149.

Little Unconventional Actions are Necessary!—To act occasionally in matters of custom against our own better judgments; to yield in practice while reserving our own intellectual liberty; to behave like everybody else and thus to show ourselves amiable and considerate to all, to compensate them, as it were, even if only to some extent, for our unconventional opinions—all this among many tolerably liberal-minded men is looked upon not only as permissible but even as “honourable,” “humane,” “tolerant,” and “unpedantic,” or whatever fine words may be used to lull to sleep the intellectual conscience. So, for example, one man, although he may be an atheist, has his infant baptized in the usual Christian fashion; another goes through his period of military service, though he may severely condemn all hatred between nations; and a third runs into the Church with a girl because she comes from a religious family, and makes his vows to a priest without feeling ashamed of it. “It is of no importance if one of us does what every one else does and has done”—so says ignorant prejudice! What a profound mistake! For nothing is of greater importance than that a powerful, long-established, and irrational custom should be once again confirmed by the act of some one who is recognised as rational. In this way the proceeding is thought to be sanctioned by reason itself! All honour to your opinions! but little unconventional actions are of still greater value.

150.

The Hazard of Marriages.—If I were a god, and a benevolent god, the marriages of men would cause me more displeasure than anything else. An individual can make very great progress within the seventy years of his life—yea, even within thirty years: such progress, indeed, as to surprise even the gods! But when we then see him exposing the inheritance and legacy of his struggles and victories, the laurel crown of his humanity, on the first convenient peg where any female may pick it to pieces for him; when we observe how well he can acquire and how little he is capable of preserving his acquisitions, and how he does not even dream that by procreation he might prepare a still more victorious life,—we then, indeed, become impatient and say, “Nothing can in the end result from humanity, individuals are wasted, for all rationality of a great advance of humanity is rendered impossible by the hazard of marriages: let us cease from being the assiduous spectators and fools of this aimless drama!” It was in this mood that the gods of Epicurus withdrew long ago to their divine seclusion and felicity: they were tired of men and their love affairs.

151.

Here are New Ideals to Invent.—At a time when a man is in love he should not be allowed to come to a decision about his life and to determine once and for all the character of his society on account of a whim. We ought publicly to declare invalid the vows of lovers, and to refuse them permission to marry: and this because we should treat marriage itself much more seriously, so that in cases where it is now contracted it would not usually be allowed in future! Are not the majority of marriages such that we should not care to have them witnessed by a third party? And yet this third party is scarcely ever lacking—the child—and he is more than a witness; he is the whipping-boy and scapegoat.

152.

Formula of Oath.—“If I am now telling a lie I am no longer an honourable man, and every one may say so to my face.” I recommend this formula in place of the present judicial oath and its customary invocation to the Deity: it is stronger. There is no reason why even religious men should oppose it; for as soon as the customary oath no longer serves, all the religious people will have to turn to their catechism, which says, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.”

153.

The Malcontent.—He is one of the brave old warriors: angry with civilisation because he believes that its object is to make all good things—honour, rewards, and fair women—accessible even to cowards.

154.

Consolation amid Perils.—The Greeks, in the course of a life that was always surrounded by great dangers and cataclysms, endeavoured to find in meditation and knowledge a kind of security of feeling, a last refugium. We, who live in a much more secure state, have introduced danger into meditation and knowledge, and it is in life itself that we endeavour to find repose, a refuge from danger.

155.
Extinct Scepticism.—Hazardous enterprises are rarer in modern times than in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, probably because modern times have no more belief in omens, oracles, stars, and soothsayers. In other words, we have become incapable of believing in a future which is reserved for us, as the ancients did, who—in contradistinction to ourselves—were much less sceptical regarding that which is to be than that which is.

156.

Evil through Exuberance.—“Oh, that we should not feel too happy!”—such was the secret fear of the Greeks in their best age. That is why they preached moderation to themselves. And we?

157.

The Worship of Natural Sounds.—What signification can we find in the fact that our culture is not only indulgent to the manifestations of grief, such as tears, complaints, reproaches, and attitudes of rage and humility, but even approves them and reckons them among the most noble and essential things?—while, on the other hand, the spirit of ancient philosophy looked down upon them with contempt, without admitting their necessity in any way. Let us remember how Plato—who was by no means one of the most inhuman of the philosophers—speaks of the Philoctetus of the tragic stage. Is it possible that our modern culture is wanting in “philosophy”? or, in accordance with the valuations of those old philosophers, do we perhaps all form part of the “mob”?

158.

The Climate for Flattery.—In our day flatterers should no longer be sought at the courts of kings, since these have all acquired a taste for militarism, which cannot tolerate flattery. But this flower even now often grows in abundance in the neighbourhood of bankers and artists.

159.

The Revivers.—Vain men value a fragment of the past more highly from the moment when they are able to revive it in their imagination (especially if it is difficult to do so), they would even like if possible to raise it from the dead. Since, however, the number of vain people is always very large, the danger presented by historical studies, if an entire epoch devotes its attention to them, is by no means small: too great an amount of strength is then wasted on all sorts of imaginable resurrections. The entire movement of romanticism is perhaps best understood from this point of view.

160.

Vain, Greedy, and not very Wise.—Your desires are greater than your understanding, and your vanity is even greater than your desires,—to people of your type a great deal of Christian practice and a little Schopenhauerian theory may be strongly recommended.

161.

Beauty corresponding to the Age.—If our sculptors, painters, and musicians wish to catch the significance of the age, they should represent beauty as bloated, gigantic, and nervous: just as the Greeks, under the influence of their morality of moderation, saw and represented beauty in the Apollo di Belvedere. We should, indeed, call him ugly! But the pedantic “classicists” have deprived us of all our honesty!
162.

The Irony of the Present Time.—At the present day it is the habit of Europeans to treat all matters of great importance with irony, because, as the result of our activity in their service, we have no time to take them seriously.

163.

Against Rousseau.—If it is true that there is something contemptible about our civilisation, we have two alternatives: of concluding with Rousseau that, “This despicable civilisation is to blame for our bad morality,” or to infer, contrary to Rousseau's view, that “Our good morality is to blame for this contemptible civilisation. Our social conceptions of good and evil, weak and effeminate as they are, and their enormous influence over both body and soul, have had the effect of weakening all bodies and souls and of crushing all unprejudiced, independent, and self-reliant men, the real pillars of a strong civilisation: wherever we still find the evil morality to-day, we see the last crumbling ruins of these pillars.” Thus let paradox be opposed by paradox! It is quite impossible for the truth to lie with both sides: and can we say, indeed, that it lies with either? Decide for yourself.

164.

Perhaps Premature.—It would seem at the present time that, under many different and misleading names, and often with a great want of clearness, those who do not feel themselves attached to morals and to established laws are taking the first initial steps to organise themselves, and thus to create a right for themselves; whilst hitherto, as criminals, free-thinkers, immoral men and miscreants, they have lived beyond the pale of the law, under the bane of outlawry and bad conscience, corrupted and corrupting. On the whole, we should consider this as right and proper, although it may result in insecurity for the coming century and compel every one to bear arms.—There is thereby a counterforce which continually reminds us that there is no exclusively moral-making morality, and that a morality which asserts itself to the exclusion of all other morality destroys too much sound strength and is too dearly bought by mankind. The non-conventional and deviating people, who are so often productive and inventive, must no longer be sacrificed: it must never again be considered as a disgrace to depart from morality either in actions or thought; many new experiments must be made upon life and society, and the world must be relieved from a huge weight of bad conscience. These general aims must be recognised and encouraged by all those upright people who are seeking truth.

165.

A Morality which does not bore one.—The principal moral commandments which a nation permits its teachers to emphasise again and again stand in relation to its chief defects, and that is why it does not find them tiresome. The Greeks, who so often failed to employ moderation, coolness, fair-mindedness, and rationality in general, turned a willing ear to the four Socratic virtues,—they stood in such need of them, and yet had so little talent for them!

166.

At the Parting of the Ways.—Shame! You wish to form part of a system in which you must be a wheel, fully and completely, or risk being crushed by wheels! where it is understood that each one will be that which his superiors make of him! where the seeking for “connections” will form part of one's natural duties! where no one feels himself offended when he has his attention drawn to some one with the remark, “He may be useful to you some time”; where people do not feel ashamed of paying a visit to ask for somebody's intercession, and where they do not even suspect that by such a voluntary submission to these morals, they are once and for all stamped as the common pottery of nature, which others can employ or break up of their free will without feeling in any way responsible for doing so,—just as if one were to say, “People of my type will never be lacking, therefore, do what you will with me! Do not stand on ceremony!”

167.

Unconditional Homage.—When I think of the most read German philosopher, the most popular German musician, and the most distinguished German statesman, I cannot but acknowledge that life is now rendered unusually arduous for these Germans, this nation of unconditional sentiments, and that, too, by their own great men. We see three magnificent spectacles spread out before us: on each occasion there is a river rushing along in the bed which it has made for itself, and even so agitated that one thinks at times it intends to flow uphill. And yet, however we might admire Schopenhauer, who would not, all things considered, like to have other opinions than his? Who in all greater and smaller things would now share the opinions of Richard Wagner, although there may be truth in the view expressed by some one: viz. that wherever Wagner gave or took offence some problem lay hidden,—which, however, he did not unearth for us. And, finally, how many are there who would be willing and eager to agree with Bismarck, if only he could always agree with himself, or were even to show some signs of doing so for the future! It is true that it is by no means astonishing to find statesmen without principles, but with dominant instincts; a versatile mind, actuated by these dominant and violent instincts, and hence without principles—these qualities are looked upon as reasonable and natural in a statesman. But, alas, this has up to the present been so un-German; as un-German as the fuss made about music and the discord and bad temper excited around the person of the musician; or as un-German as the new and extraordinary position taken up by Schopenhauer: he did not feel himself to be either above things or on his knees before them—one or other of these alternatives might still have been German—but he assumed an attitude against things! How incredible and disagreeable! to range one's self with things and nevertheless be their adversary, and finally the adversary of one's self,—what can the unconditional admirer do with such an example? And what, again, can he do with three such examples who cannot keep the peace towards one another! Here we see Schopenhauer as the antagonist of Wagner's music, Wagner attacking Bismarck's politics, and Bismarck attacking Wagnerism and Schopenhauerism. What remains for us to do? Where shall we flee with our thirst for wholesale hero-worship! Would it not be possible to choose from the music of the musician a few hundred bars of good music which appealed to the heart, and which we should like to take to heart because they are inspired by the heart,—could we not stand aside with this small piece of plunder, and forget the rest? And could we not make a similar compromise as regards the philosopher and the statesman,—select, take to heart, and in particular forget the rest?

Yes, if only forgetfulness were not so difficult! There was once a very proud man who would never on any account accept anything, good or evil, from others,—from any one, indeed, but himself. When he wanted to forget, however, he could not bestow this gift upon himself, and was three times compelled to conjure up the spirits. They came, listened to his desire, and said at last, “This is the only thing it is not in our power to give!” Could not the Germans take warning by this experience of Manfred? Why, then, should the spirits be conjured up? It is useless. We never forget what we endeavour to forget. And how great would be the “balance” which we should have to forget if we wished henceforth to continue wholesale admirers of these three great men! It would therefore be far more advisable to profit by the excellent opportunity offered us to try something new, i.e. to advance in the spirit of honesty towards ourselves and become, instead of a nation of credulous repetition and of bitter and blind animosity, a people of conditional assent and benevolent opposition. We must come to learn in the first place, however, that unconditional homage to people is something rather ridiculous, that a change of view on this point would not discredit even Germans, and that there is a profound and memorable saying: “Ce qui importe, ce ne sont point les personnes: mais les choses.” This saying is like the man who uttered it—great, honest, simple, and silent,—just like Carnot, the soldier and Republican. But may I at the present time speak thus to Germans of a Frenchman, and a Republican into the bargain? Perhaps not: perhaps I must not even recall what Niebuhr in his time dared to say to the Germans: that no one had made such an impression of true greatness upon him as Carnot.
168.

A Model.—What do I like about Thucydides, and how does it come that I esteem him more highly than Plato? He exhibits the most wide-spread and artless pleasure in everything typical in men and events, and finds that each type is possessed of a certain quantity of good sense: it is this good sense which he seeks to discover. He likewise exhibits a larger amount of practical justice than Plato; he never reviles or belittles those men whom he dislikes or who have in any way injured him in the course of his life. On the contrary: while seeing only types, he introduces something noble and additional into all things and persons; for what could posterity, to which he dedicates his work, do with things not typical! Thus this culture of the disinterested knowledge of the world attains in him, the poet-thinker, a final marvellous bloom,—this culture which has its poet in Sophocles, its statesman in Pericles, its doctor in Hippocrates, and its natural philosopher in Democritus: this culture which deserves to be called by the name of its teachers, the Sophists, and which, unhappily, from the moment of its baptism at once begins to grow pale and incomprehensible to us,—for henceforward we suspect that this culture, which was combated by Plato and all the Socratic schools, must have been very immoral! The truth of this matter is so complicated and entangled that we feel unwilling to unravel it: so let the old error (error veritate simplicior) run its old course.

169.

The Greek Genius Foreign to us.—Oriental or modern, Asiatic or European: compared with the ancient Greeks, everything is characterised by enormity of size and by the revelling in great masses as the expression of the sublime, whilst in Paestum, Pompeii, and Athens we are astonished, when contemplating Greek architecture, to see with what small masses the Greeks were able to express the sublime, and how they loved to express it thus. In the same way, how simple were the Greeks in the idea which they formed of themselves! How far we surpass them in the knowledge of man! Again, how full of labyrinths would our souls and our conceptions of our souls appear in comparison with theirs! If we had to venture upon an architecture after the style of our own souls—(we are too cowardly for that!)—a labyrinth would have to be our model. That music which is peculiar to us, and which really expresses us, lets this be clearly seen! (for in music men let themselves go, because they think there is no one who can see them hiding behind their music).

170.

Another Point of View.—How we babble about the Greeks! What do we understand of their art, the soul of which was the passion for naked masculine beauty! It was only by starting therefrom that they appreciated feminine beauty. For the latter they had thus a perspective quite different from ours. It was the same in regard to their love for women: their worship was of a different kind, and so also was their contempt.

171.

The Food of the Modern Man.—He has learned to digest many things; nay, almost everything; it is his ambition to do so. He would, however, be really of a higher order if he did not understand this so well: homo pamphagus is not the finest type of the human race. We live between a past which had a more wayward and deranged taste than we, and a future which will possibly have a more select taste,—we live too much midway.

172.

Tragedy and Music.—Men of essentially warlike disposition, such, for example, as the ancient Greeks in the time of Æschylus, are difficult to rouse, and when pity once triumphs over their hardness they are seized as by a kind of giddiness or a “demoniacal power,”—they feel themselves overpowered and thrilled by a religious horror. After this they become sceptical about their condition; but as long as they are in it they enjoy the charm of being, as it were, outside themselves, and the delight of the marvellous mixed with the bitterest gall of suffering: this is the proper kind of drink for fighting men,—something rare, dangerous, and bitter-sweet, which does not often fall to one's lot.

Tragedy appeals to souls who feel pity in this way, to those fierce and warlike souls which are difficult to overcome, whether by fear or pity, but which lose nothing by being softened from time to time. Of what use, however, is tragedy to those who are as open to the “sympathetic affections” as the sails of a ship to the wind! When at the time of Plato the Athenians had become more softened and sensitive, oh, how far they were still removed from the gushing emotions of the inhabitants of our modern towns and villages! And yet even then the philosophers were beginning to complain of the injurious nature of tragedy. An epoch full of danger such as that now beginning, in which bravery and manliness are rising in value, will perhaps again harden souls to such an extent that they will once more stand in need of tragic poets: but in the meantime these are somewhat superfluous, to put it mildly. For music, too, a better age may be approaching (it will certainly be a more evil age!) when artists will have to make their music appeal to strongly individual beings, beings which will have become hard and which will be dominated by the gloomy earnestness of their own passion; but of what use is music to the little souls of the present age which is fast passing away, souls that are too unsteady, ill-developed, half-personal, inquisitive, and covetous of everything?

173.

The Flatterers of Work.—In the glorification of “work” and the never-ceasing talk about the “blessing of labour,” I see the same secret arrière-pensée as I do in the praise bestowed on impersonal acts of a general interest, viz. a fear of everything individual. For at the sight of work—that is to say, severe toil from morning till night—we have the feeling that it is the best police, viz. that it holds every one in check and effectively hinders the development of reason, of greed, and of desire for independence. For work uses up an extraordinary proportion of nervous force, withdrawing it from reflection, meditation, dreams, cares, love, and hatred; it dangles unimportant aims before the eyes of the worker and affords easy and regular gratification. Thus it happens that a society where work is continually being performed will enjoy greater security, and it is security which is now venerated as the supreme deity.—And now, horror of horrors! it is the “workman” himself who has become dangerous; the whole world is swarming with “dangerous individuals,” and behind them follows the danger of dangers—the individuum!

174.

The Moral Fashion of a Commercial Community.—Behind the principle of the present moral fashion: “Moral actions are actions performed out of sympathy for others,” I see the social instinct of fear, which thus assumes an intellectual disguise: this instinct sets forth as its supreme, most important, and most immediate principle that life shall be relieved of all the dangerous characteristics which it possessed in former times, and that every one must help with all his strength towards the attainment of this end. It is for that reason that only those actions which keep in view the general security and the feeling of security of society are called “good.” How little joy must men now have in themselves when such a tyranny of fear prescribes their supreme moral law, if they make no objection when commanded to turn their eyes from themselves and to look aside from themselves! And yet at the same time they have lynx eyes for all distress and suffering elsewhere! Are we not, then, with this gigantic intention of ours of smoothing down every sharp edge and corner in life, utilising the best means of turning mankind into sand! Small, soft, round, infinite sand! Is that your ideal, ye harbingers of the “sympathetic affections”? In the meantime even the question remains unanswered whether we are of more use to our neighbour in running immediately and continually to his help,—which for the most part can only be done in a very superficial way, as otherwise it would become a tyrannical meddling and changing,—or by transforming ourselves into something which our neighbour can look upon with pleasure,—something, for example, which may be compared to a beautiful, quiet, and secluded garden, protected by high walls against storms and the dust of the roads, but likewise with a hospitable gate.

175.

Fundamental Basis of a Culture of Traders.—We have now an opportunity of watching the manifold growth of the culture of a society of which commerce is the soul, just as personal rivalry was the soul of culture among the ancient Greeks, and war, conquest, and law among the ancient Romans. The tradesman is able to value everything without producing it, and to value it according to the requirements of the consumer rather than his own personal needs. “How many and what class of people will consume this?” is his question of questions. Hence, he instinctively and incessantly employs this mode of valuation and applies it to everything, including the productions of art and science, and of thinkers, scholars, artists, statesmen, nations, political parties, and even entire ages: with respect to everything produced or created he inquires into the supply and demand in order to estimate for himself the value of a thing. This, when once it has been made the principle of an entire culture, worked out to its most minute and subtle details, and imposed upon every kind of will and knowledge, this is what you men of the coming century will be proud of,—if the prophets of the commercial classes are right in putting that century into your possession! But I have little belief in these prophets. Credat Judæus Apella—to speak with Horace.

176.

The Criticism of our Ancestors.—Why should we now endure the truth, even about the most recent past? Because there is now always a new generation which feels itself in contradiction to the past and enjoys in this criticism the first-fruits of its sense of power. In former times the new generation, on the contrary, wished to base itself on the old and began to feel conscious of its power, not only in accepting the opinions of its ancestors but, if possible, taking them even more seriously. To criticise ancestral authority was in former times a vice; but at the present time our idealists begin by making it their starting-point.

177.

To learn Solitude.—O ye poor fellows in the great centres of the world's politics, ye young and talented men, who, urged on by ambition, think it your duty to propound your opinion of every event of the day,—for something is always happening,—who, by thus making a noise and raising a cloud of dust, mistake yourselves for the rolling chariot of history; who, because ye always listen, always suit the moment when ye can put in your word or two, thereby lose all real productiveness. Whatever may be your desire to accomplish great deeds, the deep silence of pregnancy never comes to you! The event of the day sweeps you along like straws before the wind whilst ye lie under the illusion that ye are chasing the event,—poor fellows! If a man wishes to act the hero on the stage he must not think of forming part of the chorus; he should not even know how the chorus is made up.

178.

Daily Wear and Tear.—These young men are lacking neither in character, nor talent, nor zeal, but they have never had sufficient time to choose their own path; they have, on the contrary, been habituated from the most tender age to have their path pointed out to them. At the time when they were ripe enough to be sent into the “desert,” something else was done with them. They were turned to account, estranged from themselves, and brought up in such a way that they became accustomed to be worn out by their daily toil. This was imposed on them as a duty, and now they cannot do without it; they would not wish it to be otherwise. The only thing that cannot be refused to these poor beasts of burden is their “holidays”—such is the name they give to this ideal of leisure in an overworked century; “holidays,” in which they may for once be idle, idiotic, and childish to their heart's content.

179.

As little State as possible!—All political and economic matters are not of such great value that they ought to be dealt with by the most talented minds: such a waste of intellect is at bottom worse than any state of distress. These matters are, and ever will be, the province of smaller minds, and others than the smaller minds should not be at the service of this workshop: it would be better to let the machinery work itself to pieces again! But as matters stand at the present time, when not only do all people believe that they must know all about it day by day, but wish likewise to be always busy about it, and in so doing neglect their own work, it is a great and ridiculous mistake. The price that has to be paid for the “public safety” is far too high, and, what is maddest of all, we effect the very opposite of “public safety” a fact which our own dear century has undertaken to prove, as if this had never been proved before! To make society secure against thieves and fire, and to render it thoroughly fit for all kinds of trade and traffic, and to transform the State in a good and evil sense into a kind of Providence—these aims are low, mediocre, and not by any means indispensable; and we should not seek to attain them by the aid of the highest means and instruments which exist—means which we should reserve precisely for our highest and rarest aims! Our epoch, however much it may babble about economy, is a spendthrift: it wastes intellect, the most precious thing of all.

180.

Wars.—The great wars of our own day are the outcome of historical study.

181.

Governing.—Some people govern because of their passion for governing; others in order that they may not be governed,—the latter choose it as the lesser of two evils.

182.

Rough and Ready Consistency.—People say of a man with great respect, “He is a character”—that is, when he exhibits a rough and ready consistency, when it is evident even to the dullest eye. But, whenever a more subtle and profound intellect sets itself up and shows consistency in a higher manner, the spectators deny the existence of any character. That is why cunning statesmen usually act their comedy under the cloak of a kind of rough and ready consistency.

183.

The Old and the Young.—“There is something immoral about Parliaments,”—so many people still think,—“for in them views even against the Government may be expressed.”—“We should always adopt that view of a subject which our gracious Lord commands,”—this is the eleventh commandment in many an honest old head, especially in Northern Germany. We laugh at it as an out-of-date fashion, but in former times it was the moral law itself. Perhaps we shall again some day laugh at that which is now considered as moral by a generation brought up under a parliamentary régime, namely, the policy of placing one's party before one's own wisdom, and of answering every question concerning the public welfare in such a way as to fill the sails of the party with a favourable gust of wind. “We must take that view of a subject which the position of our party calls for”—such would be the canon. In the service of such morals we may now behold every kind of sacrifice, even martyrdom and conquest over one's self.

184.

The State as a Production of Anarchists.—In countries inhabited by tractable men there are always a few backsliders and intractable people. For the present the latter have joined the Socialists more than any other party. If it should happen that these people once come to have the making of the laws, they may be relied upon to impose iron chains upon themselves, and to practise a dreadful discipline,—they know themselves! and they will endure these harsh laws with the knowledge that they themselves have imposed them—the feeling of power and of this particular power will be too recent among them and too attractive for them not to suffer anything for its sake.

185.

Beggars.—Beggars ought to be suppressed; because we get angry both when we help them and when we do not.

186.

Business Men.—Your business is your greatest prejudice, it binds you to your locality, your society and your tastes. Diligent in business but lazy in thought, satisfied with your paltriness and with the cloak of duty concealing this contentment: thus you live, and thus you like your children to be.

187.

A Possible Future.—Is it impossible for us to imagine a social state in which the criminal will publicly denounce himself and dictate his own punishment, in the proud feeling that he is thus honouring the law which he himself has made, that he is exercising his power, the power of a lawmaker, in thus punishing himself? He may offend for once, but by his own voluntary punishment he raises himself above his offence, and not only expiates it by his frankness, greatness, and calmness, but adds to it a public benefit.—Such would be the criminal of a possible future, a criminal who would, it is true, presuppose a future legislation based upon this fundamental idea: “I yield in great things as well as in small only to the law which I myself have made.” How many experiments must yet be made! How many futures have yet to dawn upon mankind!

188.

Stimulants and Food.—Nations are deceived so often because they are always looking for a deceiver, i.e. a stimulating wine for their senses. When they can only have this wine they are glad to put up even with inferior bread. Intoxication is to them more than nutriment—this is the bait with which they always let themselves be caught! What, to them, are men chosen from among themselves—although they may be the most expert specialists—as compared with the brilliant conquerors, or ancient and magnificent princely houses! In order that he may inspire them with faith, the demagogue must at least exhibit to them a prospect of conquest and splendour. People will always obey, and even do more than obey, provided that they can become intoxicated in doing so. We may not even offer them repose and pleasure without this laurel crown and its maddening influence.

This vulgar taste which ascribes greater importance to intoxication than nutrition did not by any means originate in the lower ranks of the population: it was, on the contrary, transplanted there, and on this backward soil it grows in great abundance, whilst its real origin must be sought amongst the highest intellects, where it flourished for thousands of years. The people is the last virgin soil upon which this brilliant weed can grow. Well, then, is it really to the people that we should entrust politics in order that they may thereby have their daily intoxication?

189.

High Politics.—Whatever may be the influence in high politics of utilitarianism and the vanity of individuals and nations, the sharpest spur which urges them onwards is their need for the feeling of power—a need which rises not only in the souls of princes and rulers, but also gushes forth from time to time from inexhaustible sources in the people. The time comes again and again when the masses are ready to stake their lives and their fortunes, their consciences and their virtue, in order that they may secure that highest of all enjoyments and rule as a victorious, tyrannical, and arbitrary nation over other nations (or at all events think that they do).

On occasions such as these, feelings of prodigality, sacrifice, hope, confidence, extraordinary audacity, and enthusiasm will burst forth so abundantly that a sovereign who is ambitious or far-sighted will be able to seize the opportunity for making war, counting upon the good conscience of his people to hide his injustice. Great conquerors have always given utterance to the pathetic language of virtue; they have always been surrounded by crowds of people who felt themselves, as it were, in a state of exaltation and would listen to none but the most elevated oratory. The strange madness of moral judgments! When man experiences the sensation of power he feels and calls himself good; and at exactly the same time the others who have to endure his power call him evil!—Hesiod, in his fable of the epochs of man, has twice in succession depicted the same epoch, that of the heroes of Homer, and has thus made two epochs out of one: to those who lived under the terrible iron heel of those adventurous despots, or had heard their ancestors speak of them, the epoch appeared to be evil; but the descendants of those chivalric races worshipped it as the “good old times,” and as an almost ideally blissful age. The poet could thus not help doing what he did,—his audience probably included the descendants of both races.

190.

Former German Culture.—When the Germans began to interest other European nations, which is not so very long ago, it was owing to a culture which they no longer possess to-day, and which they have indeed shaken off with a blind ardour, as if it had been some disease; and yet they have not been able to replace it by anything better than political and national lunacy. They have in this way succeeded in becoming even more interesting to other nations than they were formerly through their culture: and may that satisfy them! It is nevertheless undeniable that this German culture has fooled Europeans, and that it did not deserve the interest shown in it, and much less the imitation and emulation displayed by other nations in trying to rival it.

Let us look back for a moment upon Schiller, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Schleiermacher, Hegel, and Schelling; let us read their correspondence and mingle for a time with the large circle of their followers: what have they in common, what characteristics have they, that fill us, as we are now, partly with a feeling of nausea and partly with pitiful and touching emotions? First and foremost, the passion for appearing at all costs to be morally exalted, and then the desire for giving utterance to brilliant, feeble, and inconsequential remarks, together with their fixed purpose of looking upon everything (characters, passions, times, customs) as beautiful—“beautiful,” alas, in accordance with a bad and vague taste, which nevertheless pretended to be of Hellenic origin. We behold in these people a weak, good-natured, and glistening idealism, which, above all, wished to exhibit noble attitudes and noble voices, something at once presumptuous and inoffensive, and animated by a cordial aversion to “cold” or “dry” reality—as also to anatomy, complete passions, and every kind of philosophical continence and scepticism, but especially towards the knowledge of nature in so far as it was impossible to use it as religious symbolism.

Goethe, in his own characteristic fashion, observed from afar these movements of German culture: placing himself beyond their influence, gently remonstrating, silent, more and more confirmed in his own better course. A little later, and Schopenhauer also was an observer of these movements—a great deal of the world and devilry of the world had again been revealed to him, and he spoke of it both roughly and enthusiastically, for there is a certain beauty in this devilry! And what was it, then, that really seduced the foreigners and prevented them from viewing this movement as did Goethe and Schopenhauer, or, better, from ignoring it altogether? It was that faint lustre, that inexplicable starlight which formed a mysterious halo around this culture. The foreigners said to themselves: “This is all very very remote from us; our sight, hearing, understanding, enjoyment, and powers of valuations are lost here, but in spite of that there may be some stars! There may be something in it! Is it possible that the Germans have quietly discovered some corner of heaven and settled there? We must try to come nearer to these Germans.” So they did begin to come nearer to the Germans, while not so very long afterwards the Germans put themselves to some trouble to get rid of this starlight halo: they knew only too well that they had not been in heaven, but only in a cloud!

191.

Better Men.—They tell me that our art is meant for the men of the present day, these greedy, unsatisfied, undisciplined, disgusted, and harassed spirits, and that it exhibits to them a picture of happiness, exaltation, and unworldliness beside that of their own brutality, so that for once they may forget and breathe freely; nay, perhaps find that they may derive some encouragement towards flight and conversion from that oblivion. Poor artists, with such a public as this; half of whose thoughts require the attention of a priest, and the other half the attention of an alienist! How much happier was Corneille—“Our great Corneille!” as Madame de Sévigné exclaimed, with the accent of a woman in the presence of a whole man,—how far superior was his audience, which he could please with pictures of chivalric virtues, strict duty, generous devotion, and heroic self-denial! How differently did he and they love existence, not as coming from blind and confused “will,” which we curse because we cannot destroy it; but loving existence as a place, so to speak, where greatness joined with humanity is possible, and where even the greatest restraint of form, such as submission to the caprice of priests and princes, could not suppress either the pride, chivalric feeling, the grace or the intellect of individuals, but could, on the contrary, be felt as a charm and incentive, as a welcome contrast to innate self-glorification and distinction and the inherited power of volition and passion.

192.

The Desire for Perfect Opponents.—It cannot be denied that the French have been the most Christian nation in the world, not because the devotion of masses in France has been greater than elsewhere, but because those Christian ideals which are most difficult to realise have become incarnated here instead of merely remaining fancies, intentions, or imperfect beginnings. Take Pascal, for example, the greatest of all Christians in his combination of ardour, intellect, and honesty, and consider what elements had to be combined in his case! Take Fénelon, the most perfect and attractive embodiment of ecclesiastical culture in all its power: a sublime golden mean of whom a historian would be tempted to prove the impossibility, whilst in reality he was merely the perfection of something exceedingly difficult and improbable. Take Madame de Guyon among her companions, the French Quietists: and everything that the eloquence and ardour of the Apostle Paul has endeavoured to divine with regard to the Christian's state of semi-divinity, this most sublime, loving, silent, and ecstatic state is seen verified in her, without, however, that Jewish obtrusiveness that Paul showed towards God—due in the case of Madame de Guyon to the real old French artlessness in words and gestures, artlessness at once womanly, subtle, and distinguished. Consider, again, the founder of the Trappists—the last person who really took seriously the ascetic ideal of Christianity, not because he was an exception among Frenchmen, but because he was a true Frenchman: for up to our own day his gloomy organisation has not been able to acclimatise itself and to prosper, except among Frenchmen; and it has followed them into Alsace and Algeria.

Let us not forget the Huguenots, either: that combination of a martial and industrial spirit, refined manners and Christian severity, has never been more beautifully exhibited. And it was at Port Royal that the great Christian erudition beheld its last era of prosperity; and in France more than anywhere else great men know how to prosper. Though not at all superficial, a great Frenchman has always his apparent superficiality;—he has, so to speak, a natural skin for his real contents and depth,—while, on the other hand, the depth of a great German is generally, as it were, closed up in an ugly-shaped box, like an elixir, which, by means of a hard and curious covering, endeavours to preserve itself from the light of day and the touch of thoughtless hands. And now let us endeavour to find out why a people like the French, so prolific in perfect types of Christians, likewise necessarily brought forth the perfect contrary types, those of unchristian free-thought! The French free-thinker, in his own inward being, had to fight against truly great men, and not, like the free-thinkers of other nations, merely against dogmas and sublime abortions.

193.

Esprit and Morals.—The German, who possesses the secret of knowing how to be tedious in spite of wit, knowledge, and feeling, and who has habituated himself to consider tediousness as moral, is in dread in the presence of French esprit lest it should tear out the eyes of morality—but a dread mingled with “fascination,” like that experienced by the little bird in the presence of the rattlesnake. Amongst all the celebrated Germans none possessed more esprit than Hegel, but he also had that great German dread of it which brought about his peculiar and defective style. For the nature of this style resembles a kernel, which is wrapped up so many times in an outer covering that it can scarcely peep through, now and then glancing forth bashfully and inquisitively, like “young women peeping through their veils,” to use the words of that old woman-hater, Æschylus. This kernel, however, is a witty though often impertinent joke on intellectual subjects, a subtle and daring combination of words, such as is necessary in a society of thinkers as gilding for a scientific pill—but, enveloped as it is in an almost impenetrable cover, it exhibits itself as the most abstruse science, and likewise as the worst possible moral tediousness. Here the Germans had a permissible form of esprit and they revelled in it with such boundless delight that even Schopenhauer's unusually fine understanding could not grasp it—during the whole of his life he thundered against the spectacle that the Germans offered to him, but he could never explain it.

194.

Vanity of the Teachers of Morals.—The relatively small success which teachers of morals have met with may be explained by the fact that they wanted too much at once, i.e. they were too ambitious and too fond of laying down precepts for everybody. In other words, they were beating the air and making speeches to animals in order to turn them into men; what wonder, then, that the animals thought this tedious! We should rather choose limited circles and endeavour to find and promote morals for them: for instance, we should make speeches to wolves with the object of turning them into dogs; but, above all, the greatest success will remain for the man who does not seek to educate either everybody or certain limited circles, but only one single individual, and who cannot be turned to the right or left from his straight purpose. The last century was superior to ours precisely because it possessed so many individually educated men, as well as educators in the same proportion, who had made this their life's task, and who with this task were dignified not only in their own eyes but in those of all the remaining “good society.”

195.

The so-called Classical Education.—Alas! we discover that our life is consecrated to knowledge and that we should throw it away, nay, that we should even have to throw it away if this consecration did not protect us from ourselves: we repeat this couplet, and not without deep emotion:

        Thee, Fate, I follow, though I fain would not,
        And yet I must, with many a sigh and groan!

And then, in looking backwards over the course of our lives, we discover that there is one thing that cannot be restored to us: the wasted period of our youth, when our teachers did not utilise these ardent and eager years to lead us to the knowledge of things, but merely to this so-called “classical education”! Only think of this wasted youth, when we were inoculated clumsily and painfully with an imperfect knowledge of the Greeks and Romans as well as of their languages, contrary to the highest principle of all culture, which holds that we should not give food except to those who hunger for it! Think of that period of our lives when we had mathematics and physics forced down our throats, instead of being first of all made acquainted with the despair of ignorance, instead of having our little daily life, our activities, and everything occurring in our houses, our workshops, in the sky, and in nature, split up into thousands of problems, painful, humiliating and irritating problems—and thus having our curiosity made acquainted with the fact that we first of all require a mathematical and mechanical knowledge before we can be allowed to rejoice in the absolute logic of this knowledge! If we had only been imbued with reverence for those branches of science, if we had only been made to tremble with emotion—were it only for once—at the struggles, the defeats, and the renewed combats of those great men, of the martyrdom which is the history of pure science! But, on the contrary, we were allowed to develop a certain contempt for those sciences in favour of historical training, formal education4 and “classicism.”

And we allowed ourselves to be so easily deceived! Formal education! Might we not have pointed to the best teachers at our high schools and asked laughingly, “Where then do they keep their formal education? and, if it is wanting in them, how can they teach it?” And classicism! Did we get any of that instruction which the ancients used to impart to their youth? Did we learn to speak or to write like them? Did we ceaselessly exercise ourselves in that duel of speech, dialectic? Did we learn to move as beautifully and proudly as they did, and to excel as they did in wrestling, throwing, and boxing? Did we learn anything of that practical asceticism of all the Greek philosophers? Did we receive any training in a single ancient virtue, and in the way in which the ancients were trained in it? Was not all meditation upon morals wanting in our education?—And how much more the only possible criticism on the subject of morality, those courageous and earnest attempts to live according to this or that morality! Did our teachers ever stir up a feeling in us which the ancients valued more highly than moderns? Did they in the spirit of the ancients indicate to us the divisions of the day and of life, and those aims by which the lives of the ancients were guided? Did we learn the ancient languages as we now learn the modern ones, viz. that we might speak them fluently and well? Nowhere can we find a real proficiency or any new faculty as the result of those toilsome years! only the knowledge of what men had learnt and were able to do in past ages!

And what knowledge! Nothing becomes clearer to me year by year than the fact that the entire Greek and ancient mode of life, however simple and evident it must seem to our eyes, is in truth very difficult to understand, and even scarcely accessible, and that the customary ease with which we babble about the ancients is either giddy levity or the old hereditary conceit of our thoughtlessness. We are deceived by words and ideas which appear to resemble our own, but behind them there is always concealed a feeling which must be strange, incomprehensible, or painful to our modern conceptions. And these are realms in which boys are allowed to roam about! Enough: we roamed about them in our childhood, and there we became seized with an almost ineradicable antipathy for all antiquity, the antipathy arising from an intimacy which was apparently too great! For so great is the conceit of our classical teachers, who would almost make it appear that they had gained full control over the ancients, that they pass on this conceit to their pupils, together with the suspicion that such a possession is of little use for making people happy, but is good enough for honest, foolish old book-worms. “Let them brood over their treasure: it is well worthy of them!”—It is with this unexpressed thought that we completed our classical education. It can't be changed now—for us, at all events! But let us not think of ourselves alone!

196.

The Most Personal Questions of Truth.—What am I really doing, and what do I mean by doing it? That is the question of truth which is not taught under our present system of education, and consequently not asked, because there is no time for it. On the other hand, we have always time and inclination for talking nonsense with children, rather than telling them the truth; for flattering women who will later on be mothers, rather than telling them the truth; and for speaking with young men about their future and their pleasures, rather than about the truth!

But what, after all, are seventy years!—Time passes, and they soon come to an end; it matters as little to us as it does to the wave to know how and whither it is rolling! No, it might even be wisdom not to know it.

“Agreed; but it shows a want of pride not even to inquire into the matter; our culture does not tend to make people proud.”

“So much the better!”

“Is it really?”

197.

Enmity of the Germans towards Enlightenment.—Let us consider the contributions which in the first half of this century the Germans made to general culture by their intellectual work. In the first place, let us take the German philosophers: they went back to the first and oldest stage of speculation, for they were content with conceptions instead of explanations, like the thinkers of dreamy epochs—a pre-scientific type of philosophy was thus revived by them. Secondly, we have the German historians and romanticists: their efforts on the whole aimed at restoring to the place of honour certain old and primitive sentiments, especially Christianity, the “soul of the people,” folk-lore, folk-speech, mediævalism, Oriental asceticism, and Hinduism. In the third place, there are the natural philosophers who fought against the spirit of Newton and Voltaire, and, like Goethe and Schopenhauer, endeavoured to re-establish the idea of a deified or diabolised nature, and of its absolute ethical and symbolical meaning. The main general tendency of the Germans was directed against enlightenment and against those social revolutions which were stupidly mistaken for the consequences of enlightenment: the piety towards everything that existed tried to become piety towards everything that had ever existed, only in order that heart and mind might be permitted to fill themselves and gush forth again, thus leaving no space for future and novel aims. The cult of feeling took the place of the cult of reason, and the German musicians, as the best exponents of all that is invisible, enthusiastic, legendary, and passionate, showed themselves more successful in building up the new temple than all the other artists in words and thoughts.

If, in considering these details, we have taken into account the fact that many good things were said and investigated, and that many things have since then been more fairly judged than on any previous occasion, there yet remains to be said of the whole that it was a general danger, and one by no means small, to set knowledge altogether below feeling under the appearance of an entire and definitive acquaintance with the past—and, to use that expression of Kant, who thus defined his own particular task—“To make way again for belief by fixing the limits of knowledge.” Let us once more breathe freely, the hour of this danger is past! And yet, strange to say, the very spirits which these Germans conjured up with such eloquence have at length become the most dangerous for the intentions of those who did conjure them up: history, the comprehension of origin and development, sympathy with the past, the new passion for feeling and knowledge, after they had been for a long time at the service of this obscure exalted and retrograde spirit, have once more assumed another nature, and are now soaring with outstretched wings above the heads of those who once upon a time conjured them forth, as new and stronger genii of that very enlightenment to combat which they had been resuscitated. It is this enlightenment which we have now to carry forward,—caring nothing for the fact that there has been and still is “a great revolution,” and again a great “reaction” against it: these are but playful crests of foam when compared with the truly great current on which we float, and want to float.

198.

Assigning Prestige to one's Country.—It is the men of culture who determine the rank of their country, and they are characterised by an innumerable number of great inward experiences, which they have digested and can now value justly. In France and Italy this fell to the lot of the nobility; in Germany, where up to now the nobility has been, as a rule, composed of men who had not much intellect to boast about (perhaps this will soon cease to be the case), it was the task of the priests, the school teachers and their descendants.

199.

We are Nobler.—Fidelity, generosity, concern for one's good reputation: these three qualities, combined in one sentiment, we call noble, distinguished, aristocratic; and in this respect we excel the Greeks. We do not wish to give this up at any cost under the pretext that the ancient objects of these virtues have rightly fallen in esteem, but we wish cautiously to substitute new objects for these most precious and hereditary impulses. To understand why the sentiments of the noblest Greeks must be considered as inferior and scarcely respectable in the present age, where we are still under the influence of the chivalric and feudal nobility, we must recall the words of consolation to which Ulysses gave utterance in the midst of the most humiliating situations, “Bear with it, my dear heart, bear with it! Thou hast borne with many more swinish things5 than these!” As an instance of this mythical example, consider also the tale of that Athenian officer, who, when threatened with a stick by another officer in the presence of the entire general staff, shook off his disgrace with the words, “Strike, but listen to me.” (This was Themistocles, that ingenious Ulysses of the classical epoch, who was just the man at the moment of disgrace to address to his “dear heart” that verse of comfort and affliction.)

The Greeks were far from making light of life and death because of an insult, as we, influenced by a hereditary spirit of chivalric adventurousness and self-devotion, are in the habit of doing; or from looking for opportunities of honourably risking life and death, as in duels; or from valuing the preservation of an unstained name (honour) more than the acquirement of an evil reputation, when the latter was compatible with glory and the feeling of power; or from remaining faithful to the prejudices and the articles of faith of a caste, when these could prevent them from becoming tyrants. For this is the ignoble secret of the good Greek aristocrat: out of sheer jealousy he treats every one of the members of his caste as being on an equal footing with himself, but he is ready at every moment to spring like a tiger on his prey—despotism. What matter lies, murders, treason, or the betrayal of his native city to him! Justice was an extremely difficult matter for people of this kind to understand—nay, justice was almost something incredible. “The just man” was to the Greeks what “the saint” was to the Christians. When Socrates, however, laid down the axiom, “The most virtuous man is the happiest,” they could not trust their ears; they thought they had heard a madman speaking. For, as a picture of the happiest man, every nobleman had in his mind the cheeky audacity and devilry of the tyrant who sacrifices everything and every one to his own exuberance and pleasure. Among people whose imagination secretly raved about such happiness, the worship of the State could not, of course, have been too deeply implanted—but I think that men whose desire for power does not rage so blindly as that of the Greek noblemen no longer stand in need of such idolatry of the State, by means of which, in past ages, such a passion was kept within due bounds.

200.

Endurance of Poverty.—There is one great advantage in noble extraction: it makes us endure poverty better.

201.

The Future of the Nobility.—The bearing of the aristocratic classes shows that, in all the members of their body the consciousness of power is continually playing its fascinating game. Thus people of aristocratic habits, men or women, never sink worn out into a chair; when every one else makes himself comfortable, as in a train, for example, they avoid reclining at their ease; they do not appear to get tired after standing at Court for hours at a stretch; they do not furnish their houses in a comfortable manner, but in such a way as to produce the impression of something grand and imposing, as if they had to serve as a residence for greater and taller beings; they reply to a provoking speech with dignity and clearness of mind, and not as if scandalised, crushed, shamed, or out of breath in the plebeian fashion. As the aristocrat is able to preserve the appearance of being possessed of a superior physical force which never leaves him, he likewise wishes by his aspect of constant serenity and civility of disposition, even in the most trying circumstances, to convey the impression that his mind and soul are equal to all dangers and surprises. A noble culture may resemble, so far as passions are concerned, either a horseman who takes pleasure in making his proud and fiery animal trot in the Spanish fashion,—we have only to recollect the age of Louis xiv.,—or like the rider who feels his horse dart away with him like the elemental forces, to such a degree that both horse and rider come near losing their heads, but, owing to the enjoyment of the delight, do keep very clear heads: in both these cases this aristocratic culture breathes power, and if very often in its customs only the appearance of the feeling of power is required, nevertheless the real sense of superiority continues constantly to increase as the result of the impression which this display makes upon those who are not aristocrats.

This indisputable happiness of aristocratic culture, based as it is on the feeling of superiority, is now beginning to rise to ever higher levels; for now, thanks to the free spirits, it is henceforth permissible and not dishonourable for people who have been born and reared in aristocratic circles to enter the domain of knowledge, where they may secure more intellectual consecrations and learn chivalric services even higher than those of former times, and where they may look up to that ideal of victorious wisdom which as yet no age has been able to set before itself with so good a conscience as the period which is about to dawn. Lastly, what is to be the occupation of the nobility in the future if it becomes more evident from day to day that it is less and less indecorus to take any part in politics?

202.

The Care of the Health.—We have scarcely begun to devote any attention to the physiology of criminals, and yet we have already reached the inevitable conclusion that between criminals and madmen there is no really essential difference: if we suppose that the current moral fashion of thinking is a healthy way of thinking. No belief, however, is nowadays more firmly believed in than this one, so we should not therefore shrink from drawing the inevitable conclusion and treating the criminal like a lunatic—above all, not with haughty pitifulness, but with medical skill and good will. He may perhaps be in need of a change of air, a change of society, or temporary absence: perhaps of solitude and new occupations—very well! He may perhaps feel that it would be to his advantage to live under surveillance for a short time in order thus to obtain protection from himself and from a troublesome tyrannical impulse—very well! We should make clear to him the possibility and the means of curing him (the extermination, transformation, and sublimation of these impulses), and also, in the worst cases, the improbability of a cure; and we should offer to the incurable criminal, who has become a useless burden to himself, the opportunity of committing suicide. While holding this in reserve as an extreme measure of relief, we should neglect nothing which would tend above all to restore to the criminal his good courage and freedom of spirit; we should free his soul from all remorse, as if it were something unclean, and show him how he may atone for a wrong which he may have done some one by benefiting some one else, perhaps the community at large, in such way that he might even do more than balance his previous offence.

All this must be done with the greatest tact! The criminal must, above all, remain anonymous or adopt an assumed name, changing his place of residence frequently, so that his reputation and future life may suffer as little as possible. At the present time it is true that the man who has been injured, apart altogether from the manner in which this injury might be redressed, wishes for revenge in addition, and applies to the courts that he may obtain it—and this is why our dreadful penal laws are still in force: Justice, as it were, holding up a pair of shopkeeper's scales and endeavouring to balance the guilt by punishment; but can we not take a step beyond this? Would it not be a great relief to the general sentiment of life if, while getting rid of our belief in guilt, we could also get rid of our old craving for vengeance, and gradually come to believe that it is a refined wisdom for happy men to bless their enemies and to do good to those who have offended them, exactly in accordance with the spirit of Christian teaching! Let us free the world from this idea of sin, and take care to cast out with it the idea of punishment. May these monstrous ideas henceforth live banished far from the abodes of men—if, indeed, they must live at all, and do not perish from disgust with themselves.

Let us not forget also, however, that the injury caused to society and to the individual by the criminal is of the same species as that caused by the sick: for the sick spread cares and ill-humour; they are non-productive, consume the earnings of others, and at the same time require attendance, doctors, and support, and they really live on the time and strength of the healthy. In spite of this, however, we should designate as inhuman any one who, for this reason, would wish to wreak vengeance on the sick. In past ages, indeed, this was actually done: in primitive conditions of society, and even now among certain savage peoples, the sick man is treated as a criminal and as a danger to the community, and it is believed that he is the resting-place of certain demoniacal beings who have entered into his body as the result of some offence he has committed—those ages and peoples hold that the sick are the guilty!

And what of ourselves? Are we not yet ripe for the contrary conception? Shall we not be allowed to say, “The guilty are the sick”? No; the hour for that has not yet come. We still lack, above all, those physicians who have learnt something from what we have hitherto called practical morals and have transformed it into the art and science of healing. We still lack that intense interest in those things which some day perhaps may seem not unlike the “storm and stress” of those old religious ecstasies. The Churches have not yet come into the possession of those who look after our health; the study of the body and of dietary are not yet amongst the obligatory subjects taught in our primary and secondary schools; there are as yet no quiet associations of those people who are pledged to one another to do without the help of law courts, and who renounce the punishment and vengeance now meted out to those who have offended against society. No thinker has as yet been daring enough to determine the health of society, and of the individuals who compose it, by the number of parasites which it can support; and no statesman has yet been found to use the ploughshare in the spirit of that generous and tender saying, “If thou wilt till the land, till it with the plough; then the bird and the wolf, walking behind thy plough, will rejoice in thee—all creatures will rejoice in thee.”

203.

Against Bad Diet.—Fie upon the meals which people nowadays eat in hotels and everywhere else where the well-off classes of society live! Even when eminent men of science meet together their tables groan under the weight of the dishes, in accordance with the principle of the bankers: the principle of too many dishes and too much to eat. The result of this is that dinners are prepared with a view to their mere appearance rather than the consequences that may follow from eating them, and that stimulating drinks are required to help in driving away the heaviness in the stomach and in the brain. Fie on the dissoluteness and extreme nervousness which must follow upon all this! Fie upon the dreams that such repasts bring! Fie upon the arts and books which must be the desert of such meals! Despite all the efforts of such people their acts will taste of pepper and ill-temper, or general weariness! (The wealthy classes in England stand in great need of their Christianity in order to be able to endure their bad digestions and their headaches.) Finally, to mention not only the disgusting but also the more pleasant side of the matter, these people are by no means mere gluttons: our century and its spirit of activity has more power over the limbs than the belly. What then is the meaning of these banquets? They represent! What in Heaven's name do they represent? Rank?—no, money! There is no rank now! We are all “individuals”! but money now stands for power, glory, pre-eminence, dignity, and influence; money at the present time acts as a greater or lesser moral prejudice for a man in proportion to the amount he may possess. Nobody wishes to hide it under a bushel or display it in heaps on a table: hence money must have some representative which can be put on the table—so behold our banquets!

204.

Danæ and the God of Gold.—Whence arises this excessive impatience in our day which turns men into criminals even in circumstances which would be more likely to bring about the contrary tendency? What induces one man to use false weights, another to set his house on fire after having insured it for more than its value, a third to take part in counterfeiting, while three-fourths of our upper classes indulge in legalised fraud, and suffer from the pangs of conscience that follow speculation and dealings on the Stock Exchange: what gives rise to all this? It is not real want,—for their existence is by no means precarious; perhaps they have even enough to eat and drink without worrying,—but they are urged on day and night by a terrible impatience at seeing their wealth pile up so slowly, and by an equally terrible longing and love for these heaps of gold. In this impatience and love, however, we see re-appear once more that fanaticism of the desire for power which was stimulated in former times by the belief that we were in the possession of truth, a fanaticism which bore such beautiful names that we could dare to be inhuman with a good conscience (burning Jews, heretics, and good books, and exterminating entire cultures superior to ours, such as those of Peru and Mexico). The means of this desire for power are changed in our day, but the same volcano is still smouldering, impatience and intemperate love call for their victims, and what was once done “for the love of God” is now done for the love of money, i.e. for the love of that which at present affords us the highest feeling of power and a good conscience.

205.

The People of Israel.—One of the spectacles which the next century will invite us to witness is the decision regarding the fate of the European Jews. It is quite obvious now that they have cast their die and crossed their Rubicon: the only thing that remains for them is either to become masters of Europe or to lose Europe, as they once centuries ago lost Egypt, where they were confronted with similar alternatives. In Europe, however, they have gone through a schooling of eighteen centuries such as no other nation has ever undergone, and the experiences of this dreadful time of probation have benefited not only the Jewish community but, even to a greater extent, the individual. As a consequence of this, the resourcefulness of the modern Jews, both in mind and soul, is extraordinary. Amongst all the inhabitants of Europe it is the Jews least of all who try to escape from any deep distress by recourse to drink or to suicide, as other less gifted people are so prone to do. Every Jew can find in the history of his own family and of his ancestors a long record of instances of the greatest coolness and perseverance amid difficulties and dreadful situations, an artful cunning in fighting with misfortune and hazard. And above all it is their bravery under the cloak of wretched submission, their heroic spernere se sperni that surpasses the virtues of all the saints.

People wished to make them contemptible by treating them contemptibly for nearly twenty centuries, and refusing them access to all honourable positions and dignities, and by pushing them further down into the meaner trades—and under this process indeed they have not become any cleaner. But contemptible? They have never ceased for a moment from believing themselves qualified for the very highest functions, nor have the virtues of the suffering ever ceased to adorn them. Their manner of honouring their parents and children, the rationality of their marriages and marriage customs, distinguishes them amongst all Europeans. Besides this, they have been able to create for themselves a sense of power and eternal vengeance from the very trades that were left to them (or to which they were abandoned). Even in palliation of their usury we cannot help saying that, without this occasional pleasant and useful torture inflicted on their scorners, they would have experienced difficulty in preserving their self-respect for so long. For our self-respect depends upon our ability to make reprisals in both good and evil things. Nevertheless, their revenge never urges them on too far, for they all have that liberty of mind, and even of soul, produced in men by frequent changes of place, climate, and customs of neighbours and oppressors, they possess by far the greatest experience in all human intercourse, and even in their passions they exercise the caution which this experience has developed in them. They are so certain of their intellectual versatility and shrewdness that they never, even when reduced to the direst straits, have to earn their bread by manual labour as common workmen, porters, or farm hands. In their manners we can still see that they have never been inspired by chivalric and noble feelings, or that their bodies have ever been girt with fine weapons: a certain obtrusiveness alternates with a submissiveness which is often tender and almost always painful.

Now, however, that they unavoidably inter-marry more and more year after year with the noblest blood of Europe, they will soon have a considerable heritage of good intellectual and physical manners, so that in another hundred years they will have a sufficiently noble aspect not to render themselves, as masters, ridiculous to those whom they will have subdued. And this is important! and therefore a settlement of the question is still premature. They themselves know very well that the conquest of Europe or any act of violence is not to be thought of; but they also know that some day or other Europe may, like a ripe fruit, fall into their hands, if they do not clutch at it too eagerly. In the meantime, it is necessary for them to distinguish themselves in all departments of European distinction and to stand in the front rank: until they shall have advanced so far as to determine themselves what distinction shall mean. Then they will be called the pioneers and guides of the Europeans whose modesty they will no longer offend.

And then where shall an outlet be found for this abundant wealth of great impressions accumulated during such an extended period and representing Jewish history for every Jewish family, this wealth of passions, virtues, resolutions, resignations, struggles, and conquests of all kinds—where can it find an outlet but in great intellectual men and works! On the day when the Jews will be able to exhibit to us as their own work such jewels and golden vessels as no European nation, with its shorter and less profound experience, can or could produce, when Israel shall have changed its eternal vengeance into an eternal benediction for Europe: then that seventh day will once more appear when old Jehovah may rejoice in Himself, in His creation, in His chosen people—and all, all of us, will rejoice with Him!

206.

The Impossible Class.—Poverty, cheerfulness, and independence—it is possible to find these three qualities combined in one individual; poverty, cheerfulness, and slavery—this is likewise a possible combination: and I can say nothing better to the workmen who serve as factory slaves; presuming that it does not appear to them altogether to be a shameful thing to be utilised as they are, as the screws of a machine and the stopgaps, as it were, of the human spirit of invention. Fie on the thought that merely by means of higher wages the essential part of their misery, i.e. their impersonal enslavement, might be removed! Fie, that we should allow ourselves to be convinced that, by an increase of this impersonality within the mechanical working of a new society, the disgrace of slavery could be changed into a virtue! Fie, that there should be a regular price at which a man should cease to be a personality and become a screw instead! Are you accomplices in the present madness of nations which desire above all to produce as much as possible, and to be as rich as possible? Would it not be your duty to present a counter-claim to them, and to show them what large sums of internal value are wasted in the pursuit of such an external object?

But where is your internal value when you no longer know what it is to breathe freely; when you have scarcely any command over your own selves, and often feel disgusted with yourselves as with some stale food; when you zealously study the newspapers and look enviously at your wealthy neighbour, made covetous by the rapid rise and fall of power, money, and opinions; when you no longer believe in a philosophy in rags, or in the freedom of spirit of a man who has few needs; when a voluntary and idyllic poverty without profession or marriage, such as should suit the more intellectual ones among you, has become for you an object of derision? On the other hand, the piping of the Socialistic rat-catchers who wish to inspire you with foolish hopes is continually sounding in your ears: they tell you to be ready and nothing further, ready from this day to the next, so that you wait and wait for something to come from outside, though living in all other respects as you lived before—until this waiting is at length changed into hunger and thirst and fever and madness, and the clay of the bestia triumphans at last dawns in all its glory. Every one of you should on the contrary say to himself: “It would be better to emigrate and endeavour to become a master in new and savage countries, and especially to become master over myself, changing my place of abode whenever the least sign of slavery threatens me, endeavouring to avoid neither adventure nor war, and, if things come to the worst, holding myself ready to die: anything rather than continuing in this state of disgraceful thraldom, this bitterness, malice and rebelliousness!” This would be the proper spirit: the workmen in Europe ought to make it clear that their position as a class has become a human impossibility, and not merely, as they at present maintain, the result of some hard and aimless arrangement of society. They should bring about an age of great swarming forth from the European beehive such as has never yet been seen, protesting by this voluntary and huge migration against machines and capital and the alternatives that now threaten them either of becoming slaves of the State or slaves of some revolutionary party.

May Europe be freed from one-fourth of her inhabitants! Both she and they will experience a sensation of relief. It is only far in the distance, in the undertaking of vast colonisations, that we shall be able to observe how much rationality, fairness, and healthy suspicion mother Europe has incorporated in her sons—these sons who could no longer endure life in the home of the dull old woman, always running the danger of becoming as bad-tempered, irritable, and pleasure-seeking as she herself. The European virtues will travel along with these workmen far beyond the boundaries of Europe; and those very qualities which on their native soil had begun to degenerate into a dangerous discontent and criminal inclinations will, when abroad, be transformed into a beautiful, savage naturalness and will be called heroism; so that at last a purer air would again be wafted over this old, over-populated, and brooding Europe of ours. What would it matter if there was a scarcity of “hands”? Perhaps people would then recollect that they had accustomed themselves to many wants merely because it was easy to gratify them—it would be sufficient to unlearn some of these wants! Perhaps also Chinamen would be called in, and these would bring with them their modes of living and thinking, which would be found very suitable for industrious ants. They would also perhaps help to imbue this fretful and restless Europe with some of their Asiatic calmness and contemplation, and—what is perhaps most needful of all—their Asiatic stability.

207.

The Attitude of the Germans to Morality.—A German is capable of great things, but he is unlikely to accomplish them, for he obeys whenever he can, as suits a naturally lazy intellect. If he is ever in the dangerous situation of having to stand alone and cast aside his sloth, when he finds it no longer possible to disappear like a cipher in a number (in which respect he is far inferior to a Frenchman or an Englishman), he shows his true strength: then he becomes dangerous, evil, deep, and audacious, and exhibits to the light of day that wealth of latent energy which he had previously carried hidden in himself, and in which no one, not even himself, had ever believed. When in such a case a German obeys himself—it is very exceptional for him to do so—he does so with the same heaviness, inflexibility, and endurance with which he obeys his prince and performs his official duties: so that, as I have said, he is then capable of great things which bear no relation to the “weak disposition” he attributes to himself.

As a rule, however, he is afraid of depending upon himself alone, he is afraid of taking the initiative: that is why Germany uses up so many officials and so much ink. Light-heartedness is a stranger to the German; he is too timid for it: but in entirely new situations which rouse him from his torpor he exhibits an almost frivolous spirit—he then delights in the novelty of his new position as if it were some intoxicating drink, and he is, as we know, quite a connoisseur in intoxication. It thus happens that the German of the present day is almost always frivolous in politics, though even here he has the advantage and prejudice of thoroughness and seriousness; and, although he may take full advantage of these qualities in negotiations with other political powers, he nevertheless rejoices inwardly at being able for once in his life to feel enthusiastic and capricious, to show his fondness for innovations, and to change persons, parties, and hopes as if they were masks. Those learned German scholars, who hitherto have been considered as the most German of Germans, were and perhaps still are as good as the German soldiers on account of their profound and almost childish inclination to obey in all external things, and on account of being often compelled to stand alone in science and to answer for many things: if they can only preserve their proud, simple, and patient disposition, and their freedom from political madness at those times when the wind changes, we may yet expect great things from them—such as they are or such as they were, they are the embryonic stage of something higher.

So far the advantages and disadvantages of the Germans, including even their learned men, have been that they were more given to superstition and showed greater eagerness to believe than any of the other nations; their vices are, and always have been, their drunkenness and suicidal inclinations (the latter a proof of the clumsiness of their intellect, which is easily tempted to throw away the reins). Their danger is to be sought in everything that binds down the faculties of reason and unchains the passions (as, for example, the excessive use of music and spirits), for the German passion acts contrarily to its own advantage, and is as self-destructive as the passions of the drunkard. Indeed, German enthusiasm is worth less than that of other nations, for it is barren. When a German ever did anything great it was done at a time of danger, or when his courage was high, with his teeth firmly set and his prudence on the alert, and often enough in a fit of generosity.—Intercourse with these Germans is indeed advisable, for almost every one of them has something to give, if we can only understand how to make him find it, or rather recover it (for he is very untidy in storing away his knowledge).

Well: when people of this type occupy themselves with morals, what precisely will be the morality that will satisfy them? In the first place, they will wish to see idealised in their morals their sincere instinct for obedience. “Man must have something which he can implicitly obey”—this is a German sentiment, a German deduction; it is the basis of all German moral teaching. How different is the impression, however, when we compare this with the entire morality of the ancient world! All those Greek thinkers, however varied they may appear to us, seem to resemble, as moralists, the gymnastic teacher who encourages his pupils by saying, “Come, follow me! Submit to my discipline! Then perhaps you may carry off the prize from all the other Greeks.” Personal distinction: such was the virtue of antiquity. Submission, obedience, whether public or private: such is German virtue. Long before Kant set forth his doctrine of the Categorical Imperative, Luther, actuated by the same impulse, said that there surely must be a being in whom man could trust implicitly—it was his proof of the existence of God; it was his wish, coarser and more popular than that of Kant, that people should implicitly obey a person and not an idea, and Kant also finally took his roundabout route through morals merely that he might secure obedience for the person. This is indeed the worship of the German, the more so as there is now less worship left in his religion.

The Greeks and Romans had other opinions on these matters, and would have laughed at such “there must be a being”: it is part of the boldness of their Southern nature to take up a stand against “implicit belief,” and to retain in their inmost heart a trace of scepticism against all and every one, whether God, man, or idea. The thinker of antiquity went even further, and said nil admirari: in this phrase he saw reflected all philosophy. A German, Schopenhauer, goes so far in the contrary direction as to say: admirari id est philosophari. But what if, as happens now and then, the German should attain to that state of mind which would enable him to perform great things? if the hour of exception comes, the hour of disobedience? I do not think Schopenhauer is right in saying that the single advantage the Germans have over other nations is that there are more atheists among them than elsewhere; but I do know this: whenever the German reaches the state in which he is capable of great things, he invariably raises himself above morals! And why should he not? Now he has something new to do, viz. to command—either himself or others! But this German morality of his has not taught him how to command! Commanding has been forgotten in it.

Footnotes

4. “Formal education” is the name given in Germany to those branches of learning which tend to develop the logical faculties, as opposed to “material” education which deals with the acquisition of facts and all kinds of “useful” knowledge.—Tr.

5. The reference is to the Odyssey, xx. 18: “Τέτλαθι δή, κραδίη; καὶ κύντερον ἄλλο ποτ᾽ ἔτλης...” etc. Κύντερος, from κύων, “a dog,” lit. more dog-like, i.e. shameless, horrible, audacious.—Tr.