THE

GENEALOGY OF
MORALS
By FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
TRANSLATED
BY HORACE B.
SAMUEL,
M. A.
K
BONI
AND
LIVERIGHT
PUBLISH
ERS
NEW
YOR
K
EDITOR'S NOTE.
In
1887,
with the view of
amplifying
and
completing
certain new doctrines which he had
merely
sketched in
Beyond
Good and Evil
(see especially Aphorism 260),
Nietzsche
published
The
Genealogy 0}
Morals. This work
is
perhaps
the least
aphoristic,
in
form,
of all Nietzsche's
productions.
For
analytical power,
more
especially
in
those
parts
where Nietzsche examines the ascetic
ideal,
The
Genealogy 0}
Morals is
unequalled by any
other of
his
works; and,
in the
light
which it throws
upon
the atti-
tude of the ecclesiast to the man of resentment and mis-
fortune,
it is one of the most valuable contributions to
sacerdotal
psychology.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface
'
.,
i
First Essay
"Good and
Evil,"
"Good and Bad" ... i
Second Essay
"Guilt,"
"Bad
Conscience,"
and the Like
40
Third Essay
What Is the Meaning of Ascetic Ideals?
94
Peoples and Countries 1
7q
PREFACE.
i.
We are
unknown,
we
knowers,
ourselves to ourselves: this
has its own
good
reason. We have never searched for
ourselves

how should it then come to

pass,
that we should
ever
find
ourselves?
Rightly
has it been said: "Where
your
treasure
is,
there will
your
heart be also." Our
treasure is
there,
where stand the hives of our
knowledge.
It is to those hives that we are
always striving;
as born
creatures of
flight,
and as the
honey-gatherers
of the
spirit,
we care
really
in our hearts
only
for one
thing

to
bring something
"home to the hive!"
As far as the rest of life with its so-called
"experiences"
is
concerned,
which of us has even sufficient serious inter-
est? or sufficient time? In our
dealings
with such
points
of
life,
we
are,
I
fear,
never
properly
to the
point;
to be
precise,
our heart is not
there,
and
certainly
not our ear.
Rather like one
who, delighting
in a divine
distraction,
or sunken in the seas of his own
soul,
in whose ear the
clock has
just
thundered with all its force its twelve strokes
of
noon, suddenly
wakes
up,
and asks
himself,
"What has
in
point
of fact
just
struck?" so do we at times rub after-
wards,
as it
were,
our
puzzled ears,
and ask in
complete
astonishment and
complete embarrassment, "Through
what have we in
point
of fact
just
lived?"
further,
"Who
are we in
point
of fact?" and
count, after they
have
struck,
ii
PREFACE
as I have
explained,
all the twelve
throbbing
beats of the
clock of our
experience,
of our
life,
of our
being

ah!

and count
wrong
in the endeavour. Of
necessity
we re-
main
strangers
to
ourselves,
we understand ourselves
not,
in ourselves we are bound to be
mistaken,
for of us holds
good
to all
eternity
the
motto,
"Each one is the farthest
away
from himself"

as far as ourselves are concerned we

are not "knowers."
2.
My thoughts concerning
the
genealogy
of our moral
prejudices

for
they
constitute the issue in this
polemic

have their first,

bald,
and
provisional expression
in that
collection of
aphorisms
entitled Human, all-too-Human.
a Book
for
Free
Minds,
the
writing
of which was
begur
Sorrento,
during
a winter which allowed me to
gaze
ovt r
the broad and
dangerous territory through
which
my
mind
had
up
to that time wandered. This took
place
in the
winter of
1876-77;
the
thoughts
themselves are older.
They
were in their substance
already
the same
thoughts
which I take
up again
in the
following
treatises:

we
hope
that
they
have derived benefit from the
long interval,
that
they
have
grown riper,
clearer,
stronger,
more com-
plete.
The
fact, however,
that I still
cling
to them even
now,
that in the meanwhile
they
have
always
held faster
by
each
other, have,
in
fact, grown
out of their
original
shape
and into each
other,
all this
strengthens
in
my
mind
the
joyous
confidence that
they
must have been
originally
neither
separate
disconnected
capricious
nor
sporadic phe-
nomena,
but have
sprung
from a common rocL from a
PREFACE iii
fundamental
"fiat"
of
knowledge,
whose
empire
reached
to the soul's
depth,
and that ever
grew
more definite in
its
voice,
and more definite in its demands. That is the
only
state of affairs that is
proper
in the case of a
philoso-
pher.
We have no
right
to be
"disconnected";
we must
neither err
"disconnectedly"
nor strike the truth "dis-
connectedly."
Rather with the
necessity
with which a
tree bears its
fruit,
so do our
thoughts,
our
values,
our
Yes's and No's and If's and
Whether's, grow
connected
and
interrelated,
mutual witnesses of one
will,
one
health,
one
kingdom,
one sun

as to whether
they
are to
your
taste,
these fruits of ours?

But what matters that to the

trees? What matters that to
us,
us the
philosophers?
Owing
to a
scrupulosity peculiar
to
myself,
which
I con-
fess
reluctantly,

it concerns indeed
morality,

a
scrupu-
losity,
which manifests
itself in
my
life at such an
early
period,
with so much
spontaneity,
with so chronic a
per-
sistence
and so keen an
opposition
to
environment, epoch,
precedent,
and
ancestry
that I should have been almost
entitled to
style
it
my
"a
priori"
my
curiosity
and
my
suspicion
felt themselves
betimes bound to halt at the
question,
of what in
point
of actual
fact was the
origin
of our "Good" and of our
"Evil."
Indeed,
at the
boyish
age
of thirteen the
problem
of the
origin
of Evil
already
haunted me: at an
age
"when
games
and God
divide one's
heart,"
I devoted to that
problem
my
first childish
at-
tempt
at the
literary game,
my
first
philosophic
essay
iv
PREFACE
and as
regards
my
infantile solution of the
problem, well,
I
gave quite properly
the honour to
God,
and made him
the
father
of evil. Did
my
own "a
priori"
demand that
precise
solution from me? that
new, immoral,
or at least
amoral" "d
priori"
and that
"categorical
imperative"
which was its voice
(but,
oh! how hostile to the Kan-
tian
article,
and how
pregnant
with
problems!),
to which
since then I have
given
more and more attention, and
indeed what is more than attention.
Fortunately
I soon
learned to
separate theological
from moral
prejudices,
and
I
gave
up looking
for a
supernatural origin
of evil. A
certain amount of historical and
philological
education,
to
say nothing
of an innate
faculty
of
psychological
discrim-
ination
par
excellence succeeded in
transforming
almost
immediately my original
problem
into the
following
one:

Under what conditions did Man invent for himself those

judgments
of
values,
"Good" and "Evil"? And 'what in-
trinsic value do
they possess
in
themselves? Have
they
up
to the
present
hindered or advanced human
well-being?
Are
they
a
symptom
of the
distress,
impoverishment,
and
degeneration
of Human Life?
Or, conversely,
is it in
them that is
manifested the
fulness,
the
strength,
and the
will of
Life,
its
courage,
its
self-confidence, its future?
On this
point
I found and hazarded in
my
mind the most
diverse
answers,
I established distinctions in
periods, peo-
ples,
and
castes,
I
became a
specialist
in
my problem,
and
from
my
answers
grew
new
questions,
new
investigations,
new
conjectures,
new
probabilities;
until at last I had a
land of
my
own and a soil of
my
own,
a whole secret
world
growing
and
flowering,
like hidden
gardens
of
whose existence no one could have an
inkling

oh,
how
PREFACE
v
happy
are
we,
we
finders of
knowledge, provided
that we
know how to
keep
silent
sufficiently long.
My
first
impulse
to
publish
some of
my hypotheses
con-
cerning
the
origin
of
morality
I owe to a
clear,
well-writ-
ten,
and even
precocious
little
book,
in
which a
perverse
and vicious kind of moral
philosophy (your
real
English
kind)
was
definitely presented
to me for the first
time;
and
this attracted mewith that
magnetic
attraction,
inherent
in that which is
diametrically opposed
and
antithetical to
one's own ideas. The title of the book was The
Origin
of
the Moral
Emotions;
its
author,
Dr. Paul
Ree;
the
year
of its
appearance, 1877.
I
may
almost
say
that I
have never read
anything
in which
every single dogma
and conclusion has called forth from me so
emphatic
a
negation
as did that
book;
albeit a
negation
untainted
by
either
pique
or
intolerance. I referred
accordingly
both'
in season and out of season in the
previous works,
at
which I was then
working,
to the
arguments
of that
book,
not to refute them

for what have I

got
to do with mere
refutations

but
substituting,
as is natural to a
positive
mind,
for an
improbable theory
one which is more
prob-
able,
and
occasionally
no doubt for one
philosophic
error
another. In that
early period
I
gave,
as I have
said,
the
first
public expression
to those theories of
origin
to which
these
essays
are
devoted,
but with a clumsiness which I
was the last to conceal from
myself,
for I was as
yet
cramped, being
still without a
special language
for these
special subjects,
still
frequently
liable to
relapse
and to
vi
PREFACE
vacillation.
To
go
into
details, compare
what T
say
in
Human,
all-too-Human,
part
i.,
about the
parallel
early
history
of Good and
Evil, Aph.
45 (namely,
their
origin
from the castes of the aristocrats
and the
slaves) ;
simi-
larly, Aph. 136
et
seq.,
concerning
the birth and value of
ascetic
morality;
similarly, Aphs.
96, 99,
vol.
ii., Aph.
89, concerning
the
Morality
of
Custom,
that far older and
more
original
kind of
morality
which is toto ado different
from the altruistic ethics
(in
which Dr.
Ree,
like all the
English
moral
philosophers,
sees the ethical
l
Thing-in-
itself"); finally, Aph. 92. Similarly, Aph.
26 in
Human,
all-too-Human,
part
ii.,
and
Aph.
112,
the Dawn
oj Day,
concerning
the
origin
of
Justice
as a balance
between
per-
sons of
approximately
equal power (equilibrium
as the
hypothesis
of all
contract, consequently
of all
law) ;
simi-
larly,
concerning
the
origin
of
Punishment,
Human,
all-
too-Human,
part
ii., Aphs.
22, 23,
in
regard
to which the
deterrent
object
is neither essential
nor
original
(as
Dr.
Ree thinks:rather is it that this
object
is
only imported,
under certain definite
conditions,
and
always
as
something
extra and
additional).
5-
In
reality
I had set
my
heart at that time on some-
thing
much more
important
than the nature of the theories
of
myself
or others
concerning
the
origin
of
morality (or,
more
precisely,
the real function
from
my
view of
these
theories
was to
point
an end to which
they
were one
among many
means).
The issue for me was the value
of
morality,
and on that
subject
I had to
place myself
PREFACE
Vll
in a state of
abstraction,
in
which I
was
almost alone
with
my great
teacher
Schopenhauer,
to whom that
book,
with all its
passion
and
inherent
contradiction
(for
that
book also was a
polemic),
turned for
present help
as
though
he were still
alive. The
issue
was,
strangely
enough,
the value of the
"unegoistic"
instincts,
the in-
stincts of
pity,
self-denial,
and
self-sacrifice which
Schop-
enhauer had so
persistently painted
in
golden colours,
deified and
etherealised,
that
eventually they appeared
to
him,
as it
were, high
and
dry,
as "intrinsic values in them-
selves,"
on the
strength
of which he uttered both to Life
and to himself his own
negation.
But
against
these
very
instincts there voiced itself in
my
soul a more and more
fundamental
mistrust,
a
scepticism
that
dug
ever
deeper
and
deeper:
and in this
very
instinct I saw the
great
danger
of
mankind,
its most sublime
temptation
and se-
duction

seduction to what? to
nothingness?

in these
very
instincts I saw the
beginning
of the
end, stability,
the
exhaustion that
gazes backwards,
the will
turning against
Life,
the last illness
announcing
itself with its own
mincing
melancholy:
I realised that the
morality
of
pity
which
spread
wider and
wider,
and whose
grip
infected even
philosophers
with its
disease,
was the most sinister
symp-
tom of our modern
European
civilisation;
I realised that
it was the route
along
which that civilisation slid on its
way
to

a new Buddhism?

a
European
Buddhism?
Nihilism? This
exaggerated
estimation
in which modern
philosophers
have held
pity,
is
quite
a new
phenomenon:
up
to that time
philosophers
were
absolutely
unanimous
as to the worthlessness of
pity.
I need
only
mention
Plato, Spinoza,
La Rochefoucauld,
and Kantfour minds
viii PREFACE
as
mutually
different as is
possible,
but united on one
point;
their
contempt
of
pity.
6.
This
problem
of the value of
pity
and of the
pity-
morality (I
am an
opponent
of the modern infamous
emasculation of our
emotions)
seems at the first blush a
mere isolated
problem,
a note of
interrogation
for
itself;
he, however,
who once halts at this
problem,
and learns
how to
put questions,
will
experience
what I
experienced:

a new and immense vista unfolds itself before

him,
a
sense of
potentiality
seizes him like a
vertigo, every species
of
doubt, mistrust,
and fear
springs up,
the belief in
morality, nay,
in all
morality, totters,

finally
a new de-
mand voices itself. Let us
speak
out this new demand:
we need a
critique
of moral
values,
the value
of
these
values is for the first time to be called into
question

and
for this
purpose
a
knowledge
is
necessary
of the condi-
tions and circumstances out of which these values
grew,
and under which
they experienced
their evolution and
their distortion
(morality
as a
result,
as a
symptom,
as a
mask,
as
Tartuffism,
as
disease,
as a
misunderstanding;
but also
morality
as a
cause,
as a
remedy,
as a
stimulant,
as a
fetter,
as a
drug), especially
as such a
knowledge
has
neither existed
up
to the
present
time nor is even now
gen-
erally
desired. The value of these "values" was taken for
Lrunted as an
indisputable
fact, which was
beyond
all
question.
No one
has, up
to the
present,
exhibited the
faintest doubt or hesitation in
judging
the
"good
man"
to be of a
higher
value than the "evil
man,"
of a
higher
PREFACE
ix
value with
regard
specifically
to human
progress, utility,
and
prosperity generally,
not
forgetting
the
future.
What?
Suppose
the converse were the truth!
What?
Suppose
there lurked in the
"good
man" a
symptom
of
retrogression,
such as a
danger,
a
temptation,
a
poison,
a
narcotic,
by
means of which the
present
battened on the
future!
More comfortable and less
risky perhaps
than
its
opposite,
but also
pettier,
meaner! So that
morality
would
really
be saddled with the
guilt,
if the maximum
potentiality of
the
power
and
splendour
of the human
species
were never to be attained? So that
really morality
would be the
danger
of
dangers?
Enough,
that after this vista had disclosed itself to
me,
I
myself
had reason to search for
learned, bold,
and in-
dustrious
colleagues (I
am
doing
it even to this
very day).
It means
traversing
with new clamorous
questions,
and at
the same time with new
eyes,
the
immense, distant,
and
completely unexplored
land of
morality

of a
morality
which has
actually
existed and been
actually
lived ! and is
this not
practically equivalent
to first
discovering
that
land?
If,
in this
context,
I
thought, amongst others,
of the
aforesaid Dr.
Ree,
I did so because
I had no doubt that
from the
very
nature of his
questions
he would be com-
pelled
to have recourse to a truer
method,
in order to ob-
tain his answers.
Have I deceived
myself
on that score?
I wished at all events to
give
a better direction of vision
to an
eye
of such
keenness and such
impartiality.
I
wished to direct him to the real
history of
morality,
and
x PREFACE
to warn
him,
while there was
yet
time, against
a world
of
English
theories that culminated in the blue vacuum
of
heaven. Other
colours,
of
course,
rise
immediately
to
one's mind as
being
a hundred times more
potent
than
blue for a
genealogy
of morals:

for
instance, grey, by
which I mean authentic facts
capable
of definite
proof
and
having actually existed, or,
to
put
it
shortly,
the whole
of that
long hieroglyphic script (which
is so hard to de-
cipher)
about the
past history
of human morals. This
script
was unknown to Dr.
Ree;
but he had read Dar-
win:

and so in his
philosophy
the Darwinian beast and
that
pink
of
modernity,
the demure
weakling
and dilet-
tante,
who "bites no
longer,"
shake hands
politely
in a
fashion
that is at least
instructive,
the latter
exhibiting
a certain facial
expression
of refined and
good-humoured
indolence,
tinged
with a touch of
pessimism
and exhaus-
tion;
as if it
really
did not
pay
to take all these
things

I
mean moral
problems

so
seriously. I,
on the other
hand,
think that there are no
subjects
which
pay
better for
being
taken
seriously; part
of this
payment is,
that
perhaps
eventually they
admit of
being
taken
gaily.
This
gaiety,
indeed, or,
to use
my
own
language,
this
joyful wisdom,
is a
payment;
a
payment
for a
protracted, brave,
labor-
ious,
and
burrowing seriousness, which,
it
goes
without
ing.
is the attribute of but a few. But on that
day
on which we
say
from the fullness of our
hearts,
"For-
ward! our old
morality
too is fit material
for
Comedy,**
we shall have discovered a new
plot,
and a new
possibility
for the
Dionysian
drama entitled The Soul's Fate

and
he will
speedily
utilise
it,
one can
wager
safely, he,
the
great
ancient eternal dramatist of the
comedy
of our
existence.
PREFACE
xi
8.
If this
writing
be obscure to
any
individual,
and
jar
on his
ears,
I do not think that it is
necessarily
I
who
am to blame. It is clear
enough,
on the
hypothesis
which
I
presuppose, namely,
that the reader has first read
my
previous writings
and has not
grudged
them a certain
amount of trouble: it is
not, indeed,
a
simple
matter to
get really
at their essence.
Take,
for
instance, my
Zara-
thustra;
I allow no one to
pass
muster as
knowing
that
book,
unless
every single
word therein has at some time
wrought
in him a
profound wound,
and at some time
exercised on him a
profound
enchantment: then and not
till then can he
enjoy
the
privilege
of
participating
rev-
erently
in the
halcyon element,
from which that work is
born,
in its
sunny brilliance,
its
distance,
its
spaciousness,
its
certainty
In other cases the
aphoristic
form
produces
difficulty,
but this is
only
because this form is treated too
casually.
An
aphorism properly
coined and cast into its
final mould is far from
being "deciphered"
as soon as it
has been
read;
on the
contrary,
it is then that it first
requires
to be
expounded

of course for that

purpose
an
art of
exposition
is
necessary.
The third
essay
in this
book
provides
an
example
of what is
offered,
of what in
such cases I call
exposition:
an
aphorism
is
prefixed
to
that
essay,
the
essay
itself is its
commentary. Certainly
one
quality
which
nowadays
has been best
forgotten
and that is
why
it will take some time
yet
for
my writings
to become readable

is essential in order to
practise
read-
ing
as an art

a
quality
for the exercise of which it is
xii
PREFACE
necessary
to be a
cow,
and under no
circumstances a
modern man!

rumination.
Sils-Maria,
Upper
Engadine,
July, 1887.
FIRST ESSAY
"GOOD AND
EVIL,"
"GOOD AND BAD"
i.
Those
English psychologists,
who
up
to the
present
are
the
only philosophers
who are to be thanked for
any
endeavour to
get
as far as a
history
of the
origin
of
morality

these
men,
I
say,
offer us in their own
person-
alities no
paltry problem;

they
even
have,
if I am to
be
quite
frank about
it,
in their
capacity
of
living riddles,
an
advantage
over their books

they
themselves are
interesting!
These
English psychologists

what do
they
really
mean? We
always
find them
voluntarily
or in-
voluntarily
at the same task of
pushing
to the front the
partie
honteuse of our inner
world,
and
looking
for the
efficient, governing,
and decisive
principle
in that
precise
quarter
where the intellectual
self-respect
of the race
would be the most reluctant to find it
(for
example,
in
the vis inertice of
habit,
or in
forgetfulness,
or in a blind
and fortuitous mechanism and association of
ideas,
or in
some factor that is
purely passive, reflex, molecular,
or
fundamentally stupid)

what is the real motive

power
which
always impels
these
psychologists
in
precisely
this
direction? Is it an instinct for human
disparagement
somewhat
sinister, vulgar,
and
malignant,
or
perhaps
in-
i
THE GEXEALOGY
OF MORALS
comprehensible
even to itself? or
perhaps
a touch of
pessimistic
jealousy,
the mistrust of disillusioned idealists
3
have become
gloomy, poisoned,
and bitter? or a
petty
subconscious
enmity
and rancour
against
Christianity
(and Plato),
that has
conceivably
never crossed the
vshold of consciousness?
or
just
a vicious taste for
se elements of life which are
bizarre,
painfully para-
doxical,
mystical,
and
illogical?
or,
as a final alternative.
a dash of each of these motives;

a little
vulgarity,
a little
gloominess,
a little
anti-Christianity,
a little
craving
for
the
necessary piquancy?
But I am told that it is
simply
a case of old
frigid
and
tedious
frogs crawling
and
hopping
around men and inside
men,
as if
they
were as
thoroughly
at home
there,
as
they
would be in a
swamp.
I am
opposed
to this statement,
nay,
I do not believe
it: and
if,
in the
impossibility
of
knowledge,
one is
per-
mitted to
wish,
so do I wish from
my
heart that
just
the
converse
metaphor
should
apply,
and that these
analysts
with their
psychological
microscopes
should
be,
at
bottom,
brave,
proud,
and
magnanimous
animals who know how
to bridle both their hearts and their
smarts,
and have
rally
trained themselves
to sacrifice what is desirable
what is true,
any
truth in
fact,
even the
simple,
bitter,
v, repulsive,
unchristian,
and immoral truths

for
there are truths of that
description.
2.
All
honour, then,
to the noble
spirits
who would fain
dominate
these historians
of
morality.
But it is
certainly
"GOOD AND EVIL/
-
-GOOD AXD BAD"
3
a
pity
that
they
lack the
historical sense
itself, that
they
themselves are
quite
deserted
by
all the
beneficent
spirits
of
history.
The whole train of their
thought
runs, as was
always
the
way
of
old-fashioned
philosophers,
on thor-
oughly
unhistorical lines: there is no doubt on this
point.
The crass
ineptitude
of their
genealogy
of morals is
immediately apparent
when the
question
arises of ascer-
taining
the
origin
of the idea and
judgment
of
"good.*'
''Man had
originally,''
so
speaks
their
decree,
"praised
and called
'good'
altruistic acts from the
standpoint
of
those on whom
they
were
conferred, that is. those to
whom
they
were
useful; subsequently
the
origin
of this
praise
was
forgotten,
and altruistic
acts,
simply because,
as a sheer matter of
habit,
they
were
praised
as
good,
came also to be felt as
good

as
though they
contained in
themselves some intrinsic
goodness."
The
thing
is obvi-
ous:

this initial derivation contains

already
all the
typical
and
idiosyncratic
traits of the
English psycholo-
gists

we have
"utility," "forgetting."
"habit." and
finally
"error,"
the whole
assemblage forming
the basis of a
sys-
tem of
values,
on which the
higher
man has
up
to the
present prided
himself as
though
it were a kind of
privi-
lege
of man in
general.
This
pride
must be
brought
low.
this
system
of values must lose its values: is that attained?
Xow the first
argument
that comes
read}-
to
my
hand
is that the real homestead of the
concept "good"
is
sought
and located in the
wrong place:
the
judgment
"good"
did riot
originate among
those to whom
goodness
was shown. Much rather has it been the
good
them-
selves,
that
is,
the aristocratic,
the
powerful,
the
high-
lioned,
the
high-minded,
who have felt that
they
them-
4
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
selves were
good,
and that their actions were
good,
that*
to
say
of the first
order,
in
contradistinction to all the
low,
the
low-minded,
the
vulgar,
and the
plebeian.
It
was out of this
pathos
of distance that
they
first
arrogated
the
right
to
create values for their own
profit,
and to
coin the names of such
values: what had
they
to do with
utility?
The
standpoint
of
utility
is as alien and as
inapplicable
as it could
possibly
be,
when we have to deal
with so volcanic an
effervescence of
supreme values,
creat-
ing
and
demarcating
as
they
do a
hierarchy
within them-
selves: it is at this
juncture
that one arrives at an
appre-
ciation of the contrast to that
tepid temperature,
which
is the
presupposition
on which
every
combination of
worldly
wisdom and
every
calculation of
practical
ex-
pediency
is
always
based

an 1 not for one

occasional,
not for one
exceptional
instance,
but
chronically.
The
pathos
of
nobility
and
distance, as I have
said, the chronic
and
despotic esprit
dc
corps
and fundamental instinct of a
higher
dominant race
coming
into association with a
meaner
race,
an "under
race,"
this is the
origin
of the
antithesis of
good
and bad.
(The
masters'
right
of
giving
names
goes
so far that
it is
permissible
to look
upon language
itself as the ex-
pression
of the
power
of the masters:
they say
"this is
that,
and
that,"
they
seal
finally every object
and
every
event with a
sound,
and
thereby
at the same time take
possession
of
it.)
It is because of this
origin
that the
word
"good"
is far from
having any necessary
connection
with altruistic
acts,
in
accordance with the
superstitious
belief of these moral
philosophers.
On the
contrary,
it
is
on the occasion of the
decay
of aristocratic
values, that
"GOOD AND
EVIL,"
"GOOD AND
BAD"
5
the antitheses between
"egoistic"
and
"altruistic"
presses
more and more
heavily
on the human
conscience
it
is,
to
use
my
own
language,
the
herd
instinct which
finds in
this antithesis an
expression
in
many ways.
And
even
then it takes a
considerable time for this instinct to be-
come
sufficiently dominant,
for the
valuation to be inex-
tricably dependent
on this
antithesis
(as
is the case in
contemporary Europe);
for
to-day
the
prejudice
is
pre-
dominant, which, acting
even now with all the
intensity
of
an obsession and brain
disease,
holds that
"moral,"
"altruistic,"
and "desinteresse" are
concepts
of
equal
value.
In the second
place, quite apart
from the fact that this
hypothesis
as to the
genesis
of the value
"good"
cannot
be
historically upheld,
it suffers from an inherent
psycho-
logical
contradiction. The
utility
of altruistic conduct has
presumably
been the
origin
of its
being praised,
and this
origin
has become
forgotten:

But in what conceivable

way
is this
forgetting possible?
Has
perchance
the
utility
of such conduct ceased at some
given
moment? The
contrary
is the case. This
utility
has rather been
experi-
enced
every day
at all
times,
and is
consequently
a feature
that obtains a new and
regular emphasis
with
every
fresh
day;
it follows
that,
so far from
vanishing
from the
consciousness,
so far indeed from
being forgotten,
it must
necessarily
become
impressed
on the consciousness
with
ever-increasing
distinctness.
How much more
logical
is
that
contrary theory (it
is not the truer for
that)
which
6 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
is
represented,
for
instance, by
Herbert
Spencer,
who
places
the
concept "good"
as
essentially
similar to the
concept "useful,"
"purposive,"
so that in the
judgments
"good"
and "bad" mankind is
simply summarising
and
investing
with a sanction its
unforgotten
and
unforget-
table
experiences concerning
the
"useful-purposive"
and
the
"mischievous-non-purposive." According
to this
theory, "good"
is the attribute of that which has
previ-
ously
shown itself
useful;
and so is able to claim to be
considered "valuable in the
highest degree,"
"valuable
in itself." This method of
explanation
is
also,
as I have
said, wrong,
but at
any
rate the
explanation
itself is co-
herent,
and
psychologically
tenable.
4-
The
guide-post
which first
put
me on the
right
track
was this
question

what is the true

etymological signifi-
cance of the various
symbols
for the idea
"good"
which
have been coined in the various
languages?
I then found
that
they
all led back to the same evolution
of
the same
idea

that
everywhere
"aristocrat,"
"noble"
(in
the social
sense),
is the root
idea,
out of which have
necessarily
developed "good"
in the sense of "with aristocratic soul."
"noble,"
in the sense of "with a soul of
high
calibre."
"with a
privileged
soul"

a
development
which
invariably
runs
parallel
with that other evolution
by
which
"vulvar."
"plebeian,"
"low,"
are made to
change finally
into "bad."
The most
eloquent proof
of this last contention is the
German word "schlccht" itself: this word is identical with
"schlicht"

(compare "schlcchtivcg"
and "schlcchtcr-
"GOOD AND
EVIL,"
"GOOD AND BAD"
7
dings")which,
originally
and as
yet
without
any
sinister
innuendo, simply
denoted the
plebeian
man in
contrast to
the aristocratic man. It is at the
sufficiently
late
period
of the
Thirty
Years' War that this sense becomes
changed
to the sense now current. From the
standpoint
of the
Genealogy
of Morals this
discovery
seems to be substan-
tial: the lateness of it is to be attributed to the
retarding
influence exercised in the modern world
by
democratic
prejudice
in the
sphere
of all
questions
of
origin.
This
extends,
as will
shortly
be
shown,
even to the
province
of
natural science and
physiology,
which
prima jacie
is the
most
objective.
The extent of the mischief which is
caused
by
this
prejudice (once
it is free of all trammels
except
those of its own
malice), particularly
to Ethics
and
History,
is shown
by
the notorious case of Buckle:
it was in Buckle that that
plebeianism
of the modern
spirit,
which is of
English origin,
broke out once
again
from its
malignant
soil with all the violence of a
slimy
volcano,
and with that
salted, rampant,
and
vulgar
elo-
quence
with which
up
to the
present
time all volcanoes
have
spoken.
With
regard
to our
problem,
which can
justly
be called
an intimate
problem,
and which
elects to
appeal
to
only
a limited number of ears:
it is of no small interest to
ascertain
that in those
words and
roots
which denote
"good"
we catch
glimpses
of
that
arch-trait,
on the
strength
of which
the aristocrats
feel themselves
to be
beings
of a
higher
order
than
their
fellows.
Indeed, they
8 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
call themselves in
perhaps
the most
frequent
instances
simply
after their
superiority
in
power (e.g.
"the
power-
ful,"
"the
lords,"
"the
commanders"),
or after the most
obvious
sign
of their
superiority,
as for
example
"the
rich,"
"the
possessors" (that
is the
meaning
of
arya;
and
the Iranian and Slav
languages correspond).
But
they
also call themselves after some characteristic
idiosyncrasy
;
and this is the case which now concerns us.
They
name
themselves,
for
instance,
"the truthful": this is first done
by
the Greek
nobility
whose
mouthpiece
is found in
Theognis,
the
Megarian poet.
The word
ecrOXo;,
which
is coined for the
purpose,
signifies etymologically
"one
who is"
who has
reality,
who is
real,
who is
true;
and
then with a
subjective twist,
the
"true,"
as the "truthful":
at this
stage
in the evolution of the
idea,
it becomes the
motto and
party cry
of the
nobility,
and
quite completes
the transition to the
meaning "noble,"
so as to
place
out-
side the
pale
the
lying, vulgar man,
as
Theognis
conceives
and
portrays
him

till
finally
the word after the
decay
of
the
nobility
is left to delineate
psychological noblesse,
and becomes as it were
ripe
and mellow. In the word
y.axcx;
as in
Sei16<; (the
plebeian
in contrast to the
dyuOog)
the cowardice is
emphasised.
This affords
per-
haps
an
inkling
on what lines the
etymological origin
of
the
very ambiguous
dyaddg
is to be
investigated.
In
the Latin mains
(which
I
place
side
by
side with
\vih
the
vulgar
man can be
distinguished
as the
dark-coloured,
and above all as the black-haired
("Iiic niger est"),
as
the
pre-Aryan
inhabitants of the Italian
soil,
whose com-
plexion
formed the clearest feature of distinction from
the dominant
blondes, namely,
the
Aryan conquering
"GOOD AND
EVIL,"
"GOOD AND BAD"
9
race:

at
any
rate Gaelic has afforded me the exact ana-
logue

Fin
(for instance,
in the name
Fin-Gal),
the dis-
tinctive word of the
nobility, finally

good, noble, clean,

but
originally
the blonde-haired man in
contrast to the
dark black-haired
aboriginals.
The
Celts,
if I
may
make
a
parenthetic statement,
were
throughout
a blonde
race;
and it is
wrong
to
connect,
as Virchow still
connects,
those traces of an
essentially
dark-haired
population
which
are to be seen on the more elaborate
ethnographical maps
of
Germany
with
any
Celtic
ancestry
or with
any
ad-
mixture of Celtic blood: in this context it is rather the
pre-Aryan population
of
Germany
which
surges up
to
these districts.
(The
same is true
substantially
of the
whole of
Europe:
in
point
of
fact,
the
subject
race has
finally again
obtained the
upper hand,
in
complexion
and
the shortness of the
skull,
and
perhaps
in the intellectual
and social
qualities.
Who can
guarantee
that modern
democracy,
still more modern
anarchy,
and indeed that
tendency
to the
"Commune,"
the most
primitive
form of
society,
which is now common to all the Socialists in
Europe,
does not in its real essence
signify
a monstrous
reversion

and that the

conquering
and master race

the
Aryan race,
is not also
becoming
inferior
physiologically?)
I believe that I can
explain
the Latin bonus as the "war-
rior":
my hypothesis
is that I am
right
in
deriving
bonus
from an older duonus
(compare
beUum-duellum
=
duen-lum,
in which the word duonus
appears
to me to
be
contained).
Bonus
accordingly
as the man of
discord,
of
variance, "entzweiung" (duo),
as the warrior: one sees
what in
ancient
Rome "the
good"
meant for a man. Must
not our actual German word
gut
mean "the
godlike,
the
io THE GEXEALOGY OF MORALS
man of
godlike
race"? and be identical with the national
name
(originally
the nobles'
name)
of the Goths?
The
grounds
for this
supposition
do not
appertain
to
this work.
6.
Above
all,
there is no
exception (though
there are
op-
portunities
for
exceptions)
to this
rule,
that the idea of
political superiority always
resolves itself into the idea of
psychological superiority,
in those cases where the
highest
caste is at the same time the
priestly caste,
and in accord-
ance with its
general
characteristics confers on itself the
privilege
of a title which alludes
specifically
to its
priestly
function. It is in these
cases,
for
instances,
that
"dean"
and "unclean" confront each other for the first time as
badges
of class
distinction;
here
again
there
develops
a
"good"
and a
"bad,"
in a sense which has ceased to be
merely
social.
Moreover,
care should be taken not to
take these ideas of "clean" and "unclean" too
seriously,
too
broadly,
or too
symbolically:
all the ideas of ancient
man
have,
on the
contrary, got
to be understood in their
initial
stages,
in a sense which
is,
to an almost incon-
ceivable
extent, crude, coarse, physical,
and
narrow,
and
above all
essentially unsymbolical.
The "clean man" is
originally only
a man who washes
himself,
who abstains
from certain foods which are conducive to skin
diseases,
who does not
sleep
with the unclean women of the lower
classes,
who has a horror of blood

not
more,
not much
more! On the other
hand,
the
very
nature of a
priestly
aristocracy
shows the reasons
why just
at such an
early
"GOOD AND
EVIL,"
"GOOD AND BAD" n
juncture
there should ensue a
really dangerous
sharpen-
ing
and
intensification of
opposed
values: it
is,
in
fact,
through
these
opposed
values that
gulfs
are cleft in the
social
plane,
which a veritable
Achilles of free
thought
would shudder to cross.
There is from the outset a cer-
tain diseased taint in such
sacerdotal
aristocracies,
and
in the habits which
prevail
in such
societies

habits
which,
averse as
they
are to
action,
constitute a
compound
of
introspection
and
explosive
emotionalism,
as a result of
which there
appears
that
introspective morbidity
and*
neurasthenia,
which adheres almost
inevitably
to all
priests
at all times: with
regard, however,
to the
remedy
which
they
themselves have invented for this disease

the
phil-
osopher
has no
option
but to
state,
that it has
proved
itself in its effects a hundred times more
dangerous
than
the
disease,
from which it should have been the deliverer.
iHumanity
itself is still diseased from the effects of the
naivetes of this
priestly
cure.
Take,
for
instance,
certain
kinds of diet
(abstention
from
flesh), fasts,
sexual con-
tinence, flight
into the wilderness
(a
kind of Weir-Mitchell
isolation, though
of course without that
system
of ex-
cessive
feeding
and
fattening
which is the most efficient
antidote to all the
hysteria
of the ascetic
ideal) ;
con-
sider too the whole
metaphysic
of the
priests,
with its war
on the
senses,
its
enervation,
its
hair-splitting;
consider its
self-hypnotism
on the fakir and Brahman
principles
(it
uses Brahman as a
glass
disc and
obsession),
and that
climax which we can understand
only
too well of an
unusual
satiety
with its
panacea
of
nothingness (or
God:

the demand for a unio

mystica
with God is the demand
of the Buddhist for
nothingness.
Nirvana

and
nothing
1 2 THE GEXEALOGY OF MORALS
else !
)
. In sacerdotal societies
every
element is on a more
dangerous scale,
not
merely
cures and
remedies,
but also
pride, revenge, cunning, exaltation,
love, ambition, virtue,
morbidity:

further,
it can
fairly
be stated that it is on
the soil of this
essentially dangerous
form of human
society,
the sacerdotal
form,
that man
really
becomes
for
the first time an
interesting
animal,
that it is in this form
that the soul of man has in a
higher
sense attained
depths
and become evil

and those are the two fundamental

forms of the
superiority
which
up
to the
present
maz has
exhibited over
every
other animal.
The reader will have
already
surmised with what iase
the
priestly
mode of valuation can branch off from the
knightly
aristocratic
mode,
and then
develop
into the
very
antithesis of the latter:
special impetus
is
given
to
this
opposition,
by every
occasion when the castes of the
priests
and warriors confront each other with mutual
jeal-
ousy
and cannot
agree
over the
prize.
The
knightly-
aristocratic
"values" are based on a careful cult of the
physical,
on a
flowering, rich,
and even
effervescing
healthiness,
that
goes considerably beyond
what is neces-
sary
for
maintaining life,
on
war, adventure,
the
chase,
the dance,
the
tourney

on
everything,
in
fact,
which is
contained
in
strong, free,
and
joyous
action. The
priestly-
aristocratic
mode of valuation is

we have seen

based
on other
hypotheses:
it is bad
enough
for this class when
it is a
question
of war! Yet the
priests
are,
as is notori-
ous,
the worst enemies

why?
Because
they
are the
"GOOD AND
EVIL,"
"GOOD
AND BAD"
13
weakest. Their
weakness causes their
hate to
expand
into
a monstrous and sinister
shape,
a
shape
which is most
crafty
and most
poisonous.
The
really great
haters in the
history
of the world
have
always
been
priests,
who are
also the cleverest haters

in
comparison
with the clever-
ness of
priestly revenge, every
other
piece
of
cleverness
is
practically negligible.
Human
history
would be too
fatuous for
anything
were it not for the
cleverness im-
ported
into it
by
the weak

take at once the most

impor-
tant instance. All the world's efforts
against
the
"aristo-
crats,"
the
"mighty,"
the
"masters,"
the
"holders of
power,"
are
negligible by comparison
with what has been
accomplished against
those classes
by
the Jews

the
Jews,
that
priestly
nation which
eventually
realised that
the one method of
effecting
satisfaction on its enemies and
tyrants
was
by
means of a radical transvaluation of
values,
which was at the same time an act of the cleverest
revenge.
Yet the method was
only appropriate
to a
nation of
priests,
to a nation of the most
jealously
nursed
priestly revengefulness.
It was the
Jews who,
in
opposi-
tion to the aristocratic
equation (good
=
aristocratic
=
beautiful
=
happy
=
loved
by
the
gods),
dared with a
terrifying logic
to
suggest
the
contrary equation,
and
indeed to maintain with the teeth of the most
profound
hatred
(the
hatred of
weakness)
this
contrary equation,
namely,
"the wretched are alone the
good;
the
poor,
the
weak,
the
lowly,
are alone the
good;
the
suffering,
the
needy,
the
sick,
the
loathsome,
are the
only
ones who are
pious,
the
only
ones who are
blessed,
for them alone is
salvation

but
you,
on the other
hand, you
aristocrats,
you
men of
power, you
are to all
eternity
the
evil,
the
14
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
horrible,
the
covetous,
the
insatiate,
the
godless;
eter-
nally
also shall
you
be the
unblessed,
the
cursed,
the
damned!" We know who it was who
reaped
the
heritage
of this
Jewish
transvaluation. In the context of the
monstrous and
inordinately
fateful initiative which the
Jews
have exhibited in connection with this most funda-
mental of all declarations of
war,
I remember the
passage
which came to
my pen
on another occasion
(Beyond
Good and
Evil, Aph. 195)

that it
was,
in
fact,
with the
Jews
that the revolt
of
the slaves
begins
in the
sphere oj
morals;
that revolt which has behind it a
history
of two
millennia,
and which at the
present day
has
only
moved
out of our
sight,
because it

has achieved
victory.
8.
But
you
understand this not? You have no
eyes
for
a force which has taken two thousand
years
to achieve
victory?

There is
nothing
wonderful in this: all
lengthy
processes
are hard to see and to realise. But this is what
took
place:
from the trunk of that tree of
revenge
and
hate, Jewish
hate,

that most
profound
and sublime
hate,
which creates ideals and
changes
old values to new crea-
tions,
the like of which has never been on
earth,

there
grew
a
phenomenon
which was
equally incomparable,
a
new
love,
the most
profound
and sublime of all kinds of
]
ove;

and from what other trunk could it have

grown?
But beware
of
supposing
that this love has soared on its
upward growth,
as in
any way
a real
negation
of that
thirst for
revenge,
as an antithesis to the
Jewish
hate!
No,
the
contrary
is the truth! This love
grew
out of
"GOOD AND
EVIL,"
"GOOD AND BAD"
15
that
hate,
as its
crown,
as its
triumphant crown, circling
wider and wider amid the
clarity
and fulness of the
sun,
and
pursuing
in the
very kingdom
of
light
and
height
its
goal
of
hatred,
its
victory,
its
spoil,
its
strategy,
with
the same
intensity
with which the roots of that tree of
hate sank into
everything
which was
deep
and evil with
increasing stability
and
increasing
desire. This
Jesus
of
Nazareth,
the incarnate
gospel
of
love,
this "Redeemer"
bringing
salvation and
victory
to the
poor,
the
sick,
the
sinfulwas he not
really temptation
in its most sinister
and irresistible
form, temptation
to take the tortuous
path
to those
very
Jewish values and those
very Jewish
ideals? Has not Israel
really
obtained the final
goal
of
its sublime
revenge, by
the tortuous
paths
of this "Re-
deemer,"
for all that he
might pose
as Israel's
adversary
and Israel's
destroyer?
Is it not due to the black
magic
of a
really great policy
of
revenge,
of a
far-seeing,
bur-
rowing revenge,
both
acting
and
calculating
with slow-
ness,
that Israel himself must
repudiate
before all the
world the actual instrument of his own
revenge
and nail
it to the
cross,
so that all the world

that
is,
all the ene-
mies of Israel

could nibble without

suspicion
at this
very
bait?
Could, moreover, any
human mind with all
its elaborate
ingenuity
invent a bait that was more
truly
dangerous? Anything
that was even
equivalent
in the
power
of its
seductive,
intoxicating,
defiling,
and
corrupt-
ing
influence to that
symbol
of the
holy
cross,
to that
awful
paradox
of a
"god
on the
cross,"
to that
mystery
of
the
unthinkable, supreme,
and utter
horror of the self-
crucifixion of a
god
for the salvation
of
matt? It is at
least certain that mb hoc
signo
Israel,
with
its
revenge
1 6 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
and transvaluation of all
values,
has
up
to the
present
always triumphed again
over all other
ideals,
over all
more aristocratic ideals.
"But
why
do
you
talk of nobler ideals? Let us submit
to the
facts;
that the
people
have
triumphed

or the
slaves,
or the
populace,
or the
herd,
or whatever name
you
care to
give
them

if this has
happened through
the
Jews,
so be it! In that case no nation ever had a
greater
mission in the world's
history.
The 'masters'
have been done
away
with;
the
morality
of the
vulgar
man has
triumphed.
This
triumph may
also be called a
blood-poisoning
(it
has
mutually
fused the
races)

I do
not
dispute it;
but there is no doubt but that this
intoxication has succeeded. The
'redemption'
of the
human race
(that is,
from the
masters)
is
progressing;
swimmingly; everything
is
obviously becoming Judaised,
or
Christianised,
or
vulgarised (what
is there in the
words?).
It seems
impossible
to
stop
the course of this
poisoning through
the whole
body politic
of mankind

but its
tempo
and
pace may
from the
present
time be
slower,
more
delicate, quieter,
more discreet

there is
time
enough.
In view of this context has the Church
nowadays any necessary purpose?
Has
it,
in
fact,
a
right
to live? Or could man
get
on without it?
Quocritur.
It seems that it fetters and retards this
tendency,
instead
of
accelerating
it.
Well,
even that
might
be its
utility.
The Church
certainly
is a crude and boorish
institution,
that is
repugnant
to an
intelligence
with
any pretence
at
"GOOD AND
EVIL,"
"GOOD AND BAD"
17
delicacy,
to a
really
modern taste.
Should it not at
any
rate learn to be somewhat more subtle? It alienates
nowadays,
more than it allures. Which of us
would,
for-
sooth,
be a freethinker if there were no Church? It is
the Church which
repels us,
not its
poison

apart
from
the Church we like the
poison."
This is the
epilogue
of a freethinker to
my discourse,
of an honourable animal
(as
he has
given
abundant
proof),
and a democrat to
boot;
he had
up
to that time listened to
me,
and could
not endure
my silence,
but for
me, indeed,
with
regard
to this
topic
there is much on which to be silent.
10.
The revolt of the slaves in morals
begins
in the
very
principle
of resentment
becoming
creative and
giving
birth to values

a resentment
experienced by
creatures
who, deprived
as
they
are of the
proper
outlet of
action,
are forced to find their
compensation
in an
imaginary
revenge.
While
every
aristocratic
morality springs
from
a
triumphant
affirmation of its own
demands,
the slave
morality says
"no" from the
very
outset to what is "out-
side
itself,"
"different from
itself,"
and "not itself: and
this "no" is its creative deed. This volte-face of the
valuing standpoint

this inevitable
gravitation
to the ob-
jective
instead of back to the
subjective

is
typical
of
resentment": the
slave-morality requires
as the condi-
tion of its existence an external
and
objective
world,
to
employ physiological
terminology,
it
requires objective
stimuli to be
capable
of action at all

its action is fun-

damentally
a reaction.
The
contrary
is the case when
a
1 8 THE GENEALOGY
OF MORALS
we come to the aristocrat's
system
of values: it acts and
grows spontaneously,
it
merely
seeks its antithesis in
order to
pronounce
a more
grateful
and exultant
"yes"
to its own
self;

its
negative conception, "low," "vulgar."
"bad,"
is
merely
a
pale
late-born foil in
comparison
with
its
positive
and fundamental
conception
(saturated
as it is
with life and
passion),
of "we
aristocrats,
we
good
ones,
we beautiful
ones,
we
happy
ones."
When the aristocratic
morality goes astray
and com-
mits
sacrilege
on
reality,
this is limited to that
particular
1
sphere
with which it is not
sufficiently acquainted

a
sphere,
in
fact,
from the real
knowledge
of which it
disdainfully
defends itself. It
misjudges,
in some cases,
the
sphere
which it
despises,
the
sphere
of the common
vulgar
man and the low
people:
on the other
hand,
due
weight
should be
given
to the consideration that in
any
case the mood of
contempt,
of
disdain,
of
supercilious-
ness,
even on the
supposition
that it
falsely portrays
the
object
of its
contempt,
will
always
be far removed from
mat
degree
of
falsity
which will
always
characterise the
attacks

in
effigy,
of course

of the vindictive hatred and

revengeful
ness of the weak in
onslaughts
on their ene-
mies. In
point
of
fact,
there is in
contempt
too
strong
an admixture of
nonchalance,
of
casualness,
of
boredom,
of
impatience,
even of
personal
exultation,
for it to be
capable
of
distorting
its victim into a real caricature or
a real
monstrosity.
Attention
again
should be
paid
to
the almost benevolent mtances
which,
for
instance,
the
Greek
nobility imports
into all the words
by
which it
distinguishes
the common
people
from itself;
note how
continuously
a kind of
pity, care,
and consideration im-
"GOOD AND
EVIL,"
"GOOD AND BAD"
19
parts
its
honeyed flavour,
until at last almost all the
words which are
applied
to the
vulgar
man survive
finally
as
expressions
for
"unhappy," "worthy
of
pity" (corn-
Dare
8iA6g, ositaxiog,
jrovriQog, uoxfrr]QS
'
the latter two
names
really denoting
the
vulgar
man as labour-slave and
beast of
burden)

and
how, conversely, "bad," "low,"
"unhappy"
have never ceased to
ring
in the Greek ear
with a tone in which
"unhappy"
is the
predominant
note:
this is a
heritage
of the old noble aristocratic
morality,
which remains true to itself even in
contempt (let philolo-
gists
remember the sense in which
oTguooc;, <xvo?.6o;,
tWjuiov, bvoxv%iv, ^vucpoQa
used to be
employed.
The
"well-born"
simply felt
themselves the
"happy"; they
did not have to manufacture their
happiness artificially
through looking
at their
enemies,
or in cases to talk and
lie themselves into
happiness
(as
is the custom with all
resentful
men) ;
and
similarly, complete
men as
they were,
exuberant with
strength,
and
consequently
necessarily
energetic, they
were too wise to dissociate
happiness
from action

activity
becomes in their minds
necessarily
counted as
happiness
(that
is the
etymology
of sv
jiodrretv)
all in
sharp
contrast to the
"happiness"
of
the weak and the
oppressed,
with their
festering
venom
and
malignity, among
whom
happiness appears
essen-
tially
as a
narcotic,
a
deadening,
a
quietude,
a
peace,
a
"Sabbath,"
an enervation of the mind and relaxation
of
the
limbs,

in
short,
a
purely
passive phenomenon.
While
the aristocratic man lived in confidence and
openness
with himself
(yewaio?,
"noble-born," emphasises
the
nuance
"sincere,"
and
perhaps
also
"naif"),
the resentful
man,
on the other
hand,
is neither sincere nor
naif,
nor
20
THE GENEALOGY
OF MORALS
honest and candid with himself. His soul
squints;
his
mind loves hidden
crannies,
tortuous
paths
and back-
doors, everything
secret
appeals
to him as his
world,
his
safety,
his
balm;
he is
past
master in
silence,
in not for-
getting,
in
waiting,
in
provisional
self-depreciation
and
self-abasement.
A race of such
resentful
men will of
necessity eventually prove
more
prudent
than
any
aris-
tocratic
race,
it will honour
prudence
on
quite
a distinct
scale, as,
in
fact,
a
paramount
condition of
existence,
while
prudence among
aristocratic
men is
apt
to be
tinged
with a delicate
flavour of
luxury
and
refinement;
so
among
them it
plays
nothing
like so
integral
a
part
as
that
complete
certainty
of function of the
governing
un-
conscious
instincts,
or as indeed a certain lack of
pru-
dence,
such as a vehement and valiant
charge,
whether
against danger
or the
enemy,
or as those ecstatic bursts
of
rage,
love, reverence, gratitude, by
which at all times
noble souls have
recognised
each other. When the re-
sentment of the aristocratic
man manifests
itself,
it fulfils
and exhausts itself in an immediate
reaction,
and conse-
quently
instills no venom: on the other
hand,
it never
manifests itself at all in countless
instances,
when in the
case of the feeble and weak it would be inevitable.
An
inability
to take
seriously
for
any length
of time their
enemies,
their
disasters,
their misdeedsthat is the
sign
of the full
strong
natures who
possess
a
superfluity
of
moulding plastic
force,
that heals
completely
and
pro-
duces
forgetfulness:
a
good example
of this in the modern
world is
Mirabeau,
who had no
memory
for
any
insults
and meannesses which were
practised
on
him,
and who
was
only incapable
of
forgiving
because he
forgot.
Such
"GOOD AND
EViiv
"GOOD AND BAD" 21
a man indeed shakes off with a
shrug many
a worm
which would have buried itself in
another;
it is
only
in
characters like these that we see the
possibility (suppos-
ing,
of
course,
that there is such a
possibility
in the
world)
of the real "love of one's enemies." What re-
spect
for his enemies is
found, forsooth,
in an aristocratic
man-

and such a reverence is

already
a
bridge
to love!
He insists on
having
his
enemy
to himself as his distinc-
tion. He tolerates no other
enemy
but a man in whose
character there is
nothing
to
despise
and much to honour!
On the other
hand,
imagine
the
"enemy"
as the resentful
man conceives him

and it is here
exactly
that we see
his
work,
his
creativeness;
he has conceived "the evil
enemy,"
the "evil
one,"
and indeed that is the root idea
from which he now evolves as a
contrasting
and cor-
responding figure
a
"good one,"
himself

his
very
self!
11.
The method of this man is
quite contrary
to that of the
aristocratic
man,
who conceives the root idea
"good"
spontaneously
and
straight away,
that is to
say,
out of
'
himself,
and from that material then creates for himself
a
concept
of "bad"! This "bad" of aristocratic
origin
and that "evil" out of the cauldron of unsatisfied hatred

the former an
imitation,
an
"extra,"
an additional
nuance;
the
latter,
on the other
hand,
the
original,
the
beginning,
the essential act in the
conception
of a slave-
morality

these two words "bad" and

"evil,"
how
great
a difference- do
they mark,
in
spite
of the fact that
they
have an identical
contrary
in the idea
"good."
But the
22 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
idea
"good"
is not the same: much rather let the
question
be
asked,
"Who is
really
evil
according
to the
meaning
of the
morality
of resentment?" In all sternness let it
be answered thus:

just
the
good
man of the other
morality, just
the
aristocrat,
the
powerful
one,
the one
who
rules,
but who is distorted
by
the venomous
eye
of
resentfulnese,
into a new
colour,
a new
signification,
a
new
appearance.
This
particular point
we would be the
last to
deny:
the man who learnt to know those
"good"
ones
only
as
enemies,
learnt at the same time not to
know them
only
as "evil
enemies,"
and the same men
who inter
pares
were
kept
so
rigorously
in bounds
through
convention, respect, custom,
and
gratitude, though
much
more
through
mutual
vigilance
and
jealousy
inter
pares,
these men who in their relations with each other find so
many
new
ways
of
manifesting consideration, self-control,
delicacy, loyalty, pride,
and
friendship,
these men are in
reference to what is outside their circle
(where
the
foreign
element,
a
foreign country, begins) ,
not much better than
beasts of
prey,
which have been let loose.
They enjoy
there freedom from all social
control, they
feel that in
the wilderness
they
can
give
vent with
impunity
to that
tension which is
produced by
enclosure and
imprison-
ment in the
peace
of
society, they
revert to the innocence
of the
beast-of-prey conscience,
like
jubilant monsters,
who
perhaps
come from a
ghostly
bout of
murder, arson,
rape,
and
torture,
with bravado and a moral
equanimity,
as
though merely
some wild student's
prank
had been
played, perfectly
convinced that the
poets
have now an
ample
theme to
sing
and celebrate. It is
impossible
not
to
recognise
at the core of all these aristocratic races the
"GOOD AND
EVIL,"
"GOOD AND BAD"
23
beast of
prey;
the
magnificent
blonde
bride,
avidly
ram-
pant
for
spoil
and
victory;
this hidden core needed an
outlet from time to
time,
the beast must
get
loose
again,
must return into the wilderness

the
Roman, Arabic,
German,
and
Japanese nobility,
the Homeric
heroes,
the
Scandinavian
Vikings,
are all alike in this need. It is the
aristocratic races who have left the idea "Barbarian" on
all the tracks in which
they
have
marched;
nay,
a con-
sciousness of this
very
barbarianism,
and even a
pride
in
it,
manifests itself even in their
highest
civilisation
(for
example,
when Pericles
says
to his Athenians in that cele-
brated funeral
oration,
"Our
audacity
has forced a
way
over
every
land and
sea, rearing everywhere imperishable
memorials of itself for
good
and for
evil").
This audac-
ity
of aristocratic
races, mad, absurd,
and
spasmodic
as
may
be its
expression;
the incalculable and fantastic
nature of their
enterprises,

Pericles sets in
special
relief
and
glory
the
Qcrfruuia
of the
Athenians,
their non-
chalance and
contempt
for
safety, body, life,
and com-
fort, their awful
joy
and intense
delight
in all
destruction,
in all the ecstasies of
victory
and
cruelty,

all these fea-

tures become
crystallised,
for those who suffered
thereby
in the
picture
of the
"barbarian,"
of the "evil
enemy,"
perhaps
of the "Goth" and of the "Vandal." The
pro-
found, icy
mistrust which the German
provokes,
as soon
as he arrives at
power,

even at the
present time,

is
always
still an aftermath of that
inextinguishable
horror
with which for whole centuries
Europe
has
regarded
the
wrath of the blonde Teuton beast
(although
between the
old Germans and ourselves there exists
scarcely
a
psycho-
logical,
let alone a
physical,
relationship).
I have once
24
THE
GENEALOGY OF
MORALS
called
attention to the
embarrassment of
Hesiod,
when
he
conceived the series of social
ages,
and
endeavoured
to
express
them in
gold,
silver, and bronze. He could
only dispose
of the
contradiction,
with which he was
confronted,
by
the
Homeric
world,
an
age
magnificent
in-
deed,
but at the same time so awful and so
violent,
by
making
two
ages
out of
one,
which he henceforth
placed
one behind the other

first,
the
age
of the heroes and
demigods,
as that world had remained in the memories
of the
aristocratic
families,
who found therein their own
ancestors;
secondly,
the bronze
age,
as that
correspond-
ing age
appeared
to the descendants of the
oppressed,
spoiled,
ill-treated,
exiled,
enslaved; namely,
as an
age
of
bronze,
as I have
said, hard, cold,
terrible, without
feelings
and
without
conscience,
crushing everything,
and
bespattering
everything
with blood. Granted the truth
of the
theory
now
believed to be
true,
that the
very
essence
of
all
civilisation is
to train out of
man, the beast
of
prey,
a tame and civilised
animal,
a
domesticated
animal,
it follows
indubitably
that we must
regard
as the
real
tools
of
civilisation all those instincts of reaction and
resentment,
by
the
help
of which the aristocratic
races,
together
with their
ideals,
were
finally degraded
and
overpowered;
though
that has not
yet
come to be
syn-
onymous
with
saying
that the bearers of those tools also
represented
the
civilisation. It is rather the
contrary
that
is not
only probable
nay,
it is
palpable
to-day:
these
bearers of
vindictive
instincts that have to be bottled
up,
these descendants of all
European
and
non-European
slavery, especially
of the
pre- Aryan population
the
people,
I
say, represent
the decline of
humanity!
These
"GOOD AND
EVIL,"
"GOOD AND BAD"
25
"tools of civilisation" are a
disgrace
to
humanity,
and
constitute in
reality
more of an
argument against
civili-
sation,
more of a reason
why
civilisation should be sus-
pected.
One
may
be
perfectly justified
in
being always
afraid of the blonde beast that lies at the core of all
aristocratic
races,
and in
being
on one's
guard:
but who
would not a hundred times
prefer
to be
afraid,
when one
at the same time
admires,
than to be immune from
fear,
at the cost of
being perpetually
obsessed with the loath-
some
spectacle
of the
distorted,
the
dwarfed,
the
stunted,
the envenomed? And is that not our fate? What
pro-
duces
to-day
our
repulsion
towards "man"?

for we
suffer
from
"man,"
there is no doubt about it. It is not
fear;
it is rather that we have
nothing
more to fear from men
;
it is that the worm "man" is in the
foreground
and
pullulates;
it is that the "tame
man,"
the wretched
mediocre and
unedifying creature,
has learnt to consider
himself a
goal
and a
pinnacle,
an inner
meaning,
an his-
toric
principle,
a
"higher man"; yes,
it is that he has a
certain
right
so to consider
himself,
in so far as he feels
that in contrast to that excess of
deformity,
disease,
ex-
haustion,
and effeteness whose odour is
beginning
to
pol-
lute
present-day Europe,
he at
any
rate has achieved a
relative
success,
he at
any
rate still
says "yes"
to life.
12.
I cannot refrain at this
juncture
from
uttering
a
sigh
and one last
hope.
What is it
precisely
which I find
intolerable? That which
I alone cannot
get
rid
of,
which makes me choke and faint? Bad air! Bad air!
26 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
That
something misbegotten
comes near
me;
that I must
inhale the odour of the entrails of a
misbegotten
soul!

That
excepted,
what can one not endure in the
way
of
need, privation,
bad
weather, sickness, toil,
solitude? In
point
of
fact,
one
manages
to
get
over
everything,
born
as one is to a
burrowing
and
battling
existence;
one
always
returns once
again
to the
light,
one
always
lives
again
one's
golden
hour of
victory

and then one stands

as one was
born,
unbreakable, tense, ready
for some-
thing
more
difficult,
for
something
more distant, like a
bow stretched but the tauter
by every
strain, ftut from
time to time do
ye grant
me

assuming
that
"beyond
good
and evil" there are
goddesses
who can
grant

one
glimpse, grant
me but one
glimpse only,
of something
perfect, fully realised,
happy, mighty, triumphant,
of
something
that still
gives
cause for fear! A
glimpse
of
a man that
justifies
the existence of
man,
a
glimpse
of
an incarnate human
happiness
that realises and
redeems,
for the sake of which one
may
hold fast to the
belie]
in
man! For the
position
is this: in the
dwarfing
and level-
ling
of the
European
man lurks our
greatest peril,
for
it is this outlook which
fatigues

we see
to-day
nothing
which wishes to be
greater,
we surmise that the
process
is
always
still
backwards,
still backwards towards some-
thing
more
attentuated,
more inoffensive, more
cunning,
more comfortable, more
mediocre,
more indifferent, more
Chinese,
more Christian

man,
there is no doubt about
it,
grows always
"better"

the
destiny
of
Europe
lies even
in this

that in
losing
the fear of
man,
we have also lost
the
hope
in
man,
yea,
the will to be man. The
iuht
of
man now
fatigues.

What is
present-day
Nihilism if it is
n.)t that?

We are tired of man.

"GOOD AND
EVIL,"
"GOOD AND BAD"
27
13-
But let us come back to
it;
the
problem
of another
origin
of the
good

of the
good,
as the resentful man
has
thought
it out

demands its solution. It is not sur-

prising
that the lambs should bear a
grudge against
the
great
birds of
prey,
but that is no reason for
blaming
the
great
birds of
prey
for
taking
the little lambs. And
when the lambs
say among themselves,
"Those birds of
prey
are
evil,
and he who is as far removed from
being
a bird of
prey,
who is rather its
opposite,
a
lamb,

is
he not
good?"
then there is
nothing
to cavil at in the
setting up
of this
ideal, though
it
may
also be that the
birds of
prey
will
regard
it a little
sneeringly,
and
per-
chance
say
to
themselves,
"We bear no
grudge against
them,
these
good lambs,
we even like them:
nothing
is
tastier than a tender lamb." To
require
of
strength
that
it should not
express
itself as
strength,
that it should not
be a wish to
overpower,
a wish to
overthrow,
a wish to
become
master,
a thirst for enemies and
antagonisms
and
triumphs,
is
just
as absurd as to
require
of weakness
that it should
express
itself as
strength.
A
quantum
of
force is
just
such a
quantum
of
movement, will,
action

rather it is
nothing
else than
just
those
very phenomena
of
moving, willing, acting,
and can
only appear
other-
wise in the
misleading
errors of
language (and
the funda-
mental fallacies of reason which have become
petrified
therein),
which
understands,
and understands
wrongly,
all
working
as conditioned
by
a
worker, by
a
"subject."
And
just exactly
as the
people separate
the
lightning
from
28 THE
GENEALOGY OF
MORALS
its
flash,
and
interpret
the latter as a
thing done,
as the
working
of a
subject
which is called
lightning,
so also
does the
popular
morality separate
strength
from the
expression
of
strength,
as
though
behind the
strong
man
there existed some
indifferent neutral
substratum,
which
enjoyed
a
caprice
and
option
as to whether or not it
should
express strength.
But there is no such
substratum,
there is no
"being"
behind
doing, working,
becoming;
"the doer" is a mere
appanage
to the action. The action
is
everything.
In
point
of
fact,
the
people duplicate
the
doing,
when
they
make the
lightning lighten,
that is a
"doing-doing";
they
make the same
phenomenon
first a
cause,
and
then,
secondly,
the effect of that cause. The
scientists fail to
improve
matters when
they say,
"Force
moves,
force
causes,"
and so on. Our whole science is
still,
in
spite
of all its
coldness,
of all its freedom from
passion,
a
dupe
of the tricks of
language,
and has never
succeeded in
getting
rid of that
superstitious
changeling
"the
subject" (the atom,
to
give
another
instance,
is
such a
changeling, just
as the Kantian
"Thing-in-itself").
\Yhat
wonder,
if the
suppressed
and
stealthily
simmer-
ing passions
of
revenge
and hatred i
xploit
for their own
advantage
their
belief,
and indeed hold no belief with
|
more steadfast enthusiasm than this

"that the
strong
has the
option
of
being weak,
and the bird of
prey
of
being
a lamb."
Thereby
do
they
win for
themselves the
ht of
attributing
to the birds of
prey
the
responsibility
for
being
birds of
prey:
when the
oppressed,
down-
trodden,
and
overpowered say
to themselves with 1
\ indictive
guile
of weakness. "Let us be otherwise th.
evil, namely, good!
and
good
is
every
one who d<
"GOOD AND
EVIL,"
"GOOD AND BAD"
29
not
oppress,
who hurts no
one,
who does not
attack,
who
does not
pay
back,
who hands over
revenge
to
God,
who
holds
himself,
as we
do,
in
hiding;
who
goes
out of the
way
of
evil,
and
demands,
in
short,
little from
life;
like
ourselves the
patient,
the
meek,
the
just,"

yet
all
this,
in its cold and
unprejudiced interpretation,
means noth-
ing
more than "once for
all,
the weak are
weak;
it is
good
to do
nothing for
which we are not
strong enough";
but this dismal state of
affairs,
this
prudence
of the lowest
order,
which even insects
possess
(which
in a
great danger
are fain to sham death so as to avoid
doing
"too
much"),
has,
thanks to the
counterfeiting
and
self-deception
of
weakness,
come to
masquerade
in the
pomp
of an
ascetic,
mute,
and
expectant
virtue, just
as
though
the
very
weak-
ness of the weak

that
is, forsooth,
its
being,
its
working,
its whole
unique
inevitable
inseparable
reality

were a
voluntary result, something wished, chosen,
a
deed,
an act
of merit. This kind of man finds the belief in a
neutral,
free-choosing "subject" necessary
from an instinct of self-
preservation,
of
self-assertion,
in which
every
lie is fain
to
sanctify
itself. The
subject (or,
to use
popular
lan-
guage,
the
soul)
has
perhaps proved
itself the best
dogma
in the world
simply
because it rendered
possible
to th
horde of
mortal, weak,
and
oppressed
individuals of
every kind,
that most sublime
specimen
of
self-deception,
the
interpretation
of weakness as
freedom,
of
being this,
or
being that,
as merit.
14.
Will
any
one look a little into

right
into

the
mystery
3
o THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
of how ideals are
ma?iujactured
in this world? Who has
the
courage
to do it? Come!
Here we have a vista
opened
into these
grimy
work-
shops.
Wait
just
a
moment,
dear Mr.
Inquisitive
and
Foolhardy; your eye
must first
grow
accustomed to this
false
changing light

Yes!
Enough!
Xow
speak!
What is
happening
below down
yonder? Speak
out! Tell
what
you see,
man of the most
dangerous curiosity

for
now / am the listener.
"I see
nothing,
I hear the more. It is a
cautious,
spiteful, gentle whispering
and
muttering together
in all
the corners and crannies. It seems to me that
they
are
lying;
a
sugary
softness adheres to
every
sound. Weak-
ness is turned to
merit,
there is no doubt about it

it is
just
as
ycu say."
Further !
"And the
impotence
which
requites not,
is turned to
'goodness,'
craven baseness to
meekness,
submission to
those whom one
hates,
to obedience
(namely,
obedience
to one of whom
they say
that he ordered this submis-
sion

they
call him
God).
The inoffensive character of
the
weak,
the
very
cowardice in which he is
rich,
his
standing
at the
door,
his forced
necessity
of
waiting,
gain
here fine
names,
such as
'patience,'
which is also
called 'virtue
1
;
not
being
able to
avenge
one's
self,
is
called not
wishing
to
avenge
one's
self, perhaps
even
forgiveness
(for
they
know not what
they
do

we alone
know what
they
do). They
also talk of the 'love of their
enemies' and sweat
thereby."
Further!
"They
are
miserable,
there is no doubt about
it,
all
"GOOD AND
EVIL,"
"GOOD AND BAD"
31
these
whisperers
and counterfeiters in the
corners,
al-
though they try
to
get
warm
by crouching
close to each
other,
but
they
tell me that their
misery
is a favour and
distinction
given
to them
by God, just
as one beats the
dogs
one likes
best;
that
perhaps
this
misery
is also a
preparation,
a
probation,
a
training;
that
perhaps
it is
still more
something
which will one
day
be
compensated
and
paid
back with a tremendous interest in
gold, nay
in
happiness.
This
they
call 'Blessedness.'
"
Further !
"They
are now
giving
me to
understand,
that not
only
aie
they
better men than the
mighty,
the lords
of the
earth,
whose
spittle they
have
got
to lick
{not
out of
fear,
not at all out of fear! But because God
ordains that one should honour all
authority)

not
only
are
they
better
men,
but that
they
also have a 'better
time,'
at
any rate,
will one
day
have a 'better time.'
But
enough! Enough!
I can endure it no
longer.
Bad
air! Bad air! These
workshops
where ideals are manu-
factured

verily they
reek with the crassest lies."
Nay. Just
one minute! You are
saying nothing
about
the
masterpieces
of these virtuosos of black
magic,
who
can
produce whiteness, milk,
and innocence out of
any
black
you
like: have
you
not noticed what a
pitch
of
refinement is attained
by
their
chef d'ceuvre,
their most
audacious, subtle, ingenious,
and
lying
artist-trick? Take
care! These
cellar-beasts,
full of
revenge
and hate

what do
they make, forsooth,
out of their
revenge
and
hate? Do
you
hear these words? Would
you suspect,
if
you
trusted
only
their
words,
that
you
are
among
men
of resentment and
nothing
else?
3
2 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
''I
understand,
I
prick my
ears
up again (ah!
ah! ah!
and I hold
my nose).
Now do I hear for the first time
that which
they
have said so often: 'We
good,
we are
the
righteous'

what
they
demand
they
call not
revenge
but
f
the
triumph
of
righteousness' ;
what
they
hate is not
their
enemy, no, they
hate
'unrighteousness,' 'godless-
ness';
what
they
believe in and
hope
is not the
hope
of
revenge,
the intoxication of sweet
revenge (

"sweeter
than
honey,"
did Homer call
it?),
but the
victory
of
God,
of the
righteous
God over the
'godless';
what is
left for them to love in this world is not their brothers in
hate,
but their 'brothers in
love,'
as
they say,
all the
good
and
righteous
on the earth."
And how do
they
name that which serves them as a
solace
against
all the troubles of life

their
phantasma-
goria
of their
anticipated
future blessedness?
"How? Do I hear
right? They
call it 'the last
judg-
ment,'
the advent of their
kingdom,
'the
kingdom
of God'

but in the meanwhile

they
live 'in
faith,'
'in
love,'
'in
hope.'
"
Enough
!
Enough
!
IS-
In the faith in what? In the love for what? In the
hope
of what? These
weaklings!

they also, forsooth,

wish to be
strong
some
time;
there is no doubt about it.
some time their
kingdom
also must come

"the
kingdom
of God" is their name for
it,
as has been mentioned:

they
are so meek in
everything!
Yet in order to ex-
perience
that
kingdom
it is
necessary
to live
long,
to live
"GOOD AND
EVIL,"
"GOOD AND BAD"
33
beyond death,

yes,
eternal life is
necessary
so that one
can make
up
for ever for that
earthly
life "in
faith,"
"in
love,"
"in
hope."
Make
up
for what? Make
up by
what?
Dante,
as it seems to
me,
made a crass mistake
when with
awe-inspiring ingenuity
he
placed
that
inscrip-
tion over the
gate
of his
hell,
"Me too made eternal
love": at
any
rate the
following inscription
would have a
much better
right
to stand over the
gate
of the Christian
Paradise and its "eternal blessedness"

"Me too made

eternal hate"

granted
of course that a truth
may rightly
stand over the
gate
to a lie! For what is the blessed-
ness of that Paradise?
Possibly
we could
quickly
sur-
mise
it;
but it is better that it should be
explicitly
attested
by
an
authority
who in such matters is not to
be
disparaged,
Thomas of
Aquinas,
the
great
teacher and
saint. "Beati in
regno celesti,"
says he,
as
gently
as a
lamb,
"videbunt
pcenas damnatorum,
ut beatitudo Mis
magis complaceat."
Or if we wish to hear a
stronger
tone,
a word from the mouth of a
triumphant
father of
the
Church,
who warned his
disciples against
the cruel
ecstasies of the
public spectacles

But
why?
Faith offers
us much
more,

says he,
de
Spectac,
c.
29 ss.,

some-
thing
much
stronger;
thanks to the
redemption, joys
of
quite
another kind stand at our
disposal;
instead of
athletes we have our
martyrs;
we wish for
blood, well,
we have the blood of Christ

but what then awaits us on

the
day
of his
return,
of his
triumph?
And then does he
proceed,
does this
enraptured visionary:
"at enim
super-
sunt alia
spectacula,
Me ultimas et
perpetuus judicii dies,
Me nationibus
insperatus,
Me
derisus,
cum tanta sceculi
vetustas et tot
ejus
nativitates uno
igne
haurientur.
Quce
34
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
tunc
spectaculi
latitudo!
Quid
admirer!
quid
ridcam!
Ubi
gaudeam!
Ubi
exultem,
spectans
tot ct tantos
reges,
qui
in caelum
recepti nuntiabantur,
cum
ipso
Jove el
ipsis
suis testibus in imis tenebris
congemesccntes!
Item
presides" (the
provisional governors) "persecutores
dom-
inici notninis sevvioribus
quam ipsi flammis
sccvierunt in-
sultantibus contra CJtristianos
liquescentcs! Quos prccterea
sapientes
illos
philosop/ios
coram
discipulis
suis una con-
flagrantibus erubescentes,
quibus
nihil ad deum
pcrtih
suadebant,
quibus
animas aut nullas aut non in
pristina
corpora
redituras
affirmabant!
Etiam
poet
as non ad
Rhadamanti nee ad
Minois,
sed ad
inopinati
Christi
tribunal
palpitantes!
Tunc
magis tragecdi audiendi,
magis
scilicet vocales"
(with
louder tones and more vio-
lent
shrieks)
"in sua
propria calamitate;
tunc liistriones
cognoscendi,
solutiorcs multo
per ignem;
tunc
spectandus
auriga
in
flammea
rota totus
rubens,
tunc
xystici
contem-
pl-andi
non in
gymnasiis,
sed in
igiie jacidati,
nisi
quod
nc
tunc
quidem
illos velim
vivos,
ut
qui
malim ad eos
potius
conspectum
insatiabilem
conjerre, qui
in dominum
scevierunt. Hie est
illes,
dicam
fabri
aut
qiKCstuario
films"
(as
is shown
by
the whole of the
following,
and in
par-
ticular
by
this well-known
description
of the mother of
Jesus
from the
Talmud,
Tertullian is henceforth refer-
ring
to the
Jews),
"sabbati
destructor,
Samarites et
decmoniurn habeus. Hie est
quern
a Juda
redemises,
hie
est ille arundine et
colaphis
diverberatus,
sputatnentis
de
decoratus,
jelle
ct aceto
potatus.
Hie
est,
quern
clanu
discentes
subripiuruni,
ut
resurradsse
dicatur vel hortu-
lanus
detraxit,
ne lactuccc sua-
jrcqucntia
commcantiitr,:
Iccdtrcntur. Ut talia
spectes,
ut talibus
cxultcs,
quis
/
"GOOD AND
EVIL,"
"GOOD AND BAD"
35
prcetor
aut consul aut sacerdos de sua liber alii ate
prcestabit?
Et tamen hcec
jam
habemus
quodammodo
per fidem spiritu imaginante reprcesentata.
Ceterum
qualia
ilia
sunt,
quce
nee oculus vidit nee auris audivit
nee in cor hominis ascenderunt?"
(I
Cor. ii.
9.)
"Credo
circo et
utraque
cavea"
(first
and fourth
row, or,
accord-
ing
to
others,
the comic and the
tragic stage)
"et omni
studio
gratiora."
Per
fidem:
so stands it written.
16.
Let us come to a conclusion. The two
opposing
values,
"good
and
bad," "good
and
evil,"
have
fought
a dread-
ful, thousand-year fight
in the
world,
and
though
indubit-
ably
the second value has been for a
long
time in the
preponderance,
there are not
wanting places
where the
fortune of the
fight
is still undecisive. It can almost be
said that in the meanwhile the
fight
reaches a
higher
and
higher level,
and that in the meanwhile it has be-
come more and more
intense,
and
always
more and more
psychological;
so that
nowadays
there is
perhaps
no more
decisive mark of the
higher
nature,
of the more
psycho-
logical nature,
than to be in that sense
self-contradictory,
and to be
actually
still a
battleground
for those two
opposites.
The
symbol
of this
fight,
written in a
writing
which has remained
worthy
of
perusal throughout
the
course of
history up
to the
present time,
is called "Rome
against Judaea, Judaea against
Rome." Hitherto there has
been no
greater
event than that
fight,
the
putting
of that
question,
that
deadly
antagonism.
Rome found in the
Jew
the incarnation of the
unnatural,
as
though
it were
36
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
its
diametrically opposed monstrosity,
and in Rome the
Jew
was held to be convicted
oj
hatred of the whole
human race: and
rightly
so,
in so far as it is
right
to link
the
well-being
and the future of the human race to the
unconditional
mastery
of the aristocratic
values,
of the
Roman values.
What, conversely,
did the
Jews
feel
against
Rome? One can surmise it from a thousand
symptoms,
but it is sufficient to
carry
one's mind back, to
the
Johannian Apocalypse,
that most obscene of all the
written
outbursts,
which has
revenge
on its conscience.
(One
should also
appraise
at its full value the
profound
logic
of the Christian
instinct,
when over this
very
book
of hate it wrote the name of the
Disciple
of
Love,
that
self-same
disciple
to whom it attributed that
impassioned
and ecstatic
Gospel

therein lurks a
portion
of
truth,
however much
literary forging may
have been
necessary
for this
purpose.)
The Romans were the
strong
and
aristocratic;
a nation
stronger
and more aristocratic has
never existed in the
world,
has never even been dreamed
of;
every
relic of them,
every inscription enraptures,
granted
that one can divine what it is that writes the
inscription.
The
Jews, conversely,
were that
priestly
nation of resentment
par
excellence,
possessed
by
a
unique
genius
for
popular
morals:
just compare
with the
Jews
the nations with
analogous gifts,
such as the Chinese
or
the
Germans,
so as to realise afterwards
what is first
rate,
and what is fifth rate.
Which of them has been
provisionally
victorious.
Rome
or
Judaea?
but there is not a shadow of
doubt;
just
con-
sider to whom in Rome itself
nowadays you
bow down,
as
though
before the
quintessence
of all the
highest
values
"GOOD AND
EVIL,"
"GOOD AND BAD"
37

and not
only
in
Rome,
but almost over half the
world,
everywhere
where man has been tamed or is about to be
tamed

to three
Jews,
as we
know,
and one Jewess
(to
Jesus
of
Nazareth,
to Peter the
fisher,
to Paul the tent-
maker,
and to the mother of the aforesaid
Jesus,
named
Mary).
This is
very
remarkable: Rome is
undoubtedly
defeated. At
any
rate there took
place
in the Renaissance
a
brilliantly
sinister revival of the classical
ideal,
of the
aristocratic valuation of all
things:
Rome
herself,
like a
man
waking up
from a
trance,
stirred beneath the bur-
Hen of the new
Judaised
Rome that had been built over
her,
which
presented
the
appearance
of an oecumenical
synagogue
and was called the "Church": but
immediately
Judaea triumphed again,
thanks to that
fundamentally
popular (German
and
English)
movement of
revenge,
which is called the
Reformation,
and
taking
also into
account its inevitable
corollary,
the restoration of the
Church

the restoration also of the ancient

graveyard
peace
of classical Rome.
Judsea proved yet
once more
victorious over the classical ideal in the French Revo-
lution,
and in a sense which was even more crucial and
even more
profound:
the last
political
aristocracy
that
existed in
Europe,
that of the French seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries,
broke into
pieces
beneath the in-
stincts of a resentful
populace

never had the world heard

a
greater jubilation,
a more
uproarious
enthusiasm:
indeed,
there took
place
in the midst of it the most mon-
strous and
unexpected phenomenon;
the ancient ideal
itself swept
before the
eyes
and conscience of
humanity
with all its life and with unheard-of
splendour,
and in
opposition
to resentment's
lying war-cry
of the
preroga-
38
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
the
of
the
most,
in
opposition
to the will to
lowliness,
abasement,
and
equalisation,
the will to a
retrogression
and
twilight
of
humanity,
there
rang
out once
again,
stronger, simpler,
more
penetrating
than
ever,
the ter-
rible and
enchanting counter-war-cry
of the
prerogative of
the
few!
Like a final
sign-post
to other
ways,
there
appeared Napoleon,
the most
unique
and violent anach-
ronism that ever
existed,
and in him the incarnate
problem
of
the aristocratic ideal in
itself

consider well what a

problem
it is:

Napoleon,
that
synthesis
of Monster and
Superman.
17.
Was it therewith over? Was that
greatest
of all an-
titheses of ideals
thereby relegated
ad acta for all time?
Or
only postponed, postponed
for a
long
time?
May
there not take
place
at some time or other a much more
awful,
much more
carefully prepared flaring up
of the
old
conflagration?
Further! Should not one wish that
consummation with all one's
strength?

will it one's self?

demand it one's self? He who at this
juncture begins,
like
my
readers,
to
reflect,
to think
further,
will have
difficulty
in
coming quickly
to a
conclusion,

ground
enough
for me to come
myself
to a
conclusion, taking
it
for
granted
that for some time
past
what I mean has been
sufficiently clear,
what I
exactly
mean
by
that
dangerous
motto which is inscribed on the
body
of
my
last book:
Beyond
Good and Evil

at
any
rate that is not the same
as
"Beyond
Good and Bad."
"GOOD AND
EVIL,"
"GOOD AND BAD"
39
Note.

I avail
myself
of the
opportunity
offered
by
this
treatise to
express, openly
and
formally,
a wish which
up
to
the
present
has
only
been
expressed
in occasional conversa-
tions with
scholars, namely,
that some
Faculty
of
philosophy
should, by
means of a series of
prize essays, gain
the
glory
of
having promoted
the further
study
of the
history of
mor-
als

perhaps
this book
may
serve to
give
a forcible
impetus
in such a direction. With
regard
to a
possibility
of this char-
acter,
the
following question
deserves consideration. It mer-
its
quite
as much the attention of
philologists
and historians
as of actual
professional philosophers.
"What indication
of
the
history of
the evolution
of
the moral
ideas is
afforded by philology,
and
especially by etymological
investigation
?"
On the other
hand,
it
is,
of
course, equally necessary
to
induce
physiologists
and doctors to be interested in these
problems (of
the value of the valuations which have
prevailed
up
to the
present)
: in this connection the
professional philo-
sophers may
be trusted to act as the
spokesmen
and inter-
mediaries in these
particular
instances, after,
of
course, they
have
quite
succeeded in
transforming
the
relationship
between
philosophy
and
physiology
and
medicine,
which is
originally
one of coldness and
suspicion,
into the most
friendly
and fruit-
ful
reciprocity.
In
point
of
fact,
all tables of
values,
all the
"thou shalts" known to
history
and
ethnology,
need
primarily
a
physiological,
at
any
rate in
preference
to a
psychological,
elucidation and
interpretation
: all
equally require
a
critique
from medical science. The
question,
"What is the value
of this or that table of 'values' and
morality?"
will be asked
from the most varied
standpoints.
For
instance,
the
question
of "valuable
for
what" can never be
analysed
with sufficient
nicety. That,
for
instance,
which would
evidently
have value
with
regard
to
promoting
in a race the
greatest possible powers
of endurance
(or
with
regard
to
increasing
its
adaptability
to a
specific
climate,
or with
regard
to the
preservation
of the
greatest number)
would have
nothing
like the same value,
if
it were a
question
of
evolving
a
stronger species.
In
gauging
values,
the
good
of the
majority
and the
good
of the
minority
are
opposed standpoints
: we leave it to the naivete of
English
biologists
to
regard
the former
standpoint
as
intrinsically
superior.
All the sciences have now to
pave
the
way
for the
future task of the
philosopher ;
this task
being
understood to
mean,
that he must solve the
problem
of
value,
that he has to
fix the
hierarchy of
values.
SECOND ESSAY
"GUILT,"
"BAD
CONSCIENCE,"
AND THE LIKE
i.
The
breeding
of an animal that can
promise

is not
this
just
that
very paradox
of a task which nature has
set itself in
regard
to man? Is not this the
very problem
of man? The fact that this
problem
has been to a
great
extent
solved,
must
appear
all the more
phenomenal
to
one who can estimate at its full value that force of
jorgetfulness
which works in
opposition
to it.
Forgetful-
ness is no mere vis
inertia:,
as the
superficial believe,
rather is it a
power
of
obstruction,
active
and,
in the
strictest sense of the
word, positive

a
power responsible
for the fact that what we have
lived,
experienced,
taken
into
ourselves,
no more enters into consciousness
during
the
process
of
digestion (it might
be called
psychic
ab-
sorption)
than all the whole manifold
process by
which
our
physical
nutrition,
the so-called
"incorporation,"
is
carried on. The
temporary shutting
of the doors and
windows of
consciousness,
the relief from the clamant
alarums and
excursions,
with which our subconscious
world of servant
organs
works in mutual
co-operation
and
antagonism;
a little
quietude,
a little tabula rasa of the
40
"GUILT" AND "BAD
CONSCIENCE"
41
consciousness,
so as to make room
again
for the
new,
and
above all for the more noble functions and
functionaries,
room for
government, foresight, predetermination (for
our
organism
is on an
oligarchic model)

this is the util-

ity,
as I have
said,
of the active
forgetfulness,
which
is a
very
sentinel and nurse of
psychic order, repose,
etiquette;
and this shows at once
why
it is that there can
exist no
happiness,
no
gladness,
no
hope,
no
pride,
no
real
present,
without
forgetfulness.
The man in whom
this
preventative apparatus
is
damaged
and
discarded,
is
to be
compared
to a
dyspeptic,
and it is
something
more
than a
comparison

he can
"get
rid of"
nothing.
But
this
very
animal who finds it
necessary
to be
forgetful,
in
whom,
in
fact, forgetfulness
represents
a force and a
form of robust
health,
has reared for himself an
opposi-
tion-power,
a
memory,
with whose
help forgetfulness is,
in certain
instances, kept
in check

in the
cases, namely,
where
promises
have to be
made;

so that it is
by
no
means a mere
passive inability
to
get
rid of a once in-
dented
impression,
not
merely
the
indigestion
occasioned
by
a once
pledged word,
which one cannot
dispose of,
but
an active refusal to
get
rid of
it,
a
continuing
and a wish
to continue what has once been
willed,
an actual
memory
of
the
will;
so that between the
original
"I
will,"
"I shall
do,"
and the actual
discharge
of the
will,
its
act,
we can
easily interpose
a world of new
strange phenomena,
cir-
cumstances,
veritable
volitions,
without the
snapping
of
this
long
chain of the will. But what is the
underlying
hypothesis
of all this? How
thoroughly,
in order to be
able to
regulate
the future in this
way,
must man have
first learnt to
distinguish
between necessitated and acci-
42
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
dental
phenomena,
to think
casually,
to see the distant
as
present
and to
anticipate it,
to fix with
certainty
what
is the
end,
and what is the means to that
end;
above
all,
to
reckon,
to have
power
to calculate

how thor-
oughly
must man have first become
calculable,
disciplined,
necessitated even for himself and his own
conception
of
himself, that,
like a man
entering
a
promise,
he could
guarantee
himself as a
future.
2.
This is
simply
the
long history
of the
origin
of
respon-
sibility.
That task of
breeding
an animal which can
make
promises,
includes,
as we have
already grasped,
as
its condition and
preliminary,
the more immediate task
of first
making
man to a certain
extent, necessitated,
uniform,
like
among
his
like, regular,
and
consequently
calculable.
The immense work of what I have
called,
"morality
of custom"*
(cp.
Dawn
oj Day, Aphs. 9, 14,
and
16),
the actual work of man on himself
during
the
longest period
of the human
race,
his whole
prehistoric
work,
finds its
meaning,
its
great justification
(in spite
of
all its innate
hardness, despotism, stupidity,
and
idiocy)
in this fact:
man,
with the
help
of the
morality
of cus-
toms and of social
strait-waistcoats,
was made
genuinely
calculable.
If, however,
we
place
ourselves at the end of
this colossal
process,
at the
point
where the tree
finally
matures its
fruits,
when
society
and its
morality
of custom
finally bring
to
light
that to which it was
only
the
means,
then do we find as the
ripest
fruit on its tree the
sovereign
*
The German is : "Sittlichkeit der Sitte." H. B. S.
"GUILT" AND "BAD CONSCIENCE"
43
individual,
that resembles
only himself,
that has
got
loose
from the
morality
of
custom,
the autonomous
"super-
moral" individual
(for
"autonomous" and "moral" are
mutually
exclusive
terms),

in
short,
the man of the
per-
sonal, long,
and
independent will, competent
to
promise,

and we find in him a

proud
consciousness
(vibrating
in
every fibre),
of what has been at last achieved and
become vivified in
him,
a
genuine
consciousness of
power
and
freedom,
a
feeling
of human
perfection
in
general.
And this man who has
grown
to
freedom,
who is
really
competent
to
promise,
this lord of the
jree will,
this sov-
ereign

how is it
possible
for him not to know how
great
is his
superiority
over
everything incapable
of
binding
itself
by promises,
or of
being
its own
security,
how
great
is the
trust,
the
awe,
the reverence that he awakes

he
"deserves" all three

not to know that with this

mastery
over himself he is
necessarily
also
given
the
mastery
over
circumstances,
over
nature,
over all creatures with shorter
wills,
less reliable characters? The "free"
man,
the owner
of a
long
unbreakable
will,
finds in this
possession
his
standard
of
value:
looking
out from himself
upon
the
others,
he honours or he
despises,
and
just
as
necessarily
as he honours his
peers,
the
strong
and the reliable
(those
who can bind themselves
by promises),

that
is, every
one who
promises
like a
sovereign,
with
difficulty, rarely
and
slowly,
who is
sparing
with his trusts but confers
honour
by
the
very
fact of
trusting,
who
gives
his word
as
something
that can be relied
on,
because he knows
himself
strong enough
to
keep
it even in the teeth of
disasters,
even in the "teeth of
fate,"

so with
equal
necessity
will he have the heel of his foot
ready
for the
44
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
lean and
empty jackasses,
who
promise
when
they
have
no business to do
so,
and his rod of chastisement
ready
for the
liar,
who
already
breaks his word at the
very
minute when it is on his
lips.
The
proud knowledge
of
the
extraordinary privilege
of
responsibility,
the con-
sciousness of this rare
freedom,
of this
power
over him-
self and over
fate,
has sunk
right
down to his innermost
depths,
and has become an
instinct,
a
dominating
instinct

what name will he

give
to
it,
to this
dominating
instinct,
if he needs to have a word for it? But there is no doubt
about it

the
sovereign
man calls it his conscience.
His conscience?

One
apprehends
at once that the idea
"conscience,"
which is here seen in its
supreme
mani-
festation, supreme
in fact to almost the
point
of
strange-
ness,
should
already
have behind it a
long history
and
evolution. The
ability
to
guarantee
one's self with all
due
pride,
and also at the same time to
say yes
to one's
self

that
is,
as has been
said,
a
ripe fruit,
but also a late
fruit:

How
long
must needs this fruit
hang
sour and
bitter on the tree! And for an even
longer period
there
was not a
glimpse
of such a fruit to be had

no one had
taken it on himself to
promise it, although everything
on the tree was
quite ready
for
it,
and
everything
was
maturing
for that
very
consummation. ''How is a mem-
ory
to be made for the man-animal? How is an im-
pression
to be so
deeply
fixed
upon
this
ephemeral
under-
standing,
half
dense,
and half
silly, upon
this incarnate
forgetfulness,
that it will be
permanently present?''
As
"GUILT" AND "BAD
CONSCIENCE"
45
one
may imagine,
this
primeval problem
was not solved
by exactly gentle
answers and
gentle means; perhaps
there is
nothing
more awful and more sinister in the
early
history
of man than his
system of
mnemonics. "Some-
thing
is burnt in so as to remain in his
memory: only
that
which never
stops hurting
remains in his
memory."
This
is an axiom of the oldest
(unfortunately
also the
longest)
psychology
in the world. It
might
even be said that
wherever
solemnity, seriousness, mystery,
and
gloomy
colours are now found in the life of the men and of nations
of the
world,
there is some survival of that horror which
was once the universal concomitant of all
promises,
pledges,
and
obligations.
The
past,
the
past
with all its
length, depth,
and
hardness,
wafts to us its
breath,
and
bubbles
up
in us
again,
when we become "serious."
When man thinks it
necessary
to make for himself a
memory,
he never
accomplishes
it without
blood,
tortures
and
sacrifice;
the most dreadful sacrifices and forfeitures
(among
them the sacrifice of the
first-born),
the most
loathsome mutilation
(for instance, castration),
the most
cruel rituals of all the
religious
cults
(for
all
religions
are
really
at
bottpm
systems
of
cruelty)

all these
things
originate
from that instinct which found in
pain
its most
potent
mnemonic. In a certain sense the whole of asceti-
cism is to be ascribed to this: certain ideas have
got
to
be made
inextinguishable, omnipresent, "fixed,"
with the
object
of
hypnotising
the whole nervous and intellectual
system through
these "fixed ideas"

and the ascetic

methods and modes of life are the means of
freeing
those
ideas from the
competition
of all other ideas so as to
make them
"unforgettable."
The worse
memory
man
46
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
had,
the
ghastlier
the
signs presented by
his
customs;
the
severity
of the
penal
laws affords in
particular
a
gauge
of the extent of man's
difficulty
in
conquering
forgetfulness,
and in
keeping
a few
primal postulates
of
social intercourse ever
present
to the minds of those who
were the slaves of
every momentary
emotion and
every
momentary
desire. We Germans do
certainly
not
regard
ourselves as an
especially
cruel and hard-hearted
nation,
still less as an
especially
casual and
happy-go-lucky
one;
but one has
only
to look at our old
penal
ordinances in
order to realise what a lot of trouble it takes in the world
to evolve a ''nation of thinkers"
(I
mean: the
European
nation which exhibits at this
very day
the maximum of
reliability, seriousness,
bad
taste,
and
positiveness,
which
has on the
strength
of these
qualities
a
right
to train
every
kind of
European mandarin).
These Germans em-
ployed
terrible means to make for themselves a
memory.
to enable them to master their rooted
plebeian
instincts
and the brutal
crudity
of those instincts: think of the old
German
punishments,
for instance,
stoning
(as
far back
as the
legend,
the millstone falls on the head of the
guilty
man), breaking
on the wheel
(the
most
original
inven-
tion and
speciality
of the German
genius
in the
sphere
of
punishment), dart-throwing, tearing,
or
trampling by
horses
("'quartering"), boiling
the criminal in oil or wine
(still
prevalent
in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries >.
the
highly popular flaying (''slicing
into
strips"), cutting
the flesh out of the
breast;
think also of the evil-doer
being
besmeared with
honey,
and then
exposed
to the
flies in a
blazing
sun. It was
by
the
help
of such
images
and
precedents
that man
eventually kept
in his
memory
"GUILT" AND "BAD CONSCIENCE"
47
five or six "I will nots" with
regard
to which he had
already given
his
promise,
so as to be able to
enjoy
the
advantages
of
society

and
verily
with the
help
of this
kind of
memory
man
eventually
attained "reason"!
Alas!
reason, seriousness, mastery
over the
emotions,
all
these
gloomy,
dismal
things
which are called
reflection,
all these
privileges
and
pageantries
of
humanity:
how
dear is the
price
that
they
have exacted! How much
blood and
cruelty
is the foundation of all
"good things"!
But how is it that that other
melancholy object,
the
consciousness of
sin,
the whole "bad
conscience,"
came
into the world? And it is here that we turn back to our
genealogists
of morals. For the second time I
say

or
have I not said it
yet?

that
they
are worth
nothing.
Just
their own
five-spans-long
limited modern
experience;
no
knowledge
of the
past,
and no wish to know
it;
still
less a historic
instinct,
a
power
of "second
sight" (which
is what is
really required
in this
case)

and
despite
this
to
go
in for the
history
of morals. It stands to reason
that this must needs
produce
results which are removed
from the truth
by something
more than a
respectful
dis-
tance.
Have these current
genealogists
of morals ever allowed
themselves to have even the
vaguest notion,
for
instance,
that the cardinal moral idea of
"ought"
*
originates
from
*
The German word "schuld" means both debt and
guilt.
Cp.
the
English
"owe" and
"ought," by
which I
occasionally
render the double
meaning.

H. B. S.
4S
THE
GENEALOGY OF
MORALS
the
very
material idea of "owe"? Or
that
punishment
developed
as a retaliation
absolutely
independently
of
any
preliminary hypothesis
of the freedom or
determination of
the will?

And this to such an

extent,
that a
high degree
of civilisation was
always
first
necessary
for the animal
man to
begin
to
make those much more
primitive
dis-
tinctions of
"intentional,"
"negligent,"
"accidental,"
"re-
sponsible,"
and their
contraries,
and
apply
them in the
assessing
of
punishment.
That idea"the
wrong-doer
deserves
punishment
because he
might
have acted other-
wise,"
in
spite
of the fact that it is
nowadays
so
cheap,
obvious,
natural,
and
inevitable,
and
that it has had to
serve as an illustration of the
way
in
which the senti-
ment of
justice appeared
on
earth,
is in
point
of fact an
exceedingly late,
and even refined form of
human
judg-
ment and
inference;
the
placing
of this idea back at the
beginning
of the world is
simply
a
clumsy
violation of
the
principles
of
primitive
psychology.
Throughout
the*
longest period
of human
history punishment
was never
based on the
responsibility
of the evil-doer for his
action,
and was
consequently
not based on the
hypothesis
that
only
the
guilty
should be
punished;

on the
contrary,
punishment
was inflicted in those
days
for the same reason
that
parents punish
their children even
nowadays,
out of
anger
at an
injury
that
they
have
suffered,
an
anger
which vents itself
mechanically
on the author of the
injury

but this
anger
is
kept
in bounds and
modified
through
the idea that
every injury
has
somewhere or other
its
equivalent price,
and can
really
be
paid off,
even
though
it be
by
means of
pain
to the
author.
Whence
is it that this ancient
deep-rooted
and now
perhaps
in-
"GUILT"
AND
"BAD CONSCIENCE" 49
eradicable
idea has drawn its
strength,
this idea of an
equivalency
between
injury
and
pain?
I have
already
revealed its
origin,
in the contractual
relationship
between
creditor and
ower,
that is as old as the existence of
legal
rights
at
all,
and in its turn
points
back to the
primary
forms of
purchase,
sale, barter,
and trade.
The realisation
of these contractual
relations
excites,
of course
(as
would be
already expected
from our
previ-
ous
observations),
a
great
deal of
suspicion
and
opposi-
tion towards the
primitive
society
which made or sanc-
tioned them.
In this
society promises
will be
made;
in
this
society
the
object
is to
provide
the
promiser
with a
memory;
in this
society,
so
may
we
suspect,
there will
be full
scope
for
hardness, cruelty,
and
pain:
the
"ower,"
in order to induce credit in his
promise
of
repayment,
in
order to
give
a
guarantee
of the earnestness
and
sanctity
of his
promise,
in order to drill into his own conscience
the
duty,
the solemn
duty,
of
repayment,
will, by
virtue
of a contract with his creditor to meet the
contingency
of
his not
paying, pledge
something
that he still
possesses,
something
that he still has in his
power,
for
instance,
his
life or his
wife,
or his freedom or his
body (or
under
certain
religious
conditions
even his
salvation,
his soul's
welfare,
even his
peace
in the
grave;
so in
Egypt,
where
the
corpse
of the ower
found even in the
grave
no rest
from the creditor

of
course,
from the
Egyptian
stand-
point,
this
peace
was a matter of
particular
importance)
.
But
especially
has the creditor the
power
of
inflicting
on
50
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
the
body
of the ower all kinds of
pain
and torture

the
power,
for
instance,
of
cutting
off from it an amount that
appeared proportionate
to the
greatness
of the
debt;

this
point
of view resulted in the universal
prevalence
at
an
early
date of
precise
schemes of
valuation, frequently
horrible in the minuteness and
meticulosity
of their
ap-
plication, legally
sanctioned schemes of valuation for
individual limbs and
parts
of the
body.
I consider it as
already
a
progress,
as a
proof
of a
freer,
less
petty,
and
more Roman
conception
of
law,
when the Roman Code of
the Twelve Tables decreed that it was immaterial how
much or how little the creditors in such a
contingency
cut
off,
"si
plus
minusve
secuerunt,
nc
Jraudc
esto." Let
us make the
logic
of the whole of this
equalisation process
clear;
it is
strange enough.
The
equivalence
consists in
this: instead of an
advantage directly compensatory
of
his
injury (that is,
instead of an
equalisation
in
money,
lands,
or some kind of
chattel),
the creditor is
granted
by way
of
repayment
and
compensation
a certain sensa-
tion
of satisfaction

the satisfaction of
being
able to vent,
without
any trouble,
his
power
on one who is
powerless,
the
delight
"de
faire
le mal
pour
le
plaisir
de la
fairc,"
the
joy
in sheer violence: and this
joy
will be relished in
proportion
to the lowness and humbleness of the creditor
in the social
scale,
and is
quite apt
to have the effect of
the most delicious
dainty,
and even seem the foretaste of a
higher
social
position.
Thanks to the
punishment
of the
''ower,"
the creditor
participates
in the
rights
of the mas-
ters. At last he
too,
for once in a
way,
attains the
edify-
ing
consciousness of
being
able to
despise
and ill-treat
a creature

as an "inferior"

or at
any
rate of
seeing
"GUILT"
AND "BAD CONSCIENCE"
51
him
being despised
and
ill-treated,
in case the actual
power
of
punishment,
the administration of
punishment,
has
already
become transferred to the "authorities."
The
compensation consequently
consists in a claim on
cruelty
and a
right
to draw thereon.
6.
It is then in this
sphere
of the law of contract that we
find the cradle of the whole moral world of the ideas of
"guilt,"
"conscience," "duty,"
the "sacredness of
duty,"

their
commencement,
like the commencement of all
great
things
in the
world,
is
thoroughly
and
continuously
saturated
with blood. And should we not add that this
world has never
really
lost a certain savour of blood and
torture
(not
even in old Kant: the
categorical imperative
reeks of
cruelty).
It was in this
sphere
likewise that
there first became formed that sinister and
perhaps
now
indissoluble association of the ideas of
"guilt"
and "suf-
fering."
To
put
the
question yet again, why
can suffer-
ing
be a
compensation
for
"owing"?

Because the
inflic-
tion of
suffering produces
the
highest degree
of
happi-
ness,
because the
injured party
will
get
in
exchange
for
his loss
(including
his vexation at his
loss)
an extraordi-
nary counter-pleasure:
the
infliction
of
suffering

a real
feast,
something that,
as I have
said,
was all the more
appreciated
the
greater
the
paradox
created
by
the rank
and social status of the creditor.
These observations are
purely conjectural; for, apart
from the
painful
nature
of the
task,
it is hard to
plumb
such
profound depths:
the
clumsy
introduction of the idea of
"revenge"
as a con-
52
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
necting-link simply
hides and obscures the view instead
of
rendering
it clearer
(revenge
itself
simply
leads back
again
to the identical
problem

"How can the infliction

of
suffering
be a
satisfaction?').
In
my opinion
it is
repugnant
to the
delicacy,
and still more to the
hypocrisy
of tame domestic animals
(that is,
modern
men;
that
is,
ourselves),
to realise with all their
energy
the extent to
which
cruelty
constituted the
great joy
and
delight
of
ancient
man,
was an
ingredient
which seasoned
nearly
all
his
pleasures,
and
conversely
the extent of the naivete
and innocence with which he manifested his need for
cruelty,
when he
actually
made as a matter of
principle
"disinterested malice"
(or,
to use
Spinoza's expression,
the
sympat
hia
malevolcns)
into a normal characteristic of
man

as
consequently something
to which the conscience
says
a
hearty yes.
The more
profound
observer has
per-
haps already
had sufficient
opportunity
for
noticing
this
most ancient and radical
joy
and
delight
of
mankind;
in
Beyond
Good and
Evil, Aph.
188
(and
even
earlier,
in
The Dawn
oj Day, Aphs. 18, 77, 113),
I have
cautiously
indicated the
continually growing spiritualisation
and
"deification" of
cruelty,
which
pervades
the whole
history
of the
higher
civilisation
(and
in the
larger
sense even
constitutes
it).
At
any
rate the time is not so
long past
when it was
impossible
to conceive of
royal weddings
and
national festivals on a
grand scale,
without
executions,
tortures,
or
perhaps
an
auto-da-jc,
or
similarly
to conceive
of an aristocratic
household,
without a creature to serve
a butt for the cruel and malicious
baiting
of the in-
mates.
(The
reader will
perhaps
remember Don
Quixote
at the court of the Duchess: we read nowadavs the whole
"GUILT" AND "BAD CONSCIENCE"
53
of Don
Quixote
with a bitter taste in the
mouth,
almost
with a sensation of
torture,
a fact which would
appear
very strange
and
very incomprehensible
to the author and
his
contemporaries

they
read it with the best conscience
in the world as the
gayest
of
books;
they
almost died with
laughing
at
it.)
The
sight
of
suffering
does one
good,
the infliction of
suffering
does one more
good

this is a
hard
maxim,
but none the less a fundamental
maxim, old,
powerful,
and
"human, all-too-human"; one, moreover,
to
which
perhaps
even the
apes
as well would subscribe:
for it is said that in
inventing
bizarre cruelties
they
are
giving
abundant
proof
of their future
humanity,
to
which,
as it
were, they
are
playing
the
prelude.
Without
cruelty,
no feast: so teaches the oldest and
longest history
of
man

and in
punishment
too is there so much of the
festive.
Entertaining,
as I
do,
these
thoughts,
I
am,
let me
say
in
parenthesis, fundamentally opposed
to
helping
our
pes-
simists to new water for the discordant and
groaning
mills
of their
disgust
with
life;
on the
contrary,
it should be
shown
specifically that,
at the time when mankind was
not
yet
ashamed of its
cruelty,
life in the world was
brighter
than it is
nowadays
when there are
pessimists.
The
darkening
of the heavens over man has
always
in-
creased in
proportion
to the
growth
of man's shame be-
fore
man. The tired
pessimistic outlook,
the mistrust of
the riddle of
life,
the
icy negation
of
disgusted ennui,
all
those are not the
signs
of the most evil
age
of the human
54
THE GENEALOGY
OF MORALS
race: much rather do
they
come first to the
light
of
day,
as the
swamp-flowers,
which
they
are,
when the
swamp
to which
they belong,
comes into existence

I mean the
diseased refinement and
moralisation,
thanks to which
the "animal man" has at last learnt to be ashamed of all
his instincts.
On the road to
angel-hood
(not
to use in
this context a harder
word)
man has
developed
that
dys-
peptic
stomach and coated
tongue,
which have made not
only
the
joy
and innocence of the animal
repulsive
to
him,
but also life itself:

so that sometimes he stands

with
stopped
nostrils before his own
self, and,
like
Pope
Innocent
the
Third,
makes a black list of his own horrors
("unclean generation,
loathsome nutrition when in the
maternal
body,
badness of the matter out of which man
develops,
awful
stench,
secretion of
saliva, urine,
and ex-
crement"). Nowadays,
when
suffering
is
always
trotted
out as the first
argument against
existence,
as its most sin-
ister
query,
it is well to remember the times when men
judged
on converse
principles
because
they
could not dis-
pense
with the
infliction
of
suffering,
and saw therein a
magic
of the first
order,
a veritable bait of seduction to
life.
Perhaps
in those
days (this
is to solace the
weaklings)
pain
did not hurt so much as it does
nowadays: any
physician
who has treated
negroes (granted
that these are
taken as
representative
of the
prehistoric
man) suffering
from severe
internal inflammations
which would
bring
a
European,
even
though
he had the soundest
constitution,
almost to
despair,
would be in a
position
to come to this
conclusion.
Pain has not the same effect with
negroes.
(The
curve of human sensibilities to
pain
seems indeed to
"GUILT" AND "BAD CONSCIENCE"
55
sink in an
extraordinary
and almost sudden
fashion,
as
soon as one has
passed
the
upper
ten thousand or ten
millions of over-civilised
humanity,
and I
personally
have
no doubt
that, by comparison
with one
painful night
passed by
one
single hysterical
chit of a cultured
woman,
the
suffering
of all the animals taken
together
who have
been
put
to the
question
of the
knife,
so as to
give
scien-
tific
answers,
are
simply negligible.)
We
may perhaps
be
allowed to admit the
possibility
of the
craving
for
cruelty
not
necessarily having
become
really
extinct: it
only
re-
quires,
in view of the fact that
pain
hurts more
nowadays,
a certain sublimation and
subtilisation,
it must
especially
be translated to the
imaginative
and
psychic plane,
and be
adorned with such
smug euphemisms,
that even the most
fastidious and
hypocritical
conscience could never
grow
suspicious
of their real nature
("Tragic pity"
is one of
these
euphemisms:
another is "les
nostalgies
de la
croix").
What
really
raises one's
indignation against suffering
is
not
suffering intrinsically,
but the senselessness of suffer-
ing;
such a
senselessness, however,
existed neither in
Christianity,
which
interpreted suffering
into a whole
mys-
terious
salvation-apparatus,
nor in the beliefs of the naive
ancient
man,
who
only
knew how to find a
meaning
in
suffering
from the
standpoint
of the
spectator,
or the in-
flictor of the
suffering.
In order to
get
the
secret,
undis-
covered,
and unwitnessed
suffering
out of the world it was
almost
compulsory
to invent
gods
and a
hierarchy
of in-
termediate
beings,
in
short, something
which wanders even
among
secret
places,
sees even in the
dark,
and makes a
point
of never
missing
an
interesting
and
painful spectacle.
It was with the
help
of such inventions that life
got
to
56
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
learn the tour de
force,
which has become
part
of its
stock-in-trade,
the tour de
jorce
of
self-justification,
of
the
justification
of
evil; nowadays
this would
perhaps
re-
quire
other
auxiliary
devices
(for instance,
life as a riddle,
life as a
problem
of
knowledge). "Every
evil is
justified
in the
sight
of which a
god
finds
edification,"
so
rang
the
logic
of
primitive
sentiment

and, indeed,
was it
only
of
primitive?
The
gods
conceived as friends of
spectacles
of
cruelty

oh,
how far does this
primeval conception
ex-
tend even
nowadays
into our
European
civilisation! One
would
perhaps
like in this context to consult Luther and
Calvin. It is at
any
rate certain that even the Greeks
knew no more
piquant seasoning
for the
happiness
of
their
gods
than the
joys
of
cruelty. What,
do
you
think,
was the mood with which Homer makes his
gods
look down
upon
the fates of men? What final
meaning
have at
bottom the
Trojan
War and similar
tragic
horrors? It
is
impossible
to entertain
any
doubt on the
point: they
were intended as festival
games
for the
gods, and,
in so far
as the
poet
is of a more
godlike
breed than other men. as
festival
games
also for the
poets.
It was in
just
this
spirit
and no
other,
that at a later date the moral
philosophers
of Greece conceived the
eyes
of God as still
looking
down
on the moral
struggle,
the
heroism,
and the self-torture of
the
virtuous;
the Heracles of
duty
was on a
stage,
and
was conscious of the
fact;
virtue without witnesses was
something quite
unthinkable for this nation of actors.
Must not that
philosophic invention,
so audacious and so
fatal,
which was then
absolutely
new to
Europe,
the in-
vention of "free
will,"
of the absolute
spontaneity
of man
in
good
and
evil, simply
have been made for the
specific
"GUILT"
AND "BAD CONSCIENCE"
57
purpose
of
justifying
the
idea,
that the interest of the
gods
in
humanity
and human virtue was inexhaustible?
There would never on the
stage
of this free-will world
be a dearth of
really new, really
novel and
exciting
situ-
ations, plots,
catastrophes.
A world
thought
out on com-
pletely
deterministic
lines would be
easily guessed by
the
gods,
and would
consequently
soon bore them

sufficient
reason for these
friends of
the
gods,
the
philosophers,
not
to ascribe to their
gods
such a deterministic world. The
whole of ancient
humanity
is full of delicate consideration
for the
spectator,
being
as it is a world of
thorough pub-
licity
and
theatricality,
which could not conceive of
happi-
ness without
spectacles
and festivals.

And,
as has
already
been
said,
even in
great punishment
there is so much
which is festive.
8.
The
feeling
of
"ought,"
of
personal obligation
(to
take
up again
the train of our
inquiry),
has
had,
as we
saw,
its
origin
in the oldest and most
original personal
relationship
that there
is,
the
relationship
between
buyer
and
seller,
creditor
and owner:
here it was that individual confronted
individual,
and that individual
matched
himself against
individual.
There has not
yet
been found a
grade
of
civilisation
so
low,
as not to manifest some trace of this
relationship.
Making prices,
assessing values, thinking
out
equivalents,
exchanging
all this
preoccupied
the
primal
thoughts
of man to such an extent that in a certain
sense
it constituted
thinking
itself: it was here that was
trained
the oldest
form of
sagacity,
it was here m this
58
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
sphere
that we can
perhaps
trace the first commencement
of man's
pride,
of his
feeling
of
superiority
over other ani-
mals.
Perhaps
our word "Mensch"
(manas)
still ex-
presses just something
of this
self-pride:
man denoted
himself as the
being
who measures
values,
who values and
measures,
as the
"assessing"
animal
par
excellence. Sale
and
purchase,
together
with their
psychological
concomi-
tants,
are older than the
origins
of
any
form of social or-
ganisation
and union: it is rather from the most rudi-
mentary
form of individual
right
that the
budding
con-
sciousness of
exchange,
commerce, debt, right, obligation,
compensation
was first transferred to the rudest and most
elementary
of the social
complexes
(in
their relation to
similar
complexes),
the habit of
comparing
force with
force, together
with that of
measuring,
of
calculating.
His
eye
was now focussed to this
perspective;
and with that
ponderous
consistency
characteristic
of ancient
thought,
which, though
set in motion
with
difficulty, yet proceeds
inflexibly along
the line on
which it has
started,
man soon
arrived
at the
great generalisation,
"everything
has its
price,
all can be
paid
for,"
the oldest
and most naive moral
canon of
justice,
the
beginning
of all "kindness,"
of all
"equity,"
of all
"goodwill,"
of all
"objectivity"
in the
world.
Justice
in this
initial
phase
is the
goodwill among
people
of about
equal power
to come to terms with each
other,
to come to an
understanding again by
means of a
settlement,
and
with
regard
to the less
powerful,
to com-
pel
them
to
agree among
themselves
to a settlement.
Measured
always by
the
standard
of
antiquity
(this
"GUILT" AND "BAD CONSCIENCE"
59
antiquity,
moreover,
is
present
or
again possible
at all
periods) ,
the
community
stands to its members in that im-
portant
and radical
relationship
of creditor to his ew-
ers." Man lives in a
community,
man
enjoys
the advan-
tages
of a
community (and
what
advantages!
we occasion-
ally
underestimate them
nowadays),
man lives
protected,
spared,
in
peace
and
trust,
secure from certain
injuries
and
enmities,
to which the man outside the
community,
the
"peaceless" man,
is
exposed,

a German understands
the
original meaning
of "Elend"
{elend),

secure because
he has entered into
pledges
and
obligations
to the com-
munity
in
respect
of these
very injuries
and enmities.
What
happens
when this is not the case? The commun-
ity,
the defrauded
creditor,
will
get
itself
paid,
as well as
it
can,
one can reckon on that. In this case the
question
of the direct
damage
done
by
the offender is
quite
sub-
sidiary: quite apart
from this the criminal* is above all a
breaker,
a breaker of word and covenant to the
whole,
as
regards
all the
advantages
and amenities of the communal
life in which
up
to that time he had
participated.
The
criminal is an "ower" who not
only
fails to
repay
the ad-
vances and
advantages
that have been
given
to
him,
but
even sets out to attack his creditor:
consequently
he is in
the future not
only,
as is
fair, deprived
of all these ad-
vantages
and amenities

he is in addition reminded of
the
importance
of those
advantages.
The wrath of the
injured
creditor,
of the
community, puts
him back in the
wild and outlawed status from which he was
previously
protected:
the
community repudiates
him

and now
every
kind of
enmity
can vent itself on him. Punishment is in.
*
German:
"Verbrecher."
H. B. S.
60 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
this
stage
of civilisation
simply
the
copy,
the
mimic,
of
the normal treatment of the
hated, disdained,
and con-
quered enemy,
who is not
only deprived
of
every right
and
protection
but of
every mercy;
so we have the mar-
tial law and
triumphant
festival of the vce victisf in all its
mercilessness and
cruelty.
This shows
why
war itself
(counting
the sacrificial cult of
war)
has
produced
all the
forms under which
punishment
has manifested itself in
history.
10.
As it
grows
more
powerful,
the
community
tends to take
the offences of the individual less
seriously,
because
they
are now
regarded
as
being
much less
revolutionary
and
dangerous
to the
corporate
existence: the evil-doer is no
more outlawed and
put
outside the
pale,
the common
wrath can no
longer
vent itself
upon
him with its old
licence,

on the
contrary,
from this
very
time it is
against
this
wrath,
and
particularly against
the wrath of those
directly injured,
that the evil-doer is
carefully
shielded and
protected by
the
community. As,
in
fact,
the
penal
law
develops,
the
following
characteristics become more and
more
clearly
marked:
compromise
with the wrath of those
directly
affected
by
the
misdeed;
a
consequent
endeavour
to localise the matter and to
prevent
a
further,
or indeed
a
general spread
of the
disturbance; attempts
to find
equivalents
and to settle the whole matter
(compositio);
above
all,
the
will,
which manifests itself with
increasing
definiteness,
to treat
every
offence as in a certain
degree
capable
of
being paid off,
and
consequently,
at
any
rate
"GUILT" AND "BAD CONSCIENCE" 61
up
to a certain
point,
to isolate the offender from his act.
As the
power
and the self-consciousness of a
community
increases,
so
proportionately
does the
penal
law become
mitigated; conversely every weakening
and
jeopardising
of the
community
revives the harshest forms of that law.
The creditor has
always grown
more humane
proportion-
ately
as he has
grown
more
rich; finally
the amount of
injury
he can endure without
really suffering
becomes the
criterion of his wealth. It is
possible
to conceive of a
society
blessed with so
great
a consciousness
of
its own
power
as to
indulge
in the most aristocratic
luxury
of
letting
its
wrong-doers go scot-jree.

"What do
my para-
sites matter to me?"
might society say.
"Let them live
and flourish! I am
strong enough
for it."

The
justice
which
began
with the
maxim, "Everything
can be
paid
off, everything
must be
paid off,"
ends with connivance
at the
escape
of those who cannot
pay
to
escape

it
ends,
like
every good thing
on
earth, by destroying itself.

The self-destruction of
Justice!
we know the
pretty
name
it calls itself

Grace! it
remains,
as is
obvious,
the
privi-
lege
of the
strongest,
better
still,
their
super-law.
n.
A
deprecatory
word here
against
the
attempts,
that
have
lately
been
made,
to find the
origin
of
justice
on
quite
another basis

namely,
on that of resentment. Let
me
whisper
a word in the ear of the
psychologists,
if
they
would fain
study revenge
itself at close
quarters:
this
plant
blooms its
prettiest
at
present among
Anarchists
and
anti-Semites,
a hidden
flower,
as it has ever
been,
like
62 THE
GENEALOGY OF MORALS
the
violet, though, forsooth,
with another
perfume.
And
as like must
necessarily
emanate from
like,
it will not be
a matter for
surprise
that it is
just
in such circles that we
see the birth of endeavours
(it
is their old
birthplace

compare above,
First
Essay, paragraph 14),
to
sanctify
revenge
under the name of
justice (as
though Justice
were
at bottom
merely
a
development
of the consciousness of
injury),
and thus with the rehabilitation of
revenge
to
reinstate
generally
and
collectively
all the reactive emo-
tions. I
object
to this last
point
least of all. It even
seems
meritorious when
regarded
from the
standpoint
of the whole
problem
of
biology (from
which
standpoint
the value of these emotions has
up
to the
present
been
underestimated).
And that to which I alone call atten-
tion,
is the circumstance that it is the
spirit
of
revenge
itself,
from which
develops
this new nuance of scientific
equity (for
the benefit of
hate, envy, mistrust,
jealousy,
suspicion, rancour, revenge).
This scientific
"equity"
stops immediately
and makes
way
for the accents of
deadly enmity
and
prejudice,
so soon as another
group
of emotions comes on the
scene,
which in
my opinion
are
of a much
higher biological
value than these
reactions,
and
consequently
have a
paramount
claim to the valua-
tion and
appreciation
of science: I mean the
really
active
emotions,
such as
personal
and material
ambition,
and
so forth.
(E. Diihring,
Value
of Life;
Course
of
Pliiloso-
pliy,
and
passim.)
So much
against
this
tendency
in
general:
but as for the
particular
maxim of
Duhring's,
that the home of
Justice
is to be found in the
sphere
of
the reactive
feelings,
our love of truth
compels
us dras-
tically
to invert his own
proposition
and to
oppose
to him
"GUILT" AND "BAD CONSCIENCE"
63
this other maxim: the last
sphere conquered by
the
spirit
of
justice
is the
sphere
of the
feeling
of reaction! When
it
really
comes about that the
just
man remains
just
even
as
regards
his
injurer (and
not
merely cold, moderate,
re-
served,
indifferent:
being just
is
always
a
positive
state) ;
when,
in
spite
of the
strong provocation
of
personal insult,
contempt,
and
calumny,
the
lofty
and clear
objectivity
of
the
just
and
judging eye
(whose glance
is as
profound
as
it is
gentle)
is
untroubled, why
then we have a
piece
of
perfection,
a
past
master of the world

something,
in
fact,
which it would not be wise to
expect,
and which
should not at
any
rate be too
easily
believed.
Speaking
generally,
there is no doubt but that even the
justest
in-
dividual
only requires
a little dose of
hostility, malice,
or
innuendo to drive the blood into his brain and the fairness
from
it. The active
man,
the
attacking, aggressive
man
is
always
a hundred
degrees
nearer to
justice
than the man
who
merely reacts;
he
certainly
has no need to
adopt
the
tactics, necessary
in the case of the
reacting man,
of mak-
ing
false and biassed valuations of his
object.
It
is,
in
point
of
fact,
for this reason that the
aggressive
man has
at all times
enjoyed
the
stronger, bolder,
more
aristocratic,
and also
jreer outlook,
the better conscience. On the other
hand,
we
already
surmise who it
really
is that has on his
conscience the invention of the "bad
conscience,"

the
resentful man !
Finally,
let man look at himself in
history.
In what
sphere up
to the
present
has the whole adminis-
tration of
law,
the acutal
need of
law,
found its
earthly
home? Perchance in the
sphere
of the
reacting
man? Not
for a minute: rather in that of the
active, strong, spon-
taneous, aggressive
man? I
deliberately defy
the above-
64
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
mentioned
agitator (who
himself makes this self-confes-
sion,
"the creed of
revenge
has run
through
all
my
works
and endeavours like the red thread of
Justice"),
and
say,
that
judged historically
law in the world
represents
the
very
war
against
the reactive
feelings,
the
very
war
waged
on those
feelings by
the
powers
of
activity
and
aggri
sion,
which devote some of their
strength
to
damming
and
keeping
within bounds this effervescence of
hysterical
re-
activity,
and to
forcing
it to some
compromise. Every-
where where
justice
is
practised
and
justice
is
maintained,
it is to be observed that the
stronger power,
when con-
fronted with the weaker
powers
which are inferior to it
(whether
they
be
groups,
or
individuals),
searches for
weapons
to
put
an end to the senseless
fury
of resent-
ment,
while it carries on its
object, partly by taking
the
victim of resentment out of the clutches of
revenge, partly
by substituting
for
revenge
a
campaign
of its own
against
the enemies of
peace
and
order, partly by finding, sug-
gesting,
and
occasionally enforcing settlements, partly by
standardising
certain
equivalents
for
injuries,
to which
equivalents
the element of resentment is henceforth
finally
referred. The most drastic
measure, however,
taken and
effectuated
by
the
supreme power,
to combat the
pre-
ponderance
of the
feelings
of
spite
and vindictiveness

it takes this measure as soon as it is at all

strong enough
to do so

is the foundation of
law,
the
imperative
decla-
ration of what in its
eyes
is to be
regarded
as
just
and
lawful,
and what
unjust
and unlawful: and
while,
after
the foundation of
law,
the
supreme power
treats the
ag-
gressive
and
arbitrary
acts of
individuals,
or of whole
"GUILT" AND "BAD CONSCIENCE"
65
groups,
as a violation of
law,
and a revolt
against itself,
it distracts the
feelings
of its
subjects
from the immediate
injury
inflicted
by
such a
violation,
and thus
eventually
attains the
very opposite
result to that
always
desired
by
revenge,
which sees and
recognises nothing
but the stand-
point
of the
injured party.
From henceforth the
eye
be-
comes trained to a more and more
impersonal
valuation
of the
deed,
even the
eye
of the
injured party
himself
(though
this is in the final
stage
of
all,
as has been
pre-
viously
remarked)

on this
principle "right"
and
"wrong"
first manifest themselves after the foundation of law
(and
not,
as
Duhring maintains, only
after the act of
violation).
To talk of intrinsic
right
and intrinsic
wrong
is
absolutely
nonsensical; intrinsically,
an
injury,
an
oppression,
an
exploitation,
an annihilation can be
nothing wrong,
inas-
much as life is
essentially (that is,
in its cardinal func-
tions) something
which functions
by injuring, oppressing,
exploiting,
and
annihilating,
and is
absolutely
inconceiv-
able without such a character. It is
necessary
to make
an even more serious confession:

viewed from the most

advanced
biological standpoint,
conditions of
legality
can
be
only exceptional
conditions,
in that
they
are
partial
restrictions of the real
life-will,
which makes for
power,
and in that
they
are subordinated to the life-will's
general
end as
particular means,
that
is,
as means to create
larger
units of
strength.
A
legal organisation,
conceived of as
sovereign
and
universal,
not as a
weapon
in a
fight
of
complexes
of
power,
but as a
weapon against fighting,
generally something
after the
style
of
Diihring's
com-
munistic model of
treating every
will as
equal
with
every
66 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
other
will,
would be a
principle
hostile to
life,
a
destroyer
and dissolver of
man,
an
outrage
on the future of
man,
a
symptom
of
fatigue,
a secret cut to
Nothingness.

12.
A word more on the
origin
and end of
punishment

two
problems
which are or
ought
to be
kept distinct,
but
which
unfortunately
are
usually lumped
into one. And
what tactics have our moral
genealogists employed up
to
the
present
in these cases? Their inveterate naivete.
They
find out some "end" in the
punishment,
for
instance,
revenge
and
deterrence,
and then in all their innocence
set this end at the
beginning,
as the causa
fiendi
of the
punishment,
and

they
have done the trick. But the
patching up
of a
history
of the
origin
of law is the last
use to which the "End in Law"*
ought
to be
put.
Per-
haps
there is no more
pregnant principle
for
any
kind of
history
than the
following,
which,
difficult
though
it is to
master,
should none the less be mastered in
every
detail.

The
origin
of the existence of a
thing
and its final
utility,
its
practical application
and
incorporation
in a
system
of
ends,
are toto ado
opposed
to each other

everything,
anything,
which exists and which
prevails anywhere,
will
always
be
put
to new
purposes by
a force
superior
to it-
self,
will be commandeered
afresh,
will be turned and
transformed to new
uses;
all
"happening"
in the
organic
world consists of
overpowering
and
dominating,
and
again
all
overpowering
and domination is a new
interpretation
and
adjustment,
which must
necessarily
obscure or ab-
solutely extinguish
the
subsisting "meaning"
and "end."
"GUILT" AND "BAD CONSCIENCE"
67
The most
perfect comprehension
of the
utility
of
any-
physiological organ (or
also of a
legal institution,
social
custom, political habit,
form in art or in
religious
wor-
ship)
does not for a minute
imply any
simultaneous com-
prehension
of its
origin:
this
may
seem uncomfortable
and
unpalatable
to the older
men,

for it has been the

immemorial belief that
understanding
the final cause or
the
utility
of a
thing,
a
form,
an
institution,
means also
understanding
the reason for its
origin:
to
give
an ex-
ample
of this
logic,
the
eye
was made to
see,
the hand
was made to
grasp.
So even
punishment
was conceived
as invented with a view to
punishing.
But all ends and
all utilities are
only signs
that a Will to Power has mas-
tered a less
powerful force,
has
impressed
thereon out of
its own self the
meaning
of a
function;
and the whole
history
of a
"Thing,"
an
organ,
a
custom,
can on the
same
principle
be
regarded
as a continuous
"sign-chain"
of
perpetually
new
interpretations
and
adjustments,
whose
causes,
so far from
needing
to have even a mutual con-
nection,
sometimes follow and alternate with each other
absolutely haphazard. Similarly,
the evolution of a
"Thing,"
of a
custom,
is
anything
but its
progressus
to
an
end,
still less a
logical
and direct
progressus
attained
with the minimum
expenditure
of
energy
and cost: it is
rather the succession of
processes
of
subjugation,
more or
less
profound,
more or less
mutually independent,
which
operate
on the
thing
itself;
it
is, further,
the resistance
which in each case
invariably displayed
this
subjugation,
the Protean
wriggles by way
of defence and
reaction, and,
*
An allusion to Der Zweck im
Recht, by
the
great
German
jurist,
Professor
Ihering.
6S THE
GENEALOGY OF MORALS
further,
the results of successful counter-efforts. The
form is
fluid,
but the
meaning
is even more so

even in-
side
every
individual
organism
the case is the same: with
every genuine growth
of the
whole,
the "function" of the
individual
organs
becomes
shifted,

in certain cases a
partial perishing
of these
organs,
a diminution of their
numbers
(for
instance, through
annihilation of the con-
necting members),
can be a
symptom
of
growing strength
and
perfection.
What I mean is this: even
partial
loss
of utility, decay,
and
degeneration,
loss of function and
purpose,
in a
word, death, appertain
to the conditions of
the
genuine progressus;
which
always appears
in the
shape
of a will and
way
to
greater power,
and is
always
realised
at the
expense
of innumerable smaller
powers.
The
mag-
nitude of a
"progress"
is
gauged by
the
greatness
of the
sacrifice that it
requires:
humanity
as a mass sacrificed to
the
prosperity
of the one
stronger species
of Man

that
would be a.
progress.
I
emphasise
all the more this cardi-
nal characteristic of the historic
method,
for the reason
that in its essence it runs counter to
predominant
instincts
and
prevailing
taste,
which must
prefer
to
put up
with
absolute
casualness,
even with the mechanical senseless-
ness of
ail
phenomena,
than with the
theory
of a
power-
will,
in exhaustive
play throughout
all
phenomena.
The
democratic
idiosyncrasy
against everything
which rules
and wishes to
rule,
the modern misarchism
(to
coin a bad
word for a bad
thing),
has
gradually
but so
thoroughly
transformed
itself into the
guise
of
intellectualism,
the
most abstract
intellectualism,
that even
nowadays
it
pene-
trates and has
the
right
to
penetrate step by step
into the
most exact and
apparently
the most
objective
sciences: this
"GUILT" AND "BAD CONSCIENCE"
69
tendency has,
in
fact,
in
my
view
already
dominated the
whole of
physiology
and
biology,
and to their detriment,
as is
obvious,
in so far as it has
spirited away
a radical
idea,
the idea of true
activity.
The
tyranny
of this idio-
syncrasy, however,
results in the
theory
of
"adaptation"
being pushed
forward into the van of the
argument,
ex-
ploited; adaptation

that means to
say,
a second-class
activity,
a mere
capacity
for
"reacting";
in
fact,
life itself
has been defined
(by
Herbert
Spencer)
as an
increasingly
effective internal
adaptation
to external circumstances.
This
definition, however,
fails to realise the real essence
of
life,
its will to
power.
It fails to
appreciate
the
para-
mount
superiority enjoyed by
those
plastic
forces of
spon-
taneity, aggression,
and encroachment with their new in-
terpretations
and
tendencies,
to the
operation
of which
adaptation
is
only
a natural
corollary: consequently
the
sovereign
office of the
highest
functionaries in the
organ-
ism itself
(among
which the life-will
appears
as an active
and formative
principle)
is
repudiated.
One remembers
Huxley's reproach
to
Spencer
of his "administrative Ni-
hilism": but it is a case of
something
much more than
"administration."
13.
To return to our
subject, namely punishment,
we must
make
consequently
a double distinction:
first,
the rela-
tively permanent
element,
the
custom,
the
act,
the
"drama,"
a certain
rigid sequence
of methods of
pro-
cedure;
on the other
hand,
the fluid
element,
the mean-
ing,
the
end,
the
expectation
which is attached to the
oper-
70
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
ation of such
procedure.
At this
point
we
immediately
assume, per analogiam
(in
accordance with the
theory
of
the historic
method,
which we have elaborated
above),
that the
procedure
itself is
something
older and earlier
than its utilisation in
punishment,
that this utilisation was
introduced and
interpreted
into the
procedure
(which
had
existed for a
long time,
but whose
employment
had another
meaning),
in
short,
that the case is
different
from that
hftherto
supposed by
our
naif genealogists
of morals and
of
law,
who
thought
that the
procedure
was invented for
the
purpose
of
punishment,
in the same
way
that the
hand had been
previously thought
to have been invented
for the
purpose
of
grasping.
With
regard
to the other
element in
punishment,
its fluid
element,
its
meaning,
the
idea of
punishment
in a
very
Jate
stage
of civilisation
(for
instance, contemporary Europe)
is not content with man-
ifesting merely
one
meaning,
but manifests a whole
syn-
thesis "of
meanings."
The
past general history
of
pun-
ishment,
the
history
of its
employment
for the most diverse
ends, crystallises eventually
into a kind of
unity,
which is
difficult to
analyse
into its
parts,
and
which,
it is neces-
sary
to
emphasise, absolutely
defies definition.
(It
is
nowadays impossible
to
say definitely
the
precise
reason
fur
punishment:
all
ideas,
in which a whole
process
is
promiscuously comprehended,
elude
definition;
it is
only
that which has no
history,
which can be
defined.)
At
an earlier
stage,
on the
contrary,
that
synthesis
of mean-
ings appears
much less
rigid
and much more
elastic;
we
can realise how in each individual case the elements of
the
synthesis
change
their value and their
position,
so
that now one element and now another stands nut and
pre-
"GUILT" AND "BAD CONSCIENCE"
71
dominates over the
others, nay,
in certain cases one ele-
ment
(perhaps
the end of
deterrence)
seems to eliminate
all the rest. At
any rate,
so as to
give
some idea of the
uncertain, supplementary,
and accidental nature of the
meaning
of
punishment
and of the manner in which one
identical
procedure
can be
employed
and
adapted
for the
most
diametrically opposed objects,
I will at this
point
give
a scheme that has
suggested
itself to
me,
a scheme it-
self based on
comparatively
small and accidental ma-
terial.

Punishment,
as
rendering
the criminal harmless
and
incapable
of further
injury.

Punishment,
as com-
pensation
for the
injury
sustained
by
the
injured party,
in
any
form whatsoever
(including
the form of senti-
mental
compensation).

Punishment,
as an isolation of
that which disturbs the
equilibrium,
so as to
prevent
the
further
spreading
of the disturbance.

Punishment as a
means of
inspiring
fear of those who determine and exe-
cute the
punishment.

Punishment as a kind of
compen-
sation for
advantages
which the
wrong-doer
has
up
to that
time
enjoyed (for example,
when he is utilised as a slave
in the
mines)
.

Punishment,
as the elimination of an ele-
ment of
decay (sometimes
of a whole
branch,
as accord-
ing
to the Chinese
laws, consequently
as a means to the
purification
of the
race,
or the
preservation
of a social
type).

Punishment as a
festival,
as the violent
oppres-
sion and humiliation of an
enemy
that has at last been
subdued.

Punishment as a
mnemonic,
whether for him
who suffers the
punishment

the so-called
"correction,"
or for the witnesses of its administration.

Punishment,
as
the
payment
of a fee
stipulated
for
by
the
power
which
protects
the evil-doer from the excesses of
revenge.

72
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
Punishment,
as a
compromise
with the natural
phenom-
enon of
revenge,
in so far as
revenge
is still maintained
and claimed as a
privilege by
the
stronger
races.

Pun-
ishment as a declaration and measure of war
against
an
enemy
of
peace,
of
law,
of
order,
of
authority,
who is
fought by society
with the
weapons
which war
provides,
as a
spirit dangerous
to the
community,
as a breaker of
the contract on which the
community
is
based,
as a
rebel,
a
traitor,
and a breaker of the
peace.
14.
This list is
certainly
not
complete;
it is obvious that
punishment
is overloaded with utilities of all kinds. This
makes it all the more
permissible
to eliminate one
supposed
utility,
which
passes,
at
any
rate in the
popular
mind.
for its most essential
utility,
and which is
just
what even
now
provides
the
strongest support
for that faith in
pun-
ishment which is
nowadays
for
many
reasons
tottering.
Punishment is
supposed
to have the value of
exciting
in
the
guilty
the consciousness of
guilt;
in
punishment
is
sought
the
proper
instrumcntum of that
psychic
reaction
which becomes known as a "bad
conscience,"
"remorse."
But this
theory
is
even,
from the
point
of view of the
present,
a violation of
reality
and
psychology:
and how
much more so is the case when we have to deal with the
longest period
of man's
history,
his
primitive history!
Genuine remorse is
certainly extremely
rare
among
wron-j;
doers and the victims of
punishment; prisons
and houses
of correction are not the soil on which this worm of re-
morse
pullulates
for choicethis is the unanimous
opinion
"GUILT" AND "BAD CONSCIENCE"
73
of all conscientious
observers,
who in
many
cases arrive
at such a
judgment
with
enough
reluctance and
against
their own
personal
wishes.
Speaking generally, punish-
ment hardens and
numbs,
it
produces concentration,
it
sharpens
the consciousness of
alienation,
it
strengthens
the
power
of resistance. When it
happens
that it breaks the
man's
energy
and
brings
about a
piteous prostration
and
abjectness,
such a result is
certainly
even less
salutary
than the
average
effect of
punishment,
which is character-
ised
by
a harsh and sinister
doggedness.
The
thought
of
those
prehistoric
millennia
brings
us to the
unhesitating
conclusion,
that it was
simply through punishment
that
the evolution of the consciousness of
guilt
was most forc-
ibly
retarded

at
any
rate in the victims of the
punishing
power.
In
particular,
let us not underestimate the extent
to
which, by
the
very sight
of the
judicial
and executive
procedure,
the
wrong-doer
is himself
prevented
from feel-
ing
that his
deed,
the character of his
act,
is
intrinsically
reprehensible:
for he sees
clearly
the same kind of acts
practised
in the service of
justice,
and then called
good,
and
practised
with a
good conscience;
acts such as es-
pionage, trickery, bribery, trapping,
the whole
intriguing
and insidious art of the
policeman
and the informer

the whole
system,
in
fact,
manifested in the different kinds
of
punishment (a system
not excused
by passion,
but
based on
principle),
of
robbing, oppressing, insulting,
im-
prisoning, racking, murdering.

All this he sees treated

by
his
judges,
not as acts
meriting
censure and condemnation
in
themselves,
but
only
in a
particular
context and
appli-
cation. It was not on this soil that
grew
the "bad con-
science,"
that most sinister and
interesting plant
of our
74
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
earthly vegetation

in
point
of
fact,
throughout
a most
lengthy period,
no
suggestion
of
having
to do with a
'guilty
man" manifested itself in the consciousness of the
man who
judged
and
punished.
One had
merely
to deal
with an author of an
injury,
an
irresponsible piece
of fate.
And the man
himself,
on whom the
punishment
subse-
quently
fell like a
piece
of
fate,
was occasioned no more
of an "inner
pain"
than would be occasioned
by
the sud-
den
approach
of some uncalculated
event,
some terrible
natural
catastrophe,
a
rushing, crushing
avalanche
against
which there is no resistance.
This truth came
insidiously enough
to the consciousness
of
Spinoza (to
the
disgust
of his
commentators,
who
(like
Kuno
Fischer,
for
instance) give
themselves no end of
trouble to misunderstand him on this
point),
when one
afternoon
(as
he sat
raking up
who knows what
memory
)
he
indulged
in the
question
of what was
really
left for him
personally
of the celebrated Morsus coiiscicnt'uc

Spinoza,
who had
relegated ''good
and evil" to the
sphere
of human
imagination,
and
indignantly
defended the honour of his
"free" God
against
those
blasphemers
who affirmed that
God did
everything
sub rationc bom
("but
this was tanta-
mount to
subordinating
God to fate,
and would
really
be
the
greatest
of all
absurdities").
For
Spinoza
the world
had returned
again
to that innocence in which it
lay
be-
fore the
discovery
of the bad conscience:
what, then,
had
happened
to the morsus consdentia? "The antithesis of
gaudium,"
said he at last to
himself,

"A sadness ac-

"GUILT" AND "BAD CONSCIENCE"
75
companied by
the recollection of a
past
event which has
turned out
contrary
to all
expectation" (Eth. iii., Propos.
xviii. Schol. i.
ii.).
Evil-doers have
throughout
thou-
sands of
years
felt when overtaken
by punishment exactly
like
Spinoza,
on the
subject
of their "offence": "here is
something
which went
wrong contrary
to
my anticipation,"
not "I
ought
not to have done this."

They
submitted
themselves to
punishment, just
as one submits one's self
to a
disease,
to a
misfortune,
or to
death,
with that stub-
born and
resigned
fatalism which
gives
the
Russians,
for
instance,
even
nowadays,
the
advantage
over us West-
erners,
in the
handling
of life. If at that
period
there was
a
critique
of
action,
the criterion was
prudence:
the real
effect
of
punishment
is
unquestionably chiefly
to be found
in a
sharpening
of the sense of
prudence,
in a
lengthening
of the
memory,
in a will to
adopt
more of a
policy
of
caution, suspicion,
and
secrecy;
in the
recognition
that
there are
many things
which are
unquestionably beyond
one's
capacity;
in a kind of
improvement
in self-criticism.
The broad effects which can be obtained
by punishment
in man and
beast,
are the increase of
fear,
the
sharpening
of the sense of
cunning,
the
mastery
of the desires: so
it is that
punishment
tames
man,
but does not make him
"better"

it would be more correct even to

go
so far as
to assert the
contrary ("Injury
makes a man
cunning,"
says
a
popular proverb:
so far as it makes him
cunning,
it makes him also bad.
Fortunately,
it often
enough
makes him
stupid).
16.
At this
juncture
I cannot avoid
trying
to
give
a tenta-
76
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
tive and
provisional expression
to
my
own
hypothesis
con-
cerning
the
origin
of the bad conscience: it is difficult to
make it
fully appreciated,
and it
requires
continuous med-
itation, attention,
and
digestion.
I
regard
the bad con-
science as the serious illness which man was bound to con-
tract under the stress of the most radical
change
which he
has ever
experienced

that
change,
when he found himself
finally imprisoned
within the
pale
of
society
and of
peace.
Just
like the
plight
of the
water-animals,
when
they
were
compelled
either to become land-animals or to
per-
ish,
so was the
plight
of these
half-animals, perfectly
adapted
as
they
were to the
savage
life of
war, prowling,
and adventure

suddenly
all their instincts were rendered
worthless and "switched off." Henceforward
they
had to
walk on their feet

"carry
themselves,"
whereas hereto-
fore
they
had been carried
by
the water: a terrible heavi-
ness
oppressed
them.
They
found themselves
clumsy
in
obeying
the
simplest
directions,
confronted with this new
and unknown world
they
had no
longer
their old
guides

the
regulative
instincts that had led them
unconsciously
to
safety

they
were
reduced,
were those
unhappy
crea-
tures,
to
thinking, inferring, calculating, putting together
causes and
results,
reduced to that
poorest
and most er-
ratic
organ
of
theirs,
their "consciousness."
I do not be-
lieve there was ever in the world such a
feeling
of
misery,
such a leaden discomfort

further,
those old instincts had
not
immediately
ceased their demands!
Only
it was dif-
ficult and
rarely possible
to
gratify
them:
speaking
broadly, they
were
compelled
to
satisfy
themselves
by
new
and,
as it
were,
hole-and-corner methods. All in-
stincts which do not find a vent
without,
turn inwards

"GUILT" AND "BAD

CONSCIENCE"
77
this is what I mean
by
the
growing
"internalisation" of
man:
consequently
we have the first
growth
in
man,
of
what
subsequently
was called his soul. The whole inner
world, originally
as thin as if it had been stretched be-
tween two
layers
of
skin,
burst
apart
and
expanded pro-
portionately,
and obtained
depth, breadth,
and
height,
when man's external outlet became obstructed. These
terrible
bulwarks,
with which the social
organisation pro-
tected itself
against
the old instincts of freedom
(punish-
ments
belong pre-eminently
to these
bulwarks), brought
it about that all those instincts of
wild, free, prowling
man became turned backwards
against
man
himself.
En-
mity, cruelty,
the
delight
in
persecution,
in
surprises,
change,
destruction

the
turning
all these instincts
against
their own
possessors:
this is the
origin
of the "bad con-
science." It was
man, who, lacking
external enemies and
obstacles,
and
imprisoned
as he was in the
oppressive
nar-
rowness and
monotony
of
custom,
in his own
impatience
lacerated, persecuted, gnawed, frightened,
and ill-treated
himself;
it was this animal in the hands of the
tamer,
which beat itself
against
the bars of its
cage;
it was this
being who, pining
and
yearning
for that desert home of
which it had been
deprived,
was
compelled
to create out
of its own
self,
an
adventure,
a
torture-chamber,
a hazard-
ous and
perilous
desert

it was this
fool,
this homesick and
desperate prisoner
who invented the "bad conscience."
But
thereby
he introduced that most
grave
and sinister
illness,
from which mankind has not
yet recovered,
the
suffering
of man from the disease called
man,
as the re-
sult of a violent
breaking
from his animal
past,
the
result,
as it
were,
of a
spasmodic plunge
into a new environment
78
THE GENEALOGY OF
MORALS
and new conditions of
existence,
the result of a declara-
tion of war
against
the old
instincts,
which
up
to that time
had been the
staple
of his
power,
his
joy,
his formidable-
ness. Let us
immediately
add that this fact of an animal
ego turning against itself, taking part against itself,
pro-
duced in the world so
novel, profound, unheard-of,
prob-
lematic, inconsistent,
and
pregnant
a
phenomenon,
that
the
aspect
of the world was
radically
altered
thereby.
In
sooth, only
divine
spectators
could have
appreciated
the
drama that then
began,
and whose end baffles
conjecture
as
yet

a drama too
subtle,
too
wonderful,
too
paradox-
ical to warrant its
undergoing
a nonsensical and unheeded
performance
on some random
grotesque planet!
Hence-
forth man is to be counted as one of the most
unexpected
and sensational
lucky
shots in the
game
of the
"big baby"
of
Heracleitus,
whether he be called Zeus or Chance

he
awakens on his behalf the
interest, excitement, hope,
al-
most the
confidence,
of his
being
the
harbinger
and fore-
runner of
something,
of man
being
no
end,
but
only
a
stage,
an
interlude,
a
bridge,
a
great promise.
17-
It is
primarily
involved in this
hypothesis
of the
origin
of the bad
conscience,
that that alteration was no
gradual
and no
voluntary
alteration,
and that it did not manifest
itself as an
organic adaptation
to new
conditions,
but as
a
break,
a
jump,
a
necessity,
an inevitable
fate, against
which there was no resistance and never a
spark
of re-
sentment.
And
secondarily,
that the
fitting
of a hitherto
unchecked and
amorphous
population
into a fixed
form,
"GUILT" AND "BAD CONSCIENCE"
79
starting
as it had done in an act of
violence,
could
only
be
accomplished by
acts of violence and
nothing
else

that the oldest "State"

appeared consequently
as a
ghastly
tyranny,
a
grinding
ruthless
piece
of
machinery,
which
went on
working,
till this raw material of a semi-animal
populace
was not
only thoroughly
kneaded and
elastic,
but also moulded. I used the word
"State"; my meaning
is
self-evident, namely,
a herd of blonde beasts of
prey,
a
race of
conquerors
and
masters,
which with all its war-
like
organisation
and all its
organising power pounces
with its terrible claws en a
population,
in numbers
pos-
sibly tremendously superior,
but as
yet formless,
as
yet
nomad. Such is the
origin
of the "State." That fantas-
tic
theory
that makes it
begin
with a contract
is,
I
think,
disposed
of. He who can
command,
he who is a master
by "nature,"
he who comes on the scene forceful in deed
and
gesture

what has he to do with contracts? Such

beings defy calculation, they
come like
fate,
without
cause,
reason, notice, excuse, they
are there as the
lightning
is
there,
too
terrible,
too
sudden,
too
convincing,
too "dif-
ferent,"
to be
personally
even hated. Their work is an
instinctive
creating
and
impressing
of
forms, they
are the
most
involuntary,
unconscious artists that there are:

their
appearance produces instantaneously
a scheme of
sovereignty
which is
live,
in which the functious are
par-
titioned and
apportioned,
in which above all no
part
is re-
ceived or finds a
place,
until
pregnant
with a
"meaning"
in
regard
to the whole.
They
are
ignorant
of the mean-
ing
of
guilt, responsibility, consideration,
are these born
organisers;
in them
predominates
that terrible
artist-ego-
ism,
that
gleams
like
brass,
and that knows itself
justified
So THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
to all
eternity,
in its
work,
even as a mother in her child.
It is not in them that there
grew
the bad
conscience,
that
is
elementary
but it would not have
grown
without
than,
repulsive growth
as it
was,
it would be
missing,
had not
a tremendous
quantity
of freedom been
expelled
from the
world
by
the stress of their
hammer-strokes,
their artist
violence,
or been at
any
rate made invisible
and,
as it
were,
latent. This instinct
of freedom
forced into
being
latent

it is
already
clear

this instinct of freedom farced

back,
trodden
back, imprisoned
within
itself,
and
finally only
able to find vent and relief in
itself;
this, only this,
is the
beginning
of the "bad conscience."
18.
Beware of
thinking lightly
of this
phenomenon, by
rea-
son of its initial
painful ugliness.
At bottom it is the
same active force which is at work on a more
grandiose
scale in those
potent
artists and
organisers,
and builds
states,
where
here, internally,
on a smaller and
pettier
scale and with a
retrogressive
tendency,
makes itself a
bad conscience in the
"labyrinth
of the
breast,"
to use
ethe's
phrase,
and which builds
negative
ideals;
it
is,
I
repeat,
that identical instinct
of freedom (to
use
my
own
language,
the will to
power)
:
only
the
material,
on which
this force with all its constructive and
tyrannous
nature
is let
loose,
is here man
himself,
his whole old animal self

and not as in the case of that more

grandiose
and sensa-
tional
phenomenon,
the other
man,
other men. This se-
cret
self-tyranny,
this
cruelty
of the
artist,
this
delight
in
giving
a form to one's self as a
piece
of
difficult,
re-
"GUILT" AND "BAD CONSCIENCE" 8r
fractory,
and
suffering material,
in
burning
in a
will,
a
critique,
a
contradiction,
a
contempt,
a
negation;
this sin-
ister and
ghastly
labour of love on the
part
of a
soul,
whose will is cloven in two within
itself,
which makes itself
suffer from
delight
in the infliction of
suffering;
this
wholly
active bad conscience has
finally (as
one
already
anticipates)

true fountainhead as it is of idealism and

imagination

produced
an abundance of novel and amaz-
ing beauty
and
affirmation,
and
perhaps
has
really
been
the first to
give
birth to
beauty
at all. What would
beauty
be, forsooth,
if its contradiction had not first been
pre-
sented to
consciousness,
if the
ugly
had not first said to
itself,
"I am
ugly"?
At
any rate,
after this hint the
problem
of how far idealism and
beauty
can be traced
in such
opposite
ideas as
"selflessness," self-denial, self-
sacrifice,
becomes less
problematical;
and
indubitably
in
future we shall
certainly
know the real and
original
char-
acter of the
delight experienced by
the
self-less,
the self-
denying,
the
self-sacrificing:
this
delight
is a
phase
of
cruelty.

So much
provisionally
for the
origin
of "altru-
ism" as a moral
value,
and the
marking
out the
ground
from which this value has
grown:
it is
only
the bad con-
science, only
the will for
self-abuse,
that
provides
the nec-
essary
conditions for the existence of altruism as a value.
19.
Undoubtedly
the bad conscience is an
illness,
but an
illness as
pregnancy
is an illness. If we search out the
conditions under which this illness reaches its most ter-
rible and sublime
zenith,
we shall see what
really
first
82
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
brought
about its
entry
into the world. But to do this
we must take a
long breath,
and we must first of all
go
back once
again
to an earlier
point
of view. The relation
at civil law of the ower to his creditor
(which
has
ready
been discussed in
detail),
has been
interpreted
once
again
(and
indeed in a manner which
historically
is ex-
ceedingly
remarkable and
suspicious)
into a
relationship,
which is
perhaps
more
incomprehensible
to us moderns
than to
any
other
era;
that
is,
into the
relationship
of
the
existing generation
to its ancestors.
Within the
origi-
nal tribal association

v/e are
talking
of
primitive
times

each lft aeration

recognises
a
legal obligation
to-
wards the earlier
generation,
and
particularly
towards the
earliest,
which founded the
family
(and
this is
something
much more than a mere sentimental
obligation,
the ex-
istence of
which, during
the
longest period
of man's his-
tory,
is
by
no means
indisputable).
There
prevails
in
them the conviction that it is
only
thanks to sacrifices
and efforts of their
ancestors,
that the race
persists
at all

and that this has to be

paid
back to them
by
sacrifices
and services. Thus is
recognized
the o\
fa
debt,
which accumulates
continually by
reason of these an-
cestors never
ceasing
in their
subsequent
life as
potent
spirits
to secure
by
their
power
new
privileges
and advan-
tages
to the race.
Gratis, perchance?
But there is no
gratis
for that raw
and "mean-souled"
age.
What return
can be made?Sacrifice
(at first,
nourishment,
in its
crude;!
sense),
festivals,
temples,
tributes of
veneration,
above
all,
obedience

since all customs

are, qua
works
of the
ancestors, equally
their
precepts
and commands

are the ancestors ever

given enough?
This
suspicion
"GUILT" AND "BAD CONSCIENCE"
S3
remains and
grows:
from time to time it extorts a
great
wholesale
ransom, something
monstrous in the
way
of re-
payment
of the creditor
(the
notorious sacrifice of the
first-born,
for
example, blood,
human blood in
any case).
The
fear
of ancestors and their
power,
the consciousness
of
owing
debts to
them, necessarily increases, according
to this kind of
logic,
in the exact
proportion
that the race
itself
increases,
that the race itself becomes more victor-
ious,
more
independent,
more
honoured,
more feared.
This,
and not the
contrary,
is the fact. Each
step
to-
wards race
decay,
all disastrous
events,
all
symptoms
of
degeneration,
of
approaching disintegration, always
dimin-
ish the fear of the founders'
spirit,
and whittle
away
the
idea of his
sagacity, providence,
and
potent presence.
Conceive this crude kind of
logic
carried to its climax: it
follows that the ancestors of the most
powerful
races
must,
through
the
growing
fear that
they
exercise on the
imagi-
nations, grow
themselves into monstrous
dimensions,
and
become
relegated
to the
gloom
of a divine
mystery
that
transcends
imagination

the ancestor becomes at last

necessarily transfigured
into a
god. Perhaps
this is the
very origin
of the
gods,
that
is,
an
origin
from
fear/
And
those who feel bound to
add,
"but from
piety also,"
will
have
difficulty
in
maintaining
this
theory,
with
regard
to
the
primeval
and
longest period
of the human race.
And,
of
course,
this is even more the case as
regards
the middle
period,
the formative
period
of the aristocratic races

the aristocratic races which have

given
back with interest
to their
founders,
the ancestors
(heroes, gods),
all those
qualities
which in the meanwhile have
appeared
in them-
selves,
that
is,
the aristocratic
qualities.
We will later on
84
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
glance again
at the
ennobling
and
promotion
of the
gods
(which,
of
course,
is
totally
distinct from their "sancti-
fication")
: let us now
provisionally
follow to its end the
course of the whole of this
development
of the conscious-
ness of
"owing."
20.
According
to the
teaching
of
history,
the consciousness
of
owing
debts to the
deity by
no means came to an end
with the
decay
of the clan
organisation
of
society; just
as mankind has inherited the ideas of
"good"
and "bad"
from the
race-nobility (together
with its fundamental
tendency
towards
establishing
social
distinctions) ,
so with
the
heritage
of the racial and tribal
gods
it has also in-
herited the incubus of debts as
yet unpaid
and the desire
to
discharge
them. The transition is effected
by
those
large populations
of slaves and
bondsmen, who,
whether
through compulsion
or
through
submission and "mimi-
cry"
have accommodated themselves to the
religion
of
their
masters; through
this channel these inherited
tendencies inundate the world. The
feeling
of
owing
a
debt to the
deity
has
grown continuously
for several cen-
turies, always
in the same
proportion
in which the idea of
God and the consciousness of God have
grown
and become
exalted
among
mankind.
(The
whole
history
of ethnic
fights, victories, reconciliations, amalgamations, every-
thing,
in
fact,
which
precedes
the eventual
classing
of all
the social elements in each
great race-svnthesis,
are mir-
rored in the
hotch-potch genealogy
of their
gods,
in the
legends
of their
fights,
victories, and reconciliations.
Prog-
"GUILT" AND "BAD CONSCIENCE"
85
ress towards universal
empires invariably
means
progress
towards universal
deities; despotism,
with its
subjugation
of the
independent nobility, always paves
the
way
for
some
system
or other of
monotheism.)
The
appearance
of the Christian
god,
as the record
god up
to this
time,
has for that
very
reason
brought equally
into the world the
record amount of
guilt
consciousness. Granted that we
have
gradually
started on the reverse
movement,
there is
no little
probability
in the
deduction,
based on the con-
tinuous
decay
in the belief in the Christian
god,
to the
effect that there also
already
exists a considerable
decay
in the human consciousness of
owing (ought) ;
in
fact,
we cannot shut our
eyes
to the
prospect
of the
complete
and eventual
triumph
of atheism
freeing
mankind from all
this
feeling
of
obligation
to their
origin,
their causa
prima.
Atheism and a kind of second innocence
complement
and
supplement
each other.
21.
So much for
my rough
and
preliminary
sketch of the
interrelation of the ideas
"ought" (owe)
and
"duty"
with
the
postulates
of
religion.
I have
intentionally
shelved
up
to the
present
the actual moralisation of these ideas
(their
being pushed
back into the
conscience,
or more
precisely
the
interweaving
of the bad conscience with the idea of
God),
and at the end of the last
paragraph
used
language
to the effect that this moralisation did not
exist,
and that
consequently
these ideas had
necessarily
come to an
end,
by
reason of what had
happened
to their
hypothesis,
the
credence in our
"creditor,"
in God. The actual facts
86 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
differ
terribly
from this
theory.
It is with the moralisa-
tion of the ideas
"ought"
and
"duty,"
and with their
being pushed
back into the bad
conscience,
that comes
the first actual
attempt
to reverse the direction of the de-
velopment
we have
just described,
or at
any
rate to arrest
its evolution
;
it is
just
at this
juncture
that the
very hope
of an eventual
redemption
has to
put
itself once for all
into the
prison
of
pessimism,
it is at this
juncture
that the
eye
lias to recoil and rebound in
despair
from off an ada-
mantine
impossibility,
it is at this
juncture
that the ideas
"guilt"
and
"duty"
have to turn backwards

turn back-
wards
against
whom? There is no doubt about
it;
pri-
marily against
the
"ower,"
in whom the bad conscience
now establishes
itself, eats, extends,
and
grows
like a
poly-
pus throughout
its
length
and
breadth,
all with such viru-
lence,
that at
last,
with the
impossibility
of
paying
the
debt,
there becomes conceived the idea of the
impossibility
of
paying
the
penalty,
the
thought
of its
inexpiability
(the
idea of "eternal
punishment")

finally,
too,
it turns
against
the
"creditor,"
whether found in the causa
prima
of
man,
the
origin
of the human
race,
its
sire,
who hence-
forth becomes burdened with a curse
('Adam," "original
sin,"
"determination of the
will"),
or in Nature from
whose womb man
springs,
and on whom the
responsibility
for the
principle
of evil is now cast
("Diabolisation
of
ture"),
or in existence
generally,
on this
logic
an abso-
lute white
elephant,
with which mankind is landed
(the
Nihilistic
flight
from
life,
the demand for
Nothingness,
or
for the
opposite
of
existence,
for some other
existence,
I'.uddhism and the
like)

till
suddenly
we stand before
that
paradoxical
and awful
expedient, through
which a
"GUILT" AND "BAD CONSCIENCE"
87
tortured
humanity
has found a
temporary alleviation,
that stroke of
genius
called
Christianity:

God
person-
ally immolating
himself for the debt of
man,
God
paying
himself
personally
out of a
pound
of his own
flesh,
God
as the one
being
who can deliver man from what man had
become unable to deliver himself

the creditor
playing
scapegoat
for his
debtor,
from love
(can you
believe
it?),
from love of his debtor! . . .
22.
The reader will
already
have
conjectured
what took
place
on the
stage
and behind the scenes of this drama.
That will for
self-torture,
that inverted
cruelty
of the ani-
mal
man, who,
turned
subjective
and scared into intro-
spection (encaged
as he was in "the
State,"
as
part
of
his
taming process),
invented the bad conscience so as
to hurt
himself,
after the natural outlet for this will to
hurt,
became blocked

in other
words,
this man of the
bad conscience
exploited
the
religious hypothesis
so as to
carry
his
martyrdom
to the
ghastliest pitch
of
agonised
intensity. Owing something
to God: this
thought
becomes
his instrument of torture. He
apprehends
in God the
most extreme antitheses that he can find to his own char-
acteristic and ineradicable animal
instincts,
he himself
gives
a new
interpretation
to these animal instincts as be-
ing against
what he "owes" to God
(as enmity, rebellion,
and revolt
against
the
"Lord,"
the
"Father,"
the
"Sire,"
the
"Beginning
of the
world"),
he
places
himself between
the horns of the
dilemma,
"God" and "Devil."
Every
negation
which he is inclined to utter to
himself,
to the
88 THE
GENEALOGY OF MORALS
nature,
naturalness,
and
reality
of his
being,
he
whips
into an
ejaculation
of
"yes," uttering
it as
something
ex-
isting, living, efficient,
as
being God,
as the holiness of
God,
the
judgment
of
God,
as the
hangmanship
of
God,
as
transcendence,
as
eternity,
as
unending torment,
as
hell,
as
infinity
of
punishment
and
guilt.
This is a kind of
madness of the will in the
sphere
of
psychological cruelty
which is
absolutely unparalleled:

man's will to find him-

self
guilty
and
blameworthy
to the
point
of
inexpiability,
his will to think of himself as
punished,
without the
pun-
ishment ever
being
able to balance the
guilt,
his will to
infect and to
poison
the fundamental basis of the universe
with the
problem
of
punishment
and
guilt,
in order to cut
off once and for all
any escape
out of this
labyrinth
of
"fixed
ideas,"
his will for
rearing
an ideal

that of the
"holy
God"

face to face with which he can have

tangible
proof
of his own unworthiness. Alas for this mad melan-
choly
beast man! What
phantasies
invade
it,
what
par-
oxysms
of
perversity, hysterical senselessness,
and mental
bestiality
break out
immediately,
at the
very slightest
check on its
being
the beast of action ! All this is exces-
sively interesting,
but at the same time tainted with a
black,
gloomy, enervating melancholy,
so that a forcible
veto must be invoked
against looking
too
long
into these
abysses.
Here is
disease,
undubitably,
the most
ghastly
disease that has as
yet played
havoc
among
men: and he
who can still hear
(but
man turns now deaf ears to such
sounds),
how in this
night
of torment and nonsense there
has
rung
out the
cry
of
love,
the
cry
of the most
passion-
ate
ecstasy,
of
redemption
in
love,
he turns
away gripped
"GUILT" AND "BAD CONSCIENCE"
89
by
an invincible horror

in man there is so much that is

ghastly

too
long
has the world been a mad-house.
23-
Let this suffice once for all
concerning
the
origin
of the
"holy
God." The fact that in
itself
the
conception
of
gods
is not bound to lead
necessarily
to this
degradation
of the
imagination (a temporary representation
of whose
vagar-
ies we felt bound to
give),
the fact that there exist nobler
methods of
utilising
the invention of
gods
than in this
self-crucifixion and self-
degradation
of
man,
in which the
last two thousand
years
of
Europe
have been
past
mas-
ters

these facts can

fortunately
be still
perceived
from
every glance
that we cast at the Grecian
gods,
these mir-
rors of noble and
grandiose men,
in which the animal in
man felt itself
deified,
and did not devour itself in sub-
jective frenzy.
These Greeks
long
utilised their
gods
as
simple
buffers
against
the "bad conscience"so that
they
could continue to
enjoy
their freedom of soul:
this,
of
course,
is
diametrically opposed
to
Christianity's theory
of its
god. They
went
very jar
on this
principle,
did these
splendid
and lion-hearted
children;
and there is no lesser
authority
than that of the Homeric Zeus for
making
them
realise
occasionally
that
they
are
taking
life too
casually.
"Wonderful," says
he on one occasion

it has to do with
the case of
vEgistheus,
a
very
bad case indeed

"Wonderful how
they grumble,
the mortals
against
the
immortals
9
o THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
Only jrom
us,
they presume,
comes
evil,
but in their
folly,
Fashion
they, spite
of
fate,
the doom of their own dis-
aster."
Yet the reader will note and observe that this
Olympian
spectator
and
judge
is far from
being angry
with them
and
thinking
evil of them on this score. "How
joolisJi they
are,"
so thinks he of the misdeeds of mortals

and
"folly,"
"imprudence,"
"a little brain disturbance." and
nothing
more,
are what the
Greeks,
even of the
strongest,
bravest
period,
have admitted to be the
ground
of much that is
evil and fatal.

Folly,
not
sin,
do
you
understand? . . .
But even this brain disturbance was a
problem

"Come,
how is it even
possible?
How could it have
really
got
in
brains like
ours,
the brains of men of aristocratic
ancestry,
of men of
fortune,
of men of
good
natural
endowments,
of men of the best
society,
of men of
nobility
and virtue?"
This was the
question
that for
century
on
century
the
aristocratic Greek
put
to himself when confronted with
every (to
him
incomprehensible) outrage
and
sacrilege
with which one of his
peers
had
polluted
himself. "It
must be that a
god
had infatuated
him,"
he would
say
at
last, nodding
his head.

This solution is
typical
of the
(reeks,
. . .
accordingly
the
gods
in those times sub-
served the functions of
justifying
man to a certain extent
even in evilin those
days they
took
upon
themselves
not the
punishment,
but,
what is more
noble,
the
guilt.
24.
I conclude with three
queries,
as
you
will sec. "Is an
"GUILT" AND "BAD CONSCIENCE"
91
ideal
actually
set
up here,
or is one
pulled
down?" I am
perhaps
asked. . . . But have
ye sufficiently
asked
your-
selves how dear a
payment
has the
setting up
of
every
ideal in the world exacted? To achieve that consumma-
tion how much truth must
always
be traduced and mis-
understood,
how
many
lies must be
sanctified,
hew much
conscience has
got
to be
disturbed,
how
many pounds
of
"God" have
got
to be sacrificed
every
time?^ To enable
a
sanctuary
to be set
up
a
sanctuary
has
got
to be de-
stroyed:
that is a law

show me an instance where it has

not been fulfilled! . . . We modern
men,
we inherit the
immemorial tradition of
vivisecting
the
conscience,
and
practising cruelty
to our animal selves. That is the
sphere
of our most
protracted training, perhaps
of our artistic
prowess,
at
any
rate of our dilettantism and our
perverted
taste. Man has for too
long regarded
his natural
pro-
clivities with an "evil
eye,"
so that
eventually they
have
become in his
system
affiliated to a bad conscience. A
converse endeavour would be
intrinsically
feasible

but
who is
strong enough
to
attempt
it?

namely,
to affiliate
to the "bad conscience" all those unnatural
proclivities,
all those transcendental
aspirations, contrary
to
sense,
instinct, nature,
and animalism

in
short,
all
past
and
present ideals,
which are all ideals
opposed
to
life,
and
traducing
the world. To whom is one to turn
nowadays
with such
hopes
and
pretensions?

It is
just
the
good
men that we should thus
bring
about our
ears;
and in ad-
dition,
as stands to
reason,
the
indolent,
the
hedgers,
the
vain,
the
hysterical,
the tired. . . . What is more offensive
or more
thoroughly
calculated to
alienate,
than
giving any
hint of the exalted
severity
with which we treat ourselves?
92
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
And
again
how
conciliatory,
how full of love does all the
world show itself towards us so soon as we do as all the
world
does,
and 'iet ourselves
go"
like all the world. For
such a consummation we need
spirits
of
different
calibre
than seems
really
feasible in this
age; spirits
rendered
potent through
wars and
victories,
to whom
conquest,
adventure, danger,
even
pain,
have become a
need; for
such a consummation we need habituation to
sharp,
rare
air,
to winter
wanderings,
to literal and
metaphorical
ice
and
mountains;
we even need a kind of sublime
malice,
a
supreme
and most self-conscious insolence of
knowledge,
which is the
appanage
of
great health;
we need
(to
sum-
marise the awful
truth) just
this
great
health'.
Is this even feasible
to-day?
. . . But some
day,
in a
stronger age
than this
rotting
and
introspective present,
must he in sooth come to
us,
even the redeemer of
great
love and
scorn,
the creative
spirit, rebounding by
the im-
petus
of his own force back
again away
from
every
trans-
cendental
plane
and
dimension,
he whose solitude is mis-
understanded of the
people,
as
though
it were a
flight
jrom reality;

while
actually
it is
only
his
diving,
bur-
rowing,
and
penetrating
into
reality,
so that when he
comes
again
to the
light
he can at once
bring
about
by
these means the
redemption
of this
reality;
its
redemption
from the curse which the old ideal has laid
upon
it. This
man of the
future,
who in this wise will redeem us from
the old
ideal,
as he will from that ideal's
necessary
corol-
lary
of
great nausea,
will to
nothingness,
and
Nihilism;
this tocsin of noon and of the
great verdict,
which renders
the will
again free,
who
gives
back to the world its
goal
and to man his
hope,
this Antichrist and
Antinihilist,
this
"GUILT" AND "BAD CONSCIENCE"
93
conqueror
of God and of
Nothingness

he must one
day
come.
25-
But what am I
talking
of?
Enough! Enough?
At
this
juncture
I have
only
one
proper course,
silence:
otherwise I
trespass
on a domain
open
alone to one who
is
younger
than
I,
one
stronger,
more
"future"
than I

open
alone to
ZaratJmstra,
Zarathustra the
godless.
THIRD ESSAY.
WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS?
"Careless, mocking,
forceful

so does wisdom wish us:

she is a
woman,
and never loves
any
one but a warrior."
Thus
Spake
Zarathustra.
i.
What is the
meaning
of ascetic ideals? In
artists,
nothing,
or too
much;
in
philosophers
and
scholars,
a kind
of "flair" and instinct for the conditions most favourable
to advanced intellectualism;
in
women,
at best an addi-
tional seductive
fascination,
a little morbidezza on a fine
piece
of
flesh,
the
angelhood
of a
fat, pretty
animal;
in
physiological
failures and whiners
(in
the
majority
of
mortals),
an
attempt
to
pose
as "too
good"
for this
world,
a
holy
form of
debauchery,
their chief
weapon
in the bat-
tle with
lingering pain
and
ennui;
in
priests,
the actual
priestly
faith,
their best
engine
of
power,
and also the
supreme authority
for
power;
in
saints, finally
a
pretext
for
hibernation,
their novissima
gloria cupido,
their
peace
in
nothingness ("God"),
their form of madness.
but in the
very
fact that the ascetic ideal has meant so
94
ASCETIC IDEALS
95
much to
man,
lies
expressed
the fundamental feature of
man's
will,
his horror vacui: he needs a
goal

and he will
sooner will
nothingness
than not will at all.

Am I not
understood?

Have I not been understood?

"Certainly
not,
sir?"

Well, let us
begin
at the
beginning.
2.
What is the
meaning
of ascetic ideals?
Or,
to take an
individual case in
regard
to which I have often been con-
sulted,
what is the
meaning,
for
example,
of an artist like
Richard
Wagner paying homage
to
chastity
in his old
age?
He had
always
done
so,
of
course,
in a certain
sense,
but it was not till
quite
the
end,
that he did so in an
ascetic sense. What is the
meaning
of this
"change
of at-
titude,"
this radical revolution in his attitude

for that
was what it was?
Wagner
veered
thereby straight
round
into his own
opposite.
What is the
meaning
of an artist
veering
round into his own
opposite?
At this
point
(granted
that we do not mind
stopping
a little over this
question),
we
immediately
call to mind the
best, strong-
est, gayest,
and boldest
period,
that there
perhaps
ever was
in
Wagner's
life: that was the
period
when he was
gen-
uinely
and
deeply occupied
with the idea of "Luther's
Wedding."
Who knows what chance is
responsible
for
our now
having
the Meister
singers
instead of this wed-
ding
music? And how much in the latter is
perhaps just
an echo of the former? But there is no doubt but that
the theme would have dealt with the
praise
of
chastity.
And
certainly
it would also have dealt with the
praise
of
sensuality,
and even
so,
it would seem
quite
in
order,
and
96
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
even
so,
it would have been
equally Wagnerian.
For
there is no
necessary
antithesis between
chastity
and sen-
suality: every good marriage, every
authentic heart-felt
love transcends this antithesis.
Wagner would,
it seems
to
me,
have done well to have
brought
this
pleasing reality
home once
again
to his
Germans, by
means of a bold and
graceful
"Luther
Comedy,"
for there were and are
among
the Germans
many
revilers of
sensuality;
and
perhaps
Luther's
greatest
merit lies
just
in the fact of his
having
had the
courage
of his
sensuality (it
used to be
called,
prettily enough, "evangelistic freedom'').
But even in
those cases where that antithesis between
chastity
and
sensuality
does
exist,
there has
fortunately
been for some
time no
necessity
for it to be in
any way
a
tragic
anti-
thesis. This
should,
at
any rate,
be the case with all be-
ings
who are sound in mind and
body,
who are far from
reckoning
their delicate balance between "animal" and
"angel,"
as
being
on the face of it one of the
principles op-
posed
to existence

the most subtle and brilliant

spirits,
such as
Goethe,
such as
Hafiz,
have even seen in this a
further
charm of life. Such "conflicts"
actually
allure
one to life. On the other
hand,
it is
only
too clear that
when once these ruined swine are reduced to
worshipping
chastity

and there are such swine

they only
see and
worship
in it the antithesis to
themselves,
the antithesis
to ruined swine.
Oh,
what a
tragic grunting
and
eager-
ness! You can
just
think of it

they worship
that
pain-
ful and
superfluous contrast,
which Richard
Wagner
in
his latter
days undoubtedly
wished to set to
music,
and
to
place
on the
stage!
"For what
purpose, \or
sooth'"
ASCETIC IDEALS
97
as we
may reasonably
ask. What did the swine matter
to
him;
what do
they
matter to us?
At this
point
it is
impossible
to
beg
the further
question
of what he
really
had to do with that
manly (ah,
so un-
manly) country bumpkin,
that
poor
devil and
natural,
Parsifal,
whom he
eventually
made a Catholic
by
such
fraudulent
devices. What? Was this Parsifal
really
meant
seriously?
One
might
be
tempted
to
suppose
the
contrary,
even to wish it

that the
Wagnerian
Parsifal
was meant
joyously,
like a
concluding play
of a
trilogy
or
satyric
drama,
in which
Wagner
the
tragedian
wished to
take farewell of
us,
of
himself,
above all of
tragedy,
and
to do so in a manner that should be
quite
fitting
and
worthy,
that
is,
with an excess of the most extreme and
flippant parody
of the
tragic itself,
of the
ghastly earthly
seriousness
and
earthly
woe of old

a
parody
of that most
crude
phase
in the unnaturalness of the ascetic
ideal,
that had at
length
been overcome.
That,
as I have
said,
would have been
quite worthy
of a
great tragedian;
who
like
every
artist first attains the
supreme pinnacle
of his
greatness
when he can look down into
himself
and his
art,
when he can
laugh
at himself. Is
Wagner's
Parsifal his
secret
laugh
of
superiority
over
himself,
the
triumph
of
that
supreme
artistic freedom and artistic
transcendency
which he has at
length
attained.
We
might,
I
repeat,
wish
it were
so,
for what can
Parsifal,
taken
seriously,
amount
to? Is it
really necessary
to see in it
(according
to an ex-
g8
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
pression
once used
against me)
the
product
of an insane
hate of
knowledge, mind,
and flesh? A curse on flesh and
spirit
in one breath of hate? An
apostasy
and reversion
to the morbid Christian and obscurantist ideals? And
finally
a
self-negation
and self-elimination on the
part
of
an
artist,
who till then had devoted all the
strength
of his
will to the
contrary, namely,
the
highest
artistic
expres-
sion of soul and
body.
And not
only
his
art;
of his life as
well.
Just
remember with what enthusiasm
Wagner
fol-
lowed in the
footsteps
of Feuerbach. Feuerbach's motto
of
"healthy sensuality" rang
in the ears of
Wagner
dur-
ing
the thirties and forties of the
century,
as it did in the
ears of
many
Germans
(they
dubbed themselves
"Young
Germans"),
like the word of
redemption.
Did he event-
ually change
Ids mind on the
subject?
For it seems at
any
rate that he
eventually
wished to
change
his teach-
ing
on that
subject
. . . and not
only
is that the case
with the Parsifal
trumpets
on the
stage:
in the
melancholy,
cramped,
and embarrassed lucubrations of his later
years,
there are a hundred
places
in which there are manifesta-
tions of a secret wish and
will,
a
despondent,
uncertain,
unavowed will to
preach
actual
retrogression,
conversion,
Christianity,
medkevalism,
and to
say
to his
disciples,
"All is
vanity!
Seek salvation elsewhere!" Even the
"blood of the Redeemer" is once invoked.
Let me
speak
out
my
mind in a case like
this,
which
has
many painful
elements

and it is a
typical
case: it is
certainly
best to
separate
an artist from his work so com-
ASCETIC IDEALS
99
pletely
that he cannot be taken as
seriously
as his work.
He is after all
merely
the
presupposition
of his
work,
the
womb,
the
soil,
in certain cases the
dung
and
manure,
on
which and out of which it
grows

and
consequently,
in
most
cases, something
that must be
forgotten
if the work
itself is to be
enjoyed.
The
insight
into the
origin
of a
work is a matter for
psychologists
and
vivisectors,
but
never either in the
present
or the future for the
aesthetes,
the artists. The author and creator of Parsifal was as
little
spared
the
necessity
of
sinking
and
living
himself
into the terrible
depths
and foundations of mediaeval soul-
contrasts,
the
necessity
of a
malignant
abstraction from
all intellectual
elevation, severity,
and
discipline,
the ne-
cessity
of a kind of mental
perversity (if
the reader will
pardon
me such a
word),
as little as a
pregnant
woman is
spared
the horrors and marvels of
pregnancy, which,
as I
have
said,
must be
forgotten
if the child is to be
enjoyed.
We must
guard
ourselves
against
the
confusion,
into
which an artist himself would fall
only
too
easily (to
em-
ploy
the
English terminology)
out of
psychological
"con-
tiguity";
as
though
the artist' himself
actually
were the
object
which he is able to
represent, imagine,
and
express.
In
point
of
fact,
the
position
is that even if he conceived
he were such an
object,
he would
certainly
not
represent,
conceive, express
it. Homer would not have created an
Achilles,
nor Goethe a
Faust,
if Homer had been an
Achilles or if Goethe had been a Faust. A
complete
and
perfect
artist is to all
eternity separated
from the
"real,"
from the actual
;
on the other
hand,
it will be
appreciated
that he can at times
get
tired to the
point
of
despair
of this
eternal
"unreality"
and falseness of his innermost
being

ioo THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS

and that he then sometimes
attempts
to
trespass
on to the
most forbidden
ground,
on
reality,
and
attempts
to have
real existence. With what success? The success will be
guessed

it is the
typical velleity
of the
artist;
the same
velleity
to which
Wagner
fell a victim in his old
age,
and
for which he had to
pay
so
dearly
and so
fatally
(he
lost
thereby
his most valuable
friends).
But after
all, quite
apart
from this
velleity,
who would not wish
emphatically
for
Wagner's
own sake that he had taken farewell of us
and of his art in a
different
manner,
not with a
Parsifal,
but in more
victorious,
more self-confident,
more
Wag-
nerian
style

a
style
less
misleading,
a
style
less
ambig-
uous with
regard
to his whole
meaning,
less
Schopen-
hauerian,
less Nihilistic? . . .
5-
WTiat, then,
is the
meaning
of ascetic ideals? In the
case of an artist we are
getting
to understand their mean-
ing: Nothing
at all . . . or so much that it is as
good
as
nothing
at all.
Indeed,
what is the use of them? Our
artists have for a
long
time
past
not taken
up
a
sufficiently
independent
attitude,
either in the world or
against
it,
to
warrant their valuations and the
changes
in these valua-
tions
exciting
interest. At all times
they
have
played
the
valet of some
morality, philosophy,
or
religion, quite apart
from the fact that
unfortunately they
have often
enough
been the
inordinately supple
courtiers of their clients and
patrons,
and the
inquisitive
toadies of the
powers
that are
existing,
or even of the new
powers
to come. To
put
it at
the
lowest, they always
need a
rampart,
a
support,
an al-
ready
constituted
authority:
artists never stand
by
them-
ASCETIC IDEALS
101
selves, standing
alone is
opposed
to their
deepest
instincts.
So,
for
example,
did Richard
Wagner
take,
"when the
time had
come,"
the
philosopher Schopenhauer
for his
covering
man in
front,
for his
rampart.
Who would con-
sider it even
thinkable,
that he would have had the
courage
for an ascetic
ideal,
without the
support
afforded him
by
the
philosophy
of
Schopenhauer,
without the
authority
of
Schopenhauer,
which dominated
Europe
in the seventies?
(This
is without consideration of the
question
whether an
artist without the milk
*
of an
orthodoxy
would have been
possible
at
all.)
This
brings
us to the more serious
ques-
tion: What is the
meaning
of a real
philosopher paying
homage
to the ascetic
ideal,
a
really self-dependent
intel-
lect like
Schopenhauer,
a man and
knight
with a
glance
of
bronze,
who has the
courage
to be
himself,
who knows
how to stand alone without first
waiting
for men who cover
him in
front,
and the nods of his
superiors?
Let us now
consider at once the remarkable attitude of
Schopenhauer
towards
art,
an attitude which has even a fascination for
certain
types.
For that is
obviously
the reason
why
Richard
Wagner
all at once went over to
Schopenhauer
(persuaded thereto,
as one
knows, by
a
poet, Herwegh),
went over so
completely
that there ensued the
cleavage
of a
complete
theoretic contradiction between his earlier
and his later aesthetic faiths

the
earlier,
for
example,
being expressed
in
Opera
and
Drama,
the later in the
writings
which he
published
from
1870
onwards. In
par-
ticular, Wagner
from that time onwards
(and
this is the
volte-face
which alienates us the
most)
had no
scruples
*
An allusion to the celebrated
monologue
in William Tell.
102 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
about
changing
his
judgment concerning
the value and
position
of music itself. What did he care if
up
to that
time he had made of music a
means,
a
medium,
a
"woman,"
that in order to thrive needed an
end,
a man

that
is,
the drama? He
suddenly
realised that more could
be effected
by
the
novelty
of the
Schopenhauerian
theory
in
majoretn
musiccc
gloriam

that is to
say, by
means of
the
sovereignty
of
music,
as
Schopenhauer
understood
it;
music abstracted from and
opposed
to all the other
arts,
music as the
independent
art-in-itself,
not like the otfc
arts, affording
reflections of the
phenomenal
world,
but
rather the
language
of the will
itself, speaking
straight
out
of the
"abyss"
as its most
personal,
original,
and direct
manifestation. This
extraordinary
rise in the value of
music
(a
rise which seemed to
grow
out of the
Schopen-
hauerian
philosophy)
was at once
accompanied by
an un-
precedented
rise in the estimation in which the musician
himself was held: he became now an
oracle,
a
priest, nay,
more than a
priest,
a kind of
mouthpiece
for the "intrinsic
essence of
things,"
a
telephone
from the other world

from henceforward he talked not

only
music,
did this ven-
triloquist
of
God,
he talked
metaphysic;
what wonder that
one
day
he
eventually
talked ascetic ideals!
6.
Schopenhauer
has made use of the Kantian treatm?nt
of the aesthetic
problem

though
he
certainly
did not re-
gard
it with the Kantian
eyes.
Kant
thought
that he
showed honour to art when he favoured and
placed
in the
foreground
those of the
predicates
of the
beautiful,
which
ASCETIC IDEALS
103
constitute the honour of
knowledge: impersonality
and
universality.
This is not the
place
to discuss whether this
was not a
complete mistake;
all that I wish to
emphasise
is that
Kant, just
like other
philosophers,
instead of en-
visaging
the aesthetic
problem
from the
standpoint
of the
experiences
of the artist
(the creator),
has
only
considered
art and
beauty
from the
standpoint
of the
spectator,
and
has
thereby imperceptibly imported
the
spectator
himself
into the idea of the "beautiful"! But if
only
the
philoso-
phers
of the beautiful had sufficient
knowledge
of this
"spectator"!

Knowledge
of him as a
great
fact of
per-
sonality,
as a
great experience,
as a wealth of
strong
and
most individual
events, desires, surprises,
and
raptures
in
the
sphere
of
beauty! But,
as I
feared,
the
contrary
was
always
the case. And so we
get
from our
philosophers,
from the
very beginning,
definitions on which the lack of
a subtler
personal experience squats
like a fat worm of
crass
error,
as it does on Kant's famous definition of the
beautiful. "That is
beautiful," says Kant,
"which
pleases
without
interesting."
Without
interesting! Compare
this
definition with this other
one,
made
by
a real
"spectator"
and "artist"

by Stendhal,
who once called the beautiful
une
promesse
de bonheur.
Here,
at
any rate,
the one
point
which Kant makes
prominent
in the aesthetic
position
is
repudiated
and eliminated

le desinteressement. Who
is
right,
Kant or Stendhal?
When, forsooth,
our aesthetes
never
get
tired of
throwing
into the scales in Kant's favour
the fact that under the
magic
of
beauty
men can look at
even naked female statues "without
interest,"
w
T
e can
certainly laugh
a little at their
expense:

in
regard
to
this ticklish
point
the
experiences
of artists are more
104
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
''interesting,"
and at
any
rate
Pygmalion
was not neces-
sarily
an "unaesthetic man." Let us think all the better
of the innocence of our
aesthetes,
reflected as it is in such
arguments;
let
us,
for
instance,
count to Kant's honour
the
country-parson
naivete of his doctrine
concerning
the
peculiar
character of the sense of touch! And here we
come back to
Schopenhauer,
who stood in much closer
neighbourhood
to the arts than did
Kant,
and
yet
never
escaped
outside the
pale
of the Kantian
definition;
how
was that? The circumstance is marvellous
enough:
he
interprets
the
expression,
"without
interest,"
in the most
personal fashion,
out of an
experience
which must in his
case have been
part
and
parcel
of his
regular
routine. On
few
subjects
does
Schopenhauer speak
with such
certainty
as on the
working
of aesthetic
contemplation:
he
says
of
it that it
simply
counteracts sexual
interest,
like
lupulin
and
camphor;
he never
gets
tired of
glorifying
this
escape
from the "Life-will" as the
great advantage
and
utility
of
the aesthetic state. In
fact,
one is
tempted
to ask if his
fundamental
conception
of Will and
Idea,
the
thought
that
there can
only
exist freedom from the "will"
by
means of
"idea,"
did not
originate
in a
generalisation
from this sex-
ual
experience.
(In
all
questions concerning
the
Schopen-
hauerian
philosophy,
one
should,
by
the
bye,
never lose
sight
of the consideration that it is the
conception
of a
youth
of
twenty-six,
so that it
participates
not
only
in
what is
peculiar
to
Schopenhauer's
life,
but in what is
peculiar
to that
special period
of his
life.)
Let us
listen,
for
instance,
to one of the most
expressive among
the
countless
passages
which he has written in honour of the
aesthetic state
(World
as Will and
Idea,
i.
231);
let us
ASCETIC IDEALS
105
listen to the
tone,
the
suffering,
the
happiness,
the
grati-
tude,
with which such words are uttered: "This is the
painless
state which
Epicurus praised
as the
highest good
and as the state of the
gods;
we are
during
that moment
freed from the vile
pressure
of the
will,
we celebrate the
Sabbath of the will's hard
labour,
the wheel of Ixion
stands still." What vehemence of
language!
What
images
of
anguish
and
protracted
revulsion! How almost
pathological
is that
temporal
antithesis between "that mo-
ment" and
everything else,
the "wheel of
Ixion,"
"the
hard labour of the
will,"
"the vile
pressure
of the will."
But
granted
that
Schopenhauer
was a hundred times
right
for himself
personally,
how does that
help
our
insight
into
the nature of the beautiful?
Schopenhauer
has described
one effect of the
beautiful,

the
calming
of the
will,
but is this effect
really
normal? As has been
mentioned,
Stendhal,
an
equally
sensual but more
happily
constituted
nature than
Schopenhauer, gives prominence
to another
effect of the "beautiful." "The beautiful
promises hap-
piness."
To him it is
just
the excitement of the will
(the
"interest") by
the
beauty
that seems the essential fact.
And does not
Schopenhauer ultimately lay
himself
open
to
the
objection,
that he is
quite wrong
in
regarding
himself
as a Kantian on this
point,
that he has
absolutely
failed
to understand in a Kantian sense the Kantian definition
of the beautiful

that the beautiful

pleased
him as well
by
means of an
interest, by means,
in
fact,
of the
strong-
est and most
personal
interest of
all,
that of the victim
of torture who
escapes
from his torture?

And to come
back
again
to our first
question,
"What is the
meaning
of a
philosopher paying homage
to ascetic ideals?" We
106 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
get now,
at
any rate,
a first
hint;
he wishes to
escape from
a torture.
Let us beware of
making
dismal faces at the word
"torture"

there is
certainly
in this case
enough
to de-
duct, enough
to discount

there is even
something
to
laugh
at. For we must
certainly
not underestimate the
fact that
Schopenhauer,
who in
practice
treated
sexuality
as a
personal enemy
(including
its
tool, woman,
that
"instrumentum
diaboli"),
needed enemies to
keep
him in
a
good
humour;
that he loved
grim,
bitter,
blackish-green
words;
that he
raged
for the sake of
raging,
out of
pas-
sion;
that he would have
grown ill,
would have become
a
pessimist
(for
he was not a
pessimist,
however much he
wished to
be),
without his
enemies,
without
Hegel,
woman, sensuality,
and the whole "will for existence"
"keeping
on." Without them
Schopenhauer
would not
have
"kept on,"
that is a safe
wager;
he would have run
away:
but his enemies held him
fast,
his enemies
always
enticed him back
again
to
existence,
his wrath was
just
as theirs was to the ancient
Cynics,
his balm,
his recrea-
tion,
his
recompense,
his remcd'nim
against disgust,
his
liappiness.
So much with
regard
to what is most
per-
sonal
in the case of
Schopenhauer;
on the other ha
there is still much which is
typical
in him

and
only
now
we come back to our
problem.
It is an
accepted
and
indisputable
fact,
so
long
as there are
philosophers
in
the
world,
and wherever
philosophers
have existed
(from
India to
England,
to take the
opposite poles
of
philo-
ASCETIC IDEALS
107
sophic ability),
that there exists a real irritation and
rancour on the
part
of
philosophers
towards
sensuality.
Schopenhauer
is
merely
the most
eloquent,
and if one has
the ear for
it,
also the most
fascinating
and
enchanting
outburst.
There
similarly
exists a real
philosophic
bias
and affection for the whole ascetic
ideal;
there should be
no illusions on this score. Both these
feelings,
as has been
said, belong
to the
type;
if a
philosopher
lacks both of
them,
then he is

you may
be certain of it

never
any-
thing
but a
"pseudo."
What does this mean? For this
state of affairs must first be
interpreted:
in itself it stands
there
stupid
to all
eternity,
like
any "Thing-in-itself."
Every animal, including
la bete
philosophe,
strives in-
stinctively
after an
optimum
of favourable
conditions,
un-
der which he can let his whole
strength
have
play,
and
achieves his maximum consciousness of
power;
with
equal
instinctiveness,
and with a fine
perceptive
flair which is
superior
to
any reason, every
animal shudders
mortally
at
every
kind of disturbance and hindrance which ob-
structs or could obstruct his
way
to that
optimum (it
is
not his
way
to
happiness
of which I am
talking,
but his
way
to
power,
to
action,
the most
powerful action,
and
in
point
of fact in
many
cases his
way
to
unhappiness)
.
Similarly,
the
philosopher
shudders
mortally
at
marriage,
together
with all that could
persuade
him to it

marriage
as a fatal hindrance on the
way
to the
optimum. Up
to
the
present
what
great philosophers
have been married?
Heracleitus, Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Kant,
Schopenhauer

they
were not
married, and, further,
one
cannot
imagine
them as married. A married
philosopher
belongs
to
comedy,
that is
my rule;
as for that
exception
io8 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
of a Socrates

the malicious Socrates married

himself,
it
seems, ironice, just
to
prove
this
very
rule.
Every philoso-
pher
would
say,
as Buddha
said,
when the birth of a son
was announced to him: "Rahoula has been born to
me,
a fetter has been
forged
for me"
(Rahoula
means here
"a little
demon") ;
there must come an hour of reflection
to
every
"free
spirit" (granted
that he has had
previ-
ously
an hour of
thoughtlessness), just
as one came once
to the same Buddha:
"Narrowly cramped,"
he
reflected,
"is life in the
house;
it is a
place
of
uncleanness;
freedom
is found in
leaving
the house." Because he
thought
like
this,
he left the house. So
many bridges
to
independence
are shown in the ascetic
ideal,
that the
philosopher
can-
not refrain from exultation and
clapping
of hands when
he hears the
history
of all those resolute
ones,
who on one
day
uttered a
nay
to all servitude and went into some
desert;
even
granting
that
they
were
only strong asses,
and the absolute
opposite
of
strong
minds.
What, then,
does the ascetic ideal mean in a
philosopher?
This is
my
answer

it will have been

guessed long ago:
when he sees
this ideal the
philosopher
smiles because he sees therein
an
optimum
of the conditions of the
highest
and boldest
intellectuality;
he does not
thereby deny '"existence,"
he
rather affirms
thereby
his existence and
only
his
existence,
and this
perhaps
to the
point
of not
being
far off the
blasphemous wish, pereat mundus, fiat philosophia, fiat
pJrilosophus, fiaml
. . .
8.
These
philosophers, you see,
are
by
no means uncor-
ASCETIC IDEALS
109
rupted
witnesses and
judges
of the value of the ascetic
ideal.
They
think
of
themselves

what is the "saint" to

them?
They
think of that which to them
personally
is
most
indispensable;
of freedom from
compulsion,
disturb-
ance, noise;
freedom from
business, duties, cares;
of a
clear
head;
of the
dance, spring,
and
flight
of
thoughts;
of
good
air

rare, clear, free, dry,

as is the air on the
heights,
in which
every
animal creature becomes more in-
tellectual and
gains wings; they
think of
peace
in
every
cellar;
all the hounds
neatly chained;
no
baying
of
enmity
and uncouth
rancour;
no remorse of wounded
ambition;
quiet
and submissive internal
organs, busy
as
mills,
but
unnoticed;
the heart
alien, transcendent, future, posthu-
mous

to
summarise, they
mean
by
the ascetic ideal the
joyous
asceticism of a deified and
newly fledged animal,
sweeping
over life rather than
resting.
We know what
are the three
great
catch-words of the ascetic ideal:
pov-
erty, humility, chastity;
and now
just
look
closely
at the
life of all the
great
fruitful inventive
spirits

you
will
always
find
again
and
again
these three
qualities up
to a
certain extent. Not for a
minute,
as is
self-evident,
as
though, perchance, they
were
part
of their virtues

what
has this
type
of man to do with virtues

but as the most

essential and natural conditions of their best
existence,
their
finest
fruitfulness. In this connection it is
quite pos-
sible that their
predominant
intellectualism had first to
curb an
unruly
and irritable
pride,
or an insolent sensual-
ism,
or that it had all its work cut out to maintain its
wish for the "desert"
against perhaps
an
inclination to
luxury
and
dilettantism,
or
similarly against
an
extrava-
gant liberality
of heart and hand. But their
intellect did
no THE
GENEALOGY OF MORALS
effect all
this,
simply
because it was the dominant
instinct,
which carried
through
its orders in the case of all the
other instincts. It effects it
still: if it ceased to do
so,
it
would
simply
not be dominant. But there is not one iota
of "virtue" in all this.
Further,
the
desert,
of which I
just spoke,
in which the
strong, independent,
and well-
equipped spirits
retreat into their
hermitage

oh, how
different is it from the cultured classes' dream of a desert!
In certain
cases,
in
fact,
the cultured classes themselves
are the desert. And it is certain that all the actors of
the intellect would not endure this desert for a minute.
It is
nothing
like romantic and
Syrian enough
for
them,
nothing
like
enough
of a
stage
desert! Here as well there
are
plenty
of
asses,
but at this
point
the resemblance
ceases. But a desert
nowadays
is
something
like this

perhaps
a deliberate
obscurity;
a
getting-out-of
the
way
of one's
self;
a fear of
noise, admiration,
papers,
influence;
a little
office,
a
daily task,
something
that hides rather
than
brings
to
light;
sometimes
associating
with
harmless,
cheerful beasts and
fowls,
the
sight
of which
refreshes;
a
mountain for
company,
but not a dead
one,
one with
eyes
(that is,
with
lakes)
;
in certain cases even a room in a
crowded hotel where one can reckon on not
being recog-
nised,
and on
being
able to talk with
impunity
to
every
one: here is the desert

oh,
it is
lonely enough,
believe
me! I
grant
that when Heracleitus retreated to the courts
and cloisters of the colossal
temple
of
Artemis,
that
"wilderness" was
worthier;
why
do we lack such
temples?
(perchance
we do not lack them: I
just
think of
my
splendid study
in the Piazza di San
Marco,
in
spring,
of
course,
and in the
morning,
between ten and
twelve).
ASCETIC IDEALS in
But that which Heracleitus shunned is still
just
what we
too avoid
nowadays:
the noise and democratic babble of
the
Ephesians,
their
politics,
their news from the
"empire"
(I mean,
of
course, Persia),
their market-trade in "the
things
of
to-day"

for there is one

thing
from which we
philosophers especially
need a rest

from the
things
of
"to-day."
We honour the
silent,
the
cold,
the
noble,
the
far,
the
past, everything,
in
fact,
at the
sight
of which
the soul is not bound to brace itself
up
and defend itself

something
with which one can
speak
without
speaking
aloud.
Just
listen now to the tone a
spirit
has when it
speaks; every spirit
has its own tone and loves its own
tone. That
thing yonder,
for
instance,
is bound to be an
agitator,
that
is,
a hollow
head,
a hollow
mug:
whatever
may go
into
him, everything
comes back from him dull
and
thick, heavy
with the echo of the
great
void. That
spirit yonder nearly always speaks
hoarse: has
he, per-
chance, thought
himself hoarse? It
may
be so

ask the
physiologists

but he who thinks in

words,
thinks as a
speaker
and not as a thinker
(it
shows that he does not
think of
objects
or think
objectively,
but
only
of his rela-
tions with
objects

that,
in
point
of
fact,
he
only
thinks
of himself and his
audience).
This third one
speaks
aggressively,
he comes too near our
body,
his breath
blows on us

we shut our mouth

involuntarily, although
he
speaks
to us
through
a book: the tone of his
style
supplies
the reason

he has no
time,
he has small faith
in
himself,
he finds
expression
now or never. But a
spirit
who is sure of himself
speaks softly;
he seeks
secrecy,
he
lets himself be awaited. A
philosopher
is
recognised by
the fact that he shuns three brilliant and
noisy things

ii2 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS

fame, princes,
and women: which is not to
say
that
they
do not come to him. He shuns
every glaring light:
therefore he shuns his time and its
"daylight."
Therein
he is as a
shadow;
the
deeper
sinks the
sun,
the
greater
grows
the shadow. As for his
humility,
he
endures,
as he
endures
darkness,
a certain
dependence
and
obscurity:
further,
he is afraid of the shock of
lightning,
he shudders
at the
insecurity
of a tree which is too isolated and too
exposed,
on which
every
storm vents its
temper, every
temper
its storm. His "maternal"
instinct,
his secret love
for that which
grows
in
him, guides
him into states where
he is relieved from the
necessity
of
taking
care of
himself,
in the same
way
in which the "mother" instinct in woman
has
thoroughly
maintained
up
to the
present
woman's
dependent position.
After
all, they
demand little
enough,
do these
philosophers,
their favourite motto
is,
"He who
possesses
is
possessed."
All this is
not,
as I must
say
again
and
again,
to be attributed to a
virtue,
to a meri-
torious wish for moderation and
simplicity:
but because
their
supreme
lord so demands of
them,
demands
wisely
and
inexorably;
their lord who is
eager only
for one
thing,
for which alone he
musters,
and for which alone he hoards
everything

time, strength,
love,
interest. This kind of
man likes not to be disturbed
by enmity,
he likes not to
be disturbed
by friendship,
it is a
type
which
forgets
or
despises easily.
It strikes him as bad form to
play
the
martyr,
"to
suffer
for truth"

he leaves all that to the

ambitious and to the
stage-heroes
of the
intellect,
and to
all
those,
in
fact,
who have time
enough
for such luxuries
(they themselves,
the
philosophers,
have
something
to do
for
truth).
They
make a
sparing
use of
big words; they
ASCETIC IDEALS
113
are said to be adverse to the word "truth" itself: it has a
"high
falutin'
"
ring. Finally,
as far as the
chastity
ot
philosophers
is
concerned,
the fruitfulness of this
type
of
mind is
manifestly
in another
sphere
than that of chil-
dren; perchance
in some other
sphere, too, they
have the
survival of their
name,
their little
immortality (philoso-
phers
in ancient India would
express
themselves with still
greater
boldness: "Of what use is
posterity
to him whose
soul is the
world?").
In this attitude there is not a trace
of
chastity, by
reason of
any
ascetic
scruple
or hatred of
the
flesh, any
more than it is
chastity
for an athlete or a
jockey
to abstain from
women;
it is rather the will of the
dominant
instinct,
at
any rate, during
the
period
of their
advanced
philosophic pregnancy. Every
artist knows the
harm done
by
sexual intercourse on occasions of
great
mental strain and
preparation;
as far as the
strongest
artists and those with the surest instincts are
concerned,
this is not
necessarily
a case of
experience

hard
experi-
ence

but it is
simply
their "maternal" instinct
which,
in
order to benefit the
growing work, disposes recklessly
(beyond
all its normal stocks and
supplies)
of the
vigour
of its animal
life;
the
greater power
then absorbs the
lesser. Let us now
apply
this
interpretation
to
gauge
cor-
rectly
the case of
Schopenhauer,
which we have
already
mentioned: in his
case,
the
sight
of the beautiful acted
manifestly
like a
resolving
irritant on the chief
power
of
his nature
(the power
of
contemplation
and of intense
penetration) ;
so that this
strength exploded
and became
suddenly
master of his consciousness. But this
by
no
means excludes the
possibility
of that
particular
sweet-
ness and
fulness,
which is
peculiar
to the aesthetic
state,
H4
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
springing directly
from the
ingredient
of
sensuality (just
as that "idealism" which is
peculiar
to
girls
at
puberty
originates
in the same
source)

it
may be, consequently,
that
sensuality
is not removed
by
the
approach
of the
aesthetic
state,
as
Schopenhauer believed,
but
merely
be-
comes
transfigured,
and ceases to enter into the conscious-
ness as sexual excitement.
(I
shall return once
again
to
this
point
in connection with the more delicate
problems
of the
physiology of
the
(esthetic,
a
subject
which
up
to
the
present
has been
singularly
untouched and uneluci-
dated.)
A certain
asceticism,
a
grimly gay
whole-hearted renun-
ciation, is,
as we have
seen,
one of the most favourable
conditions for the
highest intellectualism, and,
conse-
quently,
for the most natural corollaries of such intel-
lectualism: we shall therefore be
proof against any
sur-
prise
at the
philosophers
in
particular always treating
the
ascetic ideal with a certain amount of
predilection.
A
serious historical
investigation
shows the bond between
the ascetic ideal and
philosophy
to be still much
tighter
and still much
stronger.
It
may
be said that it was
only
in the
leading strings
of this ideal that
philosophy really
learnt to make its first
steps
and
baby paces

alas how
clumsily,
alas how
crossly,
alas how
ready
to tumble down
and lie on its stomach was this
shy
little
darling
of a
brat with its
bandy legs!
The
early history
of
philosophy
is like that of all
good things;

for a
long
time
they
had
not the
courage
to be
themselves, they kept always
look-
ASCETIC IDEALS
115
ing
round to see if no one would come to their
help;
fur-
ther, they
were afraid of all who looked at them.
Just
enumerate in order the
particular
tendencies and virtues
of the
philosopher
his
tendency
to
doubt,
his
tendency
to
deny,
his
tendency
to wait
(to
be
"ephectic"),
his
tendency
to
analyse, search, explore, dare,
his
tendency
to
compare
and to
equalise,
his will to be neutral and ob-
jective,
his will for
everything
which is "sine ira et
studio": has it
yet
been realised that for
quite
a
lengthy
period
these tendencies went counter to the first claims of
morality
and conscience?
(To say nothing
at all of
Reason,
which even Luther chose to call Frau
Kliiglin*
the
sly whore.)
Has it been
yet appreciated
that a
phi-
losopher,
in the event of his
arriving
at
self-consciousness,
must needs feel himself an incarnate "nitimur in
vetitum,"

and
consequently guard
himself
against
"his own sen-
sations," against
self-consciousness? It
is,
I
repeat, just
the same with all
good things,
on which we now
pride
ourselves;
even
judged by
the standard of the ancient
Greeks,
our whole modern
life,
in so far as it is not weak-
ness,
but
power
and the consciousness of
power, appears
pure "Hybris"
and
godlessness:
for the
things
which are
the
very
reverse of those which we honour
to-day,
have
had for a
long
time conscience on their
side,
and God as
their
guardian. "Hybris"
is our whole attitude to nature
nowadays,
our violation of nature with the
help
of ma-
chinery,
and all the
unscrupulous ingenuity
of our scien-
tists and
engineers. "Hybris"
is our attitude to
God,
that
is,
to some
alleged teleological
and ethical
spider
behind
the meshes of the
great trap
of the causal web. Like
*
Mistress
Sly.

Tr.
n6 THE
GENEALOGY OF MORALS
Charles the Bold in his war with Louis the
Eleventh,
we
may say, "je
combats Vunivcrsclle
araignce
,
\
"Hybris"
is
our attitude to ourselves

for we
experiment
with our-
selves in a
way
that we would not allow with
any animal,
and with
pleasure
and
curiosity open
our soul in our
living body:
what matters now to us the "salvation" of the
soul? We heal ourselves afterwards:
being
ill is instruc-
tive,
we doubt it
not,
even more instructive than
being
well

inoculators of disease seem to us

to-day
even more
necessary
than
any
medicine-men and "saviours." There
is no doubt we do violence to ourselves
nowaday.-,
we
crackers of the soul's
kernel,
we incarnate
riddles,
who are
ever
asking riddles,
as
though
life were
naught
else than
the
cracking
of a
nut;
and even
thereby
must we neces-
sarily
become
day by day
more and more
worthy
to be
asked
questions
and
worthy
to ask
them, even
thereby
do we
perchance
also become worthier to

live?
. . . All
good things
were once bad
thins;?:
from
every original
sin has
grown
an
original
virtue.
Marriage,
for
example,
seemed for a
long
time a sin
against
the
rights
of the
community
;
a man
formerly paid
a fine for
the insolence of
claiming
one woman to himself
(to
this
phase belongs,
for
instance,
the
jus priv.
to-day
still in Cambodia the
privilege
of the
priest,
that
guardian
of the
"good
old
customs").
The
soft, benevolent,
yielding, sympathetic feelings

eventually
valued so
highly
that
they
almost became
"intrinsic
values,"
were for a
very long
time
actually
despised by
their
possessors: gentleness
was then a sub-
ject
for
shame,
just
as hardness is now
(compare
B(
yond
Good and
Evil, Aph. 260).
The submission to law:
oh,
ASCETIC IDEALS
117
with what
qualms
of conscience was it that the noble races
throughout
the world renounced the vendetta and
gave
the law
power
over themselves! Law was
long
a
vetitum,
a
blasphemy,
an
innovation;
it was introduced with force
like a
force,
to which men
only
submitted with a sense of
personal
shame.
Every tiny step
forward in the world
was
formerly
made at the cost of mental and
physical
torture.
Nowadays
the whole of this
point
of view

"that not
only stepping
forward, nay, stepping
at
all,
movement, change,
all needed their countless
martyrs,"
rings
in our ears
quite strangely.
I have
put
it forward
in the Dawn
of Day, Aph.
18.
"Nothing
is
purchased
more
dearly," says
the same book a little
later,
"than the
modicum of human reason and freedom which is now
our
pride.
But that
pride
is the reason
why
it is now
almost
impossible
for us to feel in
sympathy
with those
immense
periods
of the
'Morality
of
Custom,'
which lie
at the
beginning
of the 'world's
history,' constituting
as
they
do the real decisive historical
principle
which has
fixed the character of
humanity;
those
periods,
I
repeat,
when
throughout
the world
suffering passed
for
virtue,
cruelty
for
virtue,
deceit for
virtue, revenge
for
virtue,
repudiation
of the reason for
virtue;
and
when,
con-
versely, well-being passed
current for
danger,
the desire
for
knowledge
for
danger, pity
for
danger, peace
for dan-
ger, being pitied
for
shame,
work for
shame,
madness for
divinity,
and
change
for
immorality
and incarnate cor-
ruption!"
10.
There is in the same
book, Aph. 12,
an
explanation
n8 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
of the burden of
unpopularity
under which the earliest
race of
contemplative
men had to live

despised
almost
as
widely
as
they
were first feared!
Contemplation
first
appeared
on earth in a
disguised shape,
in an
ambiguous
form,
with an evil heart and often with an
uneasy
head:
there is no doubt about it. The
inactive, brooding,
un-
warlike element in the instincts of
contemplative
men
long
invested them with a cloud of
suspicion:
the
only
way
to combat this was to excite a definite
fear.
And
the old
Brahmans,
for
example,
knew to a
nicety
how to
do this! The oldest
philosophers
were well versed in
giving
to their
very
existence and
appearance, meaning,
firmness, background,
by
reason whereof men learnt to
fear
them;
considered more
precisely, they
did this from
an even more fundamental
need,
the need of
inspiring
in
themselves fear and self-reverence. For
they
found even
in their own souls all the valuations turned
against
them-
selves;
they
had to
fight
down
every
kind of
suspicion
and
antagonism
against
"the
philosophic
element in them-
selves."
Being
men of a terrible
age, they
did this with
terrible means:
cruelty
to
themselves,
ingenious
self-
mortification

this was the chief method of these ambi-

tious hermits and intellectual
revolutionaries,
who were
obliged
to force down the
gods
and the traditions of their
own
soul,
so as to enable themselves to believe in their
own revolution. I remember the famous
story
of the
King Vicvamitra, who,
as the result of a thousand
years
of
self-martyrdom,
reached such a consciousness of
power
and such a confidence in himself that he undertook to
build a new heaven: the sinister
symbol
of the oldest
and newest
history
of
philosophy
in the whole world.
ASCETIC IDEALS
119
Every
one who has ever built
anywhere
a "new heaven"
first found the
power
thereto in his own hell. . . . Let us
compress
the facts into a short formula. The
philosophic
spirit had,
in order to be
possible
to
any
extent at
all,
to
masquerade
and
disguise
itself as one of the
previously
fixed types
of the
contemplative man,
to
disguise
itself
as
priest, wizard, soothsayer,
as a
religious
man
generally:
the ascetic ideal has for a
long
time served the
philoso-
pher
as a
superficial form,
as a condition which enabled
him to exist. ... To be able to be a
philosopher
he had
to
exemplify
the
ideal;
to
exemplify it,
he was bound to
believe in it. The
peculiarly
etherealised abstraction of
philosophers,
with their
negation
of the
world,
their
enmity
to
life,
their disbelief in the
senses,
which has been main-
tained
up
to the most recent
time,
and has almost
thereby
come to be
accepted
as the ideal
philosophic
attitude

this abstraction is the result of those enforced conditions

under which
philosophy
came into
existence,
and con-
tinued to
exist;
inasmuch as for
quite
a
very long
time
philosophy
would have been
absolutely impossible
in the
world without an ascetic cloak and
dress,
without an
ascetic
self-misunderstanding. Expressed plainly
and
palpably,
the ascetic
priest
has taken the
repulsive
and
sinister form of the
caterpillar,
beneath which and behind
which alone
philosophy
could live and slink about. . . .
Has all that
really changed?
Has that
flamboyant
and
dangerous winged creature,
that
"spirit"
which that
caterpillar
concealed within
itself,
has
it,
I
say,
thanks to
a
sunnier, warmer, lighter world, really
and
finally flung
off its hood and
escaped
into the
light?
Can we
to-day
point
to
enough pride, enough daring, enough courage,
120 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
enough self-confidence, enough
mental
will, enough
will
for
responsibility, enough
freedom of the
will,
to enable
the
philosopher
to be now in the world
really

possible?
ii.
And
now,
after we have
caught sight
of the ascetic
priest,
let us tackle our
problem.
What is the
meaning
of the ascetic ideal? It now first becomes serious

vitally
serious. We are now confronted with the real
representatives oj
the serious. "What is the
meaning
of
all seriousness?" This even more radical
question
is
per-
chance
already
on the
tip
of our
tongue:
a
question,
fairly,
for
physiologists,
but which we for the time
being
skip.
In that ideal the ascetic
priest
finds not
only
his
faith,
but also his
will,
his
power,
his interest. His
right
to existence stands and falls with that ideal. What won-
der that we here run
up against
a terrible
opponent
(on
the
supposition,
of
course,
that we are the
opponents
of
that
ideal),
an
opponent fighting
for his life
against
those
who
repudiate
that ideal! ... On the other
hand,
it is
from the outset
improbable
that such a biased attitude
towards our
problem
will do him
any particular good;
the ascetic
priest
himself will
scarcely prove
the
happiest
champion
of his own ideal
(on
the same
principle
on
which a woman
usually
fails when she wishes to
champion
"woman")

let alone
proving
the most
objective
critic
and
judge
of the
controversy
now raised. We shall there-
fore

so much is
already
obvious

rather have
actually
to
help
him to defend himself
properly against ourselves,
than we shall have to fear
being
too well beaten
by
him.
ASCETIC IDEALS 121
The
idea,
which is the
subject
of this
dispute,
is the
value of our life from the
standpoint
of the ascetic
priests:
this
life,
then
(together
with the whole of which it is a
part, "Nature,"
"the
world,"
the whole
sphere
of becom-
ing
and
passing away),
is
placed by
them in relation to
an existence of
quite
another
character,
which it excludes
and to which it is
opposed,
unless it
deny
its own self:
in this
case,
the case of an ascetic
life,
life is taken as a
bridge
to another existence. The ascetic treats life as a
maze,
in which one must walk backwards till one comes
to the
place
where it
starts;
or he treats it as an error
which one
may, nay must,
refute
by
action: for he de-
mands that he should be
followed;
he
enforces,
where he
can,
his valuation of existence. What does this mean?
Such a monstrous valuation is not an
exceptional case,
or a
curiosity
recorded in human
history:
it is one of the
most
general
and
persistent
facts that there are. The
reading
from the
vantage
of a distant star of the
capital
letters of our
earthly life,
would
perchance
lead to the
conclusion that the earth was the
especially
ascetic
planet,
a den of
discontented, arrogant,
and
repulsive creatures,
who never
got
rid of a
deep disgust
of
themselves,
of the
world,
of all
life,
and did themselves as much hurt as
possible
out of
pleasure
in
hurting

presumably
their one
and
only pleasure.
Let us consider how
regularly,
how
universally,
how
practically
at
every single period
the
ascetic
priest puts
in his
appearance:
he
belongs
to no
particular race;
he thrives
everywhere;
he
grows
out of
all classes. Not that he
perhaps
bred this valuation
by
heredity
and
propagated
it

the
contrary
is the case.
It must be a
necessity
of the first order which makes
122 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
this
species,
hostile,
as it
is,
to
life, always grow again
and
always
thrive
again.

Life
itself must
certainly
have
an interest in the continuance of such a
type
of self-con-
tradiction. For an ascetic life is a self-contradiction:
here rules resentment without
parallel,
the resentment of
an insatiate instinct and
ambition,
that would be
master,
not over some element in
life,
but over life
itself,
over
life's
deepest, strongest,
innermost
conditions;
here is an
attempt
made to utilise
power
to dam the sources of
power;
here does the
green eye
of
jealousy
tum even
against physiological
well-being, especially against
the
expression
of such
well-being, beauty, joy,
while a sense
of
pleasure
is
experienced
and
sought
in
abortion,
in
decay,
in
pain,
in
misfortune,
in
ugliness,
in
voluntary
punishment,
in the
exercising, flagellation,
and sacrifice of
the self. All this is in the
highest degree paradoxical:
we are here confronted with a rift that wills itself to be a
rift,
which
enjoys
itself in this
very suffering,
and even
becomes more and more certain of
itself,
more and more
triumphant,
in
proportion
as its own
presupposition,
physiological
vitality,
decreases. "The
triumph just
in
the
supreme agony":
under this
extravagant
emblem did
the ascetic ideal
fight
from of
old;
in this
mystery
of
seduction,
in this
picture
of
rapture
and torture, it
recog-
nised its
brightest light,
its
salvation,
its final
victory.
Crux, nux,
lux

it has all these three in one.

12.
Granted that such an incarnate will for contradiction
and unnaturalness is induced to
philosophise;
on what
ASCETIC IDEALS
123
will it vent its
pet caprice?
On that which has been felt
with the
greatest certainty
to be
true,
to be
real;
it will
look for error in those
very places
where the life instinct
fixes truth with the
greatest positiveness.
It
will,
for
instance,
after the
example
of the ascetics of the Vedanta
Philosophy,
reduce matter to an
illusion,
and
similarly
treat
pain, multiplicity,
the whole
logical
contrast of
"Subject"
and
"Object"

errors, nothing
but errors! To
renounce the belief in one's own
ego,
to
deny
to one's self
one's own
"reality"

what a
triumph!
and here
already
we have a much
higher
kind of
triumph,
which is not
merely
a
triumph
over the
senses,
over the
palpable,
but
an infliction of violence and
cruelty
on
reason;
and this
ecstasy
culminates in the ascetic
self-contempt,
the ascetic
scorn of one's own reason
making
this decree: there is
a domain of truth and of
life,
but reason is
specially
excluded therefrom. ...
By
the
bye,
even in the Kantian
idea of "the
intelligible
character of
things"
there remains
a trace of that
schism,
so dear to the heart of the
ascetic,
that schism which likes to turn reason
against reason;
in
fact, "intelligible
character" means in Kant a kind of
quality
in
things
of which the intellect
comprehends
so
much,
that for
it,
the
intellect,
it is
absolutely
incom-
prehensible.
After
all,
let
us,
in our character of know-
ers,
not be
ungrateful
towards such determined reversals
of the
ordinary perspectives
and
values,
with which the
mind had for too
long raged against
itself with an
ap-
parently
futile
sacrilege!
In the same
way
the
very
seeing
of another
vista,
the
very wishing
to see another
vista,
is no little
training
and
preparation
of the intellect
for its eternal
"Objectivity"

objectivity being
under-
i2
4
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
stood not as
"contemplation
without interest"
(for
that
is
inconceivable and
nonsensical),
but as the
ability
to have
the
pros
and cons in one's
power
and to switch them on
and
off,
so as to
get
to know how to
utilise,
for the
advancement of
knowledge,
the
difference
in the
per-
spective
and in the emotional
interpretations.
But let
us, forsooth, my philosophic colleagues,
henceforward
guard
ourselves more
carefully against
this
mythology
of
dangerous
ancient
ideas,
which has set
up
a
"pure,
will-
less, painless,
timeless
subject
of
knowledge";
let us
guard
ourselves from the tentacles of such
contradictory
ideas
as
"pure reason,"
"absolute
spirituality," "knowledge-in-
itself":

in these theories an
eye
that cannot be
thought
of is
required
to
think,
an
eye
which ex
hypothesi
has no
direction at
all,
an
eye
in which the active and inter-
preting
functions are
cramped,
are
absent;
those func-
tions,
I
say, by
means of which "abstract"
seeing
first
became
seeing something;
in these theories
consequently
the absurd and the nonsensical is
always
demanded of
the
eye.
There is
only
a
seeing
from a
perspective, only
a
"knowing"
from a
perspective,
and the more emotions
we
express
over a
thing,
the more
eyes,
different
eyes,
we train on the same
thing,
the more
complete
will be
our "idea" of that
thing,
our
"objectivity."
But the
elimination of the will
altogether,
the
switching
off of
the emotions all and
sundry, granted
that we could do
so,
vvhat! would not that be called intellectual castration?
13-
But let us turn back. Such a
self-contradiction,
as
ASCETIC IDEALS
125
apparently
manifests itself
among
the
ascetics,
"Life
turned
against Life,"
is

so much is
absolutely
obvious

from the
physiological
and not now from the
psycho-
logical standpoint, simply
nonsense. It can
only
be an
apparent contradiction;
it must be a kind of
provisional
expression,
an
explanation,
a
formula,
an
adjustment,
a
psychological misunderstanding
of
something,
whose real
nature could not be understood for a
long time,
and
whose real essence could not be
described;
a mere word
jammed
into an old
gap
of human
knowledge.
To
put
briefly
the facts
against
its
being
real: the ascetic ideal
springs from
the
prophylactic
and
self-preservative
in-
stincts which mark a decadent
life,
which seeks
by every
means in its
power
to maintain its
position
and
fight
for
its
existence;
it
points
to a
partial physiological depres-
sion and
exhaustion, against
which the most
profound
and
intact life-instincts
fight ceaselessly
with new
weapons
and discoveries. The ascetic ideal is such a
weapon:
its
position
is
consequently exactly
the reverse of that which
the
worshippers
of the ideal
imagine

life
struggles
in it
and
through
it with death and
against death;
the ascetic
ideal is a
dodge
for the
preservation
of life. An
impor-
tant fact is
brought
out in the extent to
which,
as
history
teaches,
this ideal could rule and exercise
power
over
man, especially
in all those
places
where the civilisation
and
taming
of man was
completed:
that fact
is,
the dis-
eased state of man
up
to the
present,
at
any rate,
of the
man who has been
tamed,
the
physiological struggle
of
man with death
(more precisely,
with the
disgust
with
life,
with
exhaustion,
with the wish for the
"end").
The
ascetic
priest
is the incarnate wish for an existence of
126 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
another
kind,
an existence on another
plane,

he
is,
in
fact,
the
highest point
of this
wish,
its official
ecstasy
and
passion:
but it is the
very power
of this wish which
is the fetter that binds him
here;
it is
just
that which
makes him into a tool that must labour to create more
favourable conditions for
earthly
existence,
for existence
on the human
plane

it is with this
very power
that he
keeps
the whole herd of
failures, distortions, abortions,
unfortunates, sufferers from
themselves of
every kind,
fast
to
existence,
while he as the herdsman
goes instinctively
on in front. You understand me
already:
this ascetic
priest,
this
apparent enemy
of
life,
this denier

he actu-
ally belongs
to the
really great
conservative and
affirmative
forces of life. . . . What does it come
from,
this diseased
state? For man is more
diseased,
more
uncertain,
more
changeable,
more unstable than
any
other
animal,
there
is no doubt of it

he is the diseased animal : what does it

spring
from?
Certainly
he has also
dared, innovated,
braved
more, challenged
fate more than all the other ani-
mals
put together; he,
the
great experimenter
with him-
self,
the
unsatisfied,
the
insatiate,
who
struggles
for the
supreme mastery
with
beast, Nature,
and
gods,
he,
the
as
yet
ever
uncompelled,
the ever
future,
who finds no
more
any
rest from his own
aggressive strength, goaded
inexorably
on
by
the
spur
of the future
dug
into the flesh
of the
present:

how should not so brave and rich an

animal also be the most
endangered,
the animal with the
longest
and
deepest
sickness
among
all sick animals?
. . . Man is sick of
it,
oft
enough
there are whole
epi-
demics of this
satiety (as
about
1348,
the time of the
Dance of
Death)
: but even this
very
nausea,
this tired-
ASCETIC IDEALS
127
ness,
this
disgust
with
himself,
all this is
discharged
from
him with such force that it is
immediately
made into a
new fetter. His
"nay,"
which he utters to
life, brings
to
light
as
though by magic
an abundance of
graceful
"yeas";
even when he wounds
himself,
this master of
destruction,
of
self-destruction,
it is
subsequently
the
wound itself that forces him to live.
14.
The more normal is this sickliness in man

and we
cannot
dispute
this
normality

the
higher
honour should
be
paid
to the rare cases of
psychical
and
physical pow-
erfulness,
the
windfalls
of
humanity,
and the more
strictly
should the sound be
guarded
from that worst of
air,
the
air of the sick-room. Is that done? The sick are the
greatest danger
for the
healthy;
it is not from the
strong-
est that harm comes to the
strong,
but from the weakest.
Is that known?
Broadly considered,
it is not for a min-
ute the fear of
man,
whose diminution should be wished
for;
for this fear forces the
strong
to be
strong,
to be at
times terribleit
preserves
in its
integrity
the sound
type
of man. What is to be
feared,
what does work with a
fatality
found in no other
fate,
is not the
great
fear
of,
but the
great
nausea
with, man;
and
equally
so the
great
pity
for man.
Supposing
that both these
things
were
one
day
to
espouse
each
other,
then
inevitably
the maxi-
mum of monstrousness would
immediately
come into the
world

the "last will" of

man,
his will for
nothingness,
Nihilism.
And,
in
sooth,
the
way
is well
paved
thereto.
He who not
only
has his nose to smell
with,
but also has
128 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
eves and
ears,
he sniffs almost wherever he
goes to-day
an air
something
like that of a
mad-house,
the air of a
hospital

I am
speaking,
as stands to
reason,
of the cul-
tured areas of
mankind,
of
every
kind of
"Europe''
that
there is in fact in the world. The sick are the
great
danger
of
man,
not the
evil,
not the "beasts of
prey."
They
who are from the outset
botched, oppressed, broken,
those are
they,
the weakest are
they,
who most under-
mine the life beneath the feet of
man,
who instil the most
dangerous
venom and
scepticism
into our trust in
life,
in
mr.n,
in ourselves. Where shall we
escape
from
it,
from
that covert look
(from
which we
carry away
a
deep
sadness),
from that averted look of him who is misborn
from the
beginning,
that look which
betrays
what such a
man
says
to himself

that look which is a

groan?
"Would
that I were
something else,"
so
groans
this
look,
"but
there is no
hope.
I am what I am: how could I
get
away
from
myself? And, verily

/ am sick
of myself!"
On such a soil of
self-contempt,
a veritable
swamp soil,
grows
that
weed,
that
poisonous growth,
and all so
tiny.
so
hidden,
so
ignoble,
so
sugary.
Here teem the worms of
revenge
and
vindictiveness;
here the air reeks of
things
secret and
unmentionable;
here is ever
spun
the net of
the most
malignant conspiracy

the
conspiracy
of the
sufferers
against
the sound and the
victorious;
here is the
jht
of the victorious hated. And what
lying
so as not
to
acknowledge
this hate as hate! What a show of
big
words and
attitudes,
what an art of
"righteous"
calumni-
ation! These abortions! what a noble
eloquence
gushes
from their
lips!
What an amount of
sugary, slimy,
humble submission oozes in their
eyes!
What do
they
ASCETIC IDEALS
129
really
want? At
any
rate to
represent righteousness,
love,
wisdom, superiority,
that is the ambition of these "low-
est
ones,"
these sick ones! And how clever does such an
ambition make them! You
cannot,
in
fact,
but admire
the counterfeiter
dexterity
with which the
stamp
of
virtue,
even the
ring,
the
golden ring
of
virtue,
is here imitated.
They
have taken a lease of virtue
absolutely
for them-
selves,
have these
weaklings
and wretched
invalids,
there
is no doubt of
it;
"We alone are the
good,
the
righteous,"
so do
they speak,
"we alone are the homines bonce volun-
tatis."
They
stalk about in our midst as
living
re-
proaches,
as
warnings
to us

as
though health, fitness,
strength, pride,
the sensation of
power,
were
really
vicious
things
in
themselves,
for which one would have some
day
to do
penance,
bitter
penance. Oh,
how
they
themselves
are
ready
in their hearts to exact
penance,
how
they
thirst
after
being hangmen!
Among
them is an abundance of
revengeful
ones dis-
guised
as
judges,
who ever mouth the word
righteousness
like a venomous
spittle

with
mouth,
I
say, always
pursed, always ready
to
spit
at
everything,
which does
not wear a discontented
look,
but is of
good
cheer as it
goes
on its
way. Among them, again,
is that most loath-
some
species
of the
vain,
the
lying abortions,
who make a
point
of
representing
"beautiful
souls,"
and
perchance
of
bringing
to the market as
"purity
of heart" their dis-
torted sensualism swathed in verses and other
bandages;
the
species
of "self-comforters" and masturbators of their
own souls. The sick man's will to
represent
some form
or other of
superiority,
his instinct for crooked
paths,
which lead to a
tyranny
over the
healthy

where can it
130
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
not be
found,
this will to
power
of the
very
weakest?
The sick woman
especially:
no one
surpasses
her in re-
finements for
ruling, oppressing, tyrannising.
The sick
woman, moreover, spares nothing living, nothing
dead;
she
grubs up again
the most buried
things
(the
Bogos
say,
"Woman is a
hyena").
Look into the
background
of
every family,
of
every body,
of
every community:
everywhere
the
fight
of the sick
against
the
healthy

a
silent
fight
for the most
part
with minute
poisoned
powders,
with
pin-pricks,
with
spiteful grimaces
of
pa-
tience,
but also at times with that diseased
pharisaism
of
pure pantomime,
which
plays
for the choice role of
"righteous indignation." Right
into the hallowed cham-
bers of
knowledge
can it make itself
heard,
can this
hoarse
yelping
of sick
hounds, this,
rabid
lying
and
frenzy
of such "noble" Pharisees
(I
remind
readers,
who have
ears,
once more of that Berlin
apostle
of
revenge, Eugen
Diihring,
who makes most
disreputable
and
revolting
use
in all
present-day Germany
of moral
refuse;
Diihring,
the
paramount
moral blusterer that there is
to-day,
even
among
his own
kidney,
the
Anti-Semites). They
are all
men of
resentment,
are these
physiological
distortions and
worm-riddled
objects,
a whole
quivering kingdom
of bur-
rowing revenge, indefatigable
and insatiable in its out-
bursts
against
the
happy,
and
equally
so in
disguises
for
revenge,
in
pretexts
for
revenge:
when will
they really
reach their
final, fondest,
most sublime
triumph
of re-
venge?
At that
time, doubtless,
when
they
succeed in
pushing
their own
misery,
in
fact,
all
misery,
into the
consciousness
of the
happy:
so that the latter
begin
one
day
to be ashamed of their
happiness,
and
perchance say
ASCETIC IDEALS
131
to themselves when
they meet,
"It is a shame to be
happy;
there is too much
misery!"
. . . But there could
not
possibly
be a
greater
and more fatal
misunderstanding
than that of the
happy,
the
fit,
the
strong
in
body
and
soul, beginning
in this
way
to doubt their
right
to
hap-
piness. Away
with this
"perverse
world"!
Away
with
this shameful soddenness of sentiment!
Preventing
the
sick
making
the
healthy
sick

for that is what such a

soddenness comes to

this
ought
to be our
supreme object
in the world

but for this it is above all essential that

the
healthy
should remain
separated
from the
sick,
that
they
should even
guard
themselves from the look of the
sick,
that
they
should not even associate with the sick.
Or
may it, perchance,
be their mission to be nurses or
doctors? But
they
could not mistake and disown their
mission more
grossly

the
higher
must not
degrade
itself
to be the tool of the
lower,
the
pathos
of distance must
to all
eternity keep
their missions also
separate.
The
right
of the
happy
to
existence,
the
right
of bells with a
full tone over the discordant cracked
bells,
is
verily
a
thousand times
greater: they
alone are the sureties of the
future, they
alone are bound to man's future. What
they can,
what
they
must
do,
that can the sick never
do,
should never do! but if
they
are to be enabled to do what
only they
must
do,
how can
they possibly
be free to
play
the
doctor,
the
comforter,
the "Saviour" of the sick?
,
. . And therefore
good
air!
good
air! and
away,
at
any
rate,
from the
neighbourhood
of all the madhouses and
hospitals
of civilisation! And therefore
good company,
our own
company,
or
solitude,
if it must be so! but
away,
at
any rate,
from the evil fumes of internal
corruption
i
3
2 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
and the secret worm-eaten state of the sick!
that,
for-
sooth,
my friends,
we
may
defend
ourselves,
at
any
rate
for still a
time, against
the two worst
plagues
that could
have been reserved for us

against
the
great
nausea with
man!
against
the
great pity for
man!
IS-
If
you
have understood in all their
depths

and I
demand that
you
should
grasp
them
profoundly
and
understand them
profoundly

the reasons for the

impos-
sibility
of its
being
the business of the
healthy
to nurse
the
sick,
to make the sick
healthy,
it follows that
you
have
grasped
this further
necessity

the
necessity
of doc-
tors and nurses who themselves are sick. And now we
have and hold with both our hands the essence of the
ascetic
priest.
The ascetic
priest
must be
accepted by
us
as the
predestined saviour, herdsman,
and
champion
of the
sick herd:
thereby
do we first understand his awful his-
toric mission. The
lordship
over
sufferers
is his
kingdom,
to that
points
his
instinct,
in that he finds his own
spe-
cial
art,
his
master-skill,
his kind of
happiness.
He must
himself be
sick,
he must be kith and kin to the sick and
the abortions so as to understand
them,
so as to arrive
at an
understanding
with
them;
but he must also be
strong,
even more master of himself than of
others,
im-
pregnable,
forsooth,
in his will for
power,
so as to
acquire
the trust and the awe of the
weak,
so that he can be
their
hold, bulwark, prop, compulsion,
overseer, tyrant,
god.
He has to
protect
them, protect
his herds

against
whom?
Against
the
healthy,
doubtless also
against
the
ASCETIC IDEALS
133
envy
towards the
healthy.
He must be the natural ad-
versary
and scorner of
every rough, stormy, reinless, hard,
violently-predatory
health and
power.
The
priest
is the
first form of the more delicate animal that scorns more
easily
than it hates. He will not be
spared
the
waging
of war with the beasts of
prey,
a war of
guile (of "spirit")
rather than of
force,
as is self-evident

he will in cer-
tain cases find it
necessary
to
conjure up
out of
himself,
or at
any
rate to
represent practically
a new
type
of the
beast of
prey

a new animal
monstrosity
in which the
polar
bear,
the
supple, cold, crouching panther, and,
not
least
important,
the
fox,
are
joined together
in a
trinity
as
fascinating
as it is fearsome. If
necessity
exacts
it,
then will he come on the scene with bearish
seriousness,
venerable, wise, cold,
full of treacherous
superiority,
as
the herald and
mouthpiece
of
mysterious powers,
some-
times
going among
even the other kind of beasts of
prey,
determined as he is to sow on their
soil,
wherever he
can,
suffering, discord, self-contradiction,
and
only
too sure of
his
art, always
to be lord of
sufferers
at all times. He
brings
with
him, doubtless,
salve and
balsam;
but before
he can
play
the
physician
he must first
wound; so,
while
he soothes the
pain
which the wound
makes,
he at the
same time
poisons
the wound. Well versed is he in this
above all
things,
is this wizard and wild beast
tamer,
in
whose
vicinity everything healthy
must needs become
ill,
and
everything
ill must needs become tame. He
protects,
in
sooth,
his sick herd well
enough,
does this
strange
herdsman;
he
protects
them also
against themselves,
against
the
sparks (even
in the centre of the
herd)
of
wickedness, knavery, malice,
and all the other ills that
i
34
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
the
plaguey
and the sick are heir
to;
he
fights
with cun-
ning, hardness,
and stealth
against anarchy
and
against
the ever imminent
break-up
inside the
herd,
where resent-
ment,
that most
dangerous blasting-stuff
and
explosive,
ever accumulates and accumulates.
Getting
rid of this
blasting-stuff
in such a
way
that it does not blow
up
the
herd and the
herdsman,
that is his real
feat,
his
supreme
utility;
if
you
wish to
comprise
in the shortest formula
the value of the
priestly life,
it would be correct to
say
the
priest
is the diverter
of
the course
0}
resentment.
Every sufferer,
in
fact,
searches
instinctively
for a cause
of his
suffering;
to
put
it more
exactly,
a
doer,

to
put
it still more
precisely,
a sentient
responsible
doer,

in
brief, something living,
on
which,
either
actually
or in
effigy,
he can on
any pretext
vent his emotions. For
the
venting
of emotions is the sufferer's
greatest attempt
at
alleviation,
that is to
say, stupefaction,
his mechanic-
ally
desired narcotic
against pain
of
any
kind. It is in
this
phenomenon
alone that is
found, according
to
my
judgment,
the real
physiological
cause of
resentment,
re-
venge,
and their
family
is to be found

that
is,
in a
demand for the
deadening of pain through
emotion: this
cause is
generally,
but in
my
view
very
erroneously,
looked for in the defensive
parry
of a bare
protective
principle
of
reaction,
of a "reflex movement" in the case
of
any
sudden hurt and
danger,
after the manner that a
decapitated
frog
still moves in order to
get away
from a
corrosive acid. But the difference is fundamental.
In
one case the
object
is to
prevent
being
hurt
any
more;
in the other case the
object
is to deaden a
racking,
in-
sidious, nearly
unbearable
pain by
a more violent emotion
ASCETIC IDEALS
135
of
any
kind
whatsoever,
and at
any
rate for the time
being
to drive it out of the consciousnessfor this
pur-
pose
an emotion is
needed,
as wild an emotion as
pos-
sible,
and to excite that emotion some excuse or other is
needed. "It must be
somebody's
fault that I feel bad"

this kind of
reasoning
is
peculiar
to all
invalids,
and is
but the more
pronounced,
the more
ignorant they
remain
of the real cause of their
feeling bad,
the
physiological
cause
(the
cause
may
lie in a disease of the nervous
sympathicus,
or in an excessive secretion of
bile,
or in a
want of
sulphate
and
phosphate
of
potash
in the
blood,
or in
pressure
in the bowels which
stops
the circulation of
the
blood,
or in
degeneration
of the
ovaries,
and so
forth).
All sufferers have an awful resourcefulness and
ingenuity
in
finding
excuses for
painful emotions; they
even
enjoy
their
jealousy,
their
broodings
over base actions and
ap-
parent injuries, they
burrow
through
the intestines of their
past
and
present
in their search for obscure
mysteries,
wherein
they
will be at
liberty
to wallow in a
torturing
suspicion
and
get
drunk on the venom of their own
malice

they
tear
open
the oldest
wounds, they
make
themselves bleed from the scars which have
long
been
healed, they
make evil-doers out of
friends, wife, child,
and
everything
which is nearest to them. "I suffer: it
must be
somebody's
fault"

so thinks
every
sick
sheep.
But his
herdsman,
the ascetic
priest, says
to
him, "Quite
so, my sheep,
it must be the fault of some
one;
but thou
thyself
art that same
one,
it is all the fault of
thyself
alone

it is* the
fault of thyself
alone
against thyself'':
that is bold
enough,
false
enough,
but one
thing
is at least
136
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
attained; thereby,
as I have
said,
the course of resent-
ment is

diverted.
1 6.
You can see now what the remedial instinct of life has
at least tried to
effect, according
to
my conception,
through
the ascetic
priest,
and the
purpose
for which he
had to
employ
a
temporary tyranny
of such
paradoxical
and anomalous ideas as
"guilt," "sin," "sinfulness,"
"corruption,"
"damnation." What was done was to make
the sick harmless
up
to a certain
point,
to
destroy
the
incurable
by
means of
themselves,
to turn the milder
cases
severely
on to
themselves,
to
give
their resentment
a backward direction
("man
needs but one
thing"),
and
to
exploit similarly
the bad instincts of all sufferers with
a view to
self-discipline, self-surveillance, self-mastery.
It is obvious that there can be no
question
at all in the
case of a "medication" of this
kind,
a mere emotional
medication,
of
any
real
healing
of the sick in the
physio-
logical sense;
it cannot even for a moment be asserted
that in this connection the instinct of life has taken heal-
ing
as its
goal
and
purpose.
On the one
hand,
a kind
of
congestion
and
organisation
of the sick
(the
word
"Church" is the most
popular
name for
it) ;
on the
other,
a kind of
provisional safeguarding
of the
comparatively
healthy,
the more
perfect specimens,
the
cleavage
of a
rift
between
healthy
and sick

for a
long
time that was
all! and it was much! it was
very
much!
I am
proceeding,
as
you see,
in this
essay,
from an
hypothesis which,
as far as such readers as I want are
ASCETIC IDEALS
137
concerned,
does not
require
to be
proved;
the
hypothesis
that "sinfulness" in man is not an actual
fact,
but rather
merely
the
interpretation
of a
fact,
of a
physiological
discomfort,

a discomfort seen
through
a moral
religious
perspective
which is no
longer binding upon
us. The
fact, therefore,
that
any
one feels
"guilty," "sinful,"
is
certainly
not
yet any proof
that he is
right
in
feeling so,
any
more than
any
one is
healthy simply
because he feels
healthy.
Remember the celebrated witch-ordeals: in
those
days
the most acute and humane
judges
had no
doubt but that in these cases
they
were confronted with
guilt,

the "witches" themselves had no doubt on the

point,

and
yet
the
guilt
was
lacking.
Let me elaborate
this
hypothesis:
I do not for a minute
accept
the
very
"pain
in the soul" as a real
fact,
but
only
as an
explana-
tion
(a
casual
explanation)
of facts that could not hith-
erto be
precisely formulated;
I
regard
it therefore as
something
as
yet absolutely
in the air and devoid of scien-
tific
cogency

just
a nice fat word in the
place
of a lean
note of
interrogation.
When
any
one fails to
get
rid of
ihis
"pain
in the
soul,"
the cause
is, speaking crudely,
to be found not in his "soul" but more
probably
in his
stomach
(speaking crudely,
I
repeat,
but
by
no means
wishing thereby
that
you
should listen to me or under-
stand me in a crude
spirit).
A
strong
and well-consti-
tuted man
digests
his
experiences (deeds
and misdeeds all
included) just
as he
digests
his
meats,
even when he has
some
tough
morsels to swallow. If he fails to "relieve
himself" of an
experience,
this kind of
indigestion
is
quite
as much
physiological
as the other
indigestion

and
indeed,
in more
ways
than
one, simply
one of the results
1
38
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
of the other. You can
adopt
such a
theory,
and
yet
entre nous be nevertheless the
strongest opponent
of all
materialism.
17-
But is he
really
a
physician,
this ascetic
priest?
We
already
understand
why
we are
scarcely
allowed to call
him a
physician,
however much he likes to feel a "saviour"
and let himself be
worshipped
as a saviour.* It is
only
the actual
suffering,
the discomfort of the
sufferer,
which
he
combats,
not its
cause,
not the actual state of sick-
ness

this needs must constitute our most radical

objec-
tion to
priestly
medication. But
just
once
put yourself
into that
point
of
view,
of which the
priests
have a
monopoly, you
will find it hard to exhaust
your
amaze-
ment,
at what from that
standpoint
he has
completely
seen, sought,
and found. The
mitigation
of
suffering,
every
kind of
"consoling"

all this manifests itself as his

very genius:
with what
ingenuity
has he
interpreted
his
mission of
consoler,
with what
aplomb
and
audacity
has
he chosen
weapons necessary
for the
part. Christianity
in
particular
should be dubbed a
great
treasure-chamber
of
ingenious
consolations,

such a store of
refreshing,
soothing, deadening drugs
has it accumulated within
itself;
so
many
of the most
dangerous
and
daring
ex-
pedients
has it
hazarded;
with such
subtlety,
refinement.
Oriental
refinement,
has it divined what emotional stimu-
lants can
conquer,
at
any
rate for a
time,
the
deep
de-
*
In the German text "Heiland." This has the double mean-
ing
of "healer" and "saviour."H. B. S.
ASCETIC IDEALS
139
pression,
the leaden
fatigue,
the black
melancholy
of
physiological cripples

for, speaking generally,

all
relig-
ions are
mainly
concerned with
fighting
a certain
fatigue
and heaviness that has infected
everything.
You can
regard
it as
prima facie probable
that in certain
places
in the world there was almost bound to
prevail
from time
to time
among large
masses of the
population
a sense
of
physiological depression, which, however, owing
to their
lack of
physiological knowledge,
did not
appear
to their
consciousness as
such,
so that
consequently
its "cause"
and its cure can
only
be
sought
and
essayed
in the science
of moral
psychology (this,
in
fact,
is
my
most
general
formula for what is
generally
called a
"religion").
Such
a
feeling
of
depression
can have the most diverse
origins;
it
may
be the result of the
crossing
of too
heterogeneous
races
(or
of classes
genealogical
and racial differences
are also
brought
out in the classes: the
European
"Welt-
schmerz,"
the "Pessimism" of the nineteenth
century,
is
really
the result of an absurd
and
sudden
class-mixture) ;
it
may
be
brought
about
by
a mistaken
emigration

a
race
falling
into a climate for which its
power
of
adapta-
tion is insufficient
(the
case of the Indians in
India) ;
it
may
be the effect of old
age
and
fatigue (the
Parisian
pessimism
from
1850 onwards) ;
it
may
be a
wrong
diet
(the
alcoholism of the Middle
Ages,
the nonsense of
vege-
tarianism

which, however,
have in their favour the
authority
of Sir
Christopher
in
Shakespeare)
;
it
may
be
blood-deterioration, malaria, syphilis,
and the like
(Ger-
man
depression
after the
Thirty
Years'
War,
which in-
fected half
Germany
with evil
diseases,
and
thereby paved
the
way
for German
servility,
for German
pusillanimity)
.
140
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
In such a case there is
invariably
recourse to a ivar on a
grand
scale with the
feeling
of
depression;
let us inform
ourselves
briefly
on its most
important practices
and
phases
(I
leave on one
side,
as stands to
reason,
the
actual
philosophic
war
against
the
feeling
of
depression
which is
usually
simultaneous

it is
interesting enough,
but too
absurd,
too
practically negligible,
too full of cob-
webs,
too much of a hole-and-corner
affair, especially
when
pain
is
proved
to be a
mistake,
on the
naif hypothe-
sis that
pain
must needs vanish when the mistake under-
lying
it is
recognised

but behold! it does

anything
but
vanish . .
.)
That dominant
depression
is
primarily
jought by weapons
which reduce the consciousness of life
itself to the lowest
degree.
Wherever
possible,
no more
wishes,
no more
wants;
shun
everything
which
produces
emotion,
which
produces
"blood"
(eating
no
salt,
the
fakir
hygiene);
no
love;
no
hate; equanimity;
no re-
venge;
no
getting rich;
no
work; begging!
as far as
pos-
sible,
no
woman,
or as little woman as
possible;
as far
as the intellect is
concerned,
Pascal's
principle,
"il
jaut
s'abetir." To
put
the result in ethical and
psychological
language, "self-annihilation,"
"sanctification";
to
put
it in
physiological language, "hypnotism"

the
attempt
to find
some
approximate
human
equivalent
for what hibernation
is for certain
animals,
for what (estivation is for
many
tropical plants,
a minimum of assimilation and metab-
olism in which life
just manages
to subsist without
rally
coming
into the consciousness. An
amazing
amount of
human
energy
has been devoted to this
object

perhaps
uselessly?
There cannot be the
slightest
doubt but that
such
sportsmen
of
"saintliness,"
in whom at times
nearly
ASCETIC
IDEALS
141
every
nation has
abounded,
have
really
found a
genuine
relief from that which
they
have combated with such a
rigorous training

in countless cases
they really escaped
by
the
help
of their
system
of
hypnotism away
from
deep
physiological depression;
their method is
consequently
counted
among
the most universal
ethnological
facts.
Similarly
it is
improper
to consider such a
plan
for starv-
ing
the
physical
element and the
desires,
as in itself a
symptom
of
insanity (as
a
clumsy species
of roast-beef-
eating
"freethinkers" and Sir
Christophers
are fain to
do) ;
all the more certain is it that their method can and does
pave
the
way
to all kinds of mental
disturbances,
for in-
stance,
"inner
lights" (as
far as the case of
Hesychasts
of Mount
Athos), auditory
and visual
hallucinations,
voluptuous
ecstasies and effervescences of sensualism
(the
history
of St.
Theresa).
The
explanation
of such events
given by
the victims is
always
the acme of fanatical false-
hood;
this is self-evident. Note
well, however,
the tone
of
implicit gratitude
that
rings
in the
very
will for an
explanation
of such a character. The
supreme state,
sal-
vation
itself,
that final
goal
of universal
hypnosis
and
peace,
is
always regarded by
them as the
mystery
of
mysteries,
which even the most
supreme symbols
are
inadequate
to
express;
it is
regarded
as an
entry
and
homecoming
to the essence of
things,
as a liberation from
all
illusions,
as
"knowledge,"
as
"truth,"
as
"being,"
as
an
escape
from
every end, every wish, every action,
as
something
even
beyond
Good and Evil.
"Good and
Evil," quoth
the
Buddhists,
"both are
fetters. The
perfect
man is master of them both."
"The done and the
undone," quoth
the
disciple
of the
1
42
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
Vedanta,
"do him no
hurt;
the
good
and the evil he
shakes from off
him, sage
that he
is;
his
kingdom
suffers
no more from
any
act; good
and
evil,
he
goes beyond
them both."

An
absolutely
Indian
conception,
as much
Brahmanist as Buddhist. Neither in the Indian nor in
the Christian doctrine is this
"Redemption" regarded
as
attainable
by
means of virtue and moral
improvement,
however, high they may place
the value of the
hypnotic
efficiency
of virtue:
keep
clear on this
point

indeed it
simply corresponds
with the facts. The fact that
they
remained true on this
point
is
perhaps
to be
regarded
as the best
specimen
of realism in the three
great religions,
absolutely
soaked as
they
are with
morality,
with this one
exception.
"For those who
know,
there is no
duty."
"Redemption
is not attained
by
the
acquisition
of
virtues;
for
redemption
consists in
being
one with
Brahman,
who
is
incapable
of
acquiring any perfection;
and
equally
little
does it consist in the
giving up of faults,
for the
Brahman,
unity
with whom is what constitutes
redemption,
is eter-
nally pure"
(these passages
are from the Commentaries
of the
Cankara, quoted
from the first real
European
expert
of the Indian
philosophy, my
friend Paul
Deussen).
We
wish, therefore,
to
pay
honour to the idea of
"redemp-
tion" in the
great religions,
but it is somewhat hard to
remain serious in view of
the
appreciation
meted out to
the
deep sleep by
these exhausted
pessmists
who are too
tired even to dream

to the
deep sleep
considered,
that
is,
as
already
a
fusing
into
Brahman,
as the attainment of
the unio
mystica
with God. "When he has
completely
gone
to
sleep," says
on this
point
the oldest and
most
venerable
"script,"
"and come to
perfect rest,
so that
ASCETIC IDEALS
143
1 sees no more
any vision, then,
oh dear
one,
is he united
ith
Being,
he has entered into his own self

encircled
by
le Self with its absolute
knowledge,
he has no more
any
msciousness of that which is without or of that which
within.
Day
and
night
cross not these
bridges,
nor
ge,
nor
death,
nor
suffering,
nor
good deeds,
nor evil
eeds." "In
deep sleep," say similarly
the believers in
lis
deepest
of the three
great religions,
"does the soul
lit itself from out this
body
of
ours,
enters the
supreme
.ght
and stands out therein in its true
shape:
therein is it
he
supreme spirit itself,
which travels
about,
while it
ests and
plays
and
enjoys itself,
whether with
women,
or
:hariots,
or
friends;
there do its
thoughts
turn no more
>ack to this
appanage
of a
body,
to which the
'prana'
'the vital
breath)
is harnessed like a beast of burden
:o the cart." None the less we will take care to realise
(as
we did when
discussing "redemption")
that in
spite
of all its
pomps
of Oriental
extravagance
this
simply
ex-
presses
the same criticism on life as did the
clear, cold,
Greekly cold,
but
yet suffering Epicurus.
The
hypnotic
sensation of
nothingness,
the
peace
of
deepest sleep,
anaesthesia in short

that is what
passes
with the suf-
ferers and the
absolutely depressed for, forsooth,
their
supreme good,
their value of values
;
that is what must be
treasured
by
them as
something positive,
be felt
by
them
as the essence of the Positive
(according
to the same
logic
of the
feelings, nothingness
is in all
pessimistic
religions
called
God).
18.
Such a
hypnotic deadening
of
sensibility
and
suscep-
144
THE GENEALOGY
OF MORALS
tibility
to
pain,
which
presupposes
somewhat rare
powers,
especially
courage, contempt
of
opinion,
intellectual
stoicism,
is less
frequent
than another and
certainly
easier
framing
which is tried
against
states of
depression.
I
mean mechancal
activity.
It is
indisputable
that a suf-
fering
existence can be
thereby considerably
alleviated.
This fact is called
to-day by
the somewhat
ignoble
title
of the
"Blessing
of work." The alleviation consists in the
attention of the sufferer
being absolutely
diverted from
suffering,
in the incessant
monopoly
of the consciousness
by
action,
so that
consequently
there is little room left for
suffering

for narrow is
it,
this chamber of human con-
sciousness! Mechanical
activity
and its
corollaries,
such
as absolute
regularity, punctilious
unreasoning
obedience,
the chronic routine of
life,
the
complete occupation
of
time,
a certain
liberty
to be
impersonal, nay,
a
training
in
"impersonality," self-forgetfulness,
"incuria sai"

with
what
thoroughness
and
expert subtlety
have all these
methods been
exploited by
the ascetic
priest
in his war
with
pain!
When he has to tackle sufferers of the lower
orders,
slaves,
or
prisoners
(or women,
who for the most
part
are
a
compound
of labour-slave and
prisoner),
all he has to
do
is
to
juggle
a little with the
names,
and to
rechristen,
so as to make them see henceforth a
benefit,
a
compara-
tive
happiness,
in
objects
which
they
hated

the slave's
discontent with his lot was at
any
rate not invented
by
the
priests.
An even more
popular
means of
fighting
depression
is die
ordaining
of a little
joy,
which is
easily
accessible and can be made into a
rule;
this medication is
frequently
used in
conjunction
with the former ones. The
ASCETIC IDEALS
145
most
frequent
form in which
joy
is
prescribed
as a cure
is the
joy
in
producing joy (such
as
doing good, giving
presents, alleviating, helping, exhorting, comforting, prais-
ing, treating
with
distinction) ; together
with the
prescrip-
tion of "love
your neighbour."
The ascetic
priest pre-
scribes, though
in the most cautious
doses,
what is
prac-
tically
a stimulation of the
strongest
and most life-
assertive
impulse

the Will for Power. The

happiness
involved in the "smallest
superiority"
which is the con-
comitant of all
benefiting, helping, extolling, making
one's
self
useful,
is the most
ample consolation,
of
which,
if
they
are
well-advised, physiological
distortions avail them-
selves: in other cases
they
hurt each
other,
and
naturally
in obedience to the same radical instinct. An
investiga-
tion of the
origin
of
Christianity
in the Roman world
shows that
co-operative
unions for
poverty, sickness,
and
burial
sprang up
in the lowest stratum of
contemporary
society,
amid which the chief antidote
against depression,
the little
joy experienced
in mutual
benefits,
was delib-
erately
fostered. Perchance this was then a
novelty,
a
real
discovery?
This
conjuring up
of the will for co-
operation,
for
family organisation,
for communal
life,
for
"Coznacula,"
necessarily brought
the Will for
Power,
which had been
already infinitesimally stimulated,
to a
new and much fuller manifestation. The herd
organisa-
tion is a
genuine
advance and
triumph
in the
fight
with
depression.
With the
growth
of the
community
there
matures even to individuals a new
interest,
which often
enough
takes him out of the more
personal
element in
his
discontent,
his aversion to
himself,
the
"despectus
sui" of Geulincx. All sick and diseased
people
strive
i
4
6 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
instinctively
after a
herd-organisation,
out of a desire to
shake off their sense of
oppressive
discomfort and weak-
ness;
the ascetic
priest
divines this instinct and
promotes
it;
wherever a herd exists it is the instinct of weakness
which has wished for the
herd,
and the cleverness of the
priests
which has
organised it, for,
mark this:
by
an
equally
natural
necessity
the
strong
strive as much for
isolation as the weak for union: when the former bind
themselves it is
only
with a view to an
aggressive joint
action and
joint
satisfaction of their Will for
Power,
much
against
the wishes of their individual
consciences;
the
latter,
on the
contrary, range
themselves
together
with
positive delimit
in such a muster

their instincts are as

much
gratified
thereby
as the instincts of the "born mas-
ter"
(that is,
the
solitary beast-of-prey species
of
man)
are disturbed and wounded to the
quick by organisation.
There is
always lurking
beneath
every oligarchy
such is
the universal lesson of
history

the desire for

tyranny.
Every oligarchy
is
continually quivering
with the tension
of the effort
required by
each individual to
keep
master-
ing
this desire.
(Such, e.g.,
was the
Greek;
Plato shows
it in a hundred
places, Plato,
who knew his
contempo-
raries

and
himself.)
19.
The
methods
employed by
the ascetic
priest,
which we
have
already
leamt to know
stifling
of all
vitality,
me-
chanical
energy,
the little
joy,
and
especially
the method
of
"love
your neighbour"
herd-organisation,
the
awaking
of the
communal
consciousness of
power,
to such a
pitch
ASCETIC IDEALS
147
that the individual's
disgust
with himself becomes
eclipsed
by
his
delight
in the
thriving
of the
community

these
are, according
to modern
standards,
the "innocent"
methods
employed
in the
fight
with
depression;
let us
turn now to the more
interesting topic
of the
"guilty"
methods. The
guilty
methods
spell
one
thing:
to
produce
emotional excess

which is used as the most efficacious

anaesthetic
against
their
depressing
state of
protracted
pain;
this is
why priestly ingenuity
has
proved quite
inex-
haustible in
thinking
out this one
question: "By
what
means can
you produce
an emotional excess?" This
sounds harsh: it is manifest that it would sound nicer
and would
grate
on one's ears
less,
if I were to
say,
forsooth: "The ascetic
priest
made use at all times of
the enthusiasm contained in all
strong
emotions." But
what is the
good
of still
soothing
the delicate ears of our
modern effeminates? What is the
good
on our side of
budging
one
single
inch before their verbal Pecksniffian-
ism? For us
psychologists
to do that would be at once
practical Pecksniffianism, apart
from the fact of its nau-
seating
us.
The
good
taste
(others might say,
the
right-
eousness)
of a
psychologist nowadays consists,
if at
all,
in
combating
the
shamefully
moralised
language
with which
all modern
judgments
on men and
things
are smeared.
For,
do not deceive
yourself:
what constitutes the chief
characteristic of modern souls and of modern books is not
the
lying,
but the innocence which is
part
and
parcel
of
their intellectual
dishonesty.
The inevitable
running up
against
this "innocence"
everywhere
constitutes the most
distasteful feature of the somewhat
dangerous
business
which a modern
psychologist
has to undertake:
it is a
148
THE GENEALOGY
OF MORALS
part
of our
great danger

it is a road which
perhaps
leads
straight
to the
great
nauseaI know
quite
well the
purpose
which all modern books
will and can serve
(granted
that
they
last,
which I am not afraid
of,
and
snted
equally
that there is to be at some future
day
a
L'rneration with a more
rigid,
more
severe,
and healthier
taste)

the
junction
which all
modernity generally
will
serve with
posterity:
that of an
emetic,

and this
by
reason of its moral
sugariness
and
falsity,
its
ingrained
feminism,
which it is
pleased
to call
"Idealism,"
and at
any
rate believes to be idealism. Our cultured men of
to-day,
our
"good" men,
do not lie

that is
true;
but it
doe? not redound to their honour! The real
lie,
the
gen-
uine, determined,
"honest" lie
(on
whose value
you
can
listen to
Plato)
would
prove
too
tough
and
strong
an
article for them
by
a
long way;
it would be
asking
them
to do what
people
have been forbidden to ask them to
do,
to
open
their
eyes
to their own
selves,
and to learn to
distinguish
between "true" and "false" in their own
selves. The dishonest lie alone suits them:
everything
which fools a
good
man is
perfectly incapable
of
any
other
attitude to
anything
than that of a dishonourable
liar,
an
absolute
liar,
but none the less an innocent
liar,
a blue-
eyed liar,
a virtuous liar. These
"good men," they
are all
now tainted with
morality through
and
through,
and as
far as honour is concerned
they
are
disgraced
and cor-
rupted
for all
eternity.
Which of them could stand a
further truth "about man"?
or, put
more
tangibly,
which
<>f them could
put up
with a true
biography?
One or
:
;.inces: Lord
Byron composed
a most
personal
autobiography,
but Thomas Moore was "too
good"
for
ASCETIC IDEALS
149
it;
he burnt his friend's
papers.
Dr. G
winner, Schopen-
hauer's
executor,
is said to have done the
same;
for
Schopenhauer
as well wrote much about
himself,
and
perhaps
also
against
himself
(sis
eauxov).
The virtuous
American
Thayer,
Beethoven's
biographer, suddenly
stopped
his work: he had come to a certain
point
in that
honourable and
simple life,
and could stand it no
longer.
Moral: What sensible man
nowadays
writes one honest
word about himself? He must
already belong
to the
Order of
Holy
Foolhardiness. We are
promised
an auto-
biography
of Richard
Wagner;
who doubts but that it
would be a clever
autobiography? Think, forsooth,
of
the
grotesque
horror which the Catholic
priest Janssen
aroused in
Germany
with his
inconceivably square
and
harmless
pictures
of the German
Reformation;
what
wouldn't
people
do if some real
psychologist
were to
tell us about a
genuine Luther,
tell
us,
not with the
moralist
simplicity
of a
country priest
or the sweet and
cautious
modesty
of a Protestant
historian,
but
say
with the fearlessness of a
Taine,
that
springs
from force
of character and not from a
prudent
toleration of force.
(The Germans, by
the
bye,
have
already produced
the
classic
specimen
of this toleration

they may
well be
allowed to reckon him as one of their
own,
in
Leopold
Ranke,
that born classical advocate of
every
causa
jortior,
that cleverest of all the clever
opportunists.)
20.
But
you
will soon understand me.

Putting
it
shortly,
there is reason
enough,
is there
not,
for us
psychologists
ISO
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
nowadays
never to
get away
from a certain mistrust of
uur (i;
es?
Probably
even we ourselves are still
"too
good"
for our
work;
probably,
whatever
contempt
we feel for this
popular
craze for
morality,
we ourselves
are
perhaps
none the less its
victims, prey,
and
slaves;
probably
it infects even us. Of what was that
diplomat
warning us,
when he said to his
colleagues:
"Let us
especially
mistrust our first
impulses, gentlemen! they
arc almost
always good"?
So should
nowadays every
psychologist
talk to his
colleagues.
And thus we
get
back to our
problem,
which in
point
of fact does
require
from us a certain
severity,
a certain mistrust
especially
against
"first
impulses."
The ascetic ideal in the service
of projected
emotional excess:

he who remembers the

previous essay
will
already partially anticipate
the essen-
tial
meaning compressed
into these above ten words.
The
thorough
unswitching
of the human
soul,
the
plung-
ing
of it into
terror, frost, ardour,
rapture,
so as to free
it,
as
through
some
lightning shock,
from all the small-
s and
pettiness
of
unhappiness, depression,
and dis-
comfort: what
ways
lead to this
goal?
And which of
these
ways
does so most
safely?
... At bottom all
great
emotions have this
power, provided
that
they
find a
sudden
outlet

emotions such as
rage, fear, lust, revenge,
hope, triumph, despair,
cruelty; and,
in
sooth,
the ascetic
priest
has had no
scruples
in
taking
into his service the
k of
hounds that
rage
in the human
kennel,
unleashin
g
now these and now
those,
with the same con-
ct of
waking
man
out of his
protracted
melan-
choly,
of
chasing away,
at
any
rate for a
time,
his dull
lis
shrinking
misery,
but
always
under the sanction
ASCETIC IDEALS
151
of a
religious interpretation
and
justification.
This emo-
tional excess has
subsequently
to be
paid for,
this is self-
evident

it makes the ill more ill

and therefore this kind

of
remedy
for
pain
is
according
to modern standards a.
"guilty"
kind.
The dictates of
fairness, however, require
that we should
all the more
emphasise
the fact that this
remedy
is
ap-
plied
with a
good
conscience,
that the ascetic
priest
has
prescribed
it in the most
implicit
belief in its
utility
and
indispensability ;

often
enough
almost
collapsing
in the
presence
of the
pain
which he
created;

that we should
similarly emphasise
the fact that the violent
physiological
revenges
of such
excesses,
even
perhaps
the mental dis-
turbances,
are not
absolutely
inconsistent with the
general
tenor of this kind of
remedy;
this
remedy, which,
as we
have shown
previously,
is not for the
purpose
of
healing
diseases,
but of
fighting
the
unhappiness
of that
depres-
sion,
the alleviation and
deadening
of which was its
object.
The
object
was
consequently
achieved. The
keynote by
which the ascetic
priest
was enabled to
get
every
kind of
agonising
and ecstatic music to
play
on the
fibres of the human soul

was,
as
every
one
knows,
the
exploitation
of the
feeling
of
"guilt."
I have
already
indicated in the
previous essay
the
origin
of this
feeling

as a
piece
of animal
psychology
and
nothing
else: we
were thus confronted with the
feeling
of
"guilt,"
in its
crude
state,
as it were. It was first in the hands of the
priest,
real artist that he was in the
feeling
of
guilt,
that
it took
shapeoh,
what a
shape!
"Sin"

for that is the name of the new

priestly
version
of the animal "bad-conscience"
(the
inverted
cruelty)

i52
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
ip
to the
present
been the
greatest
event in the his-
tory
of the diseased
soul;
in "sin" we find the most
perilous
and fatal
masterpiece
of
religious interpretation.
Imagine man, suffering
from
himself,
some
way
or other
but at
any
rate
physiologically, perhaps
like an animal
shut
up
in
a
cage,
not clear as to the
why
and the where-
fore!
imagine
him in his desire for reasons

reasons
bring
relief

in his desire
again
for
remedies,
narcotics at
last,
consulting one,
who knows even the occult

and
see,
lo
and
behold,
he
gets
a hint from his
wizard,
the ascetic
priest,
his
first
hint on the "cause" of his trouble: he
must search for it /';/
liimselj,
in his
guiltiness,
in a
piece
of the
past,
he must understand his
very suffering
as a
state
of punishment.
He has
heard,
he has
understood,
has the unfortunate: he is now in the
plight
of a hen
round which a line has been drawn. He never
gets
out
of the circle of lines. The sick man has been turned into
"the sinner''

and now for a few thousand

years
we
t
away
from the
sight
of this new
invalid,
of "a
sinner"

shall we ever
get away
from it?

wherever we
just
look,
everywhere
the
hypnotic gaze
of the sinner
always moving
in one direction
(in
the direction of
guilt,
the Old i .iuse of
suffering)
;
everywhere
the evil con-
science,
this
"greuliche T/iicr,"*
to use Luther's
language;
everywhere
rumination over the
past,
a distorted view
of
action,
the
eaze of the
"green-eyed
monster" turned on
all
action:
everywhere
the wilful
misunderstanding
of
Buffering,
its
transvaluation into
feelings
of
guilt,
fear of
retribution; everywhere
the
scourge,
the
hairy shirt,
the
starving
body, contrition;
everywhere
the sinner break-
'1
[orrible b*
ASCETIC IDEALS
i$ j
ing
himself on the
ghastly
wheel of a restless and mor-
bidly eager conscience; everywhere
mute
pain,
extreme
fear,
the
agony
of a tortured
heart,
the
spasms
of an
unknown
happiness,
the shriek for
"redemption."
In
point
of
fact,
thanks to this
system
of
procedure,
the
old
depression, dullness,
and
fatigue
were
absolutely
con-
quered,
life itself became
very interesting again,
awake,
eternally awake, sleepless, glowing,
burnt
away,
exhausted
and
yet
not tired

such was the

figure
cut
by man,
"the
sinner,"
who was initiated into these
mysteries.
This
grand
old wizard of an ascetic
priest fighting
with de-
pression

he had
clearly triumphed,
his
kingdom
had
come: men no
longer grumbled
at
pain,
men
panted
after
pain:
"More
pain!
More
pain!"
So for centuries on
end shrieked the demand of his
acolytes
and initiates.
Every
emotional excess which
hurt; everything
which
broke, overthrew, crushed, transported, ravished;
the
nvystery
of
torture-chambers,
the
ingenuity
of hell itself

all this was now

discovered, divined, exploited,
all this
was at the service of the
wizard,
all this served to
pro-
mote the
triumph
of his
ideal,
the ascetic ideal.
"My
kingdom
is not
of
this
world,"
quoth he,
both at the be-
ginning
and at the end: had he still the
right
to talk like
that?

Goethe has maintained that there are

only thirty-
six
tragic
situations: we would infer from
that,
did we
not know
otherwise,
that Goethe was no ascetic
priest.
He

knows more.
21.
So far as all this kind of
priestly
medicine-mongering,'
1
54
THE GENEALOGY
OF MORALS
the
"guilty"
kind,
is
concerned, every
word of criticism
superfluous.
As for the
suggestion
that emotional
excess of the
type,
which in these cases the ascetic
priest
is fain to order to his sick
patients
(under
the most sacred
.hemism,
as is
obvious,
and
equally impregnated
with
the
sanctity
of his
purpose),
has ever
really
been of use
to
any
sick
man, who, forsooth,
would feel inclined to
maintain a
proposition
of that character? At
any rate,
some
understanding
should be come to as to the
expres-
sion "be of use." If
you only
wish to
express
that such
a
system
of treatment has
reformed man,
I do not
gain-
say
it: I
merely
add that "reformed"
conveys
to
my
mind
much as
"tamed," "weakened," "discouraged,"
"refined,"
daintified,"
"emasculated"
(and
thus it means almost as
much as
injured).
But when
you
have to deal
princi-
pally
with
sick, depressed,
and
oppressed
creatures,
such
a
system,
even
granted
that it makes the ill
"better,"
under
any
circumstances also makes them more ill: ask
the mad-doctors the invariable result of a methodical
application
of
penance-torture,
contritions,
and salvation
tasies.
Similarly
ask
history.
In
every body politic
where the ascetic
priest
has established this treatment
of
the
sick,
disease has on
every
occasion
spread
with sin-
ister
speed throughout
its
length
and breadth. What
was
always
the "result"?
A shattered nervous
system,
in
addition to the
existing malady,
and this
in the
greatest
in the
smallest,
in the individuals as in masses.
We
find,
in
consequence
of the
penance
and
redemption-
training,
awful
epileptic epidemics,
the
greatest
known to
history,
such as the St. Vitus and St.
John
dances of the
ASCETIC IDEALS
155
Middle
Ages;
we
find,
as another
phase
of its after-
effect, frightful
mutilations and chronic
depressions, by
means of which the
temperament
of a nation or a
city
(Geneva, Bale)
is turned once for all into its
opposite;

this
training, again,
is
responsible
for the
witch-hysteria,
a
phenomenon analogous
to somnambulism
(eight great
epidemic
outbursts of this
only
between
1564
and
1605) ;

we find
similarly
in its train those delirious death-
cravings
of
large masses,
whose awful
"shriek,"
"evviva
la morte!" was heard over the whole of
Europe,
now
interrupted by voluptuous
variations and anon
by
a
rage
for
destruction, just
as the same emotional
sequence
with
the same intermittencies and sudden
changes
is now uni-
versally
observed in
every
case where the ascetic doc-
trine of sin scores once more a
great
success
(religious
neurosis
appears
as a manifestation of the
devil,
there
is no doubt of it. What is it?
Quceritur)
.
Speaking gen-
erally,
the ascetic ideal
and
its sublime-moral
cult,
this
most
ingenious, reckless,
and
perilous systematisation
of
all methods of emotional
excess,
is writ
large
in a dreadful
and
unforgettable
fashion on the whole
history
of
man,
and
unfortunately
not
only
on
history.
I was
scarcely
able to
put
forward
any
other element which attacked the
health and race
efficiency
of
Europeans
with more de-
structive
power
than did this
ideal;
it can be
dubbed,
without
exaggeration,
the real
fatality
in the
history
of
the health of the
European
man. At the most
you
can
merely
draw a
comparison
with the
specifically
German
influence: I mean the alcohol
poisoning
of
Europe,
which
up
to the
present
has
kept pace exactly
with the
political
and racial
predominance
of the Germans
(where they
THE GEXEALOGY
OF MORALS
inoculated
their
blood,
there too did
they
inoculate their
vice).
Third in the series cornes
syphilis

magno
sed
proximo
intcrvallo.
22.
The ascetic
priest has,
wherever he has obtained the
mastery, corrupted
the health of the
soul,
he has conse-
quently
also
corrupted
taste in artibus et litteris

he
corrupts
it still.
"Consequently?"
I
hope
I shall be
granted
this
"consequently";
at
any rate,
I am not
going
to
prove
it first. One
solitary indication,
it concerns the
arch-book of Christian
literature,
their real
model,
their
"book-in-itself." In the
very
midst of the Grseco-Roman
splendour,
which was also a
splendour
of
books,
face to
face with an ancient world of
writings
which had not
yet
fallen into
decay
and
ruin,
at a time when certain
books were still to be
read,
to
possess
which we would
give
nowadays
half our literature in
exchange,
at that
time the
simplicity
and
vanity
of Christian
agitators (they
are
generally
called Fathers of the
Church)
dared to de-
clare: "We too have our classical
literature,
we do Jiot
7icr<! that
oj
the Greeks"

and meanwhile
they proudly
pointed
to their books of
legends,
their letters of
apostles,
and their
apologetic tractlets,
just
in the same
way
that
to-day
the
English
"Salvation
Army" wages
its
fight
unst
Shakespeare
and other "heathens" with an analo-
us literature You
already guess it,
I do not like the
restament";
it almost
upsets
me that I stand so
isolated in
my
taste so far as concerns this
valued,
this
Blued
Scripture;
the taste of two thousand
years
is
ASCETIC IDEALS
157
against me;
but what boots it! "Here I stand! I can-
not
help myself"
*
I have the
courage
of
my
bad taste.
The Old Testament

yes,
that is
something quite
dif-
ferent,
all honour to the Old Testament! I find therein
great men,
an heroic
landscape,
and one of the rarest
phenomena
in the
world,
the
incomparable
naivete
of
the
strong heart;
further
still,
I find a
people.
In the
New,
on the
contrary, just
a hostel of
petty sects, pure
rococo
of the
soul, twisting angles
and
fancy touches, nothing
but conventicle
air,
not to
forget
an occasional whiff of
bucolic sweetness which
appertains
to the
epoch
(and
the
Roman
province)
and is less
Jewish
than Hellenistic.
Meekness and
braggadocio
cheek
by jowl;
an emotional
garrulousness
that almost
deafens; passionate hysteria,
but no
passion ; painful pantomime ;
here
manifestly every
one lacked
good breeding.
How dare
any
one make so
much fuss about their little
failings
as do these
pious
little fellows! No one cares a straw about itlet alone
God.
Finally they actually
wish to have "the crown of
eternal
life,"
do all these little
provincials!
In return for
what,
in sooth? For what end? It is
impossible
to
carry
insolence
any
further. An immortal Peter! who could
stand him!
They
have an ambition which makes one
laugh:
the
thing
dishes
up
cut and dried his most
personal
life,
his
melancholies,
and
common-or-garden troubles,
as
though
the Universe itself were under an
obligation
to
bother itself about
them,
for it never
gets
tired of
wrap-
ping up
God Himself in the
petty misery
in which its
*
"Here I stand! I cannot
help myself.
God
help
me!
Amen"

were Luther's words before the

Reichstag
at Worms.

H. B. S.
158
THE GENEALOGY
OF MORALS
troubles
are involved. And how about the atrocious form
of this chronic
hobnobbing
with God? This
Jewish,
and
not
merely Jewish,
slobbering
and
clawing importunacy
towards
God!There exist little
despised
"heathen
nations'' in East
Africa,
from whom these first Christians
could have learnt
something
worth
learning,
a little tact
in
worshipping;
these nations do not allow themselves to
say
aloud the name of their God. This seems to me
delicate
enough,
it is certain that it is too
delicate,
and
not
only
for
primitive
Christians;
to take a
contrast, just
recollect
Luther,
the most
"eloquent"
and insolent
peasant
whom
Germany
has
had,
think of the Lutherian
tone,
in
which he felt
quite
the most in his element
during
his
-a-titcs with God. Luther's
opposition
to the medi-
al saints of the Church
(in
particular,
against
"that
devil's
hog,
the
Pope"),
was,
there is no
doubt,
at bottom
the
opposition
of a
boor,
who was offended at the
good
of the
Church,
that
worship-etiquette
of the
sacerdotal
code,
which
only
admits to the
holy
of holies
the initiated and the
silent,
and shuts the door
against
the boors. These
definitely
were not to be allowed a
hearinir
in this
planet

but Luther the

peasant simply
it
otherwise;
as it
was,
it was not German
enough
for him. He
personally
wished himself to talk
direct,
to
nally,
to talk
"straight
from the shoulder" with
his God.
Well,
he's done it. The ascetic
ideal,
you
will
gui
at no time and in no
place,
a school of
good
-
of
good
manners

at the best it was a

school lor
sacerdotal manners: that
is.
it contains
in
itself
something
which was a
deadly enemy
to all
good
ASCETIC IDEALS
159
manners. Lack of
measure, opposition
to measure it is
itself a "non
plus
ultra."
23-
The ascetic ideal has
corrupted
not
only
health and
taste,
there are also
third, fourth, fifth,
and sixth
things
which it has
corrupted

I shall take care not to

go through
the
catalogue (when
should I
get
to the
end?).
I have
here to
expose
not what this ideal
effected;
but rather
only
what it
means,
on what it is
based,
what lies lurk-
ing
behind it and under
it,
that of which it is the
pro-
visional
expression,
an obscure
expression bristling
with
queries
and
misunderstandings.
And with this
object
only
in view I
presumed
"not to
spare" my
readers a
glance
at the awfulness of its
results,
a
glance
at its fatal
results;
I did this to
prepare
them for the final and most
awful
aspect presented
to me
by
the
question
of the
significance
of that ideal. What is the
significance
of the
power
of that
ideal,
the monstrousness of its
power? Why
is it
given
such an amount of
scope? Why
is not a better
resistance offered
against
it? The ascetic ideal
expresses
one will: where is the
opposition will,
in which an
opposi-
tion ideal
expresses
itself? The ascetic ideal has an aim

this
goal is, putting
it
generally,
that all the other
interests of human life
should,
measured
by
its
standard,
appear petty
and
narrow;
it
explains epochs, nations, men,
in reference to this one
end;
it forbids
any
other inter-
pretation, any
other
end;
it
repudiates, denies, affirms,
confirms, only
in the sense of its own
interpretation (and
160
THE GENEALOGY
OF MORALS
there ever a more
thoroughly
elaborated
system
of
interpretation?)
;
it
subjects
itself to no
power,
rather does
it believe
in its own
precedence
over
every power
it
believes
that
nothing powerful
exists
in the world that
has not
first
got
to receive
from "it" a
meaning,
a
right
to
exist,
a
value,
as
being
an instrument
in its
work,
a
way
and means to its
end,
to one end. Where is the
counterpart
of this
complete
system
of
will, end,
and
interpretation?
Why
is the
counterpart
lacking?
Where
is the other "one aim"? But I am told it is not
lacking,
that not
only
has it
fought
a
long
and fortunate
fight
with that
ideal,
but that further it has
already
won the
mastery
over that ideal in all essentials:
let our whole
modern science attest this

that modern
science, which,
like the
genuine reality-philosophy
which it
is, manifestly
believes in itself
alone, manifestly
has the
courage
to be
itself,
the will to be
itself,
and has
got
on well
enough
without
God,
another
world,
and
negative
virtues.
With all their
noisy agitator-babble,
however, they
effect
nothing
with
me;
these
trumpeters
of
reality
are
bad
musicians,
their voices do not come from the
deeps
with sufficient
audibility, they
are not the
mouthpiece
for
the
abyss
of scientific
knowledge

for
to-day
scientific
knowledge
is an
abyss

the word
"science,"
in such
trumpeter-mouths,
is a
prostitution,
an
abuse,
an
imper-
tinence. The truth is
just
the
opposite
from what is main-
tained in the ascetic
theory.
Science has
to-day
abso-
lutely
no
belief in
itself,
let alone in an ideal
superior
to
Itself,
and wherever science still consists of
passion,
love,
ardour, suffering
it is not the
opposition
to that ascetic
ideal,
but rather the incarnation
of
its latest and noblest
ASCETIC IDEALS 161
form.
Does that
ring strange?
There are
enough
brave
and decent
working people,
even
among
the learned men
of
to-day,
who like their little
corner,
and
who, just
be-
cause
they
are
pleased
so to
do,
become at times inde-
cently
loud with their
demand,
that
people to-day
should
be
quite content, especially
in science

for in science there

is so much useful work to do. I do not
deny
it

there
is
nothing
I should like less than to
spoil
the
delight
of
these honest workers in their
handiwork;
for I
rejoice
in their work. But the fact of science
requiring
hard
work,
the fact of its
having
contented
workers,
is abso-
lutely
no
proof
of science as a whole
having to-day
one
end,
one
will,
one
ideal,
one
passion
for a
great faith;
the
contrary,
as I have
said,
is the case. When science is not
the latest manifestation of the ascetic ideal

but these
are cases of such
rarity, selectness,
and
exquisiteness,
as to
preclude
the
general judgment being
affected
thereby

science is a
hiding-place
for
every
kind of
cowardice,
disbelief, remorse, despectio
sui,
bad conscience

it is the
very anxiety
that
springs
from
having
no
ideal,
the suf-
fering
from the lack of a
great love,
the discontent with
an enforced moderation.
Oh,
what does all science nof
cover
to-day?
How
much,
at
any rate,
does it not
try
to cover? The
diligence
of our best
scholars,
their sense-
less
industry,
their
burning
the candle of their brain at
both ends

their
very mastery
in their handiwork

how
often is the real
meaning
of all that to
prevent
themselves
continuing
to see a certain
thing?
Science as a self-
anaesthetic: do
you
know that? You wound them

every
one who consorts with scholars
experiences
this

you
wound them sometimes to the
quick through just
a harm-
1 62
THE GENEALOGY
OF MORALS
..rd;
when
you
think
you
are
paying
them a
compli-
ment
you
embitter them
beyond
all
bounds, simply
be-
cause
you
didn't ha\e the
finesse
to infer the real kind
of customers
you
had to
tackle,
the
sufferer
kind
(who
n't own
up
even to themselves what
they really are),
the dazed and unconscious
kind who have
only
one fear

coming
to consciousness.
24.
And now look at the other
side,
at those rare
cases,
of
which I
spoke,
the most
supreme
idealists to be found
nowadays among philosophers
and scholars. Have
we,
perchance,
found in them the
sought-for opponents
of the
ascetic
ideal,
its arti-idcalists? In
fact, they
believe them-
selves to be
such,
these "unbelievers"
(for they
are all
of them
that)
: it seems that this idea is their last rem-
nant of
faith,
the idea of
being opponents
of this
ideal,
so earnest are
they
on this
subject,
so
passionate
in word
and
gesture;

but does it follow diat what

they
believe
must
necessarily
be trite? We "knowers" have
grown by
,'rees
suspicious
of all kinds of
believers,
our
suspicion
has
step by step
habituated us to draw
just
the
opposite
conclusions to what
people
have drawn
before;
that is to
say,
wherever the
strength
of a belief is
particularly prom-
inent to draw the conclusion of the
difficulty
of
proving
what is
believed,
the conclusion of its actual
improbability.
We do Dot
again deny
that "faith
produces
salvation'':
for
that
very
reason we do
deny
that faith
proves anything,

a
strong faith,
which
produces happiness,
causes
suspicion
of the
object
of that
faith,
it does not establish its
"truth,"
it
d ablish a certain
probability
of

illusion. What
ASCETIC IDEALS
163
is now the
position
in these cases? These solitaries and
deniers of
to-day;
these fanatics in one
thing,
in their
claim to intellectual
cleanness;
these
hard, stern,
contin-
ent,
heroic
spirits,
who constitute the
glory
of our
time;
all these
pale atheists, anti-Christians, immoralists,
Nihi-
lists;
these
sceptics, "ephectics,"
and "hectics" of the in-
tellect
(in
a certain sense
they
are the
latter,
both collec-
tively
and
individually) ;
these
supreme
idealists of knowl-
edge,
in whom alone
nowadays
the intellectual conscience
dwells and is alive

in
point
of fact
they
believe them-
selves as far
away
as
possible
from the ascetic
ideal,
do
these
"free, very
free
spirits":
and
yet,
if I
may
reveal
what
they
themselves cannot see

for
they
stand too near
themselves: this ideal is
simply
their
ideal, they represent
it
nowadays
and
perhaps
no one
else, they
themselves are
its most
spiritualised product,
its most advanced
picket
of skirmishers and
scouts,
its most insidious delicate and
elusive form of seduction.

If I am in
any way
a reader of
riddles,
then I will be one with this sentence: for some
time
past
there have been no
free spirits; for they
still
believe in truth. When the Christian Crusaders in the
East came into collision with that invincible order of as-
sassins,
that order of free
spirits par
excellence,
whose
lowest
grade
lives in a state of
discipline
such as no order
of monks has ever
attained,
then in some
way
or other
they managed
to
get
an
inkling
of that
symbol
and
tally-
word,
that was reserved for the
highest grade
alone as their
secretum, "Nothing
is
true, everything
is
allowed,"

in
sooth,
that was
freedom
of
thought, thereby
was
taking
leave of the
very
belief in truth. Has indeed
any
Euro-
pean, any
Christian
freethinker,
ever
yet
wandered into
1
64
THE GENEALOGY
OF MORALS
this
proposition
and its
labyrinthine consequences?
Does
he know
from
experience
the Minotauros of this den.

I
doubt it

nay,
I know otherwise.
Nothing
is more
really
alien to these
"monofanatics,"
these so-called "free
spir-
its,"
than freedom and
unfettering
in that
sense;
in no
pect
are
they
more
closely tied,
the absolute fanaticism
of their belief in truth is
unparalleled.
I know all this
perhaps
too much from
experience
at close
quarters

that
dignified philosophic
abstinence to which a belief like that
binds its
adherents,
that stoicism of the
intellect,
which
eventually
vetoes
negation
as
rigidly
as it does
affirmation,
that wish for
standing
still in front of the
actual,
the
factum brutum,
that fatalism in
''pctits ja
;
ts"
(ce petit
jaitalism,
as I call
it),
in which French Science now at-
tempts
a kind of moral
superiority
over
German,
this re-
nunciation of
interpretation generally (that is,
of
forcing,
doctoring, abridging, omitting, suppressing, inventing,
fal-
sifying,
and all the other essential attributes of
interpre-
tation)

all
this,
considered
broadly, expresses
the asceti-
cism
of
virtue,
quite
as
efficiently
as does
any repudiation
of the senses
(it
is at bottom
only
a modus of that
repudi-
ation).
Hut what forces it into that
unqualified
will for
truth
is the faith in the ascetic ideal
itself,
even
though
it
take the form of its unconscious
imperatives,

make no
mistake about
it,
it is the
faith,
I
repeat,
in a
mctaphysi-
'
value,
an intrinsic value of
truth,
of a character which
only
warranted and
guaranteed
in this ideal
(it
stands
and falls with that
ideal). Judged strictly,
there does not
t a science without its
"hypotheses,"
the
thought
of
<nce is
inconceivable, illogical:
a
philosophy,
a
faith,
must
always
exist first to enable science to
gain
ASCETIC IDEALS
165
thereby
a
direction,
a
meaning,
a limit and
method,
a
rigid
to existence.
(He
who holds a
contrary opinion
on the
subject

he,
for
example,
who takes it
upon
himself to
establish
philosophy "upon
a
strictly
scientific basis"

has
first
got
to "turn
upside-down"
not
only philosophy
but
also truth itself

the
gravest
insult which could
possibly
be offered to two such
respectable females!) Yes,
there
is no doubt about it

and here I
quote my Joyful
Wis-
dom, cp.
Book V.
Aph. 344:
"The man who is truthful
in that
daring
and extreme
fashion,
which is the
presup-
position
of the faith in
science,
asserts
thereby
a
different
world from that of
life, nature,
and
history;
and in so far
as he asserts the existence of that different
world, come,
must he not
similarly repudiate
its
counterpart,
this
world,
our world? The belief on which our faith in science is
based has remained to this
day
a
metaphysical
belief

even we knowers of
to-day,
we
godless
foes of
metaphysics,
we, too,
take our fire from that
conflagration
which was
kindled
by
a
thousand-year-old faith,
from that Christian
belief,
which was also Plato's
belief,
the belief that God
is
truth,
that truth is divine. . . . But what if this belief
becomes more and more
incredible,
what if
nothing proves
itself to be
divine,
unless it be
error, blindness,
lies

what if God Himself

proved
Himself to be our oldest lie?"

It is
necessary
to
stop
at this
point
and to consider the
situation
carefully.
Science
itself
now needs a
justification
(which
is not for a minute to
say
that there is such a
justification).
Turn in this context to the most ancient
and the most modern
philosophers: they
all fail to realise
the extent of the need of a
justification
on the
part
of the
Will for Truth

here is a
gap
in
every philosophy

what
1 66
THE GEXEALOGY
OF MORALS
b
it caused
by?
Because
up
to the
present
the ascetic
ideal dominated
all
philosophy,
because Truth was fixed
as
Being,
as
God,
as the
Supreme
Court of
Appeal,
because
Truth was not allowed to be a
problem.
Do
you
under-
stand this "allowed"?
From the minute that the belief
in the God of the ascetic ideal is
repudiated,
there exists
a ncd)
problem:
the
problem
of the value of truth. The
Will for Truth needed a
critique
let us define
by
these
rds our own task

the value of truth is

tentatively
to be called in
question.
...
(If
this seems too laconic-
ally expressed,
I recommend the reader to
peruse again
that
passage
from the
Joyful
Wisdom
which bears the
title,
''How far we also are still
pious," Aph. 344,
and
best of all the whole fifth book of that
work,
as well as
the Preface to The Dawn
0} Day.
25-
Nol
You can't
get
round me with science,
when I
search for the natural
antagonists
of the ascetic
ideal,
when I
put
the
question:
"Where is the
opposed
will in
which the
opponent
ideal
expresses
itself?" Science
is
not.
by
2
long way, independent enough
to fulfil this
function
;
in
every department
science needs an ideal
value,
a
power
which creates
values,
and in whose service it can
in itself

science itself never creates values. Its

relation to the ascetic ideal is not in itself
antagonistic:

iking roughly,
it rather
represents
the
progressive
force
in the inner
evolution of that ideal. Tested more
exactly,
lion and
antagonism
are concerned not with the
[deal
itself,
but
only
with that ideal's
outworks,
its outer
ASCETIC IDEALS
167
garb,
its
masquerade,
with its
temporary hardening,
stif-
fening,
and
dogmatising

it makes the life in the ideal

free once
more,
while it
repudiates
its
superficial
elements.
These two
phenomena,
science and the ascetic
ideal,
both
rest on the same basis

I have
already
made this clear

the
basis,
I
say,
of the same
over-appreciation
of truth
(more
accurately
the same belief in the
impossibility
of
valuing
and of
criticising truth),
and
consequently they
are
necessarily allies,
so
that,
in the event of their
being
attacked, they
must
always
be attacked and called into
question together.
A valuation of the ascetic ideal inevi-
tably
entails a valuation of science as
well;
lose no time
in
seeing
this
clearly,
and be
sharp
to catch it!
{Art,
I
am
speaking provisionally,
for I will treat it on some other
occasion in
greater detail,

art,
I
repeat,
in which
lying
is sanctified and the will
for deception
has
good
conscience
on its
side,
is much more
fundamentally opposed
to the
ascetic ideal than is science: Plato's instinct felt this

Plato,
the
greatest enemy
of art which
Europe
has
pro-
duced
up
to the
present.
Plato versus
Homer,
that is the
complete,
the true
antagonism

on the one
side,
the whole-
hearted
"transcendental,"
the
great
defamer of
life;
on the
other,
its
involuntary panegyrist,
the
golden
nature. An
artistic subservience to the service of the ascetic ideal is
consequently
the most absolute artistic
corruption
that
there can
be, though unfortunately
it is one of the most
frequent phases,
for
nothing
is more
corruptible
than an
artist.)
Considered
physiologically, moreover,
science
rests on the same basis as does the ascetic ideal : a certain
impoverishment 0} life
is the
presupposition
of the latter
as of the former
add, frigidity
of the
emotions,
slacken-
1 68
THE GENEALOGY
OF MORALS
ing
of the
tempo,
the substitution of dialectic for
instinct,
usncss
impressed
on mien and
gesture (seriousness,
that most unmistakable
sign
of strenuous
metabolism,
of
Struggling,
toiling life).
Consider the
periods
in a nation
in which the learned man comes into
prominence;
they
are the
periods
of
exhaustion,
often of
sunset,
of
decay

the
effervescing strength,
the confidence
in
life,
the confi-
dence in the future are no more. The
preponderence
of
the mandarins never
signifies any good, any
more than
does the advent of
democracy,
or arbitration instead of
war, equal rights
for
women,
the
religion
of
pity,
and all
the other
symptoms
of
declining
life.
(Science
handled as
a
problem!
what is the
meaning
of science?

upon
this
point
the Treface to the Birth
of Tragedy.)
No! this
"modern science"

mark
you
this well

is at times the
best
ally
for the ascetic
ideal,
and for the
very
reason that
it is the
ally
which is most
unconscious,
most
automatic,
most
secret,
and most subterranean!
They
have been
playing
into each other's hands
up
to the
present,
have
these
"poor
in
spirit"
and the scientific
opponents
of that
ideal
(take care,
by
the
bye,
not to think that these
op-
ponents
are the antithesis of this
ideal,
that
they
are the
rich in
spirit

that
they
are
not;
I have called them the
luetic in
spirit).
As for these celebrated victories of
science;
there is no doubt that
they
are victories

but vic-
tories over what? There was not for a
single
minute
any
victory
among
their list over the ascetic
ideal,
rather was
it made
stronger,
that is to
say,
more
elusive,
more ab-
stract,
more
insidious,
from the fact that a
wall,
an out-
work,
that had
got
built on to the main fortress and
disfigured
its
appearance,
should from time to time be
ASCETIC IDEALS
169
ruthlessly destroyed
and broken down
by
science. Does
any
one
seriously suggest
that the downfall of the
theologi-
cal
astronomy signified
the downfall of that ideal?

Has,
perchance,
man
grown
less in need of a transcendental so-
lution of his riddle of
existence,
because since that time this
existence has become more
random, casual,
and
superflu-
ous in the visible order of the universe? Has there not
been since the time of
Copernicus
an unbroken
progress
in the
self-belittling
of man and his will for
belittling
him-
self?
Alas,
his belief in his
dignity,
his
uniqueness,
his
irreplaceableness
in the scheme of
existence,
is
gone

he has become
animal,
literal, unqualified,
and unmiti-
gated animal,
he who in his earlier belief was almost God
("child
of
God," "demi-God").
Since
Copernicus
man
seems to have fallen on to a
steep plane

he rolls faster
and faster
away
from the centre

whither? into
nothing-
ness? into the
"thrilling
sensation
of
his own
nothingness"?

Well! this would be the

straight way

to the old ideal?

All science
(and
by
no means
only astronomy,
with re-
gard
to the
humiliating
and
deteriorating
effect of which
Kant has made a remarkable
confession,
"it annihilates
my
own
importance"),
all
science,
natural as much as un-
natural
-by
unnatural I mean the
self-critique
of reason

nowadays
sets out to talk man out of his
present opinion
of
himself,
as
though
that
opinion
had been
nothing
but
a bizarre
piece
of
conceit; you might go
so far as to
say
that science finds its
peculiar pride,
its
peculiar
bitter
form of stoical
ataraxia,
in
preserving
man's
contempt 0}
himself,
that state which it took so much trouble to
bring
about,
as man's final and most serious claim to
self-appre-
ciation
(rightly so,
in
point
of
fact,
for he who
despises
1
7
o
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
is
always
"one who has not
forgotten
how to
appreciate").
But does all this involve
any
real effort to counteract the
ascetic ideal? Is it
really seriously suggested
that Kant's
victory
over the
theological dogmatism
about
"God,"
"Soul," "Freedom," "Immortality,"
has
damaged
that
ideal in
any way
(as
the
theologians
have
imagined
to be
the case for a
long
time
past)?

And in this connection

it does not concern us for a
single minute,
if Kant him-
self intended
any
such consummation. It is certain that
from the time of Kant
every type
of transcendental ist is
playing
a
winning game

they
are
emancipated
from the
theologians;
what luck!

he has revealed to them that

secret
art, by
which
they
can now
pursue
their "heart's
desire" on their own
responsibility,
and with all the
respec-
tability
of science.
Similarly,
who can
grumble
at the
agnostics, reverers,
as
they are,
of the unknown and the
absolute
mystery,
if
they
now
worship
their
very query
as God?
(Xaver
Doudan talks somewhere of the
ravages
which Vhabitude d'admirer
I'inintelligible
au lieu de rester
tout
simplcmcnt
dans Vinconnu has
produced

the
ancients,
he
thinks,
must have been
exempt
from those
ravages.)
Supposing
that
everything,
"known" to
man,
fails to
satisfy
his
desires,
and on the
contrary
contradicts
and horrifies
them,
what a divine
way
out of all this to be
able to look for
the
responsibility,
not in the
"desiring"
but
in
"knowing"!

"There is no
knowledge.
Conse-
quently
there is a
God";
what a novel
elegantia syllo
gismi!
what a
triumph
for the ascetic ideal!
26.
Or,
perchance,
does the whole of modern
history
show
ASCETIC IDEALS
171
1 its demeanour
greater
confidence in
life, greater
con-
dence in its ideals? Its loftiest
pretension
is now to be
mirror;
it
repudiates
all
teleology;
it will have no more
proving";
it disdains to
play
the
judge,
and
thereby
lows its
good
taste

it asserts as little as it
denies,
it
xes,
it "describes." All this is to a
high degree ascetic,
ut at the same time it is to a much
greater degree
nihi-
stic;
make no mistake about this! You see in the his-
Drian a
gloomy, hard,
but determined
gaze,

an
eye
that
ioks out as an isolated North Pole
explorer
looks out
perhaps
so as not to look
within,
so as not to look back?
)
-there is snow

here is life
silenced,
the last crows which
aw here are called "whither?"
"Vanity,"
"Nada"

here
;Othing
more flourishes and
grows,
at the most the meta-
lolitics of St.
Petersburg
and the
"pity"
of Tolstoi. But
,s for that other school of historians a
perhaps
still more
modern"
school,
a
voluptuous
and lascivious school which
gles
life and the ascetic ideal with
equal fervour,
which
ises the word "artist" as a
glove,
and has
nowadays
es-
ablished a "corner" for
itself,
in all the
praise given
to
:ontemplation ; oh,
what a thirst do these sweet intellec-
uals excite even for ascetics and winter
landscapes! Nay!
rhe devil take these
"contemplative"
folk! How much
tefer would I wander with those historical Nihilists
hrough
the
gloomiest, grey,
cold mist!

nay,
I shall not
nind
listening (supposing
I have to
choose)
to one who
3
completely
unhistorical and anti-historical
(a man,
like
)uhring
for
instance,
over whose
periods
a hitherto
shy
,nd unavowed
species
of "beautiful souls" has
grown
in-
oxicated in
contemporary Germany,
the
species
anarchis-
ica within the educated
proletariate).
The
"contempla-
ive" are a hundred times worse

I never knew
anything
,
?3
THE GENEALOGY
OF MORALS
which
produced
such intense nausea as one of those "ob-
jective"
chairs* one of those scented
mannikins-about-
town of
history,
a
thing half-priest,
half-satyr
(Renan
parfum),
which
betrays
by
the
high,
shrill falsetto of his
applause
what he lacks and where he lacks
it,
who
betrays
where in this case the Fates have
plied
their
ghastly
shears,
alas: in too
surgeon-like
a fashion! This is dis-
tasteful
to
me,
and irritates
my patience;
let him
keep
patient
at such
sights
who has
nothing
to lose
thereby,

such a
sight enrages me,
such
spectators
embitter me
tinst the
"play,"
even more than does the
play
itself
(history itself, you
understand);
Anacreontic
moods im-
perceptibly
come over me. This
Nature,
who
gave
to the
10m,
to the lion its
ydo\i'
66vrcov,
for what
purpose
did Nature
give
me
my
foot?

To
kick, by
St.
Anacreon,
and not
merely
to run
away!
To
trample
on
all the worm-eaten
"chairs,"
the
cowardly contemplators,
the lascivious eunuchs of
history,
the flirters with ascetic
ideals,
the
righteous
hypocrites
of
impotence!
All rever-
ence on
my part
to the ascetic
ideal,
in so
far
as it is
hotn'ir So
long
as it believes in itself and
plays
no
pranks
on us! But I like not all these
coquettish
bugs
who have an insatiate ambition to smell of the
infinite,
until
eventually
the infinite smells of
bugs;
1 like not the
whited
sepulchres
with their
stagey reproduction
of
life;
I like not the tired and the used
up
who
wrap
themselves
in
wisdom
and look
"objective";
I like not the
agitators
dressed
up
bs
heroes,
who hide their
dummy-heads
behind
the
stalking-horse
of an
ideal;
I like not the ambitious
artists
who would fain
play
the ascetic and the
priest,
and

E.g. Lectureships.
ASCETIC IDEALS
173
are at bottom
nothing
but
tragic clowns;
I like
not, again,
these newest
speculators
in
idealism,
the
Anti-Semites,
who
nowadays
roll their
eyes
in the
patent
Christian-
Aryan-man-of-honour fashion,
and
by
an abuse of moral-
ist attitudes and
agitation dodges,
so
cheap
as to exhaust
any patience,
strive to excite all the blockhead elements
in the
populace (the
invariable success of
every
kind of
intellectual charlatanism in
present-day Germany hangs
together
with the almost
indisputable
and
already quite
palpable
desolation of the German
mind,
whose cause I
look for in a too exclusive
diet,
of
papers, politics,
beer,
and
Wagnerian music,
not
forgetting
the condition
prece-
dent of this
diet,
the national exclusiveness and
vanity,
the
strong
but narrow
principle, "Germany, Germany
above
everything,"*
and
finally
the
paralysis agitans
of "mod-
ern
ideas"). Europe nowadays is,
above
all, wealthy
and
ingenious
in means of
excitement;
it
apparently
has no
more
crying necessity
than stimulantia and alcohol.
Hence the enormous
counterfeiting
of
ideals,
those most
fiery spirits
of the
mind;
hence too the
repulsive,
evil-
smelling, perjured, pseudo-alcoholic
air
everywhere.
I
should like to know how
many cargoes
of imitation ideal-
ism,
of hero-costumes and
high
falutin'
clap-trap,
how
many
casks of sweetened
pity liqueur (Firm:
la
religion
de la
souffrance),
how
many
crutches of
righteous indig-
nation for the
help
of these flat-footed
intellects,
how
many
comedians of the Christian moral ideal would need
to-day
to be
exported
from
Europe,
to enable its air to
smell
pure again.
It is obvious
that,
in
regard
to this
over-production,
a new trade
possibility
lies
open;
it is
*
An illusion to the well-known
patriotic song.

H. B. S.
i
7
4
THE GENEALOGY
OF MORALS
obvious that there is a new business to be done in little
ideal idols and obedient
"idealists"don't
pass
over this
tip!
Who has sufficient
courage?
We have in our hands
the
possibility
of
idealising
the whole earth. But what
am I
talking
about
courage?
we
only
need one
thing
here

a
hand,
a
free,
a
very
free hand.
27.
Enough
!
enough
! let us leave these curiosities and com-
plexities
of the modern
spirit,
which excite as much
laugh-
ter as
disgust.
Our
problem
can
certainly
do without
them,
the
problem
of the
meaning
of the ascetic ideal

what has it
got
to do with
yesterday
or
to-day?
those
things
shall be handled
by
me more
thoroughly
and se-
verely
in another connection
(under
the title "A Contri-
bution to the
History
of
European
Nihilism,"
I refer for
this to a work which I am
preparing:
The Will to
Power,
an
Attempt
at a Transvaluation
of
All
Values).
The
only
reason
why
I come to allude to it here is this: the ascetic
ideal has at
times,
even in the most intellectual
sphere,
only
one real kind of enemies and
damagers:
these are
the comedians of this ideal

for
they
awake mistrust,
y
where
otherwise,
where the mind is at work seri-
ously,
powerfully,
and without
counterfeiting,
it
dispenses
altogether
now with an ideal
(the
popular expression
for
this
abstinence is
"Atheism")

with the
exception of
the
will
jar
truth. Hut this
will,
this remnant of an
ideal, is,
If
you
will believe
me,
that ideal itself in its severest and
I
formulation,
esoteric
through
and
through.
tripped
of all
outworks,
and
consequently
not so much
ASCETIC IDEALS
175
its remnant as its kernel.
Unqualified
honest atheism
(and
its air
only
do we
breathe, we,
the most intellectual
men of this
age)
is not
opposed
to that
ideal,
to the extent
that it
appears
to
be;
it is rather one of the final
phases
of its
evolution,
one of its
syllogisms
and
pieces
of inher-
ent
logic

it is the
awe-inspiring catastrophe
of a two-
thousand-year training
in
truth,
which
finally
forbids itself
the lie
of
the
belief
in God.
(The
same course of
develop-
ment in India

quite independently,
and
consequently
of
some demonstrative value

the same ideal

driving
to the
same conclusion the decisive
point
reached five hundred
years
before the
European era,
or more
precisely
at the
time of Buddha

it started in the
Sankhyam philosophy,
and then this was
popularised through Buddha,
and made
into a
religion.)
What,
I
put
the
question
with all
strictness,
has
really
triumphed
over the Christian God? The answer stands
in
my Joyful
Wisdom, Aph. 357:
"the Christian
morality
itself,
the idea of
truth,
taken as it was with
increasing
seriousness,
the
confessor-subtlety
of the Christian con-
science translated and sublimated into the scientific con-
science into intellectual cleanness at
any price. Regard-
ing
Nature as
though
it were a
proof
of the
goodness
and
guardianship
of
God; interpreting history
in honour of a
divine
reason,
as a constant
proof
of a moral order of the
world and a moral
teleology; explaining
our own
personal
experiences,
as
pious
men have for
long enough explained
them,
as
though every arrangement, every nod, every
sin-
gle thing
were invented and sent out of love for the sal-
vation of the
soul;
all this is now done
away with,
all this
has the conscience
against it,
and is
regarded by every
176
THE GENEALOGY
OF MORALS
subtler
conscience as
disreputable,
dishonourable,
as
lying,
feminism, weakness,
cowardice

by
means of this
severity,
if
by
means of
anything
at
all,
are
we,
in
sooth, good
Europeans
and heirs of
Europe's longest
and bravest self-
.
ry."
. . . All
great things go
to ruin
by
reason of
themselves, by
reason of an act of self-dissolution:
so
wills the law of
life,
the law of
necessary "self-mastery"
even in the essence of life

ever is the
law-giver finally
exposed
to the
cry, "patere legem quam ipse
tulisti"
;
in
thus wise did
Christianity go
to ruin as a
dogma, through
its own
morality;
in thus wise must
Christianity go again
to ruin
to-day
as a
morality

we are
standing
on the
threshold of this event. After Christian truthfulness has
drawn one conclusion after the
other,
it
finally
draws its
strongest conclusion,
its conclusion
against itself; this,
however, happens,
when it
puts
the
question,
"what is the
meaning of every
will
for
truth?" And here
again
do I
touch on
my problem,
on our
problem, my
unknown
friends
(for
as
yet
/ know of no
friends)
: what sense has
our whole
being,
if it does not mean that in our own selves
that will for truth has come to its own consciousness as a
problem/

By
reason of this attainment of self-conscious-
00
the
part
of the will for
truth, morality
from hence-
ard

there is no doubt about it

goes
to
pieces:
this
la
that
put
hundred-act
play
that is reserved for the
next two centuries of
Europe,
the most
terrible,
the most
mysterious,
and
perhaps
also the most
hopeful
of all
plays.
28.
If
you
except
the ascetic
ideal, man,
the animal man
ASCETIC IDEALS
177
had no
meaning.
His existence on earth contained no
end;
"What is the
purpose
of man at all?" was a
question
without an
answer;
the will for man and the world was
lacking;
behind
every great
human
destiny rang
as a re-
frain a still
greater "Vanity!"
The ascetic ideal
simply
means this: that
something
was
lacking,
that a tremend-
ous void encircled man

he did not know how to

justify
himself,
to
explain himself,
to affirm
himself,
he
suffered
from the
problem
of his own
meaning.
He suffered also
in other
ways,
he was in the main a diseased animal
;
but
his
problem
was not
suffering itself,
but the lack of an
answer to that
crying question,
"To what
purpose
do we
suffer?"
Man,
the bravest animal and the one most in-
ured to
suffering,
does not
repudiate suffering
in itself: he
wills
it,
he even seeks it
out, provided
that he is shown a
meaning
for
it,
a
purpose
of
suffering.
Not
suffering,
but
the senselessness of
suffering
was the curse which till then
lay spread
over
humanity

and the ascetic ideal

gave
it
a
meaning!
It was
up
till then the
only meaning;
but
any
meaning
is better than no
meaning;
the ascetic ideal was
in that connection the
"jaute
de mieux"
par
excellence that
existed at that time. In that ideal
suffering found
an ex-
planation;
the tremendous
gap
seemed
filled;
the door to
all suicidal Nihilism was closed. The
explanation

there
is no doubt about it

brought
in its train new
suffering,
deeper,
more
penetrating,
more
venomous, gnawing
more
brutally
into life: it
brought
all
suffering
under the
per-
spective
of
guilt;
but in
spite
of all that

man was saved

thereby,
he had a
meaning,
and from henceforth was no
more like a leaf in the
wind,
a shuttle-cock of
chance,
of
nonsense,
he could now "will"
something

absolutely
im-
j
78
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
material
to what
end,
to what
purpose,
with what means
he wished: the will
itself
was saved. It is
absolutely
im-
possible
to
disguise
what in
point
of fact is made clear
by
complete
will that has taken its direction from the
ascetic ideal: this hate of the
human,
and even more of
the
animal,
and more still of the
material,
this horror of
the
senses,
of reason
itself,
this fear of
happiness
and
beauty,
this desire to
get right
away
from all
illusion,
change, growth, death, wishing
and even
desiring

all
this means

let us have the

courage
to
grasp
it

a will
for
Nothingness,
a will
opposed
to
life,
a
repudiation
of
the most
fundamental conditions of
life,
but it is and re-
mains a will!

and to
say
at the end that which I said at
the
beginning

man will wish

Nothingness
rather than
not wish at all.
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.
Translated by
J.
M. KENNEDY.
(The following twenty-seven fragments
were intended
by
Nietzsche to form a
supplement
to
Chapter
VIII of
Beyond
Good and
Evil, dealing
with
Peoples
and
Countries.)
I.
The
Europeans
now
imagine
themselves as
representing,
in the
main,
the
highest types
of men on earth.
A characteristic of
Europeans: inconsistency
between
word and
deed;
the Oriental is true to himself in
daily
life. How the
European
has established colonies is ex-
plained by
his
nature,
which resembles that of a beast of
prey.
This
inconsistency
is
explained by
the fact that Chris-
tianity
has abandoned the class from which it
sprang.
This is the difference between us and the Hellenes:
their morals
grew up among
the
governing
castes.
Thucy-
dides' morals are the same as those that
exploded every-
where with Plato.
179
180
THE GENEALOGY
OF MORALS
Attempts
towards
honesty
at the
Renaissance,
for ex-
ample: always
for the benefit of the arts. Michael
Ange-
lo's
conception
of God as the
"Tyrant
of the World" was
an honest one.
I rate Michael
Angelo higher
than
Raphael, because,
through
all the Christian clouds and
prejudices
of his
time,
he saw the ideal of a culture nobler than the Christo-
Raphaelian:
whilst
Raphael truly
and
modestly glorified
(inly
the values handed down to
him,
and did not
carry
within himself
any inquiring, yearning
instincts. Michael
Angelo,
on the other
hand,
saw and felt the
problem
of
the
law-giver
of new values: the
problem
of the
conqueror
made
perfect,
who first had to subdue the ''hero within
himself,"
the man exalted to his
highest pedestal,
master
even of his
pity,
who
mercilessly
shatters and annihilates
everything
that does not bear his own
stamp, shining
in
Olympian divinity.
Michael
Angelo
was
naturally only
at certain moments so
high
and so far
beyond
his
age
and
Christian
Europe;
for the most
part
he
adopted
a conde-
iing
attitude towards the eternal feminine in Christi-
anity;
it would
seem, indeed,
that in the end he broke
D before
her,
and
gave up
the ideal of his most in-
spired
hours. It was an ideal which
only
a man in the
t and
highest vigour
of life could
bear;
but not a
man
advanced in
years! Indeed,
he would have had to
demolish
Christianity
with his ideal! But he was not
thinker
and
philosopher enough
for that.
Perhaps
Leon-
I Vinci
alone of those artists had a
really super-
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES 181
Christian outlook. He knows the
East,
the "land of
dawn,"
within himself as well as without himself. There
is
something super-European
and silent in him: a charac-
teristic of
every
one who has seen too wide a circle of
things good
and bad.
4-
How much we have learnt and learnt anew in
fifty
years!
The whole Romantic School with its belief in "the
people"
is refuted! No Homeric
poetry
as
"popular"
poetry!
No deification of the
great powers
of Nature!
No deduction from
language-relationship
to race-relation-
ship!
No "intellectual
contemplations"
of the
supernat-
ural! No truth enshrouded in
religion!
The
problem
of truthfulness is
quite
a new one. I am
astonished. From this
standpoint
we
regard
such natures
as Bismarck as
culpable
out of
carelessness,
such as Rich-
ard
Wagner
out of want of
modesty;
we would condemn
Plato for his
pia fraus,
Kant for the derivation of his
Categorical Imperative,
his own belief
certainly
not hav-
ing
come to him from this source.
Finally,
even doubt turns
against
itself: doubt in doubt.
And the
question
as to the value of truthfulness and its
extent lies there.
What I observe with
pleasure
in the German is his
Mephistophelian
nature; but,
to tell the
truth,
one must
have a
higher conception
of
Mephistopheles
than Goethe
1 82
THE GENEALOGY
OF MORALS
had,
who found it
necessary
to diminish his
Mephisto-
pheles
in order to
magnify
his "inner Faust." The true
German
Mephistopheles
is much more
dangerous, bold,
wicked,
and
cunning,
and
consequently
more
open-
hearted: remember the nature of Frederick the
Great,
or
of that much
greater Frederick,
the
Hohenstaufen,
Fred-
erick II.
The real German
Mephistopheles
crosses the
Alps,
and
believes that
everything
there
belongs
to him. Then he
recovers
himself,
like
Winckelmann,
like Mozart. He
looks
upon
Faust and Hamlet as
caricatures,
invented to
be
laughed at,
and
upon
Luther also. Goethe had his
good
German
moments,
when he
laughed inwardly
at all these
things.
But then he fell back
again
into his
cloudy
moods.
6.
Perhaps
the Germans have
only grown up
in a
wrong
climate! There is
something
in them that
might
be Hel-
lenic!

something
that is awakened when
they
are
brought
into touch with the South

Winckelmann, Goethe,
Mo-
zart.
We should not
forget, however,
that we are still
young.
Luther is still our last
event;
our last book is still
the Bible. The Germans have never
yet
"moralised."
Also,
the
very
food of the Germans was their doom: its
consequence,
Philistinism.
The
Germans are a
dangerous
people: they
are
experts
at
inventing
intoxicants.
Gothic,
rococo
(according
to
Semper),
the
historical
sense and
exoticism, Hegel,
Rich-
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES
183
ard
Wagner

Leibniz,
too
(dangerous
at the
present day)

(they
even idealised the
serving
soul as the virtue of
scholars and
soldiers,
also as the
simple mind).
The
Germans
may
well be the most
composite people
on earth.
"The
people
of the
Middle,"
the inventors of
porcelain,
and of a kind of Chinese breed of
Privy
Councillor.
8.
The smallness and baseness of the German soul were
not and are not
consequences
of the
system
of small
states;
for it is well known that the inhabitants of much smaller
states were
proud
and
independent:
and it is not a
large
state
per
se that makes souls freer and more
manly.
The
man whose soul
obeys
the slavish command: ''Thou shalt
and must kneel!" in whose
body
there is an
involuntary
bowing
and
scraping
to
titles, orders, gracious glances
from above

well,
such a man in an
"Empire"
will
only
bow all the more
deeply
and lick the dust more
fervently
in the
presence
of the
greater sovereign
than in the
pres-
ence of the lesser: this cannot be doubted. We can still
see in the lower classes of Italians that aristocratic self-
sufficiency; manly discipline
and self-confidence still form
a
part
of the
long history
of their
country:
these are vir-
tues which once manifested themselves before their
eyes.
A
poor
Venetian
gondolier
makes a far better
figure
than
a
Privy
Councillor from
Berlin,
and is even a better man
in the end

any
one can see this.
Just
ask the women.
Most
artists,
even some of the
greatest (including
the
1
84
THE
GENEALOGY
OF MORALS
historians)
have
up
to the
present
belonged
to the
serving
classes
(whether they
serve
people
of
high position
or
princes
or women
or "the
masses"),
not to
speak
of their
dependence
upon
the Church and
upon
moral law. Thus
Rubens
portrayed
the
nobility
of his
age;
but
only
accord-
in
g
to their
vague conception
of
taste,
not
according
to
his own measure of
beauty

on the
whole, therefore,
against
his own taste. Van
Dyck
was nobler in this re-
ct: who in all those whom he
painted
added a certain
amount of what he himself most
highly
valued: he did
not descend from
himself,
but rather lifted
up
others to
himself when he "rendered."
The slavish
humility
of the artist to his
public
(as
Se-
bastian Bach has testified in
undying
and
outrageous
words in the dedication of his
High Mass)
is
perhaps
more difficult to
perceive
in
music;
but it is all the more
deeply engrained.
A
hearing
would be refused me if I
endeavoured to
impart my
views on this
subject. Chopin
possesses distinction,
like Van
Dyck.
The
disposition
of
Beethoven is that of a
proud peasant;
of
Haydn,
that of
a
proud
servant.
Mendelssohn,
too, possesses
distinction

like
Goethe,
in the most natural
way
in the world.
10.
We
could at
any
time have counted on the
fingers
of
one hand
those German learned men who
possessed
wit:
the
remainder have
understanding,
and a few of
them,
happily,
that famous
"childlike character" which di-
. . It is our
privilege:
with this "divination" Ger-
irnce has
discovered some
things
which we can
PEOPLES
AND COUNTRIES
185
hardly
conceive
of,
and
which,
after
all,
do not
exist, per-
haps.
It is
only
the
Jews among
the Germans
who do not
"divine" like them.
11.
As Frenchmen
reflect the
politeness
and
esprit
of French
society,
so do Germans reflect
something
of the
deep, pen-
sive earnestness of their
mystics
and
musicians,
and also
of their
silly
childishness,
The Italian exhibits a
great
deal of
republican
distinction and
art,
and can show him-
self to be noble and
proud
without
vanity.
12.
A
larger
number of the
higher
and better-endowed
men
will,
I
hope,
have in the end so much self-restraint
as to
be able to
get
rid of their bad taste for affectation and
sentimental
darkness,
and to turn
against
Richard
Wagner
as much as
against Schopenhauer.
These two Germans
are
leading
us to
ruin; they
flatter our
dangerous quali-
ties.
A
stronger
future is
prepared
for us in
Goethe,
Beethoven,
and Bismarck than in these racial aberrations.
We have had no
philosophers
yet.
13-
The
peasant
is the commonest
type
of
noblesse,
for he
is
dependent upon
himself most of all. Peasant blood is
still the best blood in
Germany

for
example,
Luther,
Niebuhr,
Bismarck.
[86
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
Bismarck a Slav. Let
any
one look
upon
the face of
Germans.
Everything
that had
manly,
exuberant blood
in it went abroad. Over the
smug populace remaining,
the slave-souled
people,
there came an
improvement
from
abroad,
especially by
a mixture of Slavonic blood.
The
Brandenburg nobility
and the Prussian
nobility
in
general
(and
the
peasant
of certain North German dis-
tricts
i
,
comprise
at
present
the most
manly
natures in
Germany.
That the manliest men shall rule: this is
only
the natural
order of
things.
14.
The future of German culture rests with the sons of
the Prussian officers.
IS-
There has
always
been a want of wit in
Germany,
and
mediocre heads attain there to the
highest honours,
be-
cause even
they
are rare. What is most
highly prized
is
diligence
and
perseverance
and a certain
cold-blooded,
critical
outlook, and,
for the sake of such
Qualities,
Ger-
man
scholarship
and the German
military system
have
become
paramount
in
Europe.
16.
rliaments
may
be
very
useful to a
strong
and versa-
tile
Btatesman: he has
something
there to
rely upon (every
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES
187
such
thing must, however,
be able to resist!
)

upon
which
he can throw a
great
deal of
responsibility.
On the
whole,
however,
I could wish that the
counting
mania and the
superstitious
belief in
majorities
were not established in
Germany,
as with the Latin
races,
and that one could
finally
invent
something
new even in
politics!
It is sense-
less and
dangerous
to let the custom of universal
suffrage

which is still but a short time under

cultivation,
and
could
easily
be
uprooted

take a
deeper
root:
whilst,
of
course,
its introduction was
merely
an
expedient
to steer
clear of
temporary
difficulties.
17.
Can
any
one interest himself in this German
Empire?
Where is the new
thought?
Is it
only
a new combination
of
power?
All the
worse,
if it does not know its own mind.
Peace and laisser alter are not
types
of
politics
for which
I have
any respect. Ruling,
and
helping
the
highest
thoughts
to
victory

the
only things
that can make me
interested in
Germany. England's
small-mindedness is
the
great danger
now on earth. I observe more inclina-
tion towards
greatness
in the
feelings
of the Russian Nihi-
lists than in those of the
English
Utilitarians. We
require
an
intergrowth
of the German and Slav
races,
and we re-
quire, too,
the cleverest
financiers,
the
Jews,
for us to
become masters of the world.
(a)
The sense of
reality.
(b)
A
giving-up
of the
English principle
of the
people's
right
of
representation.
We
require
the
representation
of
the
great
interests.
,88
THE GENEALOGY
OF MORALS
We
require
an unconditional
union with
Russia,
. . with a
mutual
plan
of action
which shall not
per-
mit
any English
schemata to obtain the
mastery
in Russia.
No American future!
(
d)
A national
system
of
politics
is
untenable,
and em-
barrassment
by
Christian views is a
very great
evil. In
Europe
all sensible
people
are
sceptics,
whether
they say
so or not.
18.
I >ee over and
beyond
all these national
wars,
new "em-
pires,"
and whatever else lies in the
foreground.
What I
am concerned with

for I see it
preparing
itself
slowly
and
tatingly

is the United
Europe.
It was the
only
real
.,
the one
impulse
in the
souls,
of all the broad-minded
and
deep-thinking
men of this
century

this
preparation
of a new
synthesis,
and the tentative effort to
anticipate
the future of "the
European." Only
in their weaker mo-
ments,
or when
they grew
old,
did
they
fall back
again
into the national narrowness of the "Fatherlanders"

then
they
were once more
"patriots."
I am
thinking
of
men like
Napoleon,
Hcinrich
Heine, Goethe, Beethoven,
dhal, Schopenhauer. Perhaps
Richard
Wagner
like-
:s to their
number, concerning whom,
as a
successful
type
of German
obscurity, nothing
can be said
without some such
''perhaps.
- '
But to the
help
of such minds as feel the need of a new
unity
there
comes a
great
explanatory
economic fact:
the small
States of
Europe

I refer to all our

present
and
"empires"
will in a short time become
PEOPLES AND
COUNTRIES
189
economically untenable, owing
to the
mad,
uncontrolled
struggle
for the
possession
of local and international trade.
Money
is even now
compelling European
nations to
amalgamate
into one Power. In
order, however,
that Eu-
rope may
enter into the battle for the
mastery
of the
world with
good prospects
of
victory (it
is
easy
to
per-
ceive
against
whom this battle will be
waged),
she must
probably
"come to an
understanding"
with
England.
The
English
colonies are needed for this
struggle, just
as much
as modern
Germany,
to
play
her new role of broker and
middleman, requires
the colonial
possessions
of Holland.
For no one
any longer
believes that
England
alone is
strong
enough
to continue to act her old
part
for
fifty years
more;
the
impossibility
of
shutting
out homines novi from
the
government
will ruin
her,
and her continual
change
of
political parties
is a fatal obstacle to the
carrying
out
of
any
tasks which
require
to be
spread
out over a
long
period
of time. A man must
to-day
be a soldier first and
foremost that he
may
not afterwards lose his credit as a
merchant.
Enough ; here,
as in other
matters,
the
coming
century
will be found
following
in the
footsteps
of Na-
poleon

the first
man,
and the man of
greatest
initiative
and advanced
views,
of modern times. For the tasks of
the next
century,
the methods of
popular representation
and
parliaments
are the most
inappropriate imaginable.
19.
The condition of
Europe
in the next
century
will once
again
lead to the
breeding
of
manly virtues,
because men
will live in continual
danger.
Universal
military
service
i
go
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
ifl
already
the curious antidote which we
possess
for the
effeminacy
of democratic
ideas,
and it has
grown up
out
of the
struggle
of the nations.
(Nation

men who
speak
one
language
and read the same
newspapers.
These men
call themselves
"nations,"
and would far too
readily
trace their descent from the same source and
through
the
same
history; which, however,
even with the assistance of
the most
malignant lying
in the
past, they
have not suc-
ceeded in
doing.)
20.
What
quagmires
and
mendacity
must there be about if
it is
possible,
in the modern
European hotch-potch,
to
raise
questions
of "race"!
(It
being premised
that the
origin
of such writers is not in Horneo and
Borneo.)
21.
Maxim: To associate with no man who takes
any part
in the mendacious race swindle.
22.
With the freedom of travel now
existing, groups
of men
of the same kindred can
join together
and establish com-
munal
habits and
customs. The
overcoming
of "na-
tions."
23-
To make
Europe
a
centre of
culture,
national
stupidi-
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES
191
ties should not make us blind to the fact that in the
higher
regions
there is
already
a continuous
reciprocal depend-
ence. France and German
philosophy.
Richard
Wagner
and Paris
(1830-50).
Goethe and Greece. All
things
are
impelled
towards a
synthesis
of the
European past
in the
highest types
of mind.
24.
Mankind has still much before it

how, generally speak-

ing,
could the ideal be taken from the
past? Perhaps
merely
in relation to the
present,
which latter is
possibly
a lower
region.
25-
This is our
distrust,
which recurs
again
and
again ;
our
care,
which never lets us
sleep;
our
question,
which no
one listens to or wishes to listen to
;
our
Sphinx,
near which
there is more than one
precipice:
we believe that the men
of
present-day Europe
are deceived in
regard
to the
things
which we love
best,
and a
pitiless
demon
(no,
not
pitiless,
only
indifferent and
puerile)

plays
with our hearts and
their
enthusiasm,
as it
may perhaps
have
already played
with
everything
that lived and loved
;
I believe that
every-
thing
which we
Europeans
of
to-day
are in the habit of
admiring
as the values of all these
respected things
called
"humanity," "mankind," "sympathy," "pity," may
be of
some value as the debilitation and
moderating
of certain
powerful
and
dangerous primitive impulses. Nevertheless,
in the
long
run all these
things
are
nothing
else than the
i
9
2 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
belittlement of the entire
type "man,"
his
mediocrisation,
if in such a
desperate
situation I
may
make use of such
a
desperate expression.
I think that the commedia
umana for an
epicurean spectator-god
must consist in
this: that the
Europeans, by
virtue of their
growing
moral-
ity,
believe in all their innocence and
vanity
that
they
are
rising
higher
and
higher,
whereas the truth is that
they
are
sinking
lower and lower

i.e., through
the cultivation of all
the virtues which are useful to a
herd,
and
through
the
repression
of the other and
contrary
virtues which
give
rise
to a
new,
higher, stronger,
masterful race of men

the
fir>t-named virtues
merely develop
the herd-animal in
man and stabilitate the animal
"man,"
for until now man
has been "the animal as
yet
unstabilitated."
26/
Genius and Epoch.

Heroism is no form of selfish-

ness,
for one is
shipwrecked by
it. . . . The direction of
power
is often conditioned
by
the state of the
period
in
which the
great
man
happens
to be
born;
and this fact
brings
about the
superstition
that he is the
expression
of
ime. Hut this same
power
could be
applied
in sev-
eral different
ways;
and between him and his time there
is
always
this difference: that
public opinion always
wor-
ships
the herd
instinct,

i.e.,
the instinct of the
weak,

while
he,
the
strong man, fights
for
strong
ideals.
27.
The fate now
overhanging Europe
is
simply
this: that it
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES
193
is
exactly
her
strongest
sons that come
rarely
and late to
the
spring-time
of their
existence; that,
as a
rule,
when
they
are
already
in their
early youth they perish,
sad-
dened, disgusted,
darkened in
mind, just
because
they
have
already,
with the entire
passion
of their
strength,
drained to the
dregs
the
cup
of
disillusionment,
which in
our
days
means the
cup
of
knowledge,
and
they
would not
have been the
strongest
had
they
not also been the most
disillusioned. For that is the test of their
power

they
must first of all rise out of the illness of their
epoch
to
reach their own health. A late
spring-time
is their mark
of
distinction; also,
let us
add,
late
merriment,
late
folly,
the late exuberance of
joy!
For this is the
danger
of
to-day: everything
that we loved when we were
young
has
betrayed
us. Our last love

the love which makes us

acknowledge her,
our love for Truth

let us take care that

she, too,
does not
betray
us!
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Library
of the World's Best Books
HARDY,
THOMAS
(1840- )
The
Mayor
of
Casterbridge (17)
Introduction
by JOYCE
KILMER
HECHT,
BEN
Erik Dorn
(29)
Introduction
by
BURTON RASCOE
HUDSON,
W. H.
(1862- )
Green Mansions
(89)
Introduction
by JOHN
GALS-
WORTHY
IBANEZ,
VICENTE BLASCO
(1867- )
The Cabin
(69)
Introduction
by JOHN
GARRETT
UNDERHILL
IBSEN,
HENRIK
(1828-1906)
A Doll's
House, Ghosts,
An
Enemy
of the
People (6)
;
Hedda
Gabler,
Pillars of
Society,
The Master Builder
(36)
Introduction
by
H. L. MENCKEN
The Wild
Duck, Rosmersholm,
The
League
of Youth
(54)
JAMES,
HENRY
(1843-1916)
Daisy
Miller and An International
Episode (63)
Introduction
by
WILLIAM
DEAN HOWELLS
KIPLING,
RUDYARD (1865- )
Soldiers
Three
(3)
LATZKO,
ANDREAS
(1876-
)
Men in War
(88)
LAWRENCE,
D. H.
(1887- )
Sons and Lovers
(109)
Introduction
by JOHN
MAC/
LE
GALLIENNE,
ANTHOLOGY
OF AMERICAN
POETRY
(107)
Edited with an introduction
by
RICHARD
LE GALLIENNE
LOTI,
PIERRE
(1850-
)
Madame
Chrysantheme
(94)
MACY, JOHN
(1877- )
The
Spirit
of American Literature
(56)
MAETERLINCK,
MAURICE
(1862- )
A Miracle of St.
Antony,
Pelleas and
Melisande,
The
Death of
Tintagiles,
Alladine and
Palomides, Interior,
The Intruder
(11)
DeMAUPASSANT,
GUY
(1850-1893)
Love and Other Stories
(72)
Edited and translated with
an Introduction
by
MICHAEL MONAHAN
Mademoiselle
Fifi,
and Twelve Other Stories
(8);
Une
Vie
(57)
Introduction
by
HENRY
JAMES
MEREDITH,
GEORGE
(1828-1909)
Diana of the
Crossways (14)
Introduction
by
ARTHUR
SYMONS
MOLIERE
Plays (78)
Introduction
by
WALDO FRANK
MOORE,
GEORGE
(1853-
)
Confessions
of a
Young
Man
(16)
Introduction
by
FLOYD DELL
Modern
Library
of the World's Best Books
MORRISON,
ARTHUR
(1863- )
Tales of Mean Streets
(100)
Introduction
by
H. L.
MENCKEN
NIETZSCHE,
FRIEDRICH
(1844-1900)
Thus
Spake
Zarathustra
(9)
Introduction
by
FRAU
FOERSTER-NIETZSCHE
Beyond
Good and Evil
(20)
Introduction
by
WILLARD
HUN TINGTON WRIGHT
Genealogy
of Morals
(62)
O'NEILL,
EUGENE
(1888-)
The Moon of the Carribbees and Six Other
Plays
of the
Sea
(111)
Introduction
by
GEORGE
JEAN
NATHAN
OUIDA
In a Winter
City (24)
Introduction
by
CARL VAN
VECHTEN
PAINE,
THOMAS
(1737-1809)
Selections from the
Writings
of Thomas Paine
(1C8)
Edited with an Introduction
by
CARL VAN DOREN
PATER,
WALTER
(1839-1894)
Marius the
Epicurean (90)
The Renaissance
(86)
Introduction
by
ARTHUR SYMONS
PEPYS', SAMUEL;
DIARY
(103)
Condeii-st-d. Introduction
by
RICHARD LE GALLIEXNE
PREVOST,
ANTOINE FRANCOIS
(1697-1763)
Manon Lescaut
(85)
In same volume with Daudet's
Sapho
PSYCHOANALYSIS,
AN OUTLINE OF
(66)
A
Symposium
of the latest
expressions by
the leaders of
the various schools of the new
psychology.
Edited
by
J.
S. VAN TESLAAR
RODIN,
THE ART OF
(1840-1917)
64 Black and White
Reproductions (41)
Introduction
by
LOUIS WEINBERG
SCHNITZLER,
ARTHUR
(1S62-
)
Anatol,
Living Hours,
The Green Cockatoo
(32)
Introduction
by
ASHLEY DUKES
Bertha Garlan
(39)
SCHOPENHAUER,
ARTHUR
(1788-1860)
Studies in Pessimism
(12)
Introduction
by
T. B.
SAUNDERS
SHAW,
G. B.
(1856-
)
An
Unsocial
Socialist
(15)
SINCLAIR,
MAY
The
Belfry
(68)
STEPHENS, JAMES
Mary,
Mary (30) Introduction
by
PADRIAC COLUM
STEVENSON, ROBERT
LOUIS
(1850-1894)
Treasure
Island
(4)
STIRNER,
MAX
(Johann Caspar
Schmidt) (1806-1859)
The
Ego
and His
Own
(49)
Modern
Library
of the World's Best Books
3TRINDBERG,
AUGUST
(1849-1912)
Married
(2)
Introduction
by
THOMAS SELTZER
Miss
Julie,
The
Creditor,
The
Stronger Woman, Motherly
Love, Paria,
Simoon
(52)
5UDERMANN,
HERMANN
(1857-)
Dame Care
(33)
JWINBURNE,
ALGERNON CHARLES
(1837-1909)
Poems
(23)
Introduction
by
ERNEST RHYS
HOMPSON,
FRANCIS
(1859-1907)
Complete
Poems
(38)
^QLSTOY,
LEO
(1828-1910)
Redemption
and Two Other
Plays (77)
Introduction
by
ARTHUR HOPKINS
The Death of Ivan
Uyitch
and Four Other Stories
(64)
'URGENEV,
IVAN
(1818-1883)
Fathers and Sons
(21)
Introduction
by
THOMAS SELTZER
Smoke
(80)
Introduction
by JOHN
REED
AN
LOON,
HENDRIK WILLEM
(1882- )
Ancient Man
(105)
ILLON FRANCOIS
(1431-1461)
Poems
(58)
Introduction
by JOHN
PAYNE
OLTAIRE, (FRANCOIS
MARIE
AROUET) (1694-1778)
Candide
(47)
Introduction
by
PHILIP LITTELL
r
ELLS,
H. G.
(1866- )
Ann Veronica
(27)
The War in the Air
(5)
New Preface
by
H. G. Wells for
this edition
HITMAN,
WALT
(1819- )
Poems
(97)
Introduction
by
CARL "SANDBURG
ILDE,
OSCAR
(1859-1900)
An Ideal
Husband,
A Woman of No
Importance (84)
Dorian
Gray (1)
Fairy
Tales and Poems in Prose
(61)
ntentions
(96)
poems
(19)
alome,
The
Importance
of
Being Earnest, Lady
Winder-
mere's Fan
(83)
Introduction
by
EDGAR SALTUS
LSON,
WOODROW
(1856- )
elected Addresses and Public
Papers (55)
Edited with
an introduction
by
ALBERT BUSHNELL HART
MAN
QUESTION,
THE
(59)
^.
Symposium, including Essays by
Ellen
Key,
Havelock
Ellis,
G. Lowes
Dickinson,
etc. Edited
by
T. R. SMITH
ATS,
W. B.
(1865- )
rish
Fairy
and Folk Tales
(44)
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