The Project Gutenberg EBook of Human, All Too Human, by Friedrich NietzscheThis eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and withalmost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away orre-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License includedwith this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.orgTitle: Human, All Too Human A Book for Free SpiritsAuthor: Friedrich NietzscheTranslator: Alexander HarveyRelease Date: November 26, 2011 [EBook #38145]Language: EnglishCharacter set encoding: ISO-8859-1*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN ***Produced by Gary Rees, Matthew Wheaton and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (Thisbook was produced from scanned images of public domainmaterial from the Google Print project.)
A BOOK FOR FREE SPIRITS
BY
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
TRANSLATED BY ALEXANDER HARVEY
CHICAGO
CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY
1908
Copyright 1908
By Charles H. Kerr & Company
CONTENTS
| Page | |
| PREFACE. | 5 |
| OF THE FIRST AND LAST THINGS. | 19 |
| HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS. | 67 |
| THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. | 136 |
[5]
PREFACE.
1
It is often enough, and always with great surprise, intimated to me thatthere is something both ordinary and unusual in all my writings, fromthe "Birth of Tragedy" to the recently published "Prelude to aPhilosophy of the Future": they all contain, I have been told, snaresand nets for short sighted birds, and something that is almost aconstant, subtle, incitement to an overturning of habitual opinions andof approved customs. What!? Everything is merely—human—all too human?With this exclamation my writings are gone through, not without acertain dread and mistrust of ethic itself and not without a dispositionto ask the exponent of evil things if those things be not simplymisrepresented. My writings have been termed a school of distrust, stillmore of disdain: also, and more happily, of courage, audacity even. Andin fact, I myself do not believe that anybody ever looked into the worldwith a distrust as deep as mine, seeming, as I do, not simply the timelyadvocate of the devil, but, to employ theological terms, an enemy andchallenger of God; and whosoever has experienced any of the consequencesof such deep distrust, anything of the chills[6] and the agonies ofisolation to which such an unqualified difference of standpoint condemnshim endowed with it, will also understand how often I must have soughtrelief and self-forgetfulness from any source—through any object ofveneration or enmity, of scientific seriousness or wanton lightness;also why I, when I could not find what I was in need of, had to fashionit for myself, counterfeiting it or imagining it (and what poet orwriter has ever done anything else, and what other purpose can all theart in the world possibly have?) That which I always stood most in needof in order to effect my cure and self-recovery was faith, faith enoughnot to be thus isolated, not to look at life from so singular a point ofview—a magic apprehension (in eye and mind) of relationship andequality, a calm confidence in friendship, a blindness, free fromsuspicion and questioning, to two sidedness; a pleasure in externals,superficialities, the near, the accessible, in all things possessed ofcolor, skin and seeming. Perhaps I could be fairly reproached with much"art" in this regard, many fine counterfeitings; for example, that,wisely or wilfully, I had shut my eyes to Schopenhauer's blind willtowards ethic, at a time when I was already clear sighted enough on thesubject of ethic; likewise that I had deceived myself concerning RichardWagner's incurable romanticism,[7] as if it were a beginning and not anend; likewise concerning the Greeks, likewise concerning the Germans andtheir future—and there may be, perhaps, a long list of such likewises.Granted, however, that all this were true, and with justice urgedagainst me, what does it signify, what can it signify in regard to howmuch of the self-sustaining capacity, how much of reason and higherprotection are embraced in such self-deception?—and how much morefalsity is still necessary to me that I may therewith always reassuremyself regarding the luxury of my truth. Enough, I still live; and lifeis not considered now apart from ethic; it will [have] deception; itthrives (lebt) on deception ... but am I not beginning to do all overagain what I have always done, I, the old immoralist, and birdsnarer—talk unmorally, ultramorally, "beyond good and evil"?
2
Thus, then, have I evolved for myself the "free spirits" to whom thisdiscouraging-encouraging work, under the general title "Human, All TooHuman," is dedicated. Such "free spirits" do not really exist and neverdid exist. But I stood in need of them, as I have pointed out, in orderthat some good might be mixed with my[8] evils (illness, loneliness,strangeness, acedia, incapacity): to serve as gay spirits andcomrades, with whom one may talk and laugh when one is disposed to talkand laugh, and whom one may send to the devil when they grow wearisome.They are some compensation for the lack of friends. That such freespirits can possibly exist, that our Europe will yet number among hersons of to-morrow or of the day after to-morrow, such a brilliant andenthusiastic company, alive and palpable and not merely, as in my case,fantasms and imaginary shades, I, myself, can by no means doubt. I seethem already coming, slowly, slowly. May it not be that I am doing alittle something to expedite their coming when I describe in advance theinfluences under which I see them evolving and the ways along which theytravel?
3
It may be conjectured that a soul in which the type of "free spirit" canattain maturity and completeness had its decisive and deciding event inthe form of a great emancipation or unbinding, and that prior to thatevent it seemed only the more firmly and forever chained to its placeand pillar. What binds strongest? What cords seem almost unbreakable? Inthe case of mortals[9] of a choice and lofty nature they will be those ofduty: that reverence, which in youth is most typical, that timidity andtenderness in the presence of the traditionally honored and the worthy,that gratitude to the soil from which we sprung, for the hand thatguided us, for the relic before which we were taught to pray—theirsublimest moments will themselves bind these souls most strongly. Thegreat liberation comes suddenly to such prisoners, like an earthquake:the young soul is all at once shaken, torn apart, cast forth—itcomprehends not itself what is taking place. An involuntary onwardimpulse rules them with the mastery of command; a will, a wish aredeveloped to go forward, anywhere, at any price; a strong, dangerouscuriosity regarding an undiscovered world flames and flashes in alltheir being. "Better to die than live here"—so sounds the temptingvoice: and this "here," this "at home" constitutes all they havehitherto loved. A sudden dread and distrust of that which they loved, aflash of contempt for that which is called their "duty," a mutinous,wilful, volcanic-like longing for a far away journey, strange scenes andpeople, annihilation, petrifaction, a hatred surmounting love, perhaps asacrilegious impulse and look backwards, to where they so long prayedand loved, perhaps a flush of shame for what they did and at the sametime an exultation[10] at having done it, an inner, intoxicating,delightful tremor in which is betrayed the sense of victory—a victory?over what? over whom? a riddle-like victory, fruitful in questioning andwell worth questioning, but the first victory, for all—such things ofpain and ill belong to the history of the great liberation. And it is atthe same time a malady that can destroy a man, this first outbreak ofstrength and will for self-destination, self-valuation, this will forfree will: and how much illness is forced to the surface in the franticstrivings and singularities with which the freedman, the liberated seekshenceforth to attest his mastery over things! He roves fiercely around,with an unsatisfied longing and whatever objects he may encounter mustsuffer from the perilous expectancy of his pride; he tears to pieceswhatever attracts him. With a sardonic laugh he overturns whatever hefinds veiled or protected by any reverential awe: he would see whatthese things look like when they are overturned. It is wilfulness anddelight in the wilfulness of it, if he now, perhaps, gives his approvalto that which has heretofore been in ill repute—if, in curiosity andexperiment, he penetrates stealthily to the most forbidden things. Inthe background during all his plunging and roaming—for he is asrestless and aimless in his course as if lost in a wilderness—is theinterrogation[11] mark of a curiosity growing ever more dangerous. "Can wenot upset every standard? and is good perhaps evil? and God only aninvention and a subtlety of the devil? Is everything, in the lastresort, false? And if we are dupes are we not on that very accountdupers also? must we not be dupers also?" Such reflections lead andmislead him, ever further on, ever further away. Solitude, that dreadgoddess and mater saeva cupidinum, encircles and besets him, ever morethreatening, more violent, more heart breaking—but who to-day knowswhat solitude is?
4
From this morbid solitude, from the deserts of such trial years, the wayis yet far to that great, overflowing certainty and healthiness whichcannot dispense even with sickness as a means and a grappling hook ofknowledge; to that matured freedom of the spirit which is, in an equaldegree, self mastery and discipline of the heart, and gives access tothe path of much and various reflection—to that inner comprehensivenessand self satisfaction of over-richness which precludes all danger thatthe spirit has gone astray even in its own path and is sittingintoxicated in some corner or other; to that overplus[12] of plastic,healing, imitative and restorative power which is the very sign ofvigorous health, that overplus which confers upon the free spirit theperilous prerogative of spending a life in experiment and of runningadventurous risks: the past-master-privilege of the free spirit. In theinterval there may be long years of convalescence, years filled withmany hued painfully-bewitching transformations, dominated and led to thegoal by a tenacious will for health that is often emboldened to assumethe guise and the disguise of health. There is a middle ground to this,which a man of such destiny can not subsequently recall without emotion;he basks in a special fine sun of his own, with a feeling of birdlikefreedom, birdlike visual power, birdlike irrepressibleness, a somethingextraneous (Drittes) in which curiosity and delicate disdain haveunited. A "free spirit"—this refreshing term is grateful in any mood,it almost sets one aglow. One lives—no longer in the bonds of love andhate, without a yes or no, here or there indifferently, best pleased toevade, to avoid, to beat about, neither advancing nor retreating. One ishabituated to the bad, like a person who all at once sees a fearfulhurly-burly beneath him—and one was the counterpart of him whobothers himself with things that do not concern him. As a matter of factthe free spirit is bothered[13] with mere things—and how manythings—which no longer concern him.
5
A step further in recovery: and the free spirit draws near to lifeagain, slowly indeed, almost refractorily, almost distrustfully. Thereis again warmth and mellowness: feeling and fellow feeling acquiredepth, lambent airs stir all about him. He almost feels: it seems as ifnow for the first time his eyes are open to things near. He is inamaze and sits hushed: for where had he been? These near and immediatethings: how changed they seem to him! He looks gratefully back—gratefulfor his wandering, his self exile and severity, his lookings afar andhis bird flights in the cold heights. How fortunate that he has not,like a sensitive, dull home body, remained always "in the house" and "athome!" He had been beside himself, beyond a doubt. Now for the firsttime he really sees himself—and what surprises in the process. Whathitherto unfelt tremors! Yet what joy in the exhaustion, the oldsickness, the relapses of the convalescent! How it delights him,suffering, to sit still, to exercise patience, to lie in the sun! Who sowell as he appreciates the fact that there comes balmy weather even inwinter, who delights more in the[14] sunshine athwart the wall? They arethe most appreciative creatures in the world, and also the most humble,these convalescents and lizards, crawling back towards life: there aresome among them who can let no day slip past them without addressingsome song of praise to its retreating light. And speaking seriously, itis a fundamental cure for all pessimism (the cankerous vice, as is wellknown, of all idealists and humbugs), to become ill in the manner ofthese free spirits, to remain ill quite a while and then bit by bit growhealthy—I mean healthier. It is wisdom, worldly wisdom, to administereven health to oneself for a long time in small doses.
6
About this time it becomes at last possible, amid the flash lights of astill unestablished, still precarious health, for the free, the everfreer spirit to begin to read the riddle of that great liberation, ariddle which has hitherto lingered, obscure, well worth questioning,almost impalpable, in his memory. If once he hardly dared to ask "why soapart? so alone? renouncing all I loved? renouncing respect itself? whythis coldness, this suspicion, this hate for one's very virtues?"—nowhe dares, and asks it loudly, already[15] hearing the answer, "you had tobecome master over yourself, master of your own good qualities. Formerlythey were your masters: but they should be merely your tools along withother tools. You had to acquire power over your aye and no and learn tohold and withhold them in accordance with your higher aims. You had tograsp the perspective of every representation (Werthschätzung)—thedislocation, distortion and the apparent end or teleology of thehorizon, besides whatever else appertains to the perspective: also theelement of demerit in its relation to opposing merit, and the wholeintellectual cost of every affirmative, every negative. You had to findout the inevitable error1 in every Yes and in every No, error asinseparable from life, life itself as conditioned by the perspective andits inaccuracy.1 Above all, you had to see with your own eyes wherethe error1 is always greatest: there, namely, where life is littlest,narrowest, meanest, least developed and yet cannot help looking uponitself as the goal and standard of things, and smugly and ignobly andincessantly tearing to tatters all that is highest and greatest andrichest, and putting the shreds into the form of questions from thestandpoint of its own well being. You had to see with your own eyes [16]theproblem of classification, (Rangordnung, regulation concerning rank andstation) and how strength and sweep and reach of perspective wax upwardtogether: You had"—enough, the free spirit knows henceforward which"you had" it has obeyed and also what it now can do and what it now, forthe first time, dare.
1 Ungerechtigkeit, literally wrongfulness, injustice,unrighteousness.
7
Accordingly, the free spirit works out for itself an answer to thatriddle of its liberation and concludes by generalizing upon itsexperience in the following fashion: "What I went through everyone mustgo through" in whom any problem is germinated and strives to body itselfforth. The inner power and inevitability of this problem will assertthemselves in due course, as in the case of any unsuspectedpregnancy—long before the spirit has seen this problem in its trueaspect and learned to call it by its right name. Our destiny exercisesits influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature:it is our future that lays down the law to our to-day. Granted, that itis the problem of classification2 of which we free spirits may say,this is our problem, yet it is only now, in the midday [17]of our life,that we fully appreciate what preparations, shifts, trials, ordeals,stages, were essential to that problem before it could emerge to ourview, and why we had to go through the various and contradictorylongings and satisfactions of body and soul, as circumnavigators andadventurers of that inner world called "man"; as surveyors of that"higher" and of that "progression"3 that is also called"man"—crowding in everywhere, almost without fear, disdaining nothing,missing nothing, testing everything, sifting everything and eliminatingthe chance impurities—until at last we could say, we free spirits:"Here—a new problem! Here, a long ladder on the rungs of which weourselves have rested and risen, which we have actually been at times.Here is a something higher, a something deeper, a something below us, avastly extensive order, (Ordnung) a comparative classification(Rangordnung), that we perceive: here—our problem!"
2 Rangordnung: the meaning is "the problem of grasping therelative importance of things."
3 Uebereinander: one over another.
8
To what stage in the development just outlined the present book belongs(or is assigned) is something that will be hidden from no augur or[18]psychologist for an instant. But where are there psychologists to-day?In France, certainly; in Russia, perhaps; certainly not in Germany.Grounds are not wanting, to be sure, upon which the Germans of to-daymay adduce this fact to their credit: unhappily for one who in thismatter is fashioned and mentored in an un-German school! This Germanbook, which has found its readers in a wide circle of lands andpeoples—it has been some ten years on its rounds—and which must makeits way by means of any musical art and tune that will captivate theforeign ear as well as the native—this book has been read mostindifferently in Germany itself and little heeded there: to what is thatdue? "It requires too much," I have been told, "it addresses itself tomen free from the press of petty obligations, it demands fine andtrained perceptions, it requires a surplus, a surplus of time, of thelightness of heaven and of the heart, of otium in the most unrestrictedsense: mere good things that we Germans of to-day have not got andtherefore cannot give." After so graceful a retort, my philosophy bidsme be silent and ask no more questions: at times, as the proverb says,one remains a philosopher only because one says—nothing!
Nice, Spring, 1886.
[19]
OF THE FIRST AND LAST THINGS.
1
Chemistry of the Notions and the Feelings.—Philosophical problems, inalmost all their aspects, present themselves in the same interrogativeformula now that they did two thousand years ago: how can a thingdevelop out of its antithesis? for example, the reasonable from thenon-reasonable, the animate from the inanimate, the logical from theillogical, altruism from egoism, disinterestedness from greed, truthfrom error? The metaphysical philosophy formerly steered itself clear ofthis difficulty to such extent as to repudiate the evolution of onething from another and to assign a miraculous origin to what it deemedhighest and best, due to the very nature and being of the"thing-in-itself." The historical philosophy, on the other hand, whichcan no longer be viewed apart from physical science, the youngest of allphilosophical methods, discovered experimentally (and its results willprobably always be the same) that there is no antithesis whatever,except in the usual exaggerations of popular or metaphysicalcomprehension,[20] and that an error of the reason is at the bottom of suchcontradiction. According to its explanation, there is, strictlyspeaking, neither unselfish conduct, nor a wholly disinterested point ofview. Both are simply sublimations in which the basic element seemsalmost evaporated and betrays its presence only to the keenestobservation. All that we need and that could possibly be given us in thepresent state of development of the sciences, is a chemistry of themoral, religious, aesthetic conceptions and feeling, as well as of thoseemotions which we experience in the affairs, great and small, of societyand civilization, and which we are sensible of even in solitude. Butwhat if this chemistry established the fact that, even in its domain,the most magnificent results were attained with the basest and mostdespised ingredients? Would many feel disposed to continue suchinvestigations? Mankind loves to put by the questions of its origin andbeginning: must one not be almost inhuman in order to follow theopposite course?
2
The Traditional Error of Philosophers.—All philosophers make the commonmistake of taking contemporary man as their starting point and oftrying, through an analysis of him, to[21] reach a conclusion. "Man"involuntarily presents himself to them as an aeterna veritas as apassive element in every hurly-burly, as a fixed standard of things. Yeteverything uttered by the philosopher on the subject of man is, in thelast resort, nothing more than a piece of testimony concerning manduring a very limited period of time. Lack of the historical sense isthe traditional defect in all philosophers. Many innocently take man inhis most childish state as fashioned through the influence of certainreligious and even of certain political developments, as the permanentform under which man must be viewed. They will not learn that man hasevolved,4 that the intellectual faculty itself is an evolution,whereas some philosophers make the whole cosmos out of this intellectualfaculty. But everything essential in human evolution took place aeonsago, long before the four thousand years or so of which we knowanything: during these man may not have changed very much. However, thephilosopher ascribes "instinct" to contemporary man and assumes thatthis is one of the unalterable facts regarding man himself, and henceaffords a clue to the understanding of the universe in general. Thewhole teleology is so planned that man during the last four thousandyears shall be spoken of as a being existing [22]from all eternity, andwith reference to whom everything in the cosmos from its very inceptionis naturally ordered. Yet everything evolved: there are no eternal factsas there are no absolute truths. Accordingly, historical philosophisingis henceforth indispensable, and with it honesty of judgment.
3
Appreciation of Simple Truths.—It is the characteristic of an advancedcivilization to set a higher value upon little, simple truths,ascertained by scientific method, than upon the pleasing and magnificenterrors originating in metaphysical and æsthetical epochs and peoples. Tobegin with, the former are spoken of with contempt as if there could beno question of comparison respecting them, so rigid, homely, prosaic andeven discouraging is the aspect of the first, while so beautiful,decorative, intoxicating and perhaps beatific appear the last named.Nevertheless, the hardwon, the certain, the lasting and, therefore, thefertile in new knowledge, is the higher; to hold fast to it is manly andevinces courage, directness, endurance. And not only individual men butall mankind will by degrees be uplifted to this manliness when they arefinally habituated to the proper appreciation of tenable,[23] enduringknowledge and have lost all faith in inspiration and in the miraculousrevelation of truth. The reverers of forms, indeed, with their standardsof beauty and taste, may have good reason to laugh when the appreciationof little truths and the scientific spirit begin to prevail, but thatwill be only because their eyes are not yet opened to the charm of theutmost simplicity of form or because men though reared in the rightlyappreciative spirit, will still not be fully permeated by it, so thatthey continue unwittingly imitating ancient forms (and that ill enough,as anybody does who no longer feels any interest in a thing). Formerlythe mind was not brought into play through the medium of exact thought.Its serious business lay in the working out of forms and symbols. Thathas now changed. Any seriousness in symbolism is at present theindication of a deficient education. As our very acts become moreintellectual, our tendencies more rational, and our judgment, forexample, as to what seems reasonable, is very different from what it wasa hundred years ago: so the forms of our lives grow ever moreintellectual and, to the old fashioned eye, perhaps, uglier, but onlybecause it cannot see that the richness of inner, rational beauty alwaysspreads and deepens, and that the inner, rational aspect of all thingsshould now be of more consequence[24] to us than the most beautifulexternality and the most exquisite limning.
4
Astrology and the Like.—It is presumable that the objects of thereligious, moral, aesthetic and logical notions pertain simply to thesuperficialities of things, although man flatters himself with thethought that here at least he is getting to the heart of the cosmos. Hedeceives himself because these things have power to make him so happyand so wretched, and so he evinces, in this respect, the same conceitthat characterises astrology. Astrology presupposes that the heavenlybodies are regulated in their movements in harmony with the destiny ofmortals: the moral man presupposes that that which concerns himself mostnearly must also be the heart and soul of things.
5
Misconception of Dreams.—In the dream, mankind, in epochs of crudeprimitive civilization, thought they were introduced to a second,substantial world: here we have the source of all metaphysic. Withoutthe dream, men would never have been incited to an analysis of the[25]world. Even the distinction between soul and body is wholly due to theprimitive conception of the dream, as also the hypothesis of theembodied soul, whence the development of all superstition, and also,probably, the belief in god. "The dead still live: for they appear tothe living in dreams." So reasoned mankind at one time, and through manythousands of years.
6
The Scientific Spirit Prevails only Partially, not Wholly.—Thespecialized, minutest departments of science are dealt with purelyobjectively. But the general universal sciences, considered as a great,basic unity, posit the question—truly a very living question—: to whatpurpose? what is the use? Because of this reference to utility they are,as a whole, less impersonal than when looked at in their specializedaspects. Now in the case of philosophy, as forming the apex of thescientific pyramid, this question of the utility of knowledge isnecessarily brought very conspicuously forward, so that every philosophyhas, unconsciously, the air of ascribing the highest utility to itself.It is for this reason that all philosophies contain such a great amountof high flying metaphysic, and such a shrinking from the seeminginsignificance of[26] the deliverances of physical science: for thesignificance of knowledge in relation to life must be made to appear asgreat as possible. This constitutes the antagonism between thespecialties of science and philosophy. The latter aims, as art aims, atimparting to life and conduct the utmost depth and significance: in theformer mere knowledge is sought and nothing else—whatever else beincidentally obtained. Heretofore there has never been a philosophicalsystem in which philosophy itself was not made the apologist ofknowledge [in the abstract]. On this point, at least, each is optimisticand insists that to knowledge the highest utility must be ascribed. Theyare all under the tyranny of logic, which is, from its very nature,optimism.
7
The Discordant Element in Science.—Philosophy severed itself fromscience when it put the question: what is that knowledge of the worldand of life through which mankind may be made happiest? This happenedwhen the Socratic school arose: with the standpoint of happiness thearteries of investigating science were compressed too tightly to permitof any circulation of the blood—and are so compressed to-day.
[27]
8
Pneumatic Explanation of Nature.5—Metaphysic reads the message ofnature as if it were written purely pneumatically, as the church and itslearned ones formerly did where the bible was concerned. It requires agreat deal of expertness to apply to nature the same strict science ofinterpretation that the philologists have devised for all literature,and to apply it for the purpose of a simple, direct interpretation ofthe message, and at the same time, not bring out a double meaning. But,as in the case of books and literature, errors of exposition are farfrom being completely eliminated, and vestiges of allegorical andmystical interpretations are still to be met with in the most cultivatedcircles, so where nature is concerned the case is—actually much worse.
5 Pneumatic is here used in the sense of spiritual. Pneumabeing the Greek word in the New Testament for the Holy Spirit.—Ed.
9
Metaphysical World.—It is true, there may be a metaphysical world; theabsolute possibility of it can scarcely be disputed. We see all thingsthrough the medium of the human head and we cannot well cut off thishead: although there [28]remains the question what part of the world wouldbe left after it had been cut off. But that is a purely abstractscientific problem and one not much calculated to give men uneasiness:yet everything that has heretofore made metaphysical assumptionsvaluable, fearful or delightful to men, all that gave rise to them ispassion, error and self deception: the worst systems of knowledge, notthe best, pin their tenets of belief thereto. When such methods are oncebrought to view as the basis of all existing religions and metaphysics,they are already discredited. There always remains, however, thepossibility already conceded: but nothing at all can be made out ofthat, to say not a word about letting happiness, salvation and life hangupon the threads spun from such a possibility. Accordingly, nothingcould be predicated of the metaphysical world beyond the fact that it isan elsewhere,6 another sphere, inaccessible and incomprehensible tous: it would become a thing of negative properties. Even were theexistence of such a world absolutely established, it would neverthelessremain incontrovertible that of all kinds of knowledge, knowledge ofsuch a world would be of least consequence—of even less consequencethan knowledge of the chemical analysis of water would be to a stormtossed mariner.
10
The Harmlessness of Metaphysic in the Future.—As soon as religion, artand ethics are so understood that a full comprehension of them can begained without taking refuge in the postulates of metaphysical claptrapat any point in the line of reasoning, there will be a completecessation of interest in the purely theoretical problem of the "thing initself" and the "phenomenon." For here, too, the same truth applies: inreligion, art and ethics we are not concerned with the "essence of thecosmos".7 We are in the sphere of pure conception. No presentiment [orintuition] can carry us any further. With perfect tranquility thequestion of how our conception of the world could differ so sharply fromthe actual world as it is manifest to us, will be relegated to thephysiological sciences and to the history of the evolution of ideas andorganisms.
11
Language as a Presumptive Science.—The importance of language in thedevelopment of civilization consists in the fact that by means of [30]itman placed one world, his own, alongside another, a place of leveragethat he thought so firm as to admit of his turning the rest of thecosmos on a pivot that he might master it. In so far as man for ageslooked upon mere ideas and names of things as upon aeternae veritates,he evinced the very pride with which he raised himself above the brute.He really supposed that in language he possessed a knowledge of thecosmos. The language builder was not so modest as to believe that he wasonly giving names to things. On the contrary he thought he embodied thehighest wisdom concerning things in [mere] words; and, in truth,language is the first movement in all strivings for wisdom. Here, too,it is faith in ascertained truth8 from which the mightiest fountainsof strength have flowed. Very tardily—only now—it dawns upon men thatthey have propagated a monstrous error in their belief in language.Fortunately, it is too late now to arrest and turn back the evolutionaryprocess of the reason, which had its inception in this belief. Logicitself rests upon assumptions to which nothing in the world of realitycorresponds. For example, the correspondence of certain things to oneanother and the identity of those things at different periods of timeare assumptions pure [31]and simple, but the science of logic originated inthe positive belief that they were not assumptions at all butestablished facts. It is the same with the science of mathematics whichcertainly would never have come into existence if mankind had known fromthe beginning that in all nature there is no perfectly straight line, notrue circle, no standard of measurement.
8 Glaube an die gefundene Wahrheit, as distinguished fromfaith in what is taken on trust as truth.
12
Dream and Civilization.—The function of the brain which is mostencroached upon in slumber is the memory; not that it is whollysuspended, but it is reduced to a state of imperfection as, in primitiveages of mankind, was probably the case with everyone, whether waking orsleeping. Uncontrolled and entangled as it is, it perpetually confusesthings as a result of the most trifling similarities, yet in the samemental confusion and lack of control the nations invented theirmythologies, while nowadays travelers habitually observe how prone thesavage is to forgetfulness, how his mind, after the least exertion ofmemory, begins to wander and lose itself until finally he uttersfalsehood and nonsense from sheer exhaustion. Yet, in dreams, we allresemble this savage. Inadequacy of distinction and error of comparisonare the basis of[32] the preposterous things we do and say in dreams, sothat when we clearly recall a dream we are startled that so much idiocylurks within us. The absolute distinctness of all dream-images, due toimplicit faith in their substantial reality, recalls the conditions inwhich earlier mankind were placed, for whom hallucinations hadextraordinary vividness, entire communities and even entire nationslaboring simultaneously under them. Therefore: in sleep and in dream wemake the pilgrimage of early mankind over again.
13
Logic of the Dream.—During sleep the nervous system, through variousinner provocatives, is in constant agitation. Almost all the organs actindependently and vigorously. The blood circulates rapidly. The postureof the sleeper compresses some portions of the body. The coverletsinfluence the sensations in different ways. The stomach carries on thedigestive process and acts upon other organs thereby. The intestines arein motion. The position of the head induces unaccustomed action. Thefeet, shoeless, no longer pressing the ground, are the occasion of othersensations of novelty, as is, indeed, the changed garb of the entirebody. All these things, following the bustle and change of the[33] day,result, through their novelty, in a movement throughout the entiresystem that extends even to the brain functions. Thus there are ahundred circumstances to induce perplexity in the mind, a questioning asto the cause of this excitation. Now, the dream is a seeking andpresenting of reasons for these excitations of feeling, of the supposedreasons, that is to say. Thus, for example, whoever has his feet boundwith two threads will probably dream that a pair of serpents are coiledabout his feet. This is at first a hypothesis, then a belief with anaccompanying imaginative picture and the argument: "these snakes must bethe causa of those sensations which I, the sleeper, now have." Soreasons the mind of the sleeper. The conditions precedent, as thusconjectured, become, owing to the excitation of the fancy, presentrealities. Everyone knows from experience how a dreamer will transformone piercing sound, for example, that of a bell, into another of quite adifferent nature, say, the report of cannon. In his dream he becomesaware first of the effects, which he explains by a subsequent hypothesisand becomes persuaded of the purely conjectural nature of the sound. Buthow comes it that the mind of the dreamer goes so far astray when thesame mind, awake, is habitually cautious, careful, and so conservativein its dealings with hypotheses? why[34] does the first plausiblehypothesis of the cause of a sensation gain credit in the dreamingstate? (For in a dream we look upon that dream as reality, that is, weaccept our hypotheses as fully established). I have no doubt that as menargue in their dreams to-day, mankind argued, even in their wakingmoments, for thousands of years: the first causa, that occurred to themind with reference to anything that stood in need of explanation, wasaccepted as the true explanation and served as such. (Savages show thesame tendency in operation, as the reports of travelers agree). In thedream this atavistic relic of humanity manifests its existence withinus, for it is the foundation upon which the higher rational facultydeveloped itself and still develops itself in every individual. Dreamscarry us back to the earlier stages of human culture and afford us ameans of understanding it more clearly. Dream thought comes so easily tous now because we are so thoroughly trained to it through theinterminable stages of evolution during which this fanciful and facileform of theorising has prevailed. To a certain extent the dream is arestorative for the brain, which, during the day, is called upon to meetthe many demands for trained thought made upon it by the conditions of ahigher civilization.—We may, if we please, become sensible, even in ourwaking moments,[35] of a condition that is as a door and vestibule todreaming. If we close our eyes the brain immediately conjures up amedley of impressions of light and color, apparently a sort of imitationand echo of the impressions forced in upon the brain during its wakingmoments. And now the mind, in co-operation with the imagination,transforms this formless play of light and color into definite figures,moving groups, landscapes. What really takes place is a sort ofreasoning from effect back to cause. As the brain inquires: whence theseimpressions of light and color? it posits as the inducing causes of suchlights and colors, those shapes and figures. They serve the brain as theoccasions of those lights and colors because the brain, when the eyesare open and the senses awake, is accustomed to perceiving the cause ofevery impression of light and color made upon it. Here again theimagination is continually interposing its images inasmuch as itparticipates in the production of the impressions made through thesenses day by day: and the dream-fancy does exactly the same thing—thatis, the presumed cause is determined from the effect and after theeffect: all this, too, with extraordinary rapidity, so that in thismatter, as in a matter of jugglery or sleight-of-hand, a confusion ofthe mind is produced and an after effect is made to appear asimultaneous action, an[36] inverted succession of events, even.—Fromthese considerations we can see how late strict, logical thought, thetrue notion of cause and effect must have been in developing, since ourintellectual and rational faculties to this very day revert to theseprimitive processes of deduction, while practically half our lifetime isspent in the super-inducing conditions.—Even the poet, the artist,ascribes to his sentimental and emotional states causes which are notthe true ones. To that extent he is a reminder of early mankind and canaid us in its comprehension.
14
Association.9—All strong feelings are associated with a variety ofallied sentiments and emotions. They stir up the memory at the sametime. When we are under their influence we are reminded of similarstates and we feel a renewal of them within us. Thus are formed habitualsuccessions of feelings and notions, which, at last, when they followone another with lightning rapidity are no longer felt as complexitiesbut as unities. In this sense we hear of moral feelings, of religiousfeelings, as if they were absolute unities. In reality they are streamswith a hundred sources and tributaries. Here again, [37]the unity of theword speaks nothing for the unity of the thing.
9 Miterklingen: to sound simultaneously with.
15
No Within and Without in the World.10—As Democritus transferred thenotions above and below to limitless space, where they are destitute ofmeaning, so the philosophers do generally with the idea "within andwithout," as regards the form and substance (Wesen und Erscheinung) ofthe world. What they claim is that through the medium of profoundfeelings one can penetrate deep into the soul of things (Innre), drawclose to the heart of nature. But these feelings are deep only in so faras with them are simultaneously aroused, although almost imperceptibly,certain complicated groups of thoughts (Gedankengruppen) which we calldeep: a feeling is deep because we deem the thoughts accompanying itdeep. But deep thought can nevertheless be very widely sundered fromtruth, as for instance every metaphysical thought. Take from deepfeeling the element of thought blended with it and all that remains isstrength of feeling [38]which is no voucher for the validity ofknowledge, as intense faith is evidence only of its own intensity andnot of the truth of that in which the faith is felt.
10 Kein Innen und Aussen in der Welt: the above translationmay seem too literal but some dispute has arisen concerning the preciseidea the author means to convey.
16
Phenomenon and Thing-in-Itself.—The philosophers are in the habit ofplacing themselves in front of life and experience—that which they callthe world of phenomena—as if they were standing before a picture thatis unrolled before them in its final completeness. This panorama, theythink, must be studied in every detail in order to reach some conclusionregarding the object represented by the picture. From effect,accordingly is deduced cause and from cause is deduced theunconditioned. This process is generally looked upon as affording theall sufficient explanation of the world of phenomena. On the other handone must, (while putting the conception of the metaphysical distinctlyforward as that of the unconditioned, and consequently of theunconditioning) absolutely deny any connection between the unconditioned(of the metaphysical world) and the world known to us: so thatthroughout phenomena there is no manifestation of the thing-in-itself,and getting from one to the other is out of the question. Thus is leftquite ignored the circumstance that the picture—that[39] which we now calllife and experience—is a gradual evolution, is, indeed, still inprocess of evolution and for that reason should not be regarded as anenduring whole from which any conclusion as to its author (theall-sufficient reason) could be arrived at, or even pronounced out ofthe question. It is because we have for thousands of years looked intothe world with moral, aesthetic, religious predispositions, with blindprejudice, passion or fear, and surfeited ourselves with indulgence inthe follies of illogical thought, that the world has gradually become sowondrously motley, frightful, significant, soulful: it has taken ontints, but we have been the colorists: the human intellect, upon thefoundation of human needs, of human passions, has reared all these"phenomena" and injected its own erroneous fundamental conceptions intothings. Late, very late, the human intellect checks itself: and now theworld of experience and the thing-in-itself seem to it so severed and soantithetical that it denies the possibility of one's hinging upon theother—or else summons us to surrender our intellect, our personal will,to the secret and the awe-inspiring in order that thereby we may attaincertainty of certainty hereafter. Again, there are those who havecombined all the characteristic features of our world ofphenomena—that[40] is, the conception of the world which has been formedand inherited through a series of intellectual vagaries—and instead ofholding the intellect responsible for it all, have pronounced the verynature of things accountable for the present very sinister aspect of theworld, and preached annihilation of existence. Through all these viewsand opinions the toilsome, steady process of science (which now for thefirst time begins to celebrate its greatest triumph in the genesis ofthought) will definitely work itself out, the result, being, perhaps, tothe following effect: That which we now call the world is the result ofa crowd of errors and fancies which gradually developed in the generalevolution of organic nature, have grown together and been transmitted tous as the accumulated treasure of all the past—as the treasure, forwhatever is worth anything in our humanity rests upon it. From thisworld of conception it is in the power of science to release us only toa slight extent—and this is all that could be wished—inasmuch as itcannot eradicate the influence of hereditary habits of feeling, but itcan light up by degrees the stages of the development of that world ofconception, and lift us, at least for a time, above the whole spectacle.Perhaps we may then perceive that the thing-in-itself is a meet subjectfor Homeric laughter: that it seemed so much, everything,[41] indeed, andis really a void—void, that is to say, of meaning.
17
Metaphysical Explanation.—Man, when he is young, prizes metaphysicalexplanations, because they make him see matters of the highest import inthings he found disagreeable or contemptible: and if he is not satisfiedwith himself, this feeling of dissatisfaction is soothed when he seesthe most hidden world-problem or world-pain in that which he finds sodispleasing in himself. To feel himself more unresponsible and at thesame time to find things (Dinge) more interesting—that is to him thedouble benefit he owes to metaphysics. Later, indeed, he acquiresdistrust of the whole metaphysical method of explaining things: he thenperceives, perhaps, that those effects could have been attained just aswell and more scientifically by another method: that physical andhistorical explanations would, at least, have given that feeling offreedom from personal responsibility just as well, while interest inlife and its problems would be stimulated, perhaps, even more.
18
The Fundamental Problems of Metaphysics.—If a history of thedevelopment of thought[42] is ever written, the following proposition,advanced by a distinguished logician, will be illuminated with a newlight: "The universal, primordial law of the apprehending subjectconsists in the inner necessity of cognizing every object by itself, asin its essence a thing unto itself, therefore as self-existing andunchanging, in short, as a substance." Even this law, which is herecalled "primordial," is an evolution: it has yet to be shown howgradually this evolution takes place in lower organizations: how thedim, mole eyes of such organizations see, at first, nothing but a blanksameness: how later, when the various excitations of desire and aversionmanifest themselves, various substances are gradually distinguished, buteach with an attribute, that is, a special relationship to such anorganization. The first step towards the logical is judgment, theessence of which, according to the best logicians, is belief. At thefoundation of all beliefs lie sensations of pleasure or pain in relationto the apprehending subject. A third feeling, as the result of twoprior, single, separate feelings, is judgment in its crudest form. Weorganic beings are primordially interested by nothing whatever in anything (Ding) except its relation to ourselves with reference to pleasureand pain. Between the moments in which we are conscious of thisrelation, (the[43] states of feeling) lie the moments of rest, ofnot-feeling: then the world and every thing (Ding) have no interest forus: we observe no change in them (as at present a person absorbed insomething does not notice anyone passing by). To plants all things are,as a rule, at rest, eternal, every object like itself. From the periodof lower organisms has been handed down to man the belief that there arelike things (gleiche Dinge): only the trained experience attainedthrough the most advanced science contradicts this postulate. Theprimordial belief of all organisms is, perhaps, that all the rest of theworld is one thing and motionless.—Furthest away from this first steptowards the logical is the notion of causation: even to-day we thinkthat all our feelings and doings are, at bottom, acts of the free will;when the sentient individual contemplates himself he deems everyfeeling, every change, a something isolated, disconnected, that is tosay, unqualified by any thing; it comes suddenly to the surface,independent of anything that went before or came after. We are hungry,but originally we do not know that the organism must be nourished: onthe contrary that feeling seems to manifest itself without reason orpurpose; it stands out by itself and seems quite independent. Therefore:the belief in the freedom of the will is a primordial error ofeverything organic[44] as old as the very earliest inward prompting of thelogical faculty; belief in unconditioned substances and in like things(gleiche Dinge) is also a primordial and equally ancient error ofeverything organic. Inasmuch as all metaphysic has concerned itselfparticularly with substance and with freedom of the will, it should bedesignated as the science that deals with the fundamental errors ofmankind as if they were fundamental truths.
19
Number.—The invention of the laws of number has as its basis theprimordial and prior-prevailing delusion that many like things exist(although in point of fact there is no such thing is a duplicate), orthat, at least, there are things (but there is no "thing"). Theassumption of plurality always presupposes that something exists whichmanifests itself repeatedly, but just here is where the delusionprevails; in this very matter we feign realities, unities, that have noexistence. Our feelings, notions, of space and time are false for theylead, when duly tested, to logical contradictions. In all scientificdemonstrations we always unavoidably base our calculation upon somefalse standards [of duration or measurement] but as these standards[45] areat least constant, as, for example, our notions of time and space, theresults arrived at by science possess absolute accuracy and certainty intheir relationship to one another: one can keep on building uponthem—until is reached that final limit at which the erroneousfundamental conceptions, (the invariable breakdown) come into conflictwith the results established—as, for example, in the case of the atomictheory. Here we always find ourselves obliged to give credence to a"thing" or material "substratum" that is set in motion, although, at thesame time, the whole scientific programme has had as its aim theresolving of everything material into motions [themselves]: here againwe distinguish with our feeling [that which does the] moving and [thatwhich is] moved,11 and we never get out of this circle, because thebelief in things12 has been from time immemorial rooted in ournature.—When Kant says "the intellect does not derive its laws fromnature, but dictates them to her" he states the full truth as regardsthe idea of nature which we form (nature = world, as notion, that is,as error) but which is merely the synthesis of a host of errors of theintellect. [46]To a world not [the outcome of] our conception, the laws ofnumber are wholly inapplicable: such laws are valid only in the world ofmankind.
11 Wir scheiden auch hier noch mit unserer EmpfindungBewegendes und Bewegtes.
20
Some Backward Steps.—One very forward step in education is taken whenman emerges from his superstitious and religious ideas and fears and,for instance, no longer believes in the dear little angels or inoriginal sin, and has stopped talking about the salvation of the soul:when he has taken this step to freedom he has, nevertheless, through theutmost exertion of his mental power, to overcome metaphysics. Then abackward movement is necessary: he must appreciate the historicaljustification, and to an equal extent the psychological considerations,in such a movement. He must understand that the greatest advances madeby mankind have resulted from such a course and that without this verybackward movement the highest achievements of man hitherto would havebeen impossible.—With regard to philosophical metaphysics I see evermore and more who have arrived at the negative goal (that all positivemetaphysic is a delusion) but as yet very few who go a few stepsbackward: one should look out over the last rungs of the ladder, but nottry to stand on[47] them, that is to say. The most advanced as yet go onlyfar enough to free themselves from metaphysic and look back at it withan air of superiority: whereas here, no less than in the hippodrome, itis necessary to turn around in order to reach the end of the course.
21
Presumable [Nature of the] Victory of Doubt.—Let us assume for a momentthe validity of the skeptical standpoint: granted that there is nometaphysical world, and that all the metaphysical explanations of theonly world we know are useless to us, how would we then contemplate menand things? [Menschen und Dinge]. This can be thought out and it isworth while doing so, even if the question whether anything metaphysicalhas ever been demonstrated by or through Kant and Schopenhauer, be putaltogether aside. For it is, to all appearances, highly probable thatmen, on this point, will be, in the mass, skeptical. The question thusbecomes: what sort of a notion will human society, under the influenceof such a state of mind, form of itself? Perhaps the scientificdemonstration of any metaphysical world is now so difficult thatmankind will never be free from a distrust of it. And when there isformed a feeling of distrust[48] of metaphysics, the results are, in themass, the same as if metaphysics were refuted altogether and could nolonger be believed. In both cases the historical question, with regardto an unmetaphysical disposition in mankind, remains the same.
22
Disbelief in the "monumentum aere perennius".13—A decideddisadvantage, attending the termination of metaphysical modes ofthought, is that the individual fixes his mind too attentively upon hisown brief lifetime and feels no strong inducement to aid in thefoundation of institutions capable of enduring for centuries: he wisheshimself to gather the fruit from the tree that he plants andconsequently he no longer plants those trees which require centuries ofconstant cultivation and are destined to afford shade to generationafter generation in the future. For metaphysical views inspire thebelief that in them is afforded the final sure foundation upon whichhenceforth the whole future of mankind may rest and be built up: theindividual promotes his own salvation; when, [49]for example, he builds achurch or a monastery he is of opinion that he is doing something forthe salvation of his immortal soul:—Can science, as well, inspire suchfaith in the efficacy of her results? In actual fact, science requiresdoubt and distrust as her surest auxiliaries; nevertheless, the sum ofthe irresistible (that is all the onslaughts of skepticism, all thedisintegrating effects of surviving truths) can easily become so great(as, for instance, in the case of hygienic science) as to inspire thedetermination to build "eternal" works upon it. At present the contrastbetween our excitated ephemeral existence and the tranquil repose ofmetaphysical epochs is too great because both are as yet in too closejuxtaposition. The individual man himself now goes through too manystages of inner and outer evolution for him to venture to make a planeven for his life time alone. A perfectly modern man, indeed, who wantsto build himself a house feels as if he were walling himself up alive ina mausoleum.
13 Monument more enduring than brass: Horace, Odes III:XXX.
23
Age of Comparison.—The less men are bound by tradition, the greater isthe inner activity of motives, the greater, correspondingly, the outerrestlessness, the promiscuous flow of humanity, the polyphony ofstrivings. Who now feels any[50] great impulse to establish himself and hisposterity in a particular place? For whom, moreover, does there exist,at present, any strong tie? As all the methods of the arts were copiedfrom one another, so were all the methods and advancements of moralcodes, of manners, of civilizations.—Such an age derives itssignificance from the fact that in it the various ideas, codes, mannersand civilizations can be compared and experienced side by side; whichwas impossible at an earlier period in view of the localised nature ofthe rule of every civilization, corresponding to the limitation of allartistic effects by time and place. To-day the growth of the aestheticfeeling is decided, owing to the great number of [artistic] forms whichoffer themselves for comparison. The majority—those that are condemnedby the method of comparison—will be allowed to die out. In the same waythere is to-day taking place a selection of the forms and customs of thehigher morality which can result only in the extinction of the vulgarmoralities. This is the age of comparison! That is its glory—but alsoits pain. Let us not, however shrink from this pain. Rather would wecomprehend the nature of the task imposed upon us by our age asadequately as we can: posterity will bless us for doing so—a posteritythat knows itself to be [developed] through and above the narrow,[51] earlyrace-civilizations as well as the culture-civilization of comparison,but yet looks gratefully back upon both as venerable monuments ofantiquity.
24
Possibility of Progress.—When a master of the old civilization (denalten Cultur) vows to hold no more discussion with men who believe inprogress, he is quite right. For the old civilization14 has itsgreatness and its advantages behind it, and historic training forces oneto acknowledge that it can never again acquire vigor: only intolerablestupidity or equally intolerable fanaticism could fail to perceive thisfact. But men may consciously determine to evolve to a new civilizationwhere formerly they evolved unconsciously and accidentally. They can nowdevise better conditions for the advancement of mankind, for theirnourishment, training and education, they can administer the earth as aneconomic power, and, particularly, compare the capacities of men andselect them accordingly. This new, conscious civilization is killing theother which, on the whole, has led but an unreflective [52]animal and plantlife: it is also destroying the doubt of progress itself—progress ispossible. I mean: it is hasty and almost unreflective to assume thatprogress must necessarily take place: but how can it be doubted thatprogress is possible? On the other hand, progress in the sense and alongthe lines of the old civilization is not even conceivable. If romanticfantasy employs the word progress in connection with certain aims andends identical with those of the circumscribed primitive nationalcivilizations, the picture presented of progress is always borrowed fromthe past. The idea and the image of progress thus formed are quitewithout originality.
14 Cultur, culture, civilisation etc., but there is no exactEnglish equivalent.
25
Private Ethics and World Ethics.—Since the extinction of the beliefthat a god guides the general destiny of the world and, notwithstandingall the contortions and windings of the path of mankind, leads itgloriously forward, men must shape oecumenical, world-embracing ends forthemselves. The older ethics, namely Kant's, required of the individualsuch a course of conduct as he wishes all men to follow. This evincesmuch simplicity—as if any individual could determine off hand whatcourse of conduct would conduce to the welfare of humanity, and whatcourse of conduct is preëminently desir[53]able! This is a theory like thatof freedom of competition, which takes it for granted that the generalharmony [of things] must prevail of itself in accordance with someinherent law of betterment or amelioration. It may be that a latercontemplation of the needs of mankind will reveal that it is by no meansdesirable that all men should regulate their conduct according to thesame principle; it may be best, from the standpoint of certain ends yetto be attained, that men, during long periods should regulate theirconduct with reference to special, and even, in certain circumstances,evil, objects. At any rate, if mankind is not to be led astray by such auniversal rule of conduct, it behooves it to attain a knowledge of thecondition of culture that will serve as a scientific standard ofcomparison in connection with cosmical ends. Herein is comprised thetremendous mission of the great spirits of the next century.
26
Reaction as Progress.—Occasionally harsh, powerful, impetuous, yetnevertheless backward spirits, appear, who try to conjure back some pastera in the history of mankind: they serve as evidence that the newtendencies which they oppose, are not yet potent enough, that there[54] issomething lacking in them: otherwise they [the tendencies] would betterwithstand the effects of this conjuring back process. Thus Luther'sreformation shows that in his century all the impulses to freedom of thespirit were still uncertain, lacking in vigor, and immature. Sciencecould not yet rear her head. Indeed the whole Renaissance appears but asan early spring smothered in snow. But even in the present centurySchopenhauer's metaphysic shows that the scientific spirit is not yetpowerful enough: for the whole mediaeval Christian world-standpoint(Weltbetrachtung) and conception of man (Mensch-Empfindung)15 onceagain, notwithstanding the slowly wrought destruction of all Christiandogma, celebrated a resurrection in Schopenhauer's doctrine. There ismuch science in his teaching although the science does not dominate,but, instead of it, the old, trite "metaphysical necessity." It is oneof the greatest and most priceless advantages of Schopenhauer's teachingthat by it our feelings are temporarily forced back to those old humanand cosmical standpoints to which no other path could conduct us soeasily. The gain for history and justice is very great. I believe thatwithout Schopenhauer's aid it would be no easy matter for [55]anyone now todo justice to Christianity and its Asiatic relatives—a thing impossibleas regards the christianity that still survives. After according thisgreat triumph to justice, after we have corrected in so essential arespect the historical point of view which the age of learning broughtwith it, we may begin to bear still farther onward the banner ofenlightenment—a banner bearing the three names: Petrarch, Erasmus,Voltaire. We have taken a forward step out of reaction.
15 Literally man-feeling or human outlook.
27
A Substitute for Religion.—It is supposed to be a recommendation forphilosophy to say of it that it provides the people with a substitutefor religion. And in fact, the training of the intellect doesnecessitate the convenient laying out of the track of thought, since thetransition from religion by way of science entails a powerful, perilousleap,—something that should be advised against. With thisqualification, the recommendation referred to is a just one. At the sametime, it should be further explained that the needs which religionsatisfies and which science must now satisfy, are not immutable. Eventhey can be diminished and uprooted. Think, for instance, of thechristian soul-need, the sighs over[56] one's inner corruption, the anxietyregarding salvation—all notions that arise simply out of errors of thereason and require no satisfaction at all, but annihilation. Aphilosophy can either so affect these needs as to appease them or elseput them aside altogether, for they are acquired, circumscribed needs,based upon hypotheses which those of science explode. Here, for thepurpose of affording the means of transition, for the sake of lighteningthe spirit overburdened with feeling, art can be employed to far betterpurpose, as these hypotheses receive far less support from art than froma metaphysical philosophy. Then from art it is easier to go over to areally emancipating philosophical science.
28
Discredited Words.—Away with the disgustingly over-used words optimismand pessimism! For the occasion for using them grows daily less; onlydrivelers now find them indispensably necessary. What earthly reasoncould anyone have for being an optimist unless he had a god to defendwho must have created the best of all possible worlds, since he ishimself all goodness and perfection?—but what thinking man has now anyneed for the hypothesis that there is a god?—There is also no occasionwhatever for[57] a pessimistic confession of faith, unless one has apersonal interest in denouncing the advocate of god, the theologian orthe theological philosopher, and maintaining the counter propositionthat evil reigns, that wretchedness is more potent than joy, that theworld is a piece of botch work, that phenomenon (Erscheinung) is but themanifestation of some evil spirit. But who bothers his head about thetheologians any more—except the theologians themselves? Apart from alltheology and its antagonism, it is manifest that the world is neithergood nor bad, (to say nothing about its being the best or the worst) andthat these ideas of "good" and "bad" have significance only in relationto men, indeed, are without significance at all, in view of the sense inwhich they are usually employed. The contemptuous and the eulogisticpoint of view must, in every case, be repudiated.
29
Intoxicated by the Perfume of Flowers.—The ship of humanity, it isthought, acquires an ever deeper draught the more it is laden. It isbelieved that the more profoundly man thinks, the more exquisitely hefeels, the higher the standard he sets for himself, the greater hisdistance from the other animals—the more he[58] appears as a genius(Genie) among animals—the nearer he gets to the true nature of theworld and to comprehension thereof: this, indeed, he really does throughscience, but he thinks he does it far more adequately through hisreligions and arts. These are, certainly, a blossoming of the world, butnot, therefore, nearer the roots of the world than is the stalk. Onecannot learn best from it the nature of the world, although nearlyeveryone thinks so. Error has made men so deep, sensitive andimaginative in order to bring forth such flowers as religions and arts.Pure apprehension would be unable to do that. Whoever should disclose tous the essence of the world would be undeceiving us most cruelly. Notthe world as thing-in-itself but the world as idea16 (as error) isrich in portent, deep, wonderful, carrying happiness and unhappiness inits womb. This result leads to a philosophy of world negation: which, atany rate, can be as well combined with a practical world affirmation aswith its opposite.
16 Vorstellung: this word sometimes corresponds to theEnglish word "idea", at others to "conception" or "notion."
30
Evil Habits in Reaching Conclusions.—The most usual erroneousconclusions of men [59]are these: a thing17 exists, therefore it is right:Here from capacity to live is deduced fitness, from fitness, is deducedjustification. So also: an opinion gives happiness, therefore it is thetrue one, its effect is good, therefore it is itself good and true. Hereis predicated of the effect that it gives happiness, that it is good inthe sense of utility, and there is likewise predicated of the cause thatit is good, but good in the sense of logical validity. Conversely, theproposition would run: a thing17 cannot attain success, cannotmaintain itself, therefore it is evil: a belief troubles [the believer],occasions pain, therefore it is false. The free spirit, who is sensibleof the defect in this method of reaching conclusions and has had tosuffer its consequences, often succumbs to the temptation to come to thevery opposite conclusions (which, in general, are, of course, equallyerroneous): a thing cannot maintain itself: therefore it is good; abelief is troublesome, therefore it is true.
17 Sache, thing but not in the sense of Ding. Sache is ofvery indefinite application (res).
31
The Illogical is Necessary.—Among the things which can bring a thinkerto distraction is the knowledge that the illogical is necessary [60]tomankind and that from the illogical springs much that is good. Theillogical is so imbedded in the passions, in language, in art, inreligion and, above all, in everything that imparts value to life thatit cannot be taken away without irreparably injuring those beautifulthings. Only men of the utmost simplicity can believe that the natureman knows can be changed into a purely logical nature. Yet were theresteps affording approach to this goal, how utterly everything would belost on the way! Even the most rational man needs nature again, fromtime to time, that is, his illogical fundamental relation(Grundstellung) to all things.
32
Being Unjust is Essential.—All judgments of the value of life areillogically developed and therefore unjust. The vice of the judgmentconsists, first, in the way in which the subject matter comes underobservation, that is, very incompletely; secondly in the way in whichthe total is summed up; and, thirdly, in the fact that each single itemin the totality of the subject matter is itself the result of defectiveperception, and this from absolute necessity. No practical knowledge ofa man, for example, stood he never so near to us, can be complete—sothat[61] we could have a logical right to form a total estimate of him; allestimates are summary and must be so. Then the standard by which wemeasure, (our being) is not an immutable quantity; we have moods andvariations, and yet we should know ourselves as an invariable standardbefore we undertake to establish the nature of the relation of any thing(Sache) to ourselves. Perhaps it will follow from all this that oneshould form no judgments whatever; if one could but merely livewithout having to form estimates, without aversion and withoutpartiality!—for everything most abhorred is closely connected with anestimate, as well as every strongest partiality. An inclination towardsa thing, or from a thing, without an accompanying feeling that thebeneficial is desired and the pernicious contemned, an inclinationwithout a sort of experiential estimation of the desirability of an end,does not exist in man. We are primordially illogical and hence unjustbeings and can recognise this fact: this is one of the greatest andmost baffling discords of existence.
33
Error Respecting Living for the Sake of Living Essential.—Every beliefin the value and worthiness of life rests upon defective thinking;[62] itis for this reason alone possible that sympathy with the general lifeand suffering of mankind is so imperfectly developed in the individual.Even exceptional men, who can think beyond their own personalities, donot have this general life in view, but isolated portions of it. If oneis capable of fixing his observation upon exceptional cases, I mean uponhighly endowed individuals and pure souled beings, if their developmentis taken as the true end of world-evolution and if joy be felt in theirexistence, then it is possible to believe in the value of life, becausein that case the rest of humanity is overlooked: hence we have heredefective thinking. So, too, it is even if all mankind be taken intoconsideration, and one species only of impulses (the less egoistic)brought under review and those, in consideration of the other impulses,exalted: then something could still be hoped of mankind in the mass andto that extent there could exist belief in the value of life: here,again, as a result of defective thinking. Whatever attitude, thus, onemay assume, one is, as a result of this attitude, an exception amongmankind. Now, the great majority of mankind endure life without anygreat protest, and believe, to this extent, in the value of existence,but that is because each individual decides and determines alone, andnever comes out of his own personality[63] like these exceptions:everything outside of the personal has no existence for them or at theutmost is observed as but a faint shadow. Consequently the value of lifefor the generality of mankind consists simply in the fact that theindividual attaches more importance to himself than he does to theworld. The great lack of imagination from which he suffers isresponsible for his inability to enter into the feelings of beings otherthan himself, and hence his sympathy with their fate and suffering is ofthe slightest possible description. On the other hand, whosoever reallycould sympathise, necessarily doubts the value of life; were itpossible for him to sum up and to feel in himself the totalconsciousness of mankind, he would collapse with a malediction againstexistence,—for mankind is, in the mass, without a goal, and hence mancannot find, in the contemplation of his whole course, anything to servehim as a mainstay and a comfort, but rather a reason to despair. If helooks beyond the things that immediately engage him to the finalaimlessness of humanity, his own conduct assumes in his eyes thecharacter of a frittering away. To feel oneself, however, as humanity(not alone as an individual) frittered away exactly as we see the strayleaves frittered away by nature, is a feeling transcending all feeling.But who is capable of it? Only[64] a poet, certainly: and poets always knowhow to console themselves.
34
For Tranquility.—But will not our philosophy become thus a tragedy?Will not truth prove the enemy of life, of betterment? A question seemsto weigh upon our tongue and yet will not put itself into words: whetherone can knowingly remain in the domain of the untruthful? or, if onemust, whether, then, death would not be preferable? For there is nolonger any ought (Sollen), morality; so far as it is involved "ought,"is, through our point of view, as utterly annihilated as religion. Ourknowledge can permit only pleasure and pain, benefit and injury, tosubsist as motives. But how can these motives be distinguished from thedesire for truth? Even they rest upon error (in so far, as alreadystated, partiality and dislike and their very inaccurate estimatespalpably modify our pleasure and our pain). The whole of human life isdeeply involved in untruth. The individual cannot extricate it fromthis pit without thereby fundamentally clashing with his whole past,without finding his present motives of conduct, (as that of honor)illegitimate, and without opposing scorn and contempt to the ambitions[65]which prompt one to have regard for the future and for one's happinessin the future. Is it true, does there, then, remain but one way ofthinking, which, as a personal consequence brings in its train despair,and as a theoretical [consequence brings in its train] a philosophy ofdecay, disintegration, self annihilation? I believe the decidinginfluence, as regards the after-effect of knowledge, will be thetemperament of a man; I can, in addition to this after-effect justmentioned, suppose another, by means of which a much simpler life, andone freer from disturbances than the present, could be lived; so that atfirst the old motives of vehement passion might still have strength,owing to hereditary habit, but they would gradually grow weaker underthe influence of purifying knowledge. A man would live, at last, bothamong men and unto himself, as in the natural state, without praise,reproach, competition, feasting one's eyes, as if it were a play, uponmuch that formerly inspired dread. One would be rid of the strenuouselement, and would no longer feel the goad of the reflection that man isnot even [as much as] nature, nor more than nature. To be sure, thisrequires, as already stated, a good temperament, a fortified, gentle andnaturally cheerful soul, a disposition that has no need to be on itsguard against its own eccentricities and sudden outbreaks[66] and that inits utterances manifests neither sullenness nor a snarling tone—thosefamiliar, disagreeable characteristics of old dogs and old men that havebeen a long time chained up. Rather must a man, from whom the ordinarybondages of life have fallen away to so great an extent, so do that heonly lives on in order to grow continually in knowledge, and to learn toresign, without envy and without disappointment, much, yes nearlyeverything, that has value in the eyes of men. He must be content withsuch a free, fearless soaring above men, manners, laws and traditionalestimates of things, as the most desirable of all situations. He willfreely share the joy of being in such a situation, and he has, perhaps,nothing else to share—in which renunciation and self-denial really mostconsist. But if more is asked of him, he will, with a benevolent shakeof the head, refer to his brother, the free man of fact, and will,perhaps, not dissemble a little contempt: for, as regards his "freedom,"thereby hangs a tale.18
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS.
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Advantages of Psychological Observation.—That reflection regarding thehuman, all-too-human—or as the learned jargon is: psychologicalobservation—is among the means whereby the burden of life can be madelighter, that practice in this art affords presence of mind in difficultsituations and entertainment amid a wearisome environment, aye, thatmaxims may be culled in the thorniest and least pleasing paths of lifeand invigoration thereby obtained: this much was believed, was known—informer centuries. Why was this forgotten in our own century, duringwhich, at least in Germany, yes in Europe, poverty as regardspsychological observation would have been manifest in many ways hadthere been anyone to whom this poverty could have manifested itself. Notonly in the novel, in the romance, in philosophical standpoints—theseare the works of exceptional men; still more in the state of opinionregarding public events and personages; above all in general society,which says much about men but[68] nothing whatever about man, there istotally lacking the art of psychological analysis and synthesis. But whyis the richest and most harmless source of entertainment thus allowed torun to waste? Why is the greatest master of the psychological maxim nolonger read?—for, with no exaggeration whatever be it said: theeducated person in Europe who has read La Rochefoucauld and hisintellectual and artistic affinities is very hard to find; still harder,the person who knows them and does not disparage them. Apparently, too,this unusual reader takes far less pleasure in them than the formadopted by these artists should afford him: for the subtlest mind cannotadequately appreciate the art of maxim-making unless it has had trainingin it, unless it has competed in it. Without such practicalacquaintance, one is apt to look upon this making and forming as a mucheasier thing than it really is; one is not keenly enough alive to thefelicity and the charm of success. Hence present day readers of maximshave but a moderate, tempered pleasure in them, scarcely, indeed, a trueperception of their merit, so that their experiences are about the sameas those of the average beholder of cameos: people who praise becausethey cannot appreciate, and are very ready to admire and still readierto turn away.
[69]
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Objection.—Or is there a counter-proposition to the dictum thatpsychological observation is one of the means of consoling, lightening,charming existence? Have enough of the unpleasant effects of this artbeen experienced to justify the person striving for culture in turninghis regard away from it? In all truth, a certain blind faith in thegoodness of human nature, an implanted distaste for any disparagement ofhuman concerns, a sort of shamefacedness at the nakedness of the soul,may be far more desirable things in the general happiness of a man, thanthis only occasionally advantageous quality of psychologicalsharpsightedness; and perhaps belief in the good, in virtuous men andactions, in a plenitude of disinterested benevolence has been moreproductive of good in the world of men in so far as it has made men lessdistrustful. If Plutarch's heroes are enthusiastically imitated and areluctance is experienced to looking too critically into the motives oftheir actions, not the knowledge but the welfare of human society ispromoted thereby: psychological error and above all obtuseness in regardto it, help human nature forward, whereas knowledge of the truth is morepromoted by means of the stimulating strength of a hypothesis; as LaRochefoucauld[70] in the first edition of his "Sentences and Moral Maxims"has expressed it: "What the world calls virtue is ordinarily but aphantom created by the passions, and to which we give a good name inorder to do whatever we please with impunity." La Rochefoucauld andthose other French masters of soul-searching (to the number of whom haslately been added a German, the author of "Psychological Observations")are like expert marksmen who again and again hit the black spot—but itis the black spot in human nature. Their art inspires amazement, butfinally some spectator, inspired, not by the scientific spirit but by ahumanitarian feeling, execrates an art that seems to implant in the soula taste for belittling and impeaching mankind.
37
Nevertheless.—The matter therefore, as regards pro and con, standsthus: in the present state of philosophy an awakening of the moralobservation is essential. The repulsive aspect of psychologicaldissection, with the knife and tweezers entailed by the process, can nolonger be spared humanity. Such is the imperative duty of any sciencethat investigates the origin and history of the so-called moral feelingsand[71] which, in its progress, is called upon to posit and to solveadvanced social problems:—The older philosophy does not recognize thenewer at all and, through paltry evasions, has always gone astray in theinvestigation of the origin and history of human estimates(Werthschätzungen). With what results may now be very clearly perceived,since it has been shown by many examples, how the errors of the greatestphilosophers have their origin in a false explanation of certain humanactions and feelings; how upon the foundation of an erroneous analysis(for example, of the so called disinterested actions), a false ethic isreared, to support which religion and like mythological monstrositiesare called in, until finally the shades of these troubled spiritscollapse in physics and in the comprehensive world point of view. But ifit be established that superficiality of psychological observation hasheretofore set the most dangerous snares for human judgment anddeduction, and will continue to do so, all the greater need is there ofthat steady continuance of labor that never wearies putting stone uponstone, little stone upon little stone; all the greater need is there ofa courage that is not ashamed of such humble labor and that will opposepersistence, to all contempt. It is, finally, also true that countlesssingle observations concerning the human, all-too-human,[72] have beenfirst made and uttered in circles accustomed, not to furnish matter forscientific knowledge, but for intellectual pleasure-seeking; and theoriginal home atmosphere—a very seductive atmosphere—of the moralmaxim has almost inextricably interpenetrated the entire species, sothat the scientific man involuntarily manifests a sort of mistrust ofthis species and of its seriousness. But it is sufficient to point tothe consequences: for already it is becoming evident that events of themost portentous nature are developing in the domain of psychologicalobservation. What is the leading conclusion arrived at by one of thesubtlest and calmest of thinkers, the author of the work "Concerning theOrigin of the Moral Feelings", as a result of his thorough and incisiveanalysis of human conduct? "The moral man," he says, "stands no nearerthe knowable (metaphysical) world than the physical man."19 Thisdictum, grown hard and cutting beneath the hammer-blow of historicalknowledge, can some day, perhaps, in some future or other, serve as theaxe that will be laid to the root of the "metaphysical necessities" ofmen—whether more to the blessing than to the banning of universal well[73]being who can say?—but in any event a dictum fraught with the mostmomentous consequences, fruitful and fearful at once, and confrontingthe world in the two faced way characteristic of all great facts.
19 "Der moralische Mensch, sagt er, steht der intelligiblen(metaphysischen) Welt nicht näher, als der physische Mensch."
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To What Extent Useful.—Therefore, whether psychological observation ismore an advantage than a disadvantage to mankind may always remainundetermined: but there is no doubt that it is necessary, becausescience can no longer dispense with it. Science, however, recognizes noconsiderations of ultimate goals or ends any more than nature does; butas the latter duly matures things of the highest fitness for certainends without any intention of doing it, so will true science, doing withideas what nature does with matter,20 promote the purposes and thewelfare of humanity, (as occasion may afford, and in many ways) andattain fitness [to ends]—but likewise without having intended it.
20 als die Nachahmung der Natur in Begriffen, literally: "asthe counterfeit of nature in (regard to) ideas."
He to whom the atmospheric conditions of such a prospect are too wintry,has too little fire in him: let him look about him, and he will [74]becomesensible of maladies requiring an icy air, and of people who are so"kneaded together" out of ardor and intellect that they can scarcelyfind anywhere an atmosphere too cold and cutting for them. Moreover: astoo serious individuals and nations stand in need of trivialrelaxations; as others, too volatile and excitable require onerous,weighty ordeals to render them entirely healthy: should not we, the moreintellectual men of this age, which is swept more and more byconflagrations, catch up every cooling and extinguishing appliance wecan find that we may always remain as self contained, steady and calm aswe are now, and thereby perhaps serve this age as its mirror and selfreflector, when the occasion arises?
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The Fable of Discretionary Freedom.—The history of the feelings, on thebasis of which we make everyone responsible, hence, the so-called moralfeelings, is traceable in the following leading phases. At first singleactions are termed good or bad without any reference to their motive,but solely because of the utilitarian or prejudicial consequences theyhave for the community. In time, however, the origin of thesedesignations is forgotten [but] it is imagined[75] that action in itself,without reference to its consequences, contains the property "good" or"bad": with the same error according to which language designates thestone itself as hard[ness] the tree itself as green[ness]—for thereason, therefore, that what is a consequence is comprehended as acause. Accordingly, the good[ness] or bad[ness] is incorporated into themotive and [any] deed by itself is regarded as morally ambiguous. A stepfurther is taken, and the predication good or bad is no longer made ofthe particular motives but of the entire nature of a man, out of whichmotive grows as grow the plants out of the soil. Thus man issuccessively made responsible for his [particular] acts, then for his[course of] conduct, then for his motives and finally for his nature.Now, at last, is it discovered that this nature, even, cannot beresponsible, inasmuch as it is only and wholly a necessary consequenceand is synthesised out of the elements and influence of past and presentthings: therefore, that man is to be made responsible for nothing,neither for his nature, nor his motives, nor his [course of] conduct norhis [particular] acts. By this [process] is gained the knowledge thatthe history of moral estimates is the history of error, of the error ofresponsibility: as is whatever rests upon the error of the freedom ofthe will. Schopenhauer[76] concluded just the other way, thus: sincecertain actions bring depression ("consciousness of guilt") in theirtrain, there must, then, exist responsibility, for there would be nobasis for this depression at hand if all man's affairs did not followtheir course of necessity—as they do, indeed, according to the opinionof this philosopher, follow their course—but man himself, subject tothe same necessity, would be just the man that he is—which Schopenhauerdenies. From the fact of such depression Schopenhauer believes himselfable to prove a freedom which man in some way must have had, not indeedin regard to his actions but in regard to his nature: freedom,therefore, to be thus and so, not to act thus and so. Out of the esse,the sphere of freedom and responsibility, follows, according to hisopinion, the operari, the spheres of invariable causation, necessityand irresponsibility. This depression, indeed, is due apparently to theoperari—in so far as it be delusive—but in truth to whatever essebe the deed of a free will, the basic cause of the existence of anindividual: [in order to] let man become whatever he wills to become,his [to] will (Wollen) must precede his existence.—Here, apart from theabsurdity of the statement just made, there is drawn the wrong inferencethat the fact of the depression explains its character, the rational[77]admissibility of it: from such a wrong inference does Schopenhauer firstcome to his fantastic consequent of the so called discretionary freedom(intelligibeln Freiheit). (For the origin of this fabulous entity Platoand Kant are equally responsible). But depression after the act does notneed to be rational: indeed, it is certainly not so at all, for it restsupon the erroneous assumption that the act need not necessarily havecome to pass. Therefore: only because man deems himself free, but notbecause he is free, does he experience remorse and the stings ofconscience.—Moreover, this depression is something that can be grownout of; in many men it is not present at all as a consequence of actswhich inspire it in many other men. It is a very varying thing and oneclosely connected with the development of custom and civilization, andperhaps manifest only during a relatively brief period of the world'shistory.—No one is responsible for his acts, no one for his nature; tojudge is tantamount to being unjust. This applies as well when theindividual judges himself. The proposition is as clear as sunlight, andyet here everyone prefers to go back to darkness and untruth: for fearof the consequences.
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Above Animal.—The beast in us must be[78] wheedled: ethic is necessary,that we may not be torn to pieces. Without the errors involved in theassumptions of ethics, man would have remained an animal. Thus has hetaken himself as something higher and imposed rigid laws upon himself.He feels hatred, consequently, for states approximating the animal:whence the former contempt for the slave as a not-yet-man, as a thing,is to be explained.
41
Unalterable Character.—That character is unalterable is not, in thestrict sense, true; rather is this favorite proposition valid only tothe extent that during the brief life period of a man the potent newmotives can not, usually, press down hard enough to obliterate the linesimprinted by ages. Could we conceive of a man eighty thousand years old,we should have in him an absolutely alterable character; so that thematurities of successive, varying individuals would develop in him. Theshortness of human life leads to many erroneous assertions concerningthe qualities of man.
42
Classification of Enjoyments and Ethic.—The once accepted comparativeclassification[79] of enjoyments, according to which an inferior, higher,highest egoism may crave one or another enjoyment, now decides as toethical status or unethical status. A lower enjoyment (for example,sensual pleasure) preferred to a more highly esteemed one (for example,health) rates as unethical, as does welfare preferred to freedom. Thecomparative classification of enjoyments is not, however, alike or thesame at all periods; when anyone demands satisfaction of the law, he is,from the point of view of an earlier civilization, moral, from that ofthe present, non-moral. "Unethical" indicates, therefore, that a man isnot sufficiently sensible to the higher, finer impulses which thepresent civilization has brought with it, or is not sensible to them atall; it indicates backwardness, but only from the point of view of thecontemporary degree of distinction.—The comparative classification ofenjoyments itself is not determined according to absolute ethics; butafter each new ethical adjustment, it is then decided whether conduct beethical or the reverse.
43
Inhuman Men as Survivals.—Men who are now inhuman must serve us assurviving specimens of earlier civilizations. The mountain height[80] ofhumanity here reveals its lower formations, which might otherwise remainhidden from view. There are surviving specimens of humanity whose brainsthrough the vicissitudes of heredity, have escaped proper development.They show us what we all were and thus appal us; but they are as littleresponsible on this account as is a piece of granite for being granite.In our own brains there must be courses and windings corresponding tosuch characters, just as in the forms of some human organs there survivetraces of fishhood. But these courses and windings are no longer the bedin which flows the stream of our feeling.
44
Gratitude and Revenge.—The reason the powerful man is grateful is this.His benefactor has, through his benefaction, invaded the domain of thepowerful man and established himself on an equal footing: the powerfulman in turn invades the domain of the benefactor and gets satisfactionthrough the act of gratitude. It is a mild form of revenge. By notobtaining the satisfaction of gratitude the powerful would have shownhimself powerless and have ranked as such thenceforward. Hence everysociety of the good, that is to say, of the powerful originally,[81] placesgratitude among the first of duties.—Swift has added the dictum thatman is grateful in the same degree that he is revengeful.
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Two-fold Historical Origin of Good and Evil.—The notion of good and badhas a two-fold historical origin: namely, first, in the spirit of rulingraces and castes. Whoever has power to requite good with good and evilwith evil and actually brings requital, (that is, is grateful andrevengeful) acquires the name of being good; whoever is powerless andcannot requite is called bad. A man belongs, as a good individual, tothe "good" of a community, who have a feeling in common, because all theindividuals are allied with one another through the requiting sentiment.A man belongs, as a bad individual, to the "bad," to a mass ofsubjugated, powerless men who have no feeling in common. The good are acaste, the bad are a quantity, like dust. Good and bad is, for aconsiderable period, tantamount to noble and servile, master and slave.On the other hand an enemy is not looked upon as bad: he can requite.The Trojan and the Greek are in Homer both good. Not he, who does noharm, but he who is despised, is deemed bad. In the community of thegood individuals [the quality of] good[ness] is inherited; it isimpossible for[82] a bad individual to grow from such a rich soil. If,notwithstanding, one of the good individuals does something unworthy ofhis goodness, recourse is had to exorcism; thus the guilt is ascribed toa deity, the while it is declared that this deity bewitched the good maninto madness and blindness.—Second, in the spirit of the subjugated,the powerless. Here every other man is, to the individual, hostile,inconsiderate, greedy, inhuman, avaricious, be he noble or servile; badis the characteristic term for man, for every living being, indeed, thatis recognized at all, even for a god: human, divine, these notions aretantamount to devilish, bad. Manifestations of goodness, sympathy,helpfulness, are regarded with anxiety as trickiness, preludes to anevil end, deception, subtlety, in short, as refined badness. With such apredisposition in individuals, a feeling in common can scarcely arise atall, at most only the rudest form of it: so that everywhere that thisconception of good and evil prevails, the destruction of theindividuals, their race and nation, is imminent.—Our existing moralityhas developed upon the foundation laid by ruling races and castes.
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Sympathy Greater than Suffering.—There are circumstances in whichsympathy is stronger[83] than the suffering itself. We feel more pain, forinstance, when one of our friends becomes guilty of a reprehensibleaction than if we had done the deed ourselves. We once, that is, hadmore faith in the purity of his character than he had himself. Hence ourlove for him, (apparently because of this very faith) is stronger thanis his own love for himself. If, indeed, his egoism really suffers more,as a result, than our egoism, inasmuch as he must take the consequencesof his fault to a greater extent than ourselves, nevertheless, theunegoistic—this word is not to be taken too strictly, but simply as amodified form of expression—in us is more affected by his guilt thanthe unegoistic in him.
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Hypochondria.—There are people who, from sympathy and anxiety forothers become hypochondriacal. The resulting form of compassion isnothing else than sickness. So, also, is there a Christian hypochondria,from which those singular, religiously agitated people suffer who placealways before their eyes the suffering and death of Christ.
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Economy of Blessings.—The advantageous and the pleasing, as thehealthiest growths and[84] powers in the intercourse of men, are suchprecious treasures that it is much to be wished the use made of thesebalsamic means were as economical as possible: but this is impossible.Economy in the use of blessings is the dream of the craziest ofUtopians.
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Well-Wishing.—Among the small, but infinitely plentiful and thereforevery potent things to which science must pay more attention than to thegreat, uncommon things, well-wishing21 must be reckoned; I mean thosemanifestations of friendly disposition in intercourse, that laughter ofthe eye, every hand pressure, every courtesy from which, in general,every human act gets its quality. Every teacher, every functionary addsthis element as a gratuity to whatever he does as a duty; it is theperpetual well spring of humanity, like the waves of light in whicheverything grows; thus, in the narrowest circles, within the family,life blooms and flowers only through this kind feeling. Thecheerfulness, [85]friendliness and kindness of a heart are unfailingsources of unegoistic impulse and have made far more for civilizationthan those other more noised manifestations of it that are styledsympathy, benevolence and sacrifice. But it is customary to depreciatethese little tokens of kindly feeling, and, indeed, there is not much ofthe unegoistic in them. The sum of these little doses is very great,nevertheless; their combined strength is of the greatest ofstrengths.—Thus, too, much more happiness is to be found in the worldthan gloomy eyes discover: that is, if the calculation be just, and allthese pleasing moments in which every day, even the meanest human life,is rich, be not forgotten.
21 Wohl-wollen, kind feeling. It stands here for benevolencebut not benevolence in the restricted sense of the word now prevailing.
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The Desire to Inspire Compassion.—La Rochefoucauld, in the most notablepart of his self portraiture (first printed 1658) reaches the vital spotof truth when he warns all those endowed with reason to be on theirguard against compassion, when he advises that this sentiment be left tomen of the masses who stand in need of the promptings of the emotions(since they are not guided by reason) to induce them to give aid to thesuffering and to be of service in misfortune:[86] whereas compassion, inhis (and Plato's) view, deprives the heart of strength. To be sure,sympathy should be manifested but men should take care not to feel it;for the unfortunate are rendered so dull that the manifestation ofsympathy affords them the greatest happiness in the world.—Perhaps amore effectual warning against this compassion can be given if this needof the unfortunate be considered not simply as stupidity andintellectual weakness, not as a sort of distraction of the spiritentailed by misfortune itself (and thus, indeed, does La Rochefoucauldseem to view it) but as something quite different and more momentous.Let note be taken of children who cry and scream in order to becompassionated and who, therefore, await the moment when their conditionwill be observed; come into contact with the sick and the oppressed inspirit and try to ascertain if the wailing and sighing, the posturingand posing of misfortune do not have as end and aim the causing of painto the beholder: the sympathy which each beholder manifests is aconsolation to the weak and suffering only in as much as they are madeto perceive that at least they have the power, notwithstanding all theirweakness, to inflict pain. The unfortunate experiences a species of joyin the sense of superiority which the manifestation of sympathy entails;his imagination[87] is exalted; he is always strong enough, then, to causethe world pain. Thus is the thirst for sympathy a thirst for selfenjoyment and at the expense of one's fellow creatures: it shows man inthe whole ruthlessness of his own dear self: not in his mere "dullness"as La Rochefoucauld thinks.—In social conversation three fourths of allthe questions are asked, and three fourths of all the replies are madein order to inflict some little pain; that is why so many people cravesocial intercourse: it gives them a sense of their power. In thesecountless but very small doses in which the quality of badness isadministered it proves a potent stimulant of life: to the same extentthat well wishing—(Wohl-wollen) distributed through the world in likemanner, is one of the ever ready restoratives.—But will many honorablepeople be found to admit that there is any pleasure in administeringpain? that entertainment—and rare entertainment—is not seldom found incausing others, at least in thought, some pain, and in raking them withthe small shot of wickedness? The majority are too ignoble and a few aretoo good to know anything of this pudendum: the latter may,consequently, be prompt to deny that Prosper Mérimée is right when hesays: "Know, also, that nothing is more common than to do wrong for thepleasure of doing it."
[88]
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How Appearance Becomes Reality.—The actor cannot, at last, refrain,even in moments of the deepest pain, from thinking of the effectproduced by his deportment and by his surroundings—for example, even atthe funeral of his own child: he will weep at his own sorrow and itsmanifestations as though he were his own audience. The hypocrite whoalways plays one and the same part, finally ceases to be a hypocrite; asin the case of priests who, when young men, are always, eitherconsciously or unconsciously, hypocrites, and finally become naturallyand then really, without affectation, mere priests: or if the fatherdoes not carry it to this extent, the son, who inherits his father'scalling and gets the advantage of the paternal progress, does. Whenanyone, during a long period, and persistently, wishes to appearsomething, it will at last prove difficult for him to be anything else.The calling of almost every man, even of the artist, begins withhypocrisy, with an imitation of deportment, with a copying of theeffective in manner. He who always wears the mask of a friendly man mustat last gain a power over friendliness of disposition, without which theexpression itself of friendliness is not to be gained—and finallyfriendliness of disposition gains the ascendancy over him—he isbenevolent.
[89]
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The Point of Honor in Deception.—In all great deceivers onecharacteristic is prominent, to which they owe their power. In the veryact of deception, amid all the accompaniments, the agitation in thevoice, the expression, the bearing, in the crisis of the scene, therecomes over them a belief in themselves; this it is that acts soeffectively and irresistibly upon the beholders. Founders of religionsdiffer from such great deceivers in that they never come out of thisstate of self deception, or else they have, very rarely, a few momentsof enlightenment in which they are overcome by doubt; generally,however, they soothe themselves by ascribing such moments ofenlightenment to the evil adversary. Self deception must exist that bothclasses of deceivers may attain far reaching results. For men believe inthe truth of all that is manifestly believed with due implicitness byothers.
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Presumed Degrees of Truth.—One of the most usual errors of deductionis: because someone truly and openly is against us, therefore he speaksthe truth. Hence the child has faith in the judgments of its elders, theChristian in the[90] assertions of the founder of the church. So, too, itwill not be admitted that all for which men sacrificed life andhappiness in former centuries was nothing but delusion: perhaps it isalleged these things were degrees of truth. But what is really meant isthat, if a person sincerely believes a thing and has fought and died forhis faith, it would be too unjust if only delusion had inspired him.Such a state of affairs seems to contradict eternal justice. For thatreason the heart of a sensitive man pronounces against his head thejudgment: between moral conduct and intellectual insight there mustalways exist an inherent connection. It is, unfortunately, otherwise:for there is no eternal justice.
54
Falsehood.—Why do men, as a rule, speak the truth in the ordinaryaffairs of life? Certainly not for the reason that a god has forbiddenlying. But because first: it is more convenient, as falsehood entailsinvention, make-believe and recollection (wherefore Swift says thatwhoever invents a lie seldom realises the heavy burden he takes up: hemust, namely, for every lie that he tells, insert twenty more).Therefore, because in plain ordinary relations of life it is expedientto say without circumlocution: I want[91] this, I have done this, and thelike; therefore, because the way of freedom and certainty is surer thanthat of ruse.—But if it happens that a child is brought up in sinisterdomestic circumstances, it will then indulge in falsehood as matter ofcourse, and involuntarily say anything its own interests may prompt: aninclination for truth, an aversion to falsehood, is quite foreign anduncongenial to it, and hence it lies in all innocence.
55
Ethic Discredited for Faith's Sake.—No power can sustain itself when itis represented by mere humbugs: the Catholic Church may possess ever somany "worldly" sources of strength, but its true might is comprised inthose still numberless priestly natures who make their lives stern andstrenuous and whose looks and emaciated bodies are eloquent of nightvigils, fasts, ardent prayer, perhaps even of whip lashes: these thingsmake men tremble and cause them anxiety: what, if it be reallyimperative to live thus? This is the dreadful question which theiraspect occasions. As they spread this doubt, they lay anew the prop oftheir power: even the free thinkers dare not oppose suchdisinterestedness with severe truth and cry: "Thou deceived one,[92]deceive not!"—Only the difference of standpoint separates them fromhim: no difference in goodness or badness. But things we cannotaccomplish ourselves, we are apt to criticise unfairly. Thus we are toldof the cunning and perverted acts of the Jesuits, but we overlook theself mastery that each Jesuit imposes upon himself and also the factthat the easy life which the Jesuit manuals advocate is for the benefit,not of the Jesuits but the laity. Indeed, it may be questioned whetherwe enlightened ones would become equally competent workers as the resultof similar tactics and organization, and equally worthy of admiration asthe result of self mastery, indefatigable industry and devotion.
56
Victory of Knowledge over Radical Evil.—It proves a material gain tohim who would attain knowledge to have had during a considerable periodthe idea that mankind is a radically bad and perverted thing: it is afalse idea, as is its opposite, but it long held sway and its roots havereached down even to ourselves and our present world. In order tounderstand ourselves we must understand it; but in order to attain aloftier height we must step above it. We then perceive that there is nosuch thing as sin in the[93] metaphysical sense: but also, in the samesense, no such thing as virtue; that this whole domain of ethicalnotions is one of constant variation; that there are higher and deeperconceptions of good and evil, moral and immoral. Whoever desires no moreof things than knowledge of them attains speedily to peace of mind andwill at most err through lack of knowledge, but scarcely througheagerness for knowledge (or through sin, as the world calls it). He willnot ask that eagerness for knowledge be interdicted and rooted out; buthis single, all powerful ambition to know as thoroughly and as fullyas possible, will soothe him and moderate all that is strenuous in hiscircumstances. Moreover, he is now rid of a number of disturbingnotions; he is no longer beguiled by such words as hell-pain,sinfulness, unworthiness: he sees in them merely the flitting shadowpictures of false views of life and of the world.
57
Ethic as Man's Self-Analysis.—A good author, whose heart is really inhis work, wishes that someone would arise and wholly refute him if onlythereby his subject be wholly clarified and made plain. The maid in lovewishes that she could attest the fidelity of her own passion[94] throughthe faithlessness of her beloved. The soldier wishes to sacrifice hislife on the field of his fatherland's victory: for in the victory of hisfatherland his highest end is attained. The mother gives her child whatshe deprives herself of—sleep, the best nourishment and, in certaincircumstances, her health, her self.—But are all these acts unegoistic?Are these moral deeds miracles because they are, in Schopenhauer'sphrase "impossible and yet accomplished"? Is it not evident that in allfour cases man loves one part of himself, (a thought, a longing, anexperience) more than he loves another part of himself? that he thusanalyses his being and sacrifices one part of it to another part? Isthis essentially different from the behavior of the obstinate man whosays "I would rather be shot than go a step out of my way for thisfellow"?—Preference for something (wish, impulse, longing) is presentin all four instances: to yield to it, with all its consequences, is not"unegoistic."—In the domain of the ethical man conducts himself not asindividuum but as dividuum.
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What Can be Promised.—Actions can be promised, but not feelings, forthese are involuntary. Whoever promises somebody to love[95] him always, orto hate him always, or to be ever true to him, promises something thatit is out of his power to bestow. But he really can promise such coursesof conduct as are the ordinary accompaniments of love, of hate, offidelity, but which may also have their source in motives quitedifferent: for various ways and motives lead to the same conduct. Thepromise to love someone always, means, consequently: as long as I loveyou, I will manifest the deportment of love; but if I cease to love youmy deportment, although from some other motive, will be just the same,so that to the people about us it will seem as if my love remainedunchanged.—Hence it is the continuance of the deportment of love thatis promised in every instance in which eternal love (provided no elementof self deception be involved) is sworn.
59
Intellect and Ethic.—One must have a good memory to be able to keep thepromises one makes. One must have a strong imagination in order to feelsympathy. So closely is ethics connected with intellectual capacity.
60
Desire for Vengeance and Vengeance Itself.—To meditate revenge andattain it is tantamount[96] to an attack of fever, that passes away: but tomeditate revenge without possessing the strength or courage to attain itis tantamount to suffering from a chronic malady, or poisoning of bodyand soul. Ethics, which takes only the motive into account, rates bothcases alike: people generally estimate the first case as the worst(because of the consequences which the deed of vengeance may entail).Both views are short sighted.
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Ability to Wait.—Ability to wait is so hard to acquire that great poetshave not disdained to make inability to wait the central motive of theirpoems. So Shakespeare in Othello, Sophocles in Ajax, whose suicide wouldnot have seemed to him so imperative had he only been able to cool hisardor for a day, as the oracle foreboded: apparently he would then haverepulsed somewhat the fearful whispers of distracted thought and havesaid to himself: Who has not already, in my situation, mistaken a sheepfor a hero? is it so extraordinary a thing? On the contrary it issomething universally human: Ajax should thus have soothed himself.Passion will not wait: the tragic element in the lives of great men doesnot generally consist in their[97] conflict with time and the inferiorityof their fellowmen but in their inability to put off their work a yearor two: they cannot wait.—In all duels, the friends who advise have butto ascertain if the principals can wait: if this be not possible, a duelis rational inasmuch as each of the combatants may say: "either Icontinue to live and the other dies instantly, or vice versa." To waitin such circumstances would be equivalent to the frightful martyrdom ofenduring dishonor in the presence of him responsible for the dishonor:and this can easily cost more anguish than life is worth.
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Glutting Revenge.—Coarse men, who feel a sense of injury, are in thehabit of rating the extent of their injury as high as possible and ofstating the occasion of it in greatly exaggerated language, in order tobe able to feast themselves on the sentiments of hatred and revenge thusaroused.
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Value of Disparagement.—Not a few, perhaps the majority of men, find itnecessary, in order to retain their self esteem and a certain[98]uprightness in conduct, to mentally disparage and belittle all thepeople they know. But as the inferior natures are in the majority and asa great deal depends upon whether they retain or lose this uprightness,so—
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The Man in a Rage.—We should be on our guard against the man who isenraged against us, as against one who has attempted our life, for thefact that we still live consists solely in the inability to kill: werelooks sufficient, it would have been all up with us long since. Toreduce anyone to silence by physical manifestations of savagery or by aterrorizing process is a relic of under civilization. So, too, that coldlook which great personages cast upon their servitors is a remnant ofthe caste distinction between man and man; a specimen of rude antiquity:women, the conservers of the old, have maintained this survival, too,more perfectly than men.
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Whither Honesty May Lead.—Someone once had the bad habit of expressinghimself[99] upon occasion, and with perfect honesty, on the subject of themotives of his conduct, which were as good or as bad as the motives ofall men. He aroused first disfavor, then suspicion, became gradually ofill repute and was pronounced a person of whom society should beware,until at last the law took note of such a perverted being for reasonswhich usually have no weight with it or to which it closes its eyes.Lack of taciturnity concerning what is universally held secret, and anirresponsible predisposition to see what no one wants tosee—oneself—brought him to prison and to early death.
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Punishable, not Punished.—Our crime against criminals consists in thefact that we treat them as rascals.
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Sancta simplicitas of Virtue.—Every virtue has its privilege: forexample, that of contributing its own little bundle of wood to thefuneral pyre of one condemned.
[100]
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Morality and Consequence.—Not alone the beholders of an act generallyestimate the ethical or unethical element in it by the result: no, theone who performed the act does the same. For the motives and theintentions are seldom sufficiently apparent, and amid them the memoryitself seems to become clouded by the results of the act, so that a manoften ascribes the wrong motives to his acts or regards the remotemotives as the direct ones. Success often imparts to an action all thebrilliance and honor of good intention, while failure throws the shadowof conscience over the most estimable deeds. Hence arises the familiarmaxim of the politician: "Give me only success: with it I can win allthe noble souls over to my side—and make myself noble even in my owneyes."—In like manner will success prove an excellent substitute for abetter argument. To this very day many well educated men think thetriumph of Christianity over Greek philosophy is a proof of the superiortruth of the former—although in this case it was simply the coarser andmore powerful that triumphed over the more delicate and intellectual. Asregards superiority of truth, it is evident that because of it thereviving sciences have connected themselves, point for point, with thephilosophy of[101] Epicurus, while Christianity has, point for point,recoiled from it.
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Love and Justice.—Why is love so highly prized at the expense ofjustice and why are such beautiful things spoken of the former as if itwere a far higher entity than the latter? Is the former not palpably afar more stupid thing than the latter?—Certainly, and on that veryaccount so much the more agreeable to everybody: it is blind and has arich horn of plenty out of which it distributes its gifts to everyone,even when they are unmerited, even when no thanks are returned. It isimpartial like the rain, which according to the bible and experience,wets not alone the unjust but, in certain circumstances, the just aswell, and to their skins at that.
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Execution.—How comes it that every execution causes us more pain than amurder? It is the coolness of the executioner, the painful preparation,the perception that here a man is being used as an instrument for theintimidation of others. For the guilt is not punished even if there beany: this is ascribable to the teachers,[102] the parents, the environment,in ourselves, not in the murderer—I mean the predisposingcircumstances.
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Hope.—Pandora brought the box containing evils and opened it. It wasthe gift of the gods to men, a gift of most enticing appearanceexternally and called the "box of happiness." Thereupon all the evils,(living, moving things) flew out: from that time to the present they flyabout and do ill to men by day and night. One evil only did not fly outof the box: Pandora shut the lid at the behest of Zeus and it remainedinside. Now man has this box of happiness perpetually in the house andcongratulates himself upon the treasure inside of it; it is at hisservice: he grasps it whenever he is so disposed, for he knows not thatthe box which Pandora brought was a box of evils. Hence he looks uponthe one evil still remaining as the greatest source of happiness—it ishope.—Zeus intended that man, notwithstanding the evils oppressing him,should continue to live and not rid himself of life, but keep on makinghimself miserable. For this purpose he bestowed hope upon man: it is, intruth, the greatest of evils for it lengthens the ordeal of man.
[103]
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Degree of Moral Susceptibility Unknown.—The fact that one has or hasnot had certain profoundly moving impressions and insights intothings—for example, an unjustly executed, slain or martyred father, afaithless wife, a shattering, serious accident,—is the factor uponwhich the excitation of our passions to white heat principally depends,as well as the course of our whole lives. No one knows to what lengthscircumstances (sympathy, emotion) may lead him. He does not know thefull extent of his own susceptibility. Wretched environment makes himwretched. It is as a rule not the quality of our experience but itsquantity upon which depends the development of our superiority orinferiority, from the point of view of good and evil.
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The Martyr Against His Will.—In a certain movement there was a man whowas too cowardly and vacillating ever to contradict his comrades. He wasmade use of in each emergency, every sacrifice was demanded of himbecause he feared the disfavor of his comrades more than he feareddeath: he was a petty, abject spirit. They perceived this and upon thefoundation of the qualities just mentioned they[104] elevated him to thealtitude of a hero, and finally even of a martyr. Although the cowardlycreature always inwardly said No, he always said Yes with his lips, evenupon the scaffold, where he died for the tenets of his party: for besidehim stood one of his old associates who so domineered him with look andword that he actually went to his death with the utmost fortitude andhas ever since been celebrated as a martyr and exalted character.
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General Standard.—One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed tovanity, ordinary actions to habit and mean actions to fear.
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Misunderstanding of Virtue.—Whoever has obtained his experience of vicein connection with pleasure as in the case of one with a youth of wildoats behind him, comes to the conclusion that virtue must be connectedwith self denial. Whoever, on the other hand, has been very much plaguedby his passions and vices, longs to find in virtue the rest and peace ofthe soul. That is why it is possible for two virtuous people tomisunderstand one another wholly.
[105]
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The Ascetic.—The ascetic makes out of virtue a slavery.
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Honor Transferred from Persons to Things.—Actions prompted by love orby the spirit of self sacrifice for others are universally honoredwherever they are manifest. Hence is magnified the value set uponwhatever things may be loved or whatever things conduce to selfsacrifice: although in themselves they may be worth nothing much. Avaliant army is evidence of the value of the thing it fights for.
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Ambition a Substitute for Moral Feeling.—Moral feeling should neverbecome extinct in natures that are destitute of ambition. The ambitiouscan get along without moral feeling just as well as with it.—Hence thesons of retired, ambitionless families, generally become by a series ofrapid gradations, when they lose moral feeling, the most absolutelunkheads.
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Vanity Enriches.—How poor the human mind would be without vanity! As itis, it resembles[106] a well stacked and ever renewed ware-emporium thatattracts buyers of every class: they can find almost everything, havealmost everything, provided they bring with them the right kind ofmoney—admiration.
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Senility and Death.—Apart from the demands made by religion, it maywell be asked why it is more honorable in an aged man, who feels thedecline of his powers, to await slow extinction than to fix a term tohis existence himself? Suicide in such a case is a quite natural and dueproceeding that ought to command respect as a triumph of reason: and didin fact command respect during the times of the masters of Greekphilosophy and the bravest Roman patriots, who usually died by their ownhand. Eagerness, on the other hand, to keep alive from day to day withthe anxious counsel of physicians, without capacity to attain any nearerto one's ideal of life, is far less worthy of respect.—Religions arevery rich in refuges from the mandate of suicide: hence they ingratiatethemselves with those who cling to life.
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Delusions Regarding Victim and Regarding Evil Doer.—When the rich mantakes a[107] possession away from the poor man (for example, a prince whodeprives a plebeian of his beloved) there arises in the mind of the poorman a delusion: he thinks the rich man must be wholly perverted to takefrom him the little that he has. But the rich man appreciates the valueof a single possession much less because he is accustomed to manypossessions, so that he cannot put himself in the place of the poor manand does not act by any means as ill as the latter supposes. Both have atotally false idea of each other. The iniquities of the mighty whichbulk most largely in history are not nearly so monstrous as they seem.The hereditary consciousness of being a superior being with superiorenvironment renders one very callous and lulls the conscience to rest.We all feel, when the difference between ourselves and some other beingis exceedingly great, that no element of injustice can be involved, andwe kill a fly with no qualms of conscience whatever. So, too, it is noindication of wickedness in Xerxes (whom even the Greeks represent asexceptionally noble) that he deprived a father of his son and had himdrawn and quartered because the latter had manifested a troublesome,ominous distrust of an entire expedition: the individual was in thiscase brushed aside as a pestiferous insect. He was too low and mean tojustify continued sentiments of[108] compunction in the ruler of the world.Indeed no cruel man is ever as cruel, in the main, as his victim thinks.The idea of pain is never the same as the sensation. The rule isprecisely analogous in the case of the unjust judge, and of thejournalist who by means of devious rhetorical methods, leads publicopinion astray. Cause and effect are in all these instances entwinedwith totally different series of feeling and thoughts, whereas it isunconsciously assumed that principal and victim feel and think exactlyalike, and because of this assumption the guilt of the one is based uponthe pain of the other.
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The Soul's Skin.—As the bones, flesh, entrails and blood vessels areenclosed by a skin that renders the aspect of men endurable, so theimpulses and passions of the soul are enclosed by vanity: it is the skinof the soul.
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Sleep of Virtue.—If virtue goes to sleep, it will be more vigorous whenit awakes.
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Subtlety of Shame.—Men are not ashamed of obscene thoughts, but theyare ashamed when[109] they suspect that obscene thoughts are attributed tothem.
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Naughtiness Is Rare.—Most people are too much absorbed in themselves tobe bad.
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The Mite in the Balance.—We are praised or blamed, as the one or theother may be expedient, for displaying to advantage our power ofdiscernment.
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Luke 18:14 Improved.—He that humbleth himself wisheth to be exalted.
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Prevention of Suicide.—There is a justice according to which we maydeprive a man of life, but none that permits us to deprive him of death:this is merely cruelty.
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Vanity.—We set store by the good opinion of men, first because it is ofuse to us and next[110] because we wish to give them pleasure (childrentheir parents, pupils their teacher, and well disposed persons allothers generally). Only when the good opinion of men is important tosomebody, apart from personal advantage or the desire to give pleasure,do we speak of vanity. In this last case, a man wants to give himselfpleasure, but at the expense of his fellow creatures, inasmuch as heinspires them with a false opinion of himself or else inspires "goodopinion" in such a way that it is a source of pain to others (byarousing envy). The individual generally seeks, through the opinion ofothers, to attest and fortify the opinion he has of himself; but thepotent influence of authority—an influence as old as man himself—leadsmany, also, to strengthen their own opinion of themselves by means ofauthority, that is, to borrow from others the expedient of relying moreupon the judgment of their fellow men than upon their own.—Interest inoneself, the wish to please oneself attains, with the vain man, suchproportions that he first misleads others into a false, unduly exaltedestimate of himself and then relies upon the authority of others for hisself estimate; he thus creates the delusion that he pins his faithto.—It must, however, be admitted that the vain man does not desire toplease others so much as himself and he will often go so far,[111] on thisaccount, as to overlook his own interests: for he often inspires hisfellow creatures with malicious envy and renders them ill disposed inorder that he may thus increase his own delight in himself.
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Limits of the Love of Mankind.—Every man who has declared that someother man is an ass or a scoundrel, gets angry when the other manconclusively shows that the assertion was erroneous.
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Weeping Morality.—How much delight morality occasions! Think of theocean of pleasing tears that has flowed from the narration of noble,great-hearted deeds!—This charm of life would disappear if the beliefin complete irresponsibility gained the upper hand.
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Origin of Justice.—Justice (reasonableness) has its origin amongapproximate equals in power, as Thucydides (in the dreadful conferencesof the Athenian and Melian envoys) has[112] rightly conceived. Thus, wherethere exists no demonstrable supremacy and a struggle leads but tomutual, useless damage, the reflection arises that an understandingwould best be arrived at and some compromise entered into. Thereciprocal nature is hence the first nature of justice. Each party makesthe other content inasmuch as each receives what it prizes more highlythan the other. Each surrenders to the other what the other wants andreceives in return its own desire. Justice is therefore reprisal andexchange upon the basis of an approximate equality of power. Thusrevenge pertains originally to the domain of justice as it is a sort ofreciprocity. Equally so, gratitude.—Justice reverts naturally to thestandpoint of self preservation, therefore to the egoism of thisconsideration: "why should I injure myself to no purpose and perhapsnever attain my end?"—So much for the origin of justice. Only becausemen, through mental habits, have forgotten the original motive of socalled just and rational acts, and also because for thousands of yearschildren have been brought to admire and imitate such acts, have theygradually assumed the appearance of being unegotistical. Upon thisappearance is founded the high estimate of them, which, moreover, likeall estimates, is continually developing, for whatever is highlyesteemed is striven for, imitated,[113] made the object of self sacrifice,while the merit of the pain and emulation thus expended is, by eachindividual, ascribed to the thing esteemed.—How slightly moral wouldthe world appear without forgetfulness! A poet could say that God hadposted forgetfulness as a sentinel at the portal of the temple of humanmerit!
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Concerning the Law of the Weaker.—Whenever any party, for instance, abesieged city, yields to a stronger party, under stipulated conditions,the counter stipulation is that there be a reduction to insignificance,a burning and destruction of the city and thus a great damage inflictedupon the stronger party. Thus arises a sort of equalization principleupon the basis of which a law can be established. The enemy has anadvantage to gain by its maintenance.—To this extent there is also alaw between slaves and masters, limited only by the extent to which theslave may be useful to his master. The law goes originally only so faras the one party may appear to the other potent, invincible, stable, andthe like. To such an extent, then, the weaker has rights, but verylimited ones. Hence the famous dictum that each has as much law on hisside as his power extends (or more accurately, as his power is believedto extend).
[114]
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The Three Phases of Morality Hitherto.—It is the first evidence thatthe animal has become human when his conduct ceases to be based upon theimmediately expedient, but upon the permanently useful; when he has,therefore, grown utilitarian, capable of purpose. Thus is manifested thefirst rule of reason. A still higher stage is attained when he regulateshis conduct upon the basis of honor, by means of which he gains masteryof himself and surrenders his desires to principles; this lifts him farabove the phase in which he was actuated only by considerations ofpersonal advantage as he understood it. He respects and wishes to berespected. This means that he comprehends utility as a thing dependentupon what his opinion of others is and their opinion of him. Finally heregulates his conduct (the highest phase of morality hitherto attained)by his own standard of men and things. He himself decides, for himselfand for others, what is honorable and what is useful. He has become alaw giver to opinion, upon the basis of his ever higher developingconception of the utilitarian and the honorable. Knowledge makes himcapable of placing the highest utility, (that is, the universal,enduring utility) before merely personal utility,—of placing ennobling[115]recognition of the enduring and universal before the merely temporary:he lives and acts as a collective individuality.
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Ethic of the Developed Individual.—Hitherto the altruistic has beenlooked upon as the distinctive characteristic of moral conduct, and itis manifest that it was the consideration of universal utility thatprompted praise and recognition of altruistic conduct. Must not aradical departure from this point of view be imminent, now that it isbeing ever more clearly perceived that in the most personalconsiderations the most general welfare is attained: so that conductinspired by the most personal considerations of advantage is just thesort which has its origin in the present conception of morality (as auniversal utilitarianism)? To contemplate oneself as a completepersonality and bear the welfare of that personality in mind in all thatone does—this is productive of better results than any sympatheticsusceptibility and conduct in behalf of others. Indeed we all sufferfrom such disparagement of our own personalities, which are at presentmade to deteriorate from neglect. Capacity is, in fact, divorced fromour personality in most cases, and sacrificed to the state, to[116] science,to the needy, as if it were the bad which deserved to be made asacrifice. Now, we are willing to labor for our fellowmen but only tothe extent that we find our own highest advantage in so doing, no more,no less. The whole matter depends upon what may be understood as one'sadvantage: the crude, undeveloped, rough individualities will be thevery ones to estimate it most inadequately.
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Usage and Ethic.—To be moral, virtuous, praiseworthy means to yieldobedience to ancient law and hereditary usage. Whether this obedience berendered readily or with difficulty is long immaterial. Enough that itbe rendered. "Good" finally comes to mean him who acts in thetraditional manner, as a result of heredity or natural disposition, thatis to say does what is customary with scarcely an effort, whatever thatmay be (for example revenges injuries when revenge, as with the ancientGreeks, was part of good morals). He is called good because he is good"to some purpose," and as benevolence, sympathy, considerateness,moderation and the like come, in the general course of conduct, to befinally recognized as "good to some purpose" (as utilitarian) thebenevolent man, the helpful[117] man, is duly styled "good". (At first otherand more important kinds of utilitarian qualities stand in theforeground.) Bad is "not habitual" (unusual), to do things not inaccordance with usage, to oppose the traditional, however rational orthe reverse the traditional may be. To do injury to one's social groupor community (and to one's neighbor as thus understood) is looked upon,through all the variations of moral laws, in different ages, as thepeculiarly "immoral" act, so that to-day we associate the word "bad"with deliberate injury to one's neighbor or community. "Egoistic" and"non-egoistic" do not constitute the fundamental opposites that havebrought mankind to make a distinction between moral and immoral, goodand bad; but adherence to traditional custom, and emancipation from it.How the traditional had its origin is quite immaterial; in any event ithad no reference to good and bad or any categorical imperative but tothe all important end of maintaining and sustaining the community, therace, the confederation, the nation. Every superstitious custom thatoriginated in a misinterpreted event or casualty entailed sometradition, to adhere to which is moral. To break loose from it isdangerous, more prejudicial to the community than to the individual(because divinity visits the consequences of impiety and sacrilege uponthe community rather[118] than upon the individual). Now every traditiongrows ever more venerable—the more remote is its origin, the moreconfused that origin is. The reverence due to it increases fromgeneration to generation. The tradition finally becomes holy andinspires awe. Thus it is that the precept of piety is a far loftiermorality than that inculcated by altruistic conduct.
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Delight in the Moral.—A potent species of joy (and thereby the sourceof morality) is custom. The customary is done more easily, better,therefore preferably. A pleasure is felt in it and experience thus showsthat since this practice has held its own it must be good. A manner ormoral that lives and lets live is thus demonstrated advantageous,necessary, in contradistinction to all new and not yet adoptedpractices. The custom is therefore the blending of the agreeable and theuseful. Moreover it does not require deliberation. As soon as man canexercise compulsion, he exercises it to enforce and establish hiscustoms, for they are to him attested lifewisdom. So, too, a communityof individuals constrains each one of their number to adopt the samemoral or custom. The error herein is this: Because a certain custom[119] hasbeen agreeable to the feelings or at least because it proves a means ofmaintenance, this custom must be imperative, for it is regarded as theonly thing that can possibly be consistent with well being. The wellbeing of life seems to spring from it alone. This conception of thecustomary as a condition of existence is carried into the slightestdetail of morality. Inasmuch as insight into true causation is quiterestricted in all inferior peoples, a superstitious anxiety is felt thateverything be done in due routine. Even when a custom is exceedinglyburdensome it is preserved because of its supposed vital utility. It isnot known that the same degree of satisfaction can be experiencedthrough some other custom and even higher degrees of satisfaction, too.But it is fully appreciated that all customs do become more agreeablewith the lapse of time, no matter how difficult they may have been foundin the beginning, and that even the severest way of life may be rendereda matter of habit and therefore a pleasure.
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Pleasure and Social Instinct.—Through his relations with other men, manderives a new species of delight in those pleasurable emotions which hisown personality affords him; whereby[120] the domain of pleasurable emotionsis made infinitely more comprehensive. No doubt he has inherited many ofthese feelings from the brutes, which palpably feel delight when theysport with one another, as mothers with their young. So, too, the sexualrelations must be taken into account: they make every young womaninteresting to every young man from the standpoint of pleasure, andconversely. The feeling of pleasure originating in human relationshipsmakes men in general better. The delight in common, the pleasuresenjoyed together heighten one another. The individual feels a sense ofsecurity. He becomes better natured. Distrust and malice dissolve. Forthe man feels the sense of benefit and observes the same feeling inothers. Mutual manifestations of pleasure inspire mutual sympathy, thesentiment of homogeneity. The same effect is felt also at mutualsufferings, in a common danger, in stormy weather. Upon such afoundation are built the earliest alliances: the object of which is themutual protection and safety from threatening misfortunes, and thewelfare of each individual. And thus the social instinct develops frompleasure.
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The Guiltless Nature of So-Called Bad Acts.—All "bad" acts are inspiredby the impulse[121] to self preservation or, more accurately, by the desirefor pleasure and for the avoidance of pain in the individual. Thus arethey occasioned, but they are not, therefore, bad. "Pain self prepared"does not exist, except in the brains of the philosophers, any more than"pleasure self prepared" (sympathy in the Schopenhauer sense). In thecondition anterior to the state we kill the creature, be it man or ape,that attempts to pluck the fruit of a tree before we pluck it ourselvesshould we happen to be hungry at the time and making for that tree: aswe would do to-day, so far as the brute is concerned, if we werewandering in savage regions.—The bad acts which most disturb us atpresent do so because of the erroneous supposition that the one who isguilty of them towards us has a free will in the matter and that it waswithin his discretion not to have done these evil things. This belief indiscretionary power inspires hate, thirst for revenge, malice, theentire perversion of the mental processes, whereas we would feel in noway incensed against the brute, as we hold it irresponsible. To inflictpain not from the instinct of self preservation but in requital—this isthe consequence of false judgment and is equally a guiltless course ofconduct. The individual can, in that condition which is anterior to thestate, act with fierceness and violence for the intimidation[122] of anothercreature, in order to render his own power more secure as a result ofsuch acts of intimidation. Thus acts the powerful, the superior, theoriginal state founder, who subjugates the weaker. He has the right todo so, as the state nowadays assumes the same right, or, to be moreaccurate, there is no right that can conflict with this. A foundationfor all morality can first be laid only when a stronger individuality ora collective individuality, for example society, the state, subjects thesingle personalities, hence builds upon their unification andestablishes a bond of union. Morality results from compulsion, it isindeed itself one long compulsion to which obedience is rendered inorder that pain may be avoided. At first it is but custom, later freeobedience and finally almost instinct. At last it is (like everythinghabitual and natural) associated with pleasure—and is then calledvirtue.
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Shame.—Shame exists wherever a "mystery" exists: but this is areligious notion which in the earlier period of human civilization hadgreat vogue. Everywhere there were circumscribed spots to which accesswas denied on account of some divine law, except in specialcircumstances.[123] At first these spots were quite extensive, inasmuch asstipulated areas could not be trod by the uninitiated, who, when nearthem, felt tremors and anxieties. This sentiment was frequentlytransferred to other relationships, for example to sexual relations,which, as the privilege and gateway of mature age, must be withdrawnfrom the contemplation of youth for its own advantage: relations whichmany divinities were busy in preserving and sanctifying, images of whichdivinities were duly placed in marital chambers as guardians. (InTurkish such an apartment is termed a harem or holy thing, the same wordalso designating the vestibule of a mosque). So, too, Kingship isregarded as a centre from which power and brilliance stream forth, as amystery to the subjects, impregnated with secrecy and shame, sentimentsstill quite operative among peoples who in other respects are withoutany shame at all. So, too, is the whole world of inward states, theso-called "soul," even now, for all non-philosophical persons, a"mystery," and during countless ages it was looked upon as a somethingof divine origin, in direct communion with deity. It is, therefore, anadytum and occasions shame.
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Judge Not.—Care must be taken, in the contemplation of earlier ages,that there be no falling[124] into unjust scornfulness. The injustice inslavery, the cruelty in the subjugation of persons and peoples must notbe estimated by our standard. For in that period the instinct of justicewas not so highly developed. Who dare reproach the Genoese Calvin forburning the physician Servetus at the stake? It was a proceeding growingout of his convictions. And the Inquisition, too, had its justification.The only thing is that the prevailing views were false and led to thoseproceedings which seem so cruel to us, simply because such views havebecome foreign to us. Besides, what is the burning alive of oneindividual compared with eternal hell pains for everybody else? And yetthis idea then had hold of all the world without in the least vitiating,with its frightfulness, the other idea of a god. Even we nowadays arehard and merciless to political revolutionists, but that is because weare in the habit of believing the state a necessity, and hence thecruelty of the proceeding is not so much understood as in the othercases where the points of view are repudiated. The cruelty to animalsshown by children and Italians is due to the same misunderstanding. Theanimal, owing to the exigencies of the church catechism, is placed toofar below the level of mankind.—Much, too, that is frightful andinhuman in history, and which is almost incredible, is rendered[125] lessatrocious by the reflection that the one who commands and the one whoexecutes are different persons. The former does not witness theperformance and hence it makes no strong impression on him. The latterobeys a superior and hence feels no responsibility. Most princes andmilitary chieftains appear, through lack of true perception, cruel andhard without really being so.—Egoism is not bad because the idea of the"neighbor"—the word is of Christian origin and does not correspond totruth—is very weak in us, and we feel ourselves, in regard to him, asfree from responsibility as if plants and stones were involved. Thatanother is in suffering must be learned and it can never be whollylearned.
102
"Man Always Does Right."—We do not blame nature when she sends athunder storm and makes us wet: why then do we term the man who inflictsinjury immoral? Because in the latter case we assume a voluntary,ruling, free will, and in the former necessity. But this distinction isa delusion. Moreover, even the intentional infliction of injury is not,in all circumstances termed immoral. Thus, we kill a fly intentionally[126]without thinking very much about it, simply because its buzzing about isdisagreeable; and we punish a criminal and inflict pain upon him inorder to protect ourselves and society. In the first case it is theindividual who, for the sake of preserving himself or in order to sparehimself pain, does injury with design: in the second case, it is thestate. All ethic deems intentional infliction of injury justified bynecessity; that is when it is a matter of self preservation. But thesetwo points of view are sufficient to explain all bad acts done by man tomen. It is desired to obtain pleasure or avoid pain. In any sense, it isa question, always, of self preservation. Socrates and Plato are right:whatever man does he always does right: that is, does what seems to himgood (advantageous) according to the degree of advancement his intellecthas attained, which is always the measure of his rational capacity.
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The Inoffensive in Badness.—Badness has not for its object theinfliction of pain upon others but simply our own satisfaction as, forinstance, in the case of thirst for vengeance or of nerve excitation.Every act of teasing shows what pleasure is caused by the display ofour[127] power over others and what feelings of delight are experienced inthe sense of domination. Is there, then, anything immoral in feelingpleasure in the pain of others? Is malicious joy devilish, asSchopenhauer says? In the realm of nature we feel joy in breakingboughs, shattering rocks, fighting with wild beasts, simply to attestour strength thereby. Should not the knowledge that another suffers onour account here, in this case, make the same kind of act, (which, bythe way, arouses no qualms of conscience in us) immoral also? But if wehad not this knowledge there would be no pleasure in one's ownsuperiority or power, for this pleasure is experienced only in thesuffering of another, as in the case of teasing. All pleasure is, initself, neither good nor bad. Whence comes the conviction that oneshould not cause pain in others in order to feel pleasure oneself?Simply from the standpoint of utility, that is, in consideration of theconsequences, of ultimate pain, since the injured party or state willdemand satisfaction and revenge. This consideration alone can have ledto the determination to renounce such pleasure.—Sympathy has thesatisfaction of others in view no more than, as already stated, badnesshas the pain of others in view. For there are at least two (perhaps manymore) elementary ingredients in personal gratification which enterlargely[128] into our self satisfaction: one of them being the pleasure ofthe emotion, of which species is sympathy with tragedy, and another,when the impulse is to action, being the pleasure of exercising one'spower. Should a sufferer be very dear to us, we divest ourselves of painby the performance of acts of sympathy.—With the exception of some fewphilosophers, men have placed sympathy very low in the rank of moralfeelings: and rightly.
104
Self Defence.—If self defence is in general held a valid justification,then nearly every manifestation of so called immoral egoism must bejustified, too. Pain is inflicted, robbery or killing done in order tomaintain life or to protect oneself and ward off harm. A man lies whencunning and delusion are valid means of self preservation. To injureintentionally when our safety and our existence are involved, or thecontinuance of our well being, is conceded to be moral. The state itselfinjures from this motive when it hangs criminals. In unintentionalinjury the immoral, of course, can not be present, as accident alone isinvolved. But is there any sort of intentional injury in which ourexistence and the maintenance of our well being be not involved?[129] Isthere such a thing as injuring from absolute badness, for example, inthe case of cruelty? If a man does not know what pain an act occasions,that act is not one of wickedness. Thus the child is not bad to theanimal, not evil. It disturbs and rends it as if it were one of itsplaythings. Does a man ever fully know how much pain an act may causeanother? As far as our nervous system extends, we shield ourselves frompain. If it extended further, that is, to our fellow men, we would nevercause anyone else any pain (except in such cases as we cause it toourselves, when we cut ourselves, surgically, to heal our ills, orstrive and trouble ourselves to gain health). We conclude from analogythat something pains somebody and can in consequence, throughrecollection and the power of imagination, feel pain also. But what adifference there always is between the tooth ache and the pain(sympathy) that the spectacle of tooth ache occasions! Therefore wheninjury is inflicted from so called badness the degree of pain therebyexperienced is always unknown to us: in so far, however, as pleasure isfelt in the act (a sense of one's own power, of one's own excitation)the act is committed to maintain the well being of the individual andhence comes under the purview of self defence and lying for selfpreservation. Without pleasure, there is no[130] life; the struggle forpleasure is the struggle for life. Whether the individual shall carry onthis struggle in such a way that he be called good or in such a way thathe be called bad is something that the standard and the capacity of hisown intellect must determine for him.
105
Justice that Rewards.—Whoever has fully understood the doctrine ofabsolute irresponsibility can no longer include the so called rewardingand punishing justice in the idea of justice, if the latter be taken tomean that to each be given his due. For he who is punished does notdeserve the punishment. He is used simply as a means to intimidateothers from certain acts. Equally, he who is rewarded does not merit thereward. He could not act any differently than he did act. Hence thereward has only the significance of an encouragement to him and othersas a motive for subsequent acts. The praise is called out only to himwho is running in the race and not to him who has arrived at the goal.Something that comes to someone as his own is neither a punishment nor areward. It is given to him from utiliarian considerations, without hishaving any claim to it in justice. Hence one must say "the wise manpraises not[131] because a good act has been done" precisely as was oncesaid: "the wise man punishes not because a bad act has been done but inorder that a bad act may not be done." If punishment and reward ceased,there would cease with them the most powerful incentives to certain actsand away from other acts. The purposes of men demand their continuance[of punishment and reward] and inasmuch as punishment and reward, blameand praise operate most potently upon vanity, these same purposes of menimperatively require the continuance of vanity.
106
The Water Fall.—At the sight of a water fall we may opine that in thecountless curves, spirations and dashes of the waves we behold freedomof the will and of the impulses. But everything is compulsory,everything can be mathematically calculated. Thus it is, too, with humanacts. We would be able to calculate in advance every single action if wewere all knowing, as well as every advance in knowledge, every delusion,every bad deed. The acting individual himself is held fast in theillusion of volition. If, on a sudden, the entire movement of the worldstopped short, and an all knowing and reasoning intelligence were thereto take advantage[132] of this pause, he could foretell the future of everybeing to the remotest ages and indicate the path that would be taken inthe world's further course. The deception of the acting individual asregards himself, the assumption of the freedom of the will, is a part ofthis computable mechanism.
107
Non-Responsibility and Non-Guilt.—The absolute irresponsibility of manfor his acts and his nature is the bitterest drop in the cup of him whohas knowledge, if he be accustomed to behold in responsibility and dutythe patent of nobility of his human nature. All his estimates,preferences, dislikes are thus made worthless and false. His deepestsentiment, with which he honored the sufferer, the hero, sprang from anerror. He may no longer praise, no longer blame, for it is irrational toblame and praise nature and necessity. Just as he cherishes thebeautiful work of art, but does not praise it (as it is incapable ofdoing anything for itself), just as he stands in the presence of plants,he must stand in the presence of human conduct, his own included. He mayadmire strength, beauty, capacity, therein, but he can discern no merit.The chemical process and the conflict of the elements,[133] the ordeal ofthe invalid who strives for convalescence, are no more merits than thesoul-struggles and extremities in which one is torn this way and that bycontending motives until one finally decides in favor of thestrongest—as the phrase has it, although, in fact, it is the strongestmotive that decides for us. All these motives, however, whatever finenames we may give them, have grown from the same roots in which webelieve the baneful poisons lurk. Between good and bad actions there isno difference in kind but, at most, in degree. Good acts are sublimatedevil. Bad acts are degraded, imbruted good. The very longing of theindividual for self gratification (together with the fear of beingdeprived of it) obtains satisfaction in all circumstances, let theindividual act as he may, that is, as he must: be it in deeds of vanity,revenge, pleasure, utility, badness, cunning, be it in deeds of selfsacrifice, sympathy or knowledge. The degrees of rational capacitydetermine the direction in which this longing impels: every society,every individual has constantly present a comparative classification ofbenefits in accordance with which conduct is determined and others arejudged. But this standard perpetually changes. Many acts are called badthat are only stupid, because the degree of intelligence that decidedfor them was low. Indeed,[134] in a certain sense, all acts now are stupid,for the highest degree of human intelligence that has yet been attainedwill in time most certainly be surpassed and then, in retrospection, allour present conduct and opinion will appear as narrow and petty as wenow deem the conduct and opinion of savage peoples and ages.—Toperceive all these things may occasion profound pain but there is,nevertheless, a consolation. Such pains are birth pains. The butterflyinsists upon breaking through the cocoon, he presses through it, tearsit to pieces, only to be blinded and confused by the strange light, bythe realm of liberty. By such men as are capable of this sadness—howfew there are!—will the first attempt be made to see if humanity mayconvert itself from a thing of morality to a thing of wisdom. The sun ofa new gospel sheds its first ray upon the loftiest height in the soulsof those few: but the clouds are massed there, too, thicker than ever,and not far apart are the brightest sunlight and the deepest gloom.Everything is necessity—so says the new knowledge: and this knowledgeis itself necessity. All is guiltlessness, and knowledge is the way toinsight into this guiltlessness. If pleasure, egoism, vanity benecessary to attest the moral phenomena and their richest blooms, theinstinct for truth and accuracy of knowledge; if delusion[135] and confusionof the imagination were the only means whereby mankind could graduallylift itself up to this degree of self enlightenment and selfemancipation—who would venture to disparage the means? Who would havethe right to feel sad if made aware of the goal to which those pathslead? Everything in the domain of ethic is evolved, changeable,tottering; all things flow, it is true—but all things are also in thestream: to their goal. Though within us the hereditary habit oferroneous judgment, love, hate, may be ever dominant, yet under theinfluence of awaking knowledge it will ever become weaker: a new habit,that of understanding, not-loving, not-hating, looking from above, growsup within us gradually and in the same soil, and may, perhaps, inthousands of years be powerful enough to endow mankind with capacity todevelop the wise, guiltless man (conscious of guiltlessness) asunfailingly as it now developes the unwise, irrational, guilt-consciousman—that is to say, the necessary higher step, not the opposite of it.
[136]
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE.
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The Double Contest Against Evil.—If an evil afflicts us we can eitherso deal with it as to remove its cause or else so deal with it that itseffect upon our feeling is changed: hence look upon the evil as abenefit of which the uses will perhaps first become evident in somesubsequent period. Religion and art (and also the metaphysicalphilosophy) strive to effect an alteration of the feeling, partly by analteration of our judgment respecting the experience (for example, withthe aid of the dictum "whom God loves, he chastizes") partly by theawakening of a joy in pain, in emotion especially (whence the art oftragedy had its origin). The more one is disposed to interpret away andjustify, the less likely he is to look directly at the causes of eviland eliminate them. An instant alleviation and narcotizing of pain, asis usual in the case of tooth ache, is sufficient for him even in theseverest suffering. The more the domination of religions and of allnarcotic arts declines, the more searchingly do men look to theelimination[137] of evil itself, which is a rather bad thing for the tragicpoets—for there is ever less and less material for tragedy, since thedomain of unsparing, immutable destiny grows constantly morecircumscribed—and a still worse thing for the priests, for these lasthave lived heretofore upon the narcoticizing of human ill.
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Sorrow is Knowledge.—How willingly would not one exchange the falseassertions of the homines religiosi that there is a god who commands usto be good, who is the sentinel and witness of every act, every moment,every thought, who loves us, who plans our welfare in everymisfortune—how willingly would not one exchange these for truths ashealing, beneficial and grateful as those delusions! But there are nosuch truths. Philosophy can at most set up in opposition to them othermetaphysical plausibilities (fundamental untruths as well). The tragedyof it all is that, although one cannot believe these dogmas of religionand metaphysics if one adopts in heart and head the potent methods oftruth, one has yet become, through human evolution, so tender,susceptible, sensitive, as to stand in need of the most effective meansof rest and consolation. From this[138] state of things arises the dangerthat, through the perception of truth or, more accurately, seeingthrough delusion, one may bleed to death. Byron has put this intodeathless verse:
"Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most
Must mourn the deepest o'er the fatal truth,
The tree of knowledge is not that of life."
Against such cares there is no better protective than the light fancy ofHorace, (at any rate during the darkest hours and sun eclipses of thesoul) expressed in the words
"quid aeternis minorem
consiliis animum fatigas?
cur non sub alta vel platano vel hac
pinu jacentes."22
Then wherefore should you, who are mortal, outwear
Your soul with a profitless burden of care
Say, why should we not, flung at ease neath this pine,
Or a plane-tree's broad umbrage, quaff gaily our wine?
(Translation of Sir Theodore Martin.)
At any rate, light fancy or heavy heartedness of any degree must bebetter than a romantic retrogression and desertion of one's flag, anapproach to Christianity in any form: for with it, in the present stateof knowledge, one can have nothing to do without hopelessly defilingone's intellectual integrity and surrendering it unconditionally. Thesewoes may be painful enough, but without pain one cannot become a leaderand guide of humanity: and woe to him who would be such and lacks thispure integrity of the intellect!
[139]
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The Truth in Religion.—In the ages of enlightenment justice was notdone to the importance of religion, of this there can be no doubt. It isalso equally certain that in the ensuing reaction of enlightenment, thedemands of justice were far exceeded inasmuch as religion was treatedwith love, even with infatuation and proclaimed as a profound, indeedthe most profound knowledge of the world, which science had but todivest of its dogmatic garb in order to possess "truth" in itsunmythical form. Religions must therefore—this was the contention ofall foes of enlightenment—sensu allegorico, with regard for thecomprehension of the masses, give expression to that ancient truth whichis wisdom in itself, inasmuch as all science of modern times has led upto it instead of away from it. So that between the most ancient wisdomof man and all later wisdom there prevails harmony, even similarity ofviewpoint; and the advancement of knowledge—if one be disposed toconcede such a thing—has to do not with its nature but with itspropagation. This whole conception of religion and science is throughand through erroneous, and none would to-day be hardy enough tocountenance it had not Schopenhauer's rhetoric taken it underprotection, this high sounding rhetoric which now gains[140] auditors afterthe lapse of a generation. Much as may be gained from Schopenhauer'sreligio-ethical human and cosmical oracle as regards the comprehensionof Christianity and other religions, it is nevertheless certain that heerred regarding the value of religion to knowledge. He himself was inthis but a servile pupil of the scientific teachers of his time who hadall taken romanticism under their protection and renounced the spirit ofenlightenment. Had he been born in our own time it would have beenimpossible for him to have spoken of the sensus allegoricus of religion.He would instead have done truth the justice to say: never has areligion, directly or indirectly, either as dogma or as allegory,contained a truth. For all religions grew out of dread or necessity, andcame into existence through an error of the reason. They have, perhaps,in times of danger from science, incorporated some philosophicaldoctrine or other into their systems in order to make it possible tocontinue one's existence within them. But this is but a theological workof art dating from the time in which a religion began to doubt ofitself. These theological feats of art, which are most common inChristianity as the religion of a learned age, impregnated withphilosophy, have led to this superstition of the sensus allegoricus, ashas, even more, the habit of the philosophers[141] (namely thosehalf-natures, the poetical philosophers and the philosophising artists)of dealing with their own feelings as if they constituted thefundamental nature of humanity and hence of giving their own religiousfeelings a predominant influence over the structure of their systems. Asthe philosophers mostly philosophised under the influence of hereditaryreligious habits, or at least under the traditional influence of this"metaphysical necessity," they naturally arrived at conclusions closelyresembling the Judaic or Christian or Indian religioustenets—resembling, in the way that children are apt to look like theirmothers: only in this case the fathers were not certain as to thematernity, as easily happens—but in the innocence of their admiration,they fabled regarding the family likeness of all religion and science.In reality, there exists between religion and true science neitherrelationship nor friendship, not even enmity: they dwell in differentspheres. Every philosophy that lets the religious comet gleam throughthe darkness of its last outposts renders everything within it thatpurports to be science, suspicious. It is all probably religion,although it may assume the guise of science.—Moreover, though all thepeoples agree concerning certain religious things, for example, theexistence of a god (which, by the way, as regards this point,[142] is notthe case) this fact would constitute an argument against the thingagreed upon, for example the very existence of a god. The consensusgentium and especially hominum can probably amount only to an absurdity.Against it there is no consensus omnium sapientium whatever, on anypoint, with the exception of which Goethe's verse speaks:
"All greatest sages to all latest ages
Will smile, wink and slily agree
'Tis folly to wait till a fool's empty pate
Has learned to be knowing and free.
So children of wisdom must look upon fools
As creatures who're never the better for schools."
Stated without rhyme or metre and adapted to our case: the consensussapientium is to the effect that the consensus gentium amounts to anabsurdity.
111
Origin of Religious Worship.—Let us transport ourselves back to thetimes in which religious life flourished most vigorously and we willfind a fundamental conviction prevalent which we no longer share andwhich has resulted in the closing of the door to religious life once forall so far as we are concerned: this conviction has to do with natureand intercourse with her. In those times nothing is yet known ofnature's laws. Neither for earth nor for heaven is there[143] a must. Aseason, sunshine, rain can come or stay away as it pleases. There iswanting, in particular, all idea of natural causation. If a man rows, itis not the oar that moves the boat, but rowing is a magical ceremonywhereby a demon is constrained to move the boat. All illness, deathitself, is a consequence of magical influences. In sickness and deathnothing natural is conceived. The whole idea of "natural course" iswanting. The idea dawns first upon the ancient Greeks, that is to say ina very late period of humanity, in the conception of a Moira [fate]ruling over the gods. If any person shoots off a bow, there is always anirrational strength and agency in the act. If the wells suddenly rundry, the first thought is of subterranean demons and their pranks. Itmust have been the dart of a god beneath whose invisible influence ahuman being suddenly collapses. In India, the carpenter (according toLubbock) is in the habit of making devout offerings to his hammer andhatchet. A Brahmin treats the plume with which he writes, a soldier theweapon that he takes into the field, a mason his trowel, a laborer hisplow, in the same way. All nature is, in the opinion of religiouspeople, a sum total of the doings of conscious and willing beings, animmense mass of complex volitions. In regard to all that takes placeoutside of us no conclusion is permissible[144] that anything will resultthus and so, must result thus and so, that we are comparativelycalculable and certain in our experiences, that man is the rule, naturethe ruleless. This view forms the fundamental conviction that dominatescrude, religion-producing, early civilizations. We contemporary men feelexactly the opposite: the richer man now feels himself inwardly, themore polyphone the music and the sounding of his soul, the morepowerfully does the uniformity of nature impress him. We all, withGoethe, recognize in nature the great means of repose for the soul. Welisten to the pendulum stroke of this great clock with longing for rest,for absolute calm and quiescence, as if we could drink in the uniformityof nature and thereby arrive first at an enjoyment of oneself. Formerlyit was the reverse: if we carry ourselves back to the periods of crudecivilization, or if we contemplate contemporary savages, we will findthem most strongly influenced by rule, by tradition. The individual isalmost automatically bound to rule and tradition and moves with theuniformity of a pendulum. To him nature—the uncomprehended, fearful,mysterious nature—must seem the domain of freedom, of volition, ofhigher power, indeed as an ultra-human degree of destiny, as god. Everyindividual in such periods and circumstances feels that his existence,his[145] happiness, the existence and happiness of the family, the state,the success or failure of every undertaking, must depend upon thesedispositions of nature. Certain natural events must occur at the propertime and certain others must not occur. How can influence be exercisedover this fearful unknown, how can this domain of freedom be broughtunder subjection? thus he asks himself, thus he worries: Is there nomeans to render these powers of nature as subject to rule and traditionas you are yourself?—The cogitation of the superstitious andmagic-deluded man is upon the theme of imposing a law upon nature: andto put it briefly, religious worship is the result of such cogitation.The problem which is present to every man is closely connected with thisone: how can the weaker party dictate laws to the stronger, control itsacts in reference to the weaker? At first the most harmless form ofinfluence is recollected, that influence which is acquired when thepartiality of anyone has been won. Through beseeching and prayer,through abject humiliation, through obligations to regular gifts andpropitiations, through flattering homages, it is possible, therefore, toimpose some guidance upon the forces of nature, to the extent that theirpartiality be won: love binds and is bound. Then agreements can beentered into by means of which certain[146] courses of conduct are mutuallyconcluded, vows are made and authorities prescribed. But far more potentis that species of power exercised by means of magic and incantation. Asa man is able to injure a powerful enemy by means of the magician andrender him helpless with fear, as the love potion operates at adistance, so can the mighty forces of nature, in the opinion of weakermankind, be controlled by similar means. The principal means ofeffecting incantations is to acquire control of something belonging tothe party to be influenced, hair, finger nails, food from his table,even his picture or his name. With such apparatus it is possible to actby means of magic, for the basic principle is that to everythingspiritual corresponds something corporeal. With the aid of thiscorporeal element the spirit may be bound, injured or destroyed. Thecorporeal affords the handle by which the spiritual can be laid hold of.In the same way that man influences mankind does he influences somespirit of nature, for this latter has also its corporeal element thatcan be grasped. The tree, and on the same basis, the seed from which itgrew: this puzzling sequence seems to demonstrate that in both forms thesame spirit is embodied, now large, now small. A stone that suddenlyrolls, is the body in which the spirit works. Does a huge boulder lie ina[147] lonely moor? It is impossible to think of mortal power having placedit there. The stone must have moved itself there. That is to say somespirit must dominate it. Everything that has a body is subject to magic,including, therefore, the spirits of nature. If a god is directlyconnected with his portrait, a direct influence (by refraining fromdevout offerings, by whippings, chainings and the like) can be broughtto bear upon him. The lower classes in China tie cords around thepicture of their god in order to defy his departing favor, when he hasleft them in the lurch, and tear the picture to pieces, drag it throughthe streets into dung heaps and gutters, crying: "You dog of a spirit,we housed you in a beautiful temple, we gilded you prettily, we fed youwell, we brought you offerings, and yet how ungrateful you are!" Similardisplays of resentment have been made against pictures of the mother ofgod and pictures of saints in Catholic countries during the presentcentury when such pictures would not do their duty during times ofpestilence and drought.
Through all these magical relationships to nature countless ceremoniesare occasioned, and finally, when their complexity and confusion growtoo great, pains are taken to systematize them, to arrange them so thatthe favorable course of nature's progress, namely the great[148] yearlycircle of the seasons, may be brought about by a corresponding course ofthe ceremonial progress. The aim of religious worship is to influencenature to human advantage, and hence to instil a subjection to law intoher that originally she has not, whereas at present man desires to findout the subjection to law of nature in order to guide himself thereby.In brief, the system of religious worship rests upon the idea of magicbetween man and man, and the magician is older than the priest. But itrests equally upon other and higher ideas. It brings into prominence thesympathetic relation of man to man, the existence of benevolence,gratitude, prayer, of truces between enemies, of loans upon security, ofarrangements for the protection of property. Man, even in very inferiordegrees of civilization, does not stand in the presence of nature as ahelpless slave, he is not willy-nilly the absolute servant of nature. Inthe Greek development of religion, especially in the relationship to theOlympian gods, it becomes possible to entertain the idea of an existenceside by side of two castes, a higher, more powerful, and a lower, lesspowerful: but both are bound together in some way, on account of theirorigin and are one species. They need not be ashamed of one another.This is the element of distinction in Greek religion.
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At the Contemplation of Certain Ancient Sacrificial Proceedings.—Howmany sentiments are lost to us is manifest in the union of the farcical,even of the obscene, with the religious feeling. The feeling that thismixture is possible is becoming extinct. We realize the mixture onlyhistorically, in the mysteries of Demeter and Dionysos and in theChristian Easter festivals and religious mysteries. But we stillperceive the sublime in connection with the ridiculous, and the like,the emotional with the absurd. Perhaps a later age will be unable tounderstand even these combinations.
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Christianity as Antiquity.—When on a Sunday morning we hear the oldbells ringing, we ask ourselves: Is it possible? All this for a Jewcrucified two thousand years ago who said he was God's son? The proof ofsuch an assertion is lacking.—Certainly, the Christian religionconstitutes in our time a protruding bit of antiquity from very remoteages and that its assertions are still generally believed—although menhave become so keen in the scrutiny of claims—constitutes the oldestrelic of this inheritance. A god who begets children by a mortal[150] woman;a sage who demands that no more work be done, that no more justice beadministered but that the signs of the approaching end of the world beheeded; a system of justice that accepts an innocent as a vicarioussacrifice in the place of the guilty; a person who bids his disciplesdrink his blood; prayers for miracles; sins against a god expiated upona god; fear of a hereafter to which death is the portal; the figure ofthe cross as a symbol in an age that no longer knows the purpose and theignominy of the cross—how ghostly all these things flit before us outof the grave of their primitive antiquity! Is one to believe that suchthings can still be believed?
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The Un-Greek in Christianity.—The Greeks did not look upon the Homericgods above them as lords nor upon themselves beneath as servants, afterthe fashion of the Jews. They saw but the counterpart as in a mirror ofthe most perfect specimens of their own caste, hence an ideal, but nocontradiction of their own nature. There was a feeling of mutualrelationship, resulting in a mutual interest, a sort of alliance. Manthinks well of himself when he gives himself such gods and placeshimself in a[151] relationship akin to that of the lower nobility with thehigher; whereas the Italian races have a decidedly vulgar religion,involving perpetual anxiety because of bad and mischievous powers andsoul disturbers. Wherever the Olympian gods receded into the background,there even Greek life became gloomier and more perturbed.—Christianity,on the other hand, oppressed and degraded humanity completely and sankit into deepest mire: into the feeling of utter abasement it suddenlyflashed the gleam of divine compassion, so that the amazed andgrace-dazzled stupefied one gave a cry of delight and for a momentbelieved that the whole of heaven was within him. Upon this unhealthyexcess of feeling, upon the accompanying corruption of heart and head,Christianity attains all its psychological effects. It wants toannihilate, debase, stupefy, amaze, bedazzle. There is but one thingthat it does not want: measure, standard (das Maas) and therefore is itin the worst sense barbarous, asiatic, vulgar, un-Greek.
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Being Religious to Some Purpose.—There are certain insipid,traffic-virtuous people to whom religion is pinned like the hem of somegarb of a higher humanity. These people do[152] well to remain religious: itadorns them. All who are not versed in some professionalweapon—including tongue and pen as weapons—are servile: to all suchthe Christian religion is very useful, for then their servility assumesthe aspect of Christian virtue and is amazingly adorned.—People whosedaily lives are empty and colorless are readily religious. This iscomprehensible and pardonable, but they have no right to demand thatothers, whose daily lives are not empty and colorless, should bereligious also.
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The Everyday Christian.—If Christianity, with its allegations of anavenging God, universal sinfulness, choice of grace, and the danger ofeternal damnation, were true, it would be an indication of weakness ofmind and character not to be a priest or an apostle or a hermit, andtoil for one's own salvation. It would be irrational to lose sight ofone's eternal well being in comparison with temporary advantage:Assuming these dogmas to be generally believed, the every day Christianis a pitiable figure, a man who really cannot count as far as three, andwho, for the rest, just because of his intellectual incapacity, does notdeserve to be as hard punished as Christianity promises he shall be.
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Concerning the Cleverness of Christianity.—It is a master stroke ofChristianity to so emphasize the unworthiness, sinfulness anddegradation of men in general that contempt of one's fellow creaturesbecomes impossible. "He may sin as much as he pleases, he is not bynature different from me. It is I who in every way am unworthy andcontemptible." So says the Christian to himself. But even this feelinghas lost its keenest sting for the Christian does not believe in hisindividual degradation. He is bad in his general human capacity and hesoothes himself a little with the assertion that we are all alike.
118
Personal Change.—As soon as a religion rules, it has for its opponentsthose who were its first disciples.
119
Fate of Christianity.—Christianity arose to lighten the heart, but nowit must first make the heart heavy in order to be able to lighten itafterwards. Christianity will consequently go down.
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The Testimony of Pleasure.—The agreeable opinion is accepted as true.This is the testimony of pleasure (or as the church says, the evidenceof strength) of which all religions are so proud, although they shouldall be ashamed of it. If a belief did not make blessed it would not bebelieved. How little it would be worth, then!
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Dangerous Play.—Whoever gives religious feeling room, must then alsolet it grow. He can do nothing else. Then his being gradually changes.The religious element brings with it affinities and kinships. The wholecircle of his judgment and feeling is clouded and draped in religiousshadows. Feeling cannot stand still. One should be on one's guard.
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The Blind Pupil.—As long as one knows very well the strength and theweakness of one's dogma, one's art, one's religion, its strength isstill low. The pupil and apostle who has no eye for the weaknesses of adogma, a religion and so on, dazzled by the aspect of the master and byhis own reverence for him, has, on that very[155] account, generally morepower than the master. Without blind pupils the influence of a man andhis work has never become great. To give victory to knowledge, oftenamounts to no more than so allying it with stupidity that the bruteforce of the latter forces triumph for the former.
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The Breaking off of Churches.—There is not sufficient religion in theworld merely to put an end to the number of religions.
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Sinlessness of Men.—If one have understood how "Sin came into theworld," namely through errors of the reason, through which men in theirintercourse with one another and even individual men looked uponthemselves as much blacker and wickeder than was really the case, one'swhole feeling is much lightened and man and the world appear together insuch a halo of harmlessness that a sentiment of well being is instilledinto one's whole nature. Man in the midst of nature is as a child leftto its own devices. This child indeed dreams a heavy, anxious dream. Butwhen it opens its eyes it finds itself always in paradise.
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Irreligiousness of Artists.—Homer is so much at home among his gods andis as a poet so good natured to them that he must have been profoundlyirreligious. That which was brought to him by the popular faith—a mean,crude and partially repulsive superstition—he dealt with as freely asthe Sculptor with his clay, therefore with the same freedom thatÆschylus and Aristophanes evinced and with which in later times thegreat artists of the renaissance, and also Shakespeare and Goethe, drewtheir pictures.
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Art and Strength of False Interpretation.—All the visions, fears,exhaustions and delights of the saint are well known symptoms ofsickness, which in him, owing to deep rooted religious and psychologicaldelusions, are explained quite differently, that is not as symptoms ofsickness.—So, too, perhaps, the demon of Socrates was nothing but amalady of the ear that he explained, in view of his predominant moraltheory, in a manner different from what would be thought rationalto-day. Nor is the case different with the frenzy and the frenziedspeeches of the prophets and of the priests of the oracles. It is alwaysthe degree of wisdom, imagination,[157] capacity and morality in the heartand mind of the interpreters that got so much out of them. It is amongthe greatest feats of the men who are called geniuses and saints thatthey made interpreters for themselves who, fortunately for mankind, didnot understand them.
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Reverence for Madness.—Because it was perceived that an excitement ofsome kind often made the head clearer and occasioned fortunateinspirations, it was concluded that the utmost excitement would occasionthe most fortunate inspirations. Hence the frenzied being was revered asa sage and an oracle giver. A false conclusion lies at the bottom of allthis.
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Promises of Wisdom.—Modern science has as its object as little pain aspossible, as long a life as possible—hence a sort of eternalblessedness, but of a very limited kind in comparison with the promisesof religion.
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Forbidden Generosity.—There is not enough of love and goodness in theworld to throw any of it away on conceited people.
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Survival of Religious Training in the Disposition.—The Catholic Church,and before it all ancient education, controlled the whole domain ofmeans through which man was put into certain unordinary moods andwithdrawn from the cold calculation of personal advantage and from calm,rational reflection. A church vibrating with deep tones; gloomy,regular, restraining exhortations from a priestly band, whoinvoluntarily communicate their own tension to their congregation andlead them to listen almost with anxiety as if some miracle were incourse of preparation; the awesome pile of architecture which, as thehouse of a god, rears itself vastly into the vague and in all itsshadowy nooks inspires fear of its nerve-exciting power—who would careto reduce men to the level of these things if the ideas upon which theyrest became extinct? But the results of all these things arenevertheless not thrown away: the inner world of exalted, emotional,prophetic, profoundly repentant, hope-blessed moods has become inborn inman largely through cultivation. What still exists in his soul wasformerly, as he germinated, grew and bloomed, thoroughly disciplined.
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Religious After-Pains.—Though one believe[159] oneself absolutely weanedaway from religion, the process has yet not been so thorough as to makeimpossible a feeling of joy at the presence of religious feelings anddispositions without intelligible content, as, for example, in music;and if a philosophy alleges to us the validity of metaphysical hopes,through the peace of soul therein attainable, and also speaks of "thewhole true gospel in the look of Raphael's Madonna," we greet suchdeclarations and innuendoes with a welcome smile. The philosopher hashere a matter easy of demonstration. He responds with that which he isglad to give, namely a heart that is glad to accept. Hence it isobservable how the less reflective free spirits collide only with dogmasbut yield readily to the magic of religious feelings; it is a source ofpain to them to let the latter go simply on account of theformer.—Scientific philosophy must be very much on its guard lest onaccount of this necessity—an evolved and hence, also, a transitorynecessity—delusions are smuggled in. Even logicians speak of"presentiments" of truth in ethics and in art (for example of thepresentiment that the essence of things is unity) a thing which,nevertheless, ought to be prohibited. Between carefully deduced truthsand such "foreboded" things there lies the abysmal distinction that theformer are products of the intellect and the latter of the necessity.[160]Hunger is no evidence that there is food at hand to appease it. Hungermerely craves food. "Presentiment" does not denote that the existence ofa thing is known in any way whatever. It denotes merely that it isdeemed possible to the extent that it is desired or feared. The"presentiment" is not one step forward in the domain of certainty.—Itis involuntarily believed that the religious tinted sections of aphilosophy are better attested than the others, but the case is atbottom just the opposite: there is simply the inner wish that it may beso, that the thing which beautifies may also be true. This wish leads usto accept bad grounds as good.
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Of the Christian Need of Salvation.—Careful consideration must renderit possible to propound some explanation of that process in the soul ofa Christian which is termed need of salvation, and to propound anexplanation, too, free from mythology: hence one purely psychological.Heretofore psychological explanations of religious conditions andprocesses have really been in disrepute, inasmuch as a theology callingitself free gave vent to its unprofitable nature in this domain; for itsprincipal aim, so far as may be judged from the spirit of its creator,Schleier-macher,[161] was the preservation of the Christian religion and themaintenance of the Christian theology. It appeared that in thepsychological analysis of religious "facts" a new anchorage and aboveall a new calling were to be gained. Undisturbed by such predecessors,we venture the following exposition of the phenomena alluded to. Man isconscious of certain acts which are very firmly implanted in the generalcourse of conduct: indeed he discovers in himself a predisposition tosuch acts that seems to him to be as unalterable as his very being. Howgladly he would essay some other kind of acts which in the generalestimate of conduct are rated the best and highest, how gladly he wouldwelcome the consciousness of well doing which ought to follow unselfishmotive! Unfortunately, however, it goes no further than this longing:the discontent consequent upon being unable to satisfy it is added toall other kinds of discontent which result from his life destiny inparticular or which may be due to so called bad acts; so that a deepdepression ensues accompanied by a desire for some physician to removeit and all its causes.—This condition would not be found so bitter ifthe individual but compared himself freely with other men: for then hewould have no reason to be discontented with himself in particular as heis merely bearing his share of the[162] general burden of human discontentand incompleteness. But he compares himself with a being who alone mustbe capable of the conduct that is called unegoistic and of an enduringconsciousness of unselfish motive, with God. It is because he gazes intothis clear mirror, that his own self seems so extraordinarily distractedand so troubled. Thereupon the thought of that being, in so far as itflits before his fancy as retributive justice, occasions him anxiety. Inevery conceivable small and great experience he believes he sees theanger of the being, his threats, the very implements and manacles of hisjudge and prison. What succors him in this danger, which, in theprospect of an eternal duration of punishment, transcends in hideousnessall the horrors that can be presented to the imagination?
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Before we consider this condition in its further effects, we would admitto ourselves that man is betrayed into this condition not through his"fault" and "sin" but through a series of delusions of the reason; thatit was the fault of the mirror if his own self appeared to him in thehighest degree dark and hateful, and that that mirror was his own work,the very imperfect work of human imagination and judgment. In[163] the firstplace a being capable of absolutely unegoistic conduct is as fabulous asthe phoenix. Such a being is not even thinkable for the very reason thatthe whole notion of "unegoistic conduct," when closely examined,vanishes into air. Never yet has a man done anything solely for othersand entirely without reference to a personal motive; indeed how could hepossibly do anything that had no reference to himself, that is withoutinward compulsion (which must always have its basis in a personal need)?How could the ego act without ego?—A god, who, on the other hand, isall love, as he is usually represented, would not be capable of asolitary unegoistic act: whence one is reminded of a reflection ofLichtenberg's which is, in truth, taken from a lower sphere: "We cannotpossibly feel for others, as the expression goes; we feel only forourselves. The assertion sounds hard, but it is not, if rightlyunderstood. A man loves neither his father nor his mother nor his wifenor his child, but simply the feelings which they inspire." Or, as LaRochefoucauld says: "If you think you love your mistress for the merelove of her, you are very much mistaken." Why acts of love are morehighly prized than others, namely not on account of their nature, but onaccount of their utility, has already been explained in the section onthe origin of moral feelings. But[164] if a man should wish to be all lovelike the god aforesaid, and want to do all things for others and nothingfor himself, the procedure would be fundamentally impossible because hemust do a great deal for himself before there would be any possibilityof doing anything for the love of others. It is also essential thatothers be sufficiently egoistic to accept always and at all times thisself sacrifice and living for others, so that the men of love and selfsacrifice have an interest in the survival of unloving and selfishegoists, while the highest morality, in order to maintain itself mustformally enforce the existence of immorality (wherein it would be reallydestroying itself.)—Further: the idea of a god perturbs and discouragesas long as it is accepted but as to how it originated can no longer, inthe present state of comparative ethnological science, be a matter ofdoubt, and with the insight into the origin of this belief all faithcollapses. What happens to the Christian who compares his nature withthat of God is exactly what happened to Don Quixote, who depreciated hisown prowess because his head was filled with the wondrous deeds of theheroes of chivalrous romance. The standard of measurement which bothemploy belongs to the domain of fable.—But if the idea of Godcollapses, so too, does the feeling of "sin" as a violation of divinerescript, as a stain upon a[165] god-like creation. There still apparentlyremains that discouragement which is closely allied with fear of thepunishment of worldly justice or of the contempt of one's fellow men.The keenest thorn in the sentiment of sin is dulled when it is perceivedthat one's acts have contravened human tradition, human rules and humanlaws without having thereby endangered the "eternal salvation of thesoul" and its relations with deity. If finally men attain to theconviction of the absolute necessity of all acts and of their utterirresponsibility and then absorb it into their flesh and blood, everyrelic of conscience pangs will disappear.
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If now, as stated, the Christian, through certain delusive feelings, isbetrayed into self contempt, that is by a false and unscientific view ofhis acts and feelings, he must, nevertheless, perceive with the utmostamazement that this state of self contempt, of conscience pangs, ofdespair in particular, does not last, that there are hours during whichall these things are wafted away from the soul and he feels himself oncemore free and courageous. The truth is that joy in his own being, thefulness of his own powers in connection with the inevitable decline ofhis profound[166] excitation with the lapse of time, bore off the palm ofvictory. The man loves himself once more, he feels it—but this very newlove, this new self esteem seems to him incredible. He can see in itonly the wholly unmerited stream of the light of grace shed down uponhim. If he formerly saw in every event merely warnings, threats,punishments and every kind of indication of divine anger, he now readsinto his experiences the grace of god. The latter circumstance seems tohim full of love, the former as a helpful pointing of the way, and hisentirely joyful frame of mind now seems to him to be an absolute proofof the goodness of God. As formerly in his states of discouragement heinterpreted his conduct falsely so now he does the same with hisexperiences. His state of consolation is now regarded as the effectproduced by some external power. The love with which, at bottom, heloves himself, seems to be the divine love. That which he calls graceand the preliminary of salvation is in reality self-grace,self-salvation.
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Therefore a certain false psychology, a certain kind of imaginativenessin the interpretation of motives and experiences is the essentialpreliminary[167] to being a Christian and to experiencing the need ofsalvation. Upon gaining an insight into this wandering of the reason andthe imagination, one ceases to be a Christian.
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Of Christian Asceticism and Sanctity.—Much as some thinkers haveexerted themselves to impart an air of the miraculous to those singularphenomena known as asceticism and sanctity, to question which or toaccount for which upon a rational basis would be wickedness andsacrilege, the temptation to this wickedness is none the less great. Apowerful impulse of nature has in every age led to protest against suchphenomena. At any rate science, inasmuch as it is the imitation ofnature, permits the casting of doubts upon the inexplicable characterand the supernal degree of such phenomena. It is true that heretoforescience has not succeeded in its attempts at explanation. The phenomenaremain unexplained still, to the great satisfaction of those who reveremoral miracles. For, speaking generally, the unexplained must rank asthe inexplicable, the inexplicable as the non-natural, supernatural,miraculous—so runs the demand in the souls of all the religious and allthe metaphysicians (even the artists if they happen to be[168] thinkers),whereas the scientific man sees in this demand the "evilprinciple."—The universal, first, apparent truth that is encountered inthe contemplation of sanctity and asceticism is that their nature iscomplicated; for nearly always, within the physical world as well as inthe moral, the apparently miraculous may be traced successfully to thecomplex, the obscure, the multi-conditioned. Let us venture then toisolate a few impulses in the soul of the saint and the ascetic, toconsider them separately and then view them as a synthetic development.
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There is an obstinacy against oneself, certain sublimated forms of whichare included in asceticism. Certain kinds of men are under such a strongnecessity of exercising their power and dominating impulses that, ifother objects are lacking or if they have not succeeded with otherobjects they will actually tyrannize over some portions of their ownnature or over sections and stages of their own personality. Thus domany thinkers bring themselves to views which are far from likely toincrease or improve their fame. Many deliberately bring down thecontempt of others upon themselves although they could easily haveretained consideration by[169] silence. Others contradict earlier opinionsand do not shrink from the ordeal of being deemed inconsistent. On thecontrary they strive for this and act like eager riders who enjoyhorseback exercise most when the horse is skittish. Thus will men indangerous paths ascend to the highest steeps in order to laugh to scorntheir own fear and their own trembling limbs. Thus will the philosopherembrace the dogmas of asceticism, humility, sanctity, in the light ofwhich his own image appears in its most hideous aspect. This crushing ofself, this mockery of one's own nature, this spernere se sperni out ofwhich religions have made so much is in reality but a very highdevelopment of vanity. The whole ethic of the sermon on the mountbelongs in this category: man has a true delight in mastering himselfthrough exaggerated pretensions or excessive expedients and laterdeifying this tyrannically exacting something within him. In everyscheme of ascetic ethics, man prays to one part of himself as if it weregod and hence it is necessary for him to treat the rest of himself asdevil.
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Man is Not at All Hours Equally Moral; this is established. If one'smorality be judged according to one's capacity for great, selfsacrificing[170] resolutions and abnegations (which when continual, and madea habit are known as sanctity) one is, in affection, or disposition, themost moral: while higher excitement supplies wholly new impulses which,were one calm and cool as ordinarily, one would not deem oneself evencapable of. How comes this? Apparently from the propinquity of all greatand lofty emotional states. If a man is brought to an extraordinarypitch of feeling he can resolve upon a fearful revenge or upon a fearfulrenunciation of his thirst for vengeance indifferently. He craves, underthe influences of powerful emotion, the great, the powerful, theimmense, and if he chances to perceive that the sacrifice of himselfwill afford him as much satisfaction as the sacrifice of another, orwill afford him more, he will choose self sacrifice. What concerns himparticularly is simply the unloading of his emotion. Hence he readily,to relieve his tension, grasps the darts of the enemy and buries them inhis own breast. That in self abnegation and not in revenge the elementof greatness consisted must have been brought home to mankind only afterlong habituation. A god who sacrifices himself would be the mostpowerful and most effective symbol of this sort of greatness. As theconquest of the most hardly conquered enemy, the sudden mastering of apassion—thus does[171] such abnegation appear: hence it passes for thesummit of morality. In reality all that is involved is the exchange ofone idea for another whilst the temperament remained at a like altitude,a like tidal state. Men when coming out of the spell, or resting fromsuch passionate excitation, no longer understand the morality of suchinstants, but the admiration of all who participated in the occasionsustains them. Pride is their support if the passion and thecomprehension of their act weaken. Therefore, at bottom even such actsof self-abnegation are not moral inasmuch as they are not done with astrict regard for others. Rather do others afford the high strungtemperament an opportunity to lighten itself through such abnegation.
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Even the Ascetic Seeks to Make Life Easier, and generally by means ofabsolute subjection to another will or to an all inclusive rule andritual, pretty much as the Brahmin leaves absolutely nothing to his ownvolition but is guided in every moment of his life by some holyinjunction or other. This subjection is a potent means of acquiringdominion over oneself. One is occupied, hence time does not bang heavyand there is no incitement of the personal will and of the individual[172]passion. The deed once done there is no feeling of responsibility northe sting of regret. One has given up one's own will once for all andthis is easier than to give it up occasionally, as it is also easierwholly to renounce a desire than to yield to it in measured degree. Whenwe consider the present relation of man to the state we perceiveunconditional obedience is easier than conditional. The holy person alsomakes his lot easier through the complete surrender of his lifepersonality and it is all delusion to admire such a phenomenon as theloftiest heroism of morality. It is always more difficult to assertone's personality without shrinking and without hesitation than to giveit up altogether in the manner indicated, and it requires moreover moreintellect and thought.
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After having discovered in many of the less comprehensible actions meremanifestations of pleasure in emotion for its own sake, I fancy I candetect in the self contempt which characterises holy persons, and alsoin their acts of self torture (through hunger and scourgings,distortions and chaining of the limbs, acts of madness) simply a meanswhereby such natures may resist the general exhaustion of their will tolive (their[173] nerves). They employ the most painful expedients to escapeif only for a time from the heaviness and weariness in which they aresteeped by their great mental indolence and their subjection to a willother than their own.
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The Most Usual Means by which the ascetic and the sanctified individualseeks to make life more endurable comprises certain combats of an innernature involving alternations of victory and prostration. For thispurpose an enemy is necessary and he is found in the so called "innerenemy." That is, the holy individual makes use of his tendency tovanity, domineering and pride, and of his mental longings in order tocontemplate his life as a sort of continuous battle and himself as abattlefield, in which good and evil spirits wage war with varyingfortune. It is an established fact that the imagination is restrainedthrough the regularity and adequacy of sexual intercourse while on theother hand abstention from or great irregularity in sexual intercoursewill cause the imagination to run riot. The imaginations of many of theChristian saints were obscene to a degree; and because of the theorythat sexual desires were in reality demons that raged within them, thesaints did not feel wholly[174] responsible for them. It is to thisconviction that we are indebted for the highly instructive sincerity oftheir evidence against themselves. It was to their interest that thiscontest should always be kept up in some fashion because by means ofthis contest, as already stated, their empty lives gained distraction.In order that the contest might seem sufficiently great to inspiresympathy and admiration in the unsanctified, it was essential thatsexual capacity be ever more and more damned and denounced. Indeed thedanger of eternal damnation was so closely allied to this capacity thatfor whole generations Christians showed their children with actualconscience pangs. What evil may not have been done to humanity throughthis! And yet here the truth is just upside down: an exceedinglyunseemly attitude for the truth. Christianity, it is true, had said thatevery man is conceived and born in sin, and in the intolerable andexcessive Christianity of Calderon this thought is again perverted andentangled into the most distorted paradox extant in the well known lines
The greatest sin of man
Is the sin of being born.
In all pessimistic religions the act of procreation is looked upon asevil in itself. This is far from being the general human opinion. It isnot even the opinion of all pessimists. Empedocles,[175] for example, knowsnothing of anything shameful, devilish and sinful in it. He sees ratherin the great field of bliss of unholiness simply a healthful and hopefulphenomenon, Aphrodite. She is to him an evidence that strife does notalways rage but that some time a gentle demon is to wield the sceptre.The Christian pessimists of practice, had, as stated, a direct interestin the prevalence of an opposite belief. They needed in the lonelinessand the spiritual wilderness of their lives an ever living enemy, and auniversally known enemy through whose conquest they might appear to theunsanctified as utterly incomprehensible and half unnatural beings. Whenthis enemy at last, as a result of their mode of life and theirshattered health, took flight forever, they were able immediately topeople their inner selves with new demons. The rise and fall of thebalance of cheerfulness and despair maintained their addled brains in atotally new fluctuation of longing and peace of soul. And in that periodpsychology served not only to cast suspicion on everything human but towound and scourge it, to crucify it. Man wanted to find himself as baseand evil as possible. Man sought to become anxious about the state ofhis soul, he wished to be doubtful of his own capacity. Everythingnatural with which man connects the idea of badness and sinfulness (as,for instance,[176] is still customary in regard to the erotic) injures anddegrades the imagination, occasions a shamed aspect, leads man to warupon himself and makes him uncertain, distrustful of himself. Even hisdreams acquire a tincture of the unclean conscience. And yet thissuffering because of the natural element in certain things is whollysuperfluous. It is simply the result of opinions regarding the things.It is easy to understand why men become worse than they are if they arebrought to look upon the unavoidably natural as bad and later to feel itas of evil origin. It is the master stroke of religions and metaphysicsthat wish to make man out bad and sinful by nature, to render naturesuspicious in his eyes and to so make himself evil, for he learns tofeel himself evil when he cannot divest himself of nature. He graduallycomes to look upon himself, after a long life lived naturally, sooppressed by a weight of sin that supernatural powers become necessaryto relieve him of the burden; and with this notion comes the so calledneed of salvation, which is the result not of a real but of an imaginarysinfulness. Go through the separate moral expositions in the vouchers ofchristianity and it will always be found that the demands are excessivein order that it may be impossible for man to satisfy them. The objectis not that he may become moral but that he may feel as sinful[177] aspossible. If this feeling had not been rendered agreeable to man—whyshould he have improvised such an ideal and clung to it so long? As inthe ancient world an incalculable strength of intellect and capacity forfeeling was squandered in order to increase the joy of living throughfeastful systems of worship, so in the era of christianity an equallyincalculable quantity of intellectual capacity has been sacrificed inanother endeavor: that man should in every way feel himself sinful andthereby be moved, inspired, inspirited. To move, to inspire, to inspiritat any cost—is not this the freedom cry of an exhausted, over-ripe,over cultivated age? The circle of all the natural sensations had beengone through a hundred times: the soul had grown weary. Then the saintsand the ascetics found a new order of ecstacies. They set themselvesbefore the eyes of all not alone as models for imitation to many, but asfearful and yet delightful spectacles on the boundary line between thisworld and the next world, where in that period everyone thought he sawat one time rays of heavenly light, at another fearful, threateningtongues of flame. The eye of the saint, directed upon the fearfulsignificance of the shortness of earthly life, upon the imminence of thelast judgment, upon eternal life hereafter; this glowering eye in anemaciated body caused men, in[178] the old time world, to tremble to thedepths of their being. To look, to look away and shudder, to feel anewthe fascination of the spectacle, to yield to it, sate oneself upon ituntil the soul trembled with ardor and fever—that was the last pleasureleft to classical antiquity when its sensibilities had been blunted bythe arena and the gladiatorial show.
142
To Sum Up All That Has Been Said: that condition of soul at which thesaint or expectant saint is rejoiced is a combination of elements whichwe are all familiar with, except that under other influences than thoseof mere religious ideation they customarily arouse the censure of men inthe same way that when combined with religion itself and regarded as thesupreme attainment of sanctity, they are object of admiration and evenof prayer—at least in more simple times. Very soon the saint turns uponhimself that severity that is so closely allied to the instinct ofdomination at any price and which inspire even in the most solitaryindividual the sense of power. Soon his swollen sensitiveness of feelingbreaks forth from the longing to restrain his passions within it and istransformed[179] into a longing to master them as if they were wild steeds,the master impulse being ever that of a proud spirit; next he craves acomplete cessation of all perturbing, fascinating feelings, a wakingsleep, an enduring repose in the lap of a dull, animal, plant-likeindolence. Next he seeks the battle and extinguishes it within himselfbecause weariness and boredom confront him. He binds hisself-deification with self-contempt. He delights in the wild tumult ofhis desires and the sharp pain of sin, in the very idea of being lost.He is able to play his very passions, for instance the desire todomineer, a trick so that he goes to the other extreme of abjecthumiliation and subjection, so that his overwrought soul is without anyrestraint through this antithesis. And, finally, when indulgence invisions, in talks with the dead or with divine beings overcomes him,this is really but a form of gratification that he craves, perhaps aform of gratification in which all other gratifications are blended.Novalis, one of the authorities in matters of sanctity, because of hisexperience and instinct, betrays the whole secret with the utmostsimplicity when he says: "It is remarkable that the close connection ofgratification, religion and cruelty has not long ago made men aware oftheir inner relationship and common tendency."
[180]
143
Not What the Saint is but what he was in the eyes of the non-sanctifiedgives him his historical importance. Because there existed a delusionrespecting the saint, his soul states being falsely viewed and hispersonality being sundered as much as possible from humanity as asomething incomparable and supernatural, because of these things heattained the extraordinary with which he swayed the imaginations ofwhole nations and whole ages. Even he knew himself not for even heregarded his dispositions, passions and actions in accordance with asystem of interpretation as artificial and exaggerated as the pneumaticinterpretation of the bible. The distorted and diseased in his ownnature with its blending of spiritual poverty, defective knowledge,ruined health, overwrought nerves, remained as hidden from his view asfrom the view of his beholders. He was neither a particularly good mannor a particularly bad man but he stood for something that was far abovethe human standard in wisdom and goodness. Faith in him sustained faithin the divine and miraculous, in a religious significance of allexistence, in an impending day of judgment. In the last rays of thesetting sun of the ancient world, which fell upon the christian peoples,the shadowy[181] form of the saint attained enormous proportions—to suchenormous proportions, indeed, that down even to our own age, which nolonger believes in god, there are thinkers who believe in the saints.
144
It stands to reason that this sketch of the saint, made upon the modelof the whole species, can be confronted with many opposing sketches thatwould create a more agreeable impression. There are certain exceptionsamong the species who distinguish themselves either by especialgentleness or especial humanity, and perhaps by the strength of theirown personality. Others are in the highest degree fascinating becausecertain of their delusions shed a particular glow over their wholebeing, as is the case with the founder of christianity who took himselffor the only begotten son of God and hence felt himself sinless; so thatthrough his imagination—that should not be too harshly judged since thewhole of antiquity swarmed with sons of god—he attained the same goal,the sense of complete sinlessness, complete irresponsibility, that cannow be attained by every individual through science.—In the same mannerI have viewed the saints of India who occupy an intermediate stationbetween[182] the christian saints and the Greek philosophers and hence arenot to be regarded as a pure type. Knowledge and science—as far as theyexisted—and superiority to the rest of mankind by logical disciplineand training of the intellectual powers were insisted upon by theBuddhists as essential to sanctity, just as they were denounced by thechristian world as the indications of sinfulness.
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