a living still enforces even in the present day (in our transition
period when so much ceases to enforce) a definite _rôle_ on almost
all male Europeans, their so-called callings; some have the liberty,
an apparent liberty, to choose this rôle themselves, but most have it
chosen for them. The result is strange enough. Almost all Europeans
confound themselves with their rôle when they advance in age; they
themselves are the victims of their "good acting," they have forgotten
how much chance, whim and arbitrariness swayed them when their
"calling" was decided--and how many other rôles they _could_ perhaps
have played: for it is now too late! Looked at more closely, we see
that their characters have actually _evolved_ out of their rôle,
nature out of art. There were ages in which people believed with
unshaken confidence, yea, with piety, in their predestination for
this very business, for that very mode of livelihood, and would not
at all acknowledge chance, or the fortuitous rôle, or arbitrariness
therein. Ranks, guilds, and hereditary trade privileges succeeded] with
the help of this belief, in rearing those extraordinary broad towers
of society which distinguished the Middle Ages, and of which at all
events one thing remains to their credit: capacity for duration (and
duration is a thing of the first rank on earth!). But there are ages
entirely the reverse, the properly democratic ages, in which people
tend to become more and more oblivious of this belief, and a sort of
impudent conviction and quite contrary mode of viewing things comes
to the front, the Athenian conviction which is first observed in the
epoch of Pericles, the American conviction of the present day, which
wants also more and more to become a European conviction: whereby the
individual is convinced that he can do almost anything, that he _can
play almost any rôle,_ whereby everyone makes experiments with himself,
improvises, tries anew, tries with delight, whereby all nature ceases
and becomes art.... The Greeks, having adopted this _rôle-creed--_--an
artist creed, if you will--underwent step by step, as is well known,
a curious transformation, not in every respect worthy of imitation:
_they became actual stage-players;_ and as such they enchanted, they
conquered all the world, and at last even the conqueror of the world,
(for the _Græculus histrio_ conquered Rome, and _not_ Greek culture,
as the naïve are accustomed to say...). What I fear, however, and what
is at present obvious, if we desire to perceive it, is that we modern
men are quite on the same road already; and whenever a man begins to
discover in what respect he plays a rôle, and to what extent he _can_
be a stage-player, he _becomes_ a stage-player.... A new flora and
fauna of men thereupon springs up, which cannot grow in more stable,
more restricted eras--or is left "at the bottom," under the ban and
suspicion of infamy; thereupon the most interesting and insane periods
of history always make their appearance, in which "stage-players,"
_all_ kinds of stage-players, are the real masters. Precisely thereby
another species of man is always more and more injured, and in the
end made impossible: above all the great "architects"; the building
power is now being paralysed; the courage that makes plans for the
distant future is disheartened; there begins to be a lack of organising
geniuses. Who is there who would now venture to undertake works for
the completion of which millenniums would have to be _reckoned_
upon? The fundamental belief is dying out, on the basis of which one
could calculate, promise and anticipate the future in one's plan,
and offer it as a sacrifice thereto, that in fact man has only value
and significance in so far as he is _a stone in a great building;_
for which purpose he has first of all to be _solid,_ he has to be
a "stone."... Above all, not a--stage-player! In short--alas! this
fact will be hushed up for some considerable time to come!--that
which from henceforth will no longer be built, and _can_ no longer
be built, is--a society in the old sense of the term; to build that
structure everything is lacking, above all, the material. _None of
us are any longer material for a society:_ that is a truth which is
seasonable at present! It seems to me a matter of indifference that
meanwhile the most short-sighted, perhaps the most honest, and at any
rate the noisiest species of men of the present day, our friends the
Socialists, believe, hope, dream, and above all scream and scribble
almost the opposite; in fact one already reads their watchword of the
future-: "free society," on all tables and walls. Free society? Indeed!
Indeed! But you know, gentlemen, sure enough whereof one builds it?
Out of wooden iron! Out of the famous wooden iron! And not even out of
wooden....
357.
_The old Problem: "What is German?"_--Let us count up apart the real
acquisitions of philosophical thought for which we have to thank German
intellects: are they in any allowable sense to be counted also to the
credit of the whole race? Can we say that they are at the same time
the work of the "German soul," or at least a symptom of it, in the
sense in which we are accustomed to think, for example, of Plato's
ideomania, his almost religious madness for form, as an event and an
evidence of the "Greek soul"? Or would the reverse perhaps be true?
Were they individually as much _exceptions_ to the spirit of the race,
as was, for example, Goethe's Paganism with a good conscience? Or as
Bismarck's Macchiavelism was with a good conscience, his so-called
"practical politics" in Germany? Did our philosophers perhaps even
go counter to the _need_ of the "German soul"? In short, were the
German philosophers really philosophical _Germans_?--I call to mind
three cases. Firstly, _Leibnitz's_ incomparable insight--with which
he obtained the advantage not only over Descartes, but over all
who had philosophised up to his time,--that consciousness is only
an accident of mental representation, and _not_ its necessary and
essential attribute; that consequently what we call consciousness only
constitutes a state of our spiritual and psychical world (perhaps a
morbid state), and is _far from being that world itself_:--is there
anything German in this thought, the profundity of which has not as
yet been exhausted? Is there reason to think that a person of the
Latin race would not readily have stumbled on this reversal of the
apparent?--for it is a reversal. Let us call to mind secondly, the
immense note of interrogation which _Kant_ wrote after the notion of
causality. Not that he at all doubted its legitimacy, like Hume: on
the contrary, he began cautiously to define the domain within which
this notion has significance generally (we have not even yet got
finished with the marking out of these limits). Let us take thirdly,
the astonishing hit of _Hegel,_ who stuck at no logical usage or
fastidiousness when he ventured to teach that the conceptions of
kinds develop _out of one another:_ with which theory the thinkers
in Europe were prepared for the last great scientific movement, for
Darwinism--for without Hegel there would have been no Darwin. Is there
anything German in this Hegelian innovation which first introduced
the decisive conception of evolution into science?--Yes, without
doubt we feel that there is something of ourselves "discovered" and
divined in all three cases; we are thankful for it, and at the same
time surprised; each of these three principles is a thoughtful piece
of German self-confession, self-understanding, and self-knowledge.
We feel with Leibnitz that "our inner world is far richer, ampler,
and more concealed"; as Germans we are doubtful, like Kant, about the
ultimate validity of scientific knowledge of nature, and in general
about whatever _can_ be known _causaliter:_ the _knowable_ as such
now appears to us of _less_ worth. We Germans should still have been
Hegelians, even though there had never been a Hegel, inasmuch as we
(in contradistinction to all Latin peoples) instinctively attribute
to becoming, to evolution, a profounder significance and higher value
than to that which "is"--we hardly believe at all in the validity of
the concept "being." This is all the more the case because we are not
inclined to concede to our human logic that it is logic in itself, that
it is the only kind of logic (we should rather like, on the contrary,
to convince ourselves that it is only a special case, and perhaps one
of the strangest and most stupid).--A fourth question would be whether
also _Schopenhauer_ with his Pessimism, that is to say, the problem
of _the worth of existence,_ had to be a German. I think not. The
event _after_ which this problem was to be expected with certainty,
so that an astronomer of the soul could have calculated the day and
the hour for it--namely, the decay of the belief in the Christian God,
the victory of scientific atheism,--is a universal European event, in
which all races are to have their share of service and honour. On the
contrary, it has to be ascribed precisely to the Germans--those with
whom Schopenhauer was contemporary,--that they delayed this victory
of atheism longest, and endangered it most. Hegel especially was its
retarder _par excellence,_ in virtue of the grandiose attempt which he
made to persuade us at the very last of the divinity of existence, with
the help of our sixth sense, "the historical sense." As philosopher,
Schopenhauer was the _first_ avowed and inflexible atheist we Germans
have had: his hostility to Hegel had here its motive. The non-divinity
of existence was regarded by him as something understood, palpable,
indisputable; he always lost his philosophical composure and got
into a passion when he saw anyone hesitate and beat about the bush
here. It is at this point that his thorough uprightness of character
comes in: unconditional, honest atheism is precisely the _preliminary
condition_ for his raising the problem, as a final and hardwon victory
of the European conscience, as the most prolific act of two thousand
years' discipline to truth, which in the end no longer tolerates the
_lie_ of the belief in a God.... One sees what has really gained the
victory over the Christian God--, Christian morality itself, the
conception of veracity, taken ever more strictly, the confessional
subtlety of the Christian conscience, translated and sublimated to
the scientific conscience, to intellectual purity at any price. To
look upon nature as if it were a proof of the goodness and care of a
God; to interpret history in honour of a divine reason, as a constant
testimony to a moral order in the world and a moral final purpose; to
explain personal experiences as pious men have long enough explained
them, as if everything were a dispensation or intimation of Providence,
something planned and sent on behalf of the salvation of the soul: all
that is now _past,_ it has conscience _against_ it, it is regarded
by all the more acute consciences as disreputable and dishonourable,
as mendaciousness, femininism, weakness, and cowardice,--by virtue
of this severity, if by anything, we are _good_ Europeans, the heirs
of Europe's longest and bravest self-conquest. When we thus reject
the Christian interpretation, and condemn its "significance" as a
forgery, we are immediately confronted in a striking manner with the
_Schopenhauerian_ question: _Has existence then a significance at
all?_--the question which will require a couple of centuries even to
be completely heard in all its profundity. Schopenhauer's own answer
to this question was--if I may be forgiven for saying so--a premature,
juvenile reply, a mere compromise, a stoppage and sticking in the very
same Christian-ascetic, moral perspectives, _the belief in which had
got notice to quit_ along with the belief in God.... But he _raised_
the question--as a good European, as we have said, and _not_ as a
German.--Or did the Germans prove at least by the way in which they
seized on the Schopenhauerian question, their inner connection and
relationship to him, their preparation for his problem, and their
_need_ of it? That there has been thinking and printing even in Germany
since Schopenhauer's time on the problem raised by him,--it was late
enough!--does not at all suffice to enable us to decide in favour
of this closer relationship; one could, on the contrary, lay great
stress on the peculiar _awkwardness_ of this post-Schopenhauerian
Pessimism--Germans evidently do not behave themselves here as in
their element. I do not at all allude here to Eduard von Hartmann;
on the contrary, my old suspicion is not vanished even at present
that he is _too clever_ for us; I mean to say that as arrant rogue
from the very first, he did not perhaps make merry solely over German
Pessimism--and that in the end he might probably "bequeathe" to them
the truth as to how far a person could bamboozle the Germans themselves
in the age of bubble companies. But further, are we perhaps to reckon
to the honour of Germans, the old humming-top, Bahnsen, who all his
life spun about with the greatest pleasure around his realistically
dialectic misery and "personal ill-luck,"--was _that_ German? (In
passing I recommend his writings for the purpose for which I myself
have used them, as anti-pessimistic fare, especially on account of his
_elegantia psychologica,_ which, it seems to me, could alleviate even
the most constipated body and soul). Or would it be proper to count
such dilettanti and old maids as the mawkish apostle of virginity,
Mainländer, among the genuine Germans? After all he was probably a Jew
(all Jews become mawkish when they moralise). Neither Bahnsen, nor
Mainländer, nor even Eduard von Hartmann, give us a reliable grasp of
the question whether the pessimism of Schopenhauer (his frightened
glance into an undeified world, which has become stupid, blind,
deranged and problematic, his _honourable_ fright) was not only an
exceptional case among Germans, but a _German_ event: while everything
else which stands in the foreground, like our valiant politics and
our joyful Jingoism (which decidedly enough regards everything with
reference to a principle sufficiently unphilosophical: _"Deutschland,
Deutschland, über Alles"_[2] consequently _sub specie speciei,_ namely,
the German _species_), testifies very plainly to the contrary. No!
The Germans of to-day are _not_ pessimists! And Schopenhauer was a
pessimist, I repeat it once more, as a good European, and _not_ as a
German.
[2] "_Germany, Germany, above all_": the first line of the German
national song.--TR.
358.
_The Peasant Revolt of the Spirit._--We Europeans find ourselves in
view of an immense world of ruins, where some things still tower aloft,
while other objects stand mouldering and dismal, where most things
however already lie on the ground, picturesque enough--where were there
ever finer ruins?--overgrown with weeds, large and small. It is the
Church which is this city of decay: we see the religious organisation
of Christianity shaken to its deepest foundations. The belief in God is
overthrown, the belief in the Christian ascetic ideal is now fighting
its last fight. Such a long and solidly built work as Christianity--it
was the last construction of the Romans!--could not of course be
demolished..all at once; every sort of earthquake had to shake it,
every sort of spirit which perforates, digs, gnaws and moulders had
to assist in the work of destruction. But that which is strangest is
that those who have exerted themselves most to retain and preserve
Christianity, have been precisely those who did most to destroy
it,--the Germans. It seems that the Germans do not understand the
essence of a Church. Are they not spiritual enough, or not distrustful
enough to do so? In any case the structure of the Church rests on
a _southern_ freedom and liberality of spirit, and similarly on a
southern suspicion of nature, man, and spirit,--it rests on a knowledge
of man an experience of man, entirely different from what the north
has had. The Lutheran Reformation in all its length and breadth
was the indignation of the simple against something "complicated."
To speak cautiously, it was a coarse, honest misunderstanding, in
which much is to be forgiven,--people did not understand the mode of
expression of a _victorious_ Church, and only saw corruption; they
misunderstood the noble scepticism, the _luxury_ of scepticism and
toleration which every victorious, self-confident power permits....
One overlooks the fact readily enough at present that as regards
all cardinal questions concerning power Luther was badly endowed;
he was fatally short-sighted, superficial and imprudent--and above
all, as a man sprung from the people, he lacked all the hereditary
qualities of a ruling caste, and all the instincts for power; so that
his work, his intention to restore the work of the Romans, merely
became involuntarily and unconsciously the commencement of a work of
destruction. He unravelled, he tore asunder with honest rage, where
the old spider had woven longest and most carefully. He gave the
sacred books into the hands of everyone,--they thereby got at last
into the hands of the philologists, that is to say, the annihilators
of every belief based upon books. He demolished the conception of "the
Church" in that he repudiated the belief in the inspiration of the
Councils: for only under the supposition that the inspiring spirit
which had founded the Church still lives in it, still builds it,
still goes on building its house, does the conception of "the Church"
retain its power. He gave back to the priest sexual intercourse:
but three-fourths of the reverence of which the people (and above
all the women of the people) are capable, rests on the belief that
an exceptional man in this respect will also be an exceptional man
in other respects. It is precisely here that the popular belief in
something superhuman in man, in a miracle, in the saving God in man,
has its most subtle and insidious advocate. After Luther had given a
wife to the priest, he had _to take from him_ auricular confession;
that was psychologically right: but thereby he practically did away
with the Christian priest himself, whose profoundest utility has ever
consisted I in his being a sacred ear, a silent well, and a grave for
secrets. "Every man his own priest"--behind such formulæ and their
bucolic slyness, there was concealed in Luther the profoundest hatred
of "higher men," and of the rule of "higher men," as the Church had
conceived them. Luther disowned an ideal which he did not know how
to attain, while he seemed to combat and detest the degeneration
thereof. As a matter of fact, he, the impossible monk, repudiated the
_rule_ of the _homines religiosi_; he consequently brought about
precisely the same thing within the ecclesiastical social order that
he combated so impatiently in the civic order,--namely a "peasant
insurrection."--As to all that grew out of his Reformation afterwards,
good and bad, which can at present be almost counted up--who would
be naïve enough to praise or blame Luther simply on account of these
results? He is innocent of all; he knew not what he did. The art of
making the European spirit shallower especially in the north, or more
_good-natured,_ if people would rather hear it designated by a moral
expression, undoubtedly took a clever step in advance in the Lutheran
Reformation; and similarly there grew out of it the mobility and
disquietude of the spirit, its thirst for independence, its belief in
the right to freedom, and its "naturalness." If people wish to ascribe
to the Reformation in the last instance the merit of having prepared
and favoured that which we at present honour as "modern science,"
they must of course add that it is also accessory to bringing about
the degeneration of the modern scholar, with his lack of reverence,
of shame and of profundity; and that it is also responsible for all
naïve candour and plain-dealing in matters of knowledge, in short for
the _plebeianism of the spirit_ which is peculiar to the last two
centuries, and from which even pessimism hitherto, has not in any way
delivered us. "Modern ideas" also belong to this peasant insurrection
of the north against the colder, more ambiguous, more suspicious
spirit of the south, which has built itself its greatest monument in
the Christian Church. Let us not forget in the end what a Church is,
and especially in contrast to every "State": a Church is above all an
authoritative organisation which secures to the _most spiritual_ men
the highest rank, and _believes_ in the power of spirituality so far
as to forbid all grosser appliances of authority. Through this alone
the Church is under all circumstances a _nobler_ institution than the
State.--
359.
_Vengeance on Intellect, and other Backgrounds of
Morality._--Morality--where do you think it has its most dangerous and
rancorous advocates?--There, for example, is an ill-constituted man,
who does not possess enough of intellect to be able to take pleasure
in it, and just enough of culture to be aware of the fact; bored,
satiated, and a self-despiser; besides being cheated unfortunately by
some hereditary property out of the last consolation, the "blessing
of labour," the self-forgetfulness in the "day's work "; one who is
thoroughly ashamed of his existence--perhaps also harbouring some
vices,--and who on the other hand (by means of books to which he has no
right, or more intellectual society than he can digest), cannot help
vitiating himself more and more, and making himself vain and irritable:
such a thoroughly poisoned man--for intellect becomes poison, culture
becomes poison, possession becomes poison, solitude becomes poison,
to such ill-constituted beings--gets at last into a habitual state
of vengeance and inclination for vengeance.... What do you think he
finds necessary, absolutely necessary in order to give himself the
appearance in his own eyes of superiority over more intellectual men,
so as to give himself the delight of _perfect revenge,_ at least in
imagination? It is always _morality_ that he requires, one may wager
on it; always the big moral words, always the high-sounding words:
justice, wisdom, holiness, virtue; always the Stoicism of gestures (how
well Stoicism hides what one does _not_ possess!); always the mantle
of wise silence, of affability, of gentleness, and whatever else the
idealist-mantle is called, in which the incurable self-despisers and
also the incurably conceited walk about. Let me not be misunderstood:
out of such born _enemies of the spirit_ there arises now and then
the rare specimen of humanity who is honoured by the people under
the name of saint or sage: it is out of such men that there arise
those prodigies of morality that make a noise, and make history,--St
Augustine was one of these men. Fear of the intellect, vengeance on the
intellect--Oh! how often have these powerfully impelling vices become
the root of virtues! Yea, virtue _itself!_--And asking the question
among ourselves, even the philosopher's pretension to wisdom, which has
occasionally been made here and there on the earth, the maddest and
most immodest of all pretensions,--has it not always been _above all_
in India as well as in Greece, _a means of concealment?_ Sometimes,
perhaps, from the point of view of education which hallows so many
lies, it is a tender regard for growing and evolving persons, for
disciples who have often to be guarded against themselves by means of
the belief in a person (by means of an error). In most cases, however,
it is a means of concealment for a philosopher, behind which he seeks
protection, owing to exhaustion, age, chilliness, or hardening; as a
feeling of the approaching end, as the sagacity of the instinct which
animals have before their death,--they go apart, remain at rest, choose
solitude, creep into caves, become _wise_.... What? Wisdom a means of
concealment of the philosopher from--intellect?--
360.
_Two Kinds of Causes which are Confounded._--It seems to me one of my
most essential steps and advances that I have learned to distinguish
the cause of an action generally from the cause of an action in a
particular manner, say, in this direction, with this aim. The first
kind of cause is a quantum of stored-up force, which waits to be used
in some manner, for some purpose; the second kind of cause, on the
contrary, is something quite unimportant in comparison with the first,
an insignificant hazard for the most part, in conformity with which
the quantum of force in question "discharges" itself in some unique
and definite manner: the lucifer-match in relation to the barrel of
gunpowder. Among those insignificant hazards and lucifer-matches I
count all the so-called "aims," and similarly the still more so-called
"occupations" of people: they are relatively optional, arbitrary, and
almost indifferent in relation to the immense quantum of force which
presses on, as we have said, to be used up in any way whatever. One
generally looks at the matter in a different manner: one is accustomed
to see the _impelling_ force precisely in the aim (object, calling,
&c.), according to a primeval error,--but it is only the _directing_
force; the steersman and the steam have thereby been confounded. And
yet it is not even always a steersman, the directing force.... Is the
"aim" the "purpose," not often enough only an extenuating pretext, an
additional self-blinding of conceit, which does not wish it to be said
that the ship _follows_ the stream into which it has accidentally run?
That it "wishes" to go that way, _because_ it _must_ go that way? That
it has a direction, sure enough, but--not a steersman? We still require
a criticism of the conception of "purpose."
361.