Chapter IV: Preface (2)

Decadence exercises a profound and perfectly unconscious influence, even over the ideals of science: all our sociology is a proof of this proposition, and it has yet to be reproached with the fact that it has only the experience of _society in the process of decay,_ and inevitably takes its own decaying instincts as the basis of sociological judgment.

The _declining_ vitality of modern Europe formulates its social ideals in its decaying instincts: and these ideals are all so like those of _old and effete_ races, that they might be mistaken for one another.

The _gregarious instinct,_ then,--now a sovereign power,--is something totally different from the instinct of an _aristocratic society_: and the value of the sum depends upon the value of the units constituting it.... The whole of our sociology knows no other instinct than that of the herd, _i.e.,_ of a _multitude of mere ciphers_--of which every cipher has "equal rights," and where it is a virtue to be----naught....

The valuation with which the various forms of society are judged to-day is absolutely the same with that which assigns a higher place to peace than to war: but this principle is contrary to the teaching of biology, and is itself a mere outcome of decadent life. Life is a result of war, society is a means to war.... Mr. Herbert Spencer was a decadent in biology, as also in morality (he regarded the triumph of altruism as a desideratum!!!).

54.

After thousands of years of error and confusion, it is my good fortune to have rediscovered the road which leads to a Yea and to a Nay.

I teach people to say Nay in the face of all that makes for weakness and exhaustion.

I teach people to say Yea in the face of all that makes for strength, that preserves strength, and justifies the feeling of strength.

Up to the present, neither the one nor the other has been taught; but rather virtue, disinterestedness, pity, and even the negation of life. All these are values proceeding from exhausted people.

After having pondered over the physiology of exhaustion for some time, I was led to the question: to what extent the judgments of exhausted people had percolated into the world of values.

The result at which I arrived was as startling as it could possibly be--even for one like myself who was already at home in many a strange world: I found that all prevailing values--that is to say, all those which had gained ascendancy over humanity, or at least over its tamer portions, could be traced back to the judgment of exhausted people.

Under the cover of the holiest names, I found the most destructive tendencies; people had actually given the name "God" to all that renders weak, teaches weakness, and infects with weakness.... I found that the "good man" was a form of self-affirmation on the part of decadence.

That virtue which Schopenhauer still proclaimed as superior to all, and as the most fundamental of all virtues; even that same pity I recognised as more dangerous than any vice. Deliberately to thwart the law of selection among species, and their natural means of purging their stock of degenerate members--this, up to my time, had been the greatest of all virtues....

One should do honour to the _fatality_ which says to the feeble: "perish!"

The opposing of this fatality, the botching of mankind and the allowing of it to putrefy, was given the name "God" One shall not take the name of the Lord one's God in vain....

The race is corrupted--not by its vices, but by its ignorance: it is corrupted because it has not recognised exhaustion as exhaustion: physiological misunderstandings are the cause of all evil.

Virtue is our greatest misunderstanding.

Problem: how were the exhausted able to make the laws of values? In other words, how did they who are the last, come to power?... How did the instincts of the animal man ever get to stand on their heads?...

4. THE CRISIS: NIHILISM AND THE IDEA OF RECURRENCE.

55.

Extreme positions are not relieved by more moderate ones, but by extreme _opposite_ positions. And thus the belief in the utter immorality of nature, and in the absence of all purpose and sense, are psychologically necessary attitudes when the belief in God and in an essentially moral order of things is no longer tenable.

Nihilism now appears, _not_ because the sorrows of existence are greater than they were formerly, but because, in a general way, people have grown suspicious of the "meaning" which might be given to evil and even to existence. One interpretation has been overthrown: but since it was held to be _the_ interpretation, it seems as though there were no meaning in existence at all, as though everything were in vain.

***

It yet remains to be shown that this "in vain!" is the character of present Nihilism. The mistrust of our former valuations has increased to such an extent that it has led to the question: "are not all 'values' merely allurements prolonging the duration of the comedy, without, however, bringing the unravelling any closer?" The "long period of time" which has culminated in an "in vain," without either goal or purpose, is the _most paralysing_ of thoughts, more particularly when one sees that one is duped without, however, being able to resist being duped.

***

Let us imagine this thought in its worst form: existence, as it is, without either a purpose or a goal, but inevitably recurring, without an end in nonentity: "_Eternal Recurrence._"

This is the extremest form of Nihilism: nothing (purposelessness) eternal!

European form of Buddhism: the energy of knowledge and of strength drives us to such a belief. It is the most _scientific_ of all hypotheses. We deny final purposes. If existence had a final purpose it would have reached it.

***

It should be understood that what is being aimed at, here, is a contradiction of Pantheism: for "everything perfect, divine, eternal," _also_ leads _to the belief in Eternal Recurrence._ Question: has this pantheistic and affirmative attitude to all things also been made possible by morality? At bottom only the moral God has been overcome. Is there any sense in imagining a God "beyond good and evil"? Would Pantheism in _this_ sense be possible? Do we withdraw the idea of purpose from the process, and affirm the process notwithstanding? This were so if, within that process, something were _attained_ every moment--and always the same thing. Spinoza won an affirmative position of this sort, in the sense that every moment, according to him, has a logical necessity: and he triumphed by means of his fundamentally logical instinct over a like conformation of the world.

***

But his case is exceptional. If every _fundamental trait of character,_ which lies beneath every act, and which finds expression in every act, were recognised by the individual as _his_ fundamental trait of character, this individual would be driven to regard every moment of his existence in general, triumphantly as good. It would simply be necessary for that fundamental trait of character to be felt in oneself as something good, valuable, and pleasurable.

***

Now, in the case of those men and classes of men who were treated with violence and oppressed by their fellows, _morality_ saved life from despair and from the leap into nonentity:. for impotence in relation to mankind and _not_ in relation to Nature is what generates the most desperate bitterness towards existence. Morality treated the powerful, the violent, and the "masters" in general, as enemies against whom the common man must be protected--_that is to say, emboldened, strengthened._ Morality has therefore always taught the most profound _hatred_ and _contempt_ of the fundamental trait of character of all rulers--_i.e., their Will to Power._ To suppress, to deny, and to decompose this morality, would mean to regard this most thoroughly detested instinct with the reverse of the old feeling and valuation. If the sufferer and the oppressed man were _to lose his belief_ in his right to contemn the Will to Power, his position would be desperate. This would be so if the trait above-mentioned were essential to life, in which case it would follow that even that will to morality was only a cloak to this "Will to Power," as are also even that hatred and contempt. The oppressed man would then perceive that he stands _on the same platform_ with the oppressor, and that he has no individual privilege, nor any _higher rank_ than the latter.

***

On the _contrary_! There is nothing on earth which can have any value, if it have not a modicum of power--granted, of course, that life itself is the Will to Power. Morality protected the _botched_ and _bungled_ against Nihilism, in that it gave every one of them infinite worth, metaphysical worth, and classed them altogether in one order which did not correspond with that of worldly power and order of rank: it taught submission, humility, etc. _Admitting that the belief in this morality be destroyed,_ the botched and the bungled would no longer have any comfort, and would perish.

This _perishing_ seems like _self-annihilation,_ like an instinctive selection of that which must be destroyed. The _symptoms_ of this self-destruction of the botched and the bungled: self-vivisection, poisoning, intoxication, romanticism, and, above all, the instinctive constraint to acts whereby the powerful are made into _mortal enemies_ (training, so to speak, one's own hangmen), _the will to destruction_ as the will of a still deeper instinct--of the instinct of self-destruction, of the Will to Nonentity.

***

Nihilism is a sign that the botched and bungled in order to be destroyed, that, having been deprived of morality, they no longer have any reason to "resign themselves," that they take up their stand on the territory of the opposite principle, and _will also exercise power_ themselves, by compelling the powerful to become their hangmen. This is the European form of Buddhism, that _active negation,_ after all existence has lost its meaning.

***

It must not be supposed that "poverty" has grown more acute, on the contrary! "God, morality, resignation" were remedies in the very deepest stages of misery: _active_ Nihilism made its appearance in circumstances which were relatively much more favourable. The fact, alone, that morality is regarded as overcome, presupposes a certain degree of intellectual culture; while this very culture, for its part, bears evidence to a certain relative well-being. A certain intellectual fatigue, brought on by the long struggle concerning philosophical opinions, and carried to hopeless scepticism _against_ philosophy, shows moreover that the level of these Nihilists is by no means a low one. Only think of the conditions in which Buddha appeared! The teaching of the eternal recurrence would have learned principles to go upon (just as Buddha's teaching, for instance, had the notion of causality, etc.).

***

What do we mean to-day by the words "botched and bungled"? In the first place, they are used _physiologically_ and not politically. The unhealthiest kind of man all over Europe (in all classes) is the soil out of which Nihilism grows: this species of man will regard eternal recurrence as damnation--once he is bitten by the thought, he can no longer recoil before any action. He would not extirpate passively, but would cause everything to be extirpated which is meaningless and without a goal to this extent; although it is only a spasm, or sort of blind rage in the presence of the fact that everything has existed again and again for an eternity--even this period of Nihilism and destruction. The value of such a _crisis_ is that it _purifies,_ that it unites similar elements, and makes them mutually destructive, that it assigns common duties to men of opposite persuasions, and brings the weaker and more uncertain among them to the light, thus taking the first step towards a new _order of rank_ among forces from the standpoint of health: recognising commanders as commanders, subordinates as subordinates. Naturally irrespective of all the present forms of society.

***

What class of men will prove they are strongest in this new order of things? The most moderate--they who do not _require_ any extreme forms of belief, they who not only admit of, but actually like, a certain modicum of chance and nonsense; they who can think of man with a very moderate view of his value, without becoming weak and small on that account; the most rich in health, who are able to withstand a maximum amount of sorrow, and who are therefore not so very much afraid of sorrow--men who are _certain of their power,_ and who represent with conscious pride the state of strength to which man has attained.

***

How could such a man think of Eternal Recurrence?

56.

_The Periods of European Nihilism._

_The Period of Obscurity_: all kinds of groping measures devised to preserve old institutions and not to arrest the progress of new ones.

_The Period of Light_: men see that old and new are fundamental contraries; that the old values are born of descending life, and that the new ones are born of ascending life--_that all old ideals_ are unfriendly to life (born of decadence and determining it, however much they may be decked out in the Sunday finery of morality). We _understand_ the old, but are far from being sufficiently strong for the new.

_The Periods of the Three Great Passions_: contempt, pity, destruction.

_The Periods of Catastrophes_: the rise of a teaching which will sift mankind ... which drives the weak to some decision and the strong also.

II.

CONCERNING THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN NIHILISM.

_(a)_ MODERN GLOOMINESS.

57.

My friends, we had a hard time as youths; we even suffered from youth itself as though it were a serious disease. This is owing to the age in which we were born--an age of enormous internal decay and disintegration which, with all its weakness and even with the best of its strength, is opposed to the spirit of youth. Disintegration--that is to say, uncertainty--is peculiar to this age: nothing stands on solid ground or on a sound faith. People live for the morrow, because the day-after-to-morrow is doubtful. All our road is slippery and dangerous, while the ice which still bears us has grown unconscionably thin: we all feel the mild and gruesome breath of the thaw-wind--soon, where we are walking, no one will any longer _be able_ to stand!

58.

If this is not an age of decay and of diminishing vitality, it is at least one of indiscriminate and arbitrary experimentalising--and it is probable that out of an excess of abortive experiments there has grown this general impression, as of decay: and perhaps decay itself.

59.

_Concerning the history of modern gloominess._

The state-nomads (officials, etc.): "homeless"--.

The break-up of the family.

The "good man" as a symptom of exhaustion.

Justice as Will to Power (Rearing).

Lewdness and neurosis.

Black music: whither has real music gone?

The anarchist.

Contempt of man, loathing.

Most profound distinction: whether hunger or satiety is creative? The first creates the _Ideals of Romanticism._

Northern unnaturalness.

The need of Alcohol: the "need" of the working classes.

Philosophical Nihilism.

60.

The slow advance and rise of the middle and lower classes (including the lower kind of spirit and body), which was already well under way before the French Revolution, and would have made the same progress forward without the latter,--in short, then, the preponderance of the herd over all herdsmen and bell-wethers,--brings in its train:--

(1) Gloominess of spirit (the juxtaposition of a stoical and a frivolous _appearance_ of happiness, peculiar to noble cultures, is on the decline; much suffering is allowed to be _seen_ and _heard_ which formerly was borne in concealment);

(2) Moral hypocrisy (a way of _distinguishing_ oneself through morality, but by means of the values of the herd: pity, solicitude, moderation; and not by means of those virtues which are recognised and honoured outside the herd's sphere of power);

(3) A _really_ large amount of sympathy with both pain and joy (a feeling of pleasure resulting from being herded together, which is peculiar to all gregarious animals--"public spirit," "patriotism," everything, in fact, which is apart from the individual).

61.

Our age, with its indiscriminate endeavours to mitigate distress, to honour it, and to wage war in advance with unpleasant possibilities, is an age of the _poor._ Our "_rich people_"--_they_ are the poorest! The real _purpose_ of all wealth has been forgotten.

62.

_Criticism of modern man_:--"the good man," but corrupted and misled by bad institutions (tyrants and priests);--reason elevated to a position of authority;--history is regarded as the surmounting of errors;--the future is regarded as progress;--the Christian state ("God of the armies");--Christian sexual intercourse (as marriage);--the realm of "justice" (the cult of "mankind");--"freedom."

The _romantic_ attitudes of the modern man;--the noble man (Byron, Victor Hugo, George Sand);--taking the part of the oppressed and the bungled and the botched: motto for historians and romancers;--the Stoics of duty;--disinterestedness regarded as art and as knowledge;--altruism as the most mendacious form of egoism (utilitarianism), the most sentimental form of egoism.

All this savours of the eighteenth century. But it had other qualities which were not inherited, namely, a certain _insouciance,_ cheerfulness, elegance, spiritual clearness. The spiritual tempo has altered; the pleasure which was begotten by spiritual refinement and clearness has given room to the pleasure of colour, harmony, mass, reality, etc. etc. Sensuality in spiritual things. In short, it is the eighteenth century of Rousseau.

63.

Taken all in all, a considerable amount of _humanity_ has been attained by our men of to-day. That we feel this is in itself a proof of the fact that we have become so sensitive in regard to small cases of distress, that we somewhat unjustly overlook what has been achieved.

Here we must make allowances for the fact that a great deal of decadence is rife, and that, through such eyes, our world _must appear_ bad and wretched. But these eyes have always seen in the same way, in all ages.

(1) A certain hypersensitiveness, even in morality.

(2) The quantum of bitterness and gloominess, which pessimism bears with it in its judgments--both together have helped to bring about the preponderance of the other and _opposite_ point of view, that things are not well with our morality.

The fact of credit, of the commerce of the world, and the means of traffic--are expressions of an extraordinarily mild _trustfulness_ in men.... To that may also be added--

(3) The deliverance of science from moral and religious prejudices: a very good sign, though for the most part misunderstood.

In my own way, I am attempting a justification of history.

64.

_The second appearance of Buddhism._--Its precursory signs: the increase of pity. Spiritual exhaustion. The reduction of all problems to the question of pleasure and pain. The glory of war which calls forth a counter-stroke. Just as the sharp demarcation of nations generates a counter-movement in the form of the most hearty "Fraternity." The fact that it is impossible for religion to carry on its work any longer with dogma and fables.

The _catastrophe of Nihilism_ will put an end to all this Buddhistic culture.

65.

That which is most sorely afflicted to-day is the instinct and will of _tradition_: all institutions which owe their origin to this instinct, are opposed to the tastes of the age.... At bottom, nothing is thought or done which is not calculated to tear up this spirit of tradition by the roots. Tradition is looked upon as a fatality; it is studied and acknowledged (in the form of "heredity"), but people will not have anything to do with it. The extension of one will over long periods of time, the selection of conditions and valuations which make it possible to dispose of centuries in advance--this, precisely, is what is most utterly anti-modern. From which it follows, that disorganising principles give our age its specific character.

66.

"Be simple"--a demand which, when made to us complicated and incomprehensible triers of the heart and reins, is a simple absurdity.... Be natural: but even if we are unnatural--what then?

67.

The means employed in former times in order to arrive at _similarly constituted_ and lasting types, throughout long generations: entailed property and the respect of parents (the origin of the faith in gods and heroes as ancestors).

Now, the _subdivision of property_ belongs to the opposite tendency. The centralisation of an enormous number of, different interests in one soul: which, _to that end,_ must be very strong and mutable.

68.

Why does everything become _mummery._--The modern man is lacking in unfailing instinct (instinct being understood here to mean that which is the outcome of a _long period of activity in the same occupation_ on the part of one family of men); the incapability of producing anything perfect, is simply the result of this lack of instinct: one individual alone cannot make up for the schooling his ancestors should have transmitted to him.

What a morality or book of law creates: that deep instinct which renders _automatism_ and perfection possible in life and in work.

But now we have reached the opposite point; yes, we wanted to reach it--the most extreme consciousness, through introspection on the part of man and of history: and thus we are practically most distant from perfection in Being, doing, and willing: our desires--even our will to knowledge--shows how prodigiously decadent we are. We are striving after the very reverse of what _strong races_ and _strong natures_ will have--understanding is an _end_....

That Science is possible in the way in which it is practised to-day, proves that all elementary instincts, _the instincts which ward off danger and protect life,_ are no longer active. We no longer save, we are merely spending the capital of our forefathers, even in the way in which we _pursue knowledge_.

69.

_Nihilistic trait_.

_(a)_ In the _natural sciences_ ("purposelessness"), causality, mechanism, "conformity to law," an interval, a remnant.

_(b)_ Likewise in _politics_: the individual lacks the belief in his own right, innocence; falsehood rules supreme, as also the worship of the moment.

_(d)_ Likewise in _political economy_: the abolition of slavery: the lack of a redeeming class, and of _one who justifies_--the rise of anarchy. "Education"?

_(d)_ Likewise in _history_: fatalism, Darwinism; the last attempts at reconciling reason and Godliness fail. Sentimentality in regard to the past: biographies can no longer be endured! (Phenomenalism even here: character regarded as a mask; there are no facts.)

_(e)_ Likewise in _Art_: romanticism and its _counter-stroke_ (repugnance towards romantic ideals and lies). The latter, morally, as a sense of greatest truthfulness, but pessimistic. Pure "artists" (indifference as to the "subject"). (The psychology of the father-confessor and puritanical psychology--two forms of psychological romanticism: but also their counter-stroke, the attempt to maintain a purely artistic attitude towards "men"--but even in this respect no one dares to make the _opposite_ valuation.)

70.

_Against_ the teaching of the influence of _environment_ and external causes: the power coming from inside is infinitely _superior_; much that appears like influence acting from without is merely the subjection of environment to this inner power.

Precisely the same environment may be used and interpreted in opposite ways: there are no facts. A genius is _not_ explained by such theories concerning origins.

71.

"_Modernity_" regarded in the light of nutrition and digestion.

Sensitiveness is infinitely more acute (beneath moral vestments: the increase of pity), the abundance of different impressions is greater than ever. The _cosmopolitanism_ of articles of diet, of literature, newspapers, forms, tastes, and even landscapes. The speed of this affluence is _prestissimo_; impressions are wiped out, and people instinctively guard against assimilating anything or against taking anything _seriously_ and "digesting" it; the result is a weakening of the powers of digestion. There begin a sort of _adaptation_ to this accumulation of impressions. Man unlearns the art of _doing,_ and _all he does is to react_ to stimuli coming from his environment. _He spends his strength,_ partly in the process of _assimilation,_ partly in _defending himself,_ and again partly in _responding to stimuli. Profound enfeeblement of spontaneity_:--the historian, the critic, the analyst, the interpreter, the observer, the collector, the reader,--all reactive talents,--_all_ science!

Artificial _modification_ of one's own nature in order to make it resemble a "mirror"; one is interested, but only epidermally: this is systematic coolness, equilibrium, a steady _low_ temperature, just beneath the thin surface on which warmth, movement, "storm," and undulations play.

Opposition of _external_ mobility to a certain _dead heaviness and fatigue_.

72.

Where must our modern world be classed--under exhaustion or under increasing strength? Its multiformity and lack of repose are brought about by the highest form of _consciousness._

73.

Overwork, curiosity and sympathy--our _modern vices._

74.

A contribution to the characterisation of "_Modernity._"--Exaggerated development of intermediate forms; the decay of types; the break-up of tradition, schools; the predominance of the instincts (philosophically prepared: the unconscious has the greater value) after the appearance of the _enfeeblement of will power_ and of the will to an end _and_ to the means thereto.

75.

A capable artisan or scholar cuts a good figure if he have his pride in his art, and looks pleasantly and contentedly upon life. On the other hand, there is no sight more wretched than that of a cobbler or a schoolmaster who, with the air of a martyr, gives one to understand that he was really born for something better. There is nothing better than what is good! and that is: to have a certain kind of capacity and to use it. This is _virtù_ in the Italian style of the Renaissance.

Nowadays, when the state has a nonsensically oversized belly, in all fields and branches of work there are "representatives" over and above the real workman: for instance, in addition to the scholars, there are the journalists; in addition to the suffering masses, there is a crowd of jabbering and bragging ne'er-do-wells who "represent" that suffering--not to speak of the professional politicians who, though quite satisfied with their lot, stand up in Parliament and, with strong lungs, "represent" grievances. Our modern life is extremely _expensive,_ thanks to the host of middlemen that infest it; whereas in the city of antiquity, and in many a city of Spain and Italy to-day, where there is an echo of the ancient spirit, the man himself comes forward and will have nothing to do with a representative or an intermediary in the modern style--except perhaps to kick him hence!

76.

The pre-eminence of the _merchant_ and the _middleman,_ even in the most intellectual spheres: the journalist, the "representative," the historian (as an intermediary between the past and the present), the exotic and cosmopolitan, the middleman between natural science and philosophy, the semi-theologians.

77.

The men I have regarded with the most loathing, heretofore, are the parasites of intellect: they are to be found everywhere, already, in our modern Europe, and as a matter of fact their conscience is as light as it possibly can be. They may be a little turbid, and savour somewhat of Pessimism, but in the main they are voracious, dirty, dirtying, stealthy, insinuating, light-fingered gentry, scabby--and as innocent as all small sinners and microbes are. They live at the expense of those who have intellect and who distribute it liberally: they know that it is peculiar to the rich mind to live in a disinterested fashion, without taking too much petty thought for the morrow, and to distribute its wealth prodigally. For intellect is a bad domestic economist, and pays no heed whatever to the fact that everything lives on it and devours it.

78.

MODERN MUMMERY

The motleyness of modern men and its charm Essentially a mask and a sign of boredom.

The journalist.

The political man (in the "national swindle").

Mummery in the arts:--

The lack of honesty in preparing and schooling oneself for
them (Fromentin);

The Romanticists (their lack of philosophy and science and
their excess in literature);

The novelists (Walter Scott, but also the monsters of the
_Nibelung,_ with their inordinately nervous music);

The lyricists.

"Scientifically."

Virtuosos (Jews).

The popular ideals are overcome, but not yet _in the presence of the people_:

The saint, the sage, the prophet.

79.

_The want of discipline in the modern spirit_ concealed beneath all kinds of moral finery.--The show-words are: Toleration (for the "incapacity of saying yes or no"); _la largeur de sympathie_ (= a third of indifference, a third of curiosity, and a third of morbid susceptibility); "objectivity" (the lack of personality and of will, and the inability to "love"); "freedom" in regard to the rule (Romanticism); "truth" as opposed to falsehood and lying (Naturalism); the "scientific spirit" (the "human document": or, in plain English, the serial story which means "addition"--instead of "composition"); "passion" in the place of disorder and intemperance; "depth" in the place of confusion and the pell-mell of symbols.

80.

_Concerning the criticism of big words._--I am full of mistrust and malice towards what is called "ideal": this is my _Pessimism,_ that I have recognised to what extent "sublime sentiments" are a source of evil--that is to say, a belittling and depreciating of man.

Every time "progress" is expected to result from an ideal, disappointment invariably follows; the triumph of an ideal has always been a _retrograde movement_.

Christianity, revolution, the abolition of slavery, equal rights, philanthropy, love of peace, justice, truth: all these big words are only valuable in a struggle, as banners: not as realities, but as _show-words,_ for something quite different (yea, even quite opposed to what they mean!).

81.

The kind of man is known who has fallen in love with the sentence "_tout comprendre à est tout pardonner"_ It is the weak and, above all, the disillusioned: if there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to contemn! It is the philosophy of disappointment, which here swathes itself so humanly in pity, and gazes out so sweetly.

They are Romanticists, whose faith has gone to pot: now they at least wish to look on and see how everything vanishes and fades. They call it _l'art pour l'art,_ "objectivity," etc.

82.

_The main symptoms of Pessimism_:--Dinners at Magny's; Russian Pessimism (Tolstoy, Dostoiewsky); æsthetic Pessimism, _l'art pour l'art,_ "description" (the romantic and the anti-romantic Pessimism); Pessimism in the theory of knowledge (Schopenhauer: phenomenalism); anarchical Pessimism; the "religion of pity," Buddhistic preparation; the Pessimism of culture (exoticness, cosmopolitanism); moral Pessimism, myself.

83.

"_Without the Christian Faith_" said Pascal, "you would yourselves be like nature and history, _un monstre et un chaos._" We fulfilled this prophecy: once the weak and optimistic eighteenth century had _embellished_ and _rationalised_ man.

_Schopenhauer_ and _Pascal._--I none essential point, Schopenhauer is the first who _takes up Pascal's_ movement again: _un monstre et un chaos,_ consequently something that must be negatived ... history, nature, and man himself!

"_Our inability to know the truth_ is the result of our _corruption,_ of our moral _decay_" says Pascal. And Schopenhauer says essentially the same. "The more profound the corruption of reason is, the more necessary is the doctrine of salvation"--or, putting it into Schopenhauerian phraseology, negation.

84.

_Schopenhauer as an epigone_ (state of affairs before the Revolution):--Pity, sensuality, art, weakness of will, Catholicism of the most intellectual desires--that is, at bottom, the good old eighteenth century.

_Schopenhauer's_ fundamental misunderstanding of the _will_ (just as though passion, instinct, and desire were the essential factors of will) is typical: the depreciation of the will to the extent of mistaking it altogether. Likewise the hatred of willing: the attempt at seeing something superior--yea, even superiority itself, and that which really matters, in non-willing, in the "subject-being _without_ aim or intention." Great symptom of _fatigue or of the weakness of will_: for this, in reality, is what treats the passions as master, and directs them as to the way and to the measure....

85.

The undignified attempt has been made to regard Wagner and Schopenhauer as types of the mentally unsound: an infinitely more essential understanding of the matter would have been gained if the exact decadent type which each of them represents had been scientifically and accurately defined.

86.

In my opinion, Henrik Ibsen has become very German. With all his robust idealism and "Will to Truth," he never dared to ring himself free from moral-illusionism which says "freedom," and will not admit, even to itself, what freedom is: the second stage in the metamorphosis of the "Will to Power" in him who lacks it. In the first stage, one demands justice at the hands of those who have power. In the second, one speaks of "freedom," that is to say, one wishes to "shake oneself free" from those who have power. In the third stage, one speaks of "equal rights"--that is to say, so long as one is not a predominant personality one wishes to prevent one's competitors from growing in power.

87.

The Decline of _Protestantism_: theoretically and historically understood as a half-measure. Undeniable predominance of Catholicism to-day: Protestant feeling is so dead that the strongest _anti-Protestant_ movements (Wagner's _Parsifal,_ for instance) are no longer regarded as such. The whole of the more elevated intellectuality in France is _Catholic_ in instinct; Bismarck recognised that there was no longer any such thing as Protestantism.

88.

Protestantism, that spiritually unclean and tiresome form of decadence, in which Christianity has known how to survive in the mediocre North, is something incomplete and complexly valuable for knowledge, in so far as it was able to bring experiences of different kinds and origins into the same heads.

89.

What has the German spirit not made out of Christianity! And, to refer to Protestantism again, how much beer is there not still in Protestant Christianity! Can a crasser, more indolent, and more lounging form of Christian belief be imagined, than that of the average German Protestant?... It is indeed a very humble Christianity. I call it the Homœopathy of Christianity! I am reminded that, to-day, there also exists a less humble sort of Protestantism; it is taught by royal chaplains and anti-Semitic speculators: but nobody has ever maintained that any "spirit" "hovers" over these waters. It is merely a less respectable form of Christian faith, not by any means a more comprehensible one.

90.

_Progress._--Let us be on our guard lest we deceive ourselves! Time flies forward apace,--we would fain believe that everything flies forward with it,--that evolution is an advancing development.... That is the appearance of things which deceives the most circumspect. But the nineteenth century shows no advance whatever on the sixteenth: and the German spirit of 1888 is an example of a backward movement when compared with that of 1788.... Mankind does not advance, it does not even exist. The aspect of the whole is much more like that of a huge experimenting workshop where some things in all ages succeed, while an incalculable number of things fail; where all order, logic, co-ordination, and responsibility is lacking. How dare we blink the fact that the rise of Christianity is a decadent movement?--that the German Reformation was a recrudescence of Christian barbarism?--that the Revolution destroyed the instinct for an organisation of society on a large scale?... Man is not an example of progress as compared with animals: the tender son of culture is an abortion compared with the Arab or the Corsican; the Chinaman is a more successful type--that is to say, richer in sustaining power than the European.

_(b)_ THE LAST CENTURIES.

91.

Gloominess and pessimistic influence necessarily follow in the wake of enlightenment. Towards 1770 a falling-off in cheerfulness was already noticeable; women, with that very feminine instinct which always defends virtue, believed that immorality was the cause of it. Galiani hit the bull's eye: he quotes Voltaire's verse:

"Un monstre gai vaut mieux
Qu'un sentimental ennuyeux."

If now I maintain that I am ahead, by a century or two of enlightenment, of Voltaire and Galiani--who was much more profound, how deeply must I have sunk into gloominess! This is also true, and betimes I somewhat reluctantly manifested some caution in regard to the German and Christian narrowness and inconsistency of Schopenhauerian or, worse still, Leopardian Pessimism, and sought the most characteristic form (Asia). But, in order to endure that extreme Pessimism (which here and there peeps out of my _Birth of Tragedy),_ to live alone "without God or morality," I was compelled to invent a counter-prop for myself. Perhaps I know best why man is the only animal that laughs: he alone surfers so excruciatingly that he was _compelled_ to invent laughter. The unhappiest and most melancholy animal is, as might have been expected, the most cheerful.

92.

In regard to German culture, I have always had a feeling as of _decline._ The fact that I learned to know a declining form of culture has often made me _unfair_ towards the whole phenomenon of European culture. The Germans always follow at some distance behind: they always go to the root of things, for instance:--

Dependance upon foreigners; _Kant_--Rousseau, the sensualists, Hume, Swedenborg.

_Schopenhauer_--the Indians and Romanticism, Voltaire.

_Wagner_--the French cult of the ugly and of grand opera, _Paris,_ and the flight into _primitive barbarism_ (the marriage of brother and sister).

The law of the _laggard_ (the provinces go to Paris, Germany goes to France).

How is it that precisely _Germans discovered the Greek_ (the more an instinct is developed, the more it is _tempted_ to run for once into its opposite).

Music is the last breath of every culture.

93.

_Renaissance and Reformation._--What does the Renaissance prove? That the reign of the "individual" can be only a short one. The output is too great; there is not even the possibility of husbanding or of capitalising forces, and exhaustion sets in step by step. These are times when everything is _squandered,_ when even the strength itself with which one collects, capitalises, and heaps riches upon riches, _is squandered._ Even the opponents of such movements are driven to preposterous extremes in the dissipation of their strength: and they too are very soon exhausted, used up, and completely sapped.

In the Reformation we are face to face with a wild and plebeian counterpart of the Italian Renaissance, generated by similar impulses, except that the former, in the backward and still vulgar North, had to assume a religious form--there the concept of a higher life had not yet been divorced from that of a religious one.

Even the Reformation was a movement for individual liberty; "every one his own priest" is really no more than a formula for _libertinage._ As a matter of fact, the words "Evangelical freedom" would have sufficed--and all instincts which had reasons for remaining concealed broke out like wild hounds, the most brutal needs suddenly acquired the courage to show themselves, everything seemed justified ... men refused to specify the kind of freedom they had aimed at, they preferred to shut their eyes. But the fact that their eyes were closed and that their lips were moistened with gushing orations, did not prevent their hands from being ready to snatch at whatever there was to snatch at, that the belly became the god of the "free gospel," and that all lusts of revenge and of hatred were indulged with insatiable fury.

This lasted for a while: then exhaustion supervened, just as it had done in Southern Europe; and again here, it was a low form of exhaustion, a sort of general _ruere in servitium_.... Then the _disreputable_ century of Germany dawned.

94.

_Chivalry_--the position won by power: its gradual break-up (and partial transference to broader and more bourgeois spheres). In the case of Larochefoucauld we find a knowledge of the actual impulses of a noble temperament--together with the gloomy Christian estimate of these impulses.

The _protraction of Christianity_ through the _French Revolution._ The seducer is Rousseau; he once again liberates woman, who thenceforward is always represented as ever more interesting--_suffering._ Then come the slaves and Mrs. Beecher-Stowe. Then the poor and the workmen. Then the vicious and the sick--all this is drawn into the foreground (even for the purpose of disposing people in favour of the genius, it has been customary for five hundred years to press him forward as the great sufferer!). Then comes the cursing of all voluptuousness (Baudelaire and Schopenhauer), the most decided conviction that the lust of power is the greatest vice; absolute certainty that morality and disinterestedness are identical things; that the "happiness of all" is a goal worth striving after (_i.e.,_ Christ's Kingdom of Heaven). We are on the best road to it: the Kingdom of Heaven of the poor in spirit has begun.--Intermediate stages: the bourgeois (as a result of the _nouveau riche_) and the workman (as a result of the machine).

Greek and French culture of the time of Louis XIV. compared. A decided belief in oneself. A leisure-class which makes things hard for itself and exercises a great deal of self-control. The power of form, the will to form _oneself._ "Happiness" acknowledged as a purpose. Much strength and energy _behind_ all formality of manners. Pleasure at the sight of a life that is _seemingly so easy._ The _Greeks_ seemed like _children_ to the French.

95.

_The Three Centuries._

Their different kinds of _sensitiveness_ may perhaps be best expressed as follows:--

_Aristocracy_: Descartes, the reign of _reason,_ evidence showing the sovereignty of the _will_.

_Feminism_: Rousseau, the reign of _feeling,_ evidence showing the sovereignty of the senses; all lies.

_Animalism_: Schopenhauer, the reign of _passion,_ evidence showing the sovereignty of animality, more honest, but gloomy.

The seventeenth century is _aristocratic,_ all for order, haughty towards everything animal, severe in regard to the heart, "austere," and even free from sentiment, "non-German," averse to all that is burlesque and natural, generalising and maintaining an attitude of sovereignty towards the past for it believes in itself. At bottom it partakes very much of the beast of prey, and practises asceticism in order to remain master. It is the century of strength of will, as also that of strong passion.

The eighteenth century is dominated by _woman,_ it is gushing, spiritual, and flat; but with intellect at the service of aspirations and of the heart, it is a libertine in the pleasures of intellect, undermining all authorities; emotionally intoxicated, cheerful, clear, humane, and sociable, false to itself and at bottom very rascally....

The nineteenth century is more _animal,_ more subterranean, hateful, realistic, plebeian, and on that very account "better," "more honest," more submissive to "reality" of what kind soever, and _truer_; but weak of will, sad, obscurely exacting and fatalistic. It has no feeling of timidity or reverence, either in the presence of "reason" or the "heart"; thoroughly convinced of the dominion of the desires (Schopenhauer said "Will," but nothing is more characteristic of his philosophy than that it entirely lacks all actual _willing_). Even morality is reduced to an instinct ("Pity").

Auguste Comte is _the continuation of the_ eighteenth _century_ (the dominion of the heart over the head, sensuality in the theory of knowledge, altruistic exaltation).

The fact that _science_ has become as sovereign as it is to-day, proves how the nineteenth century has _emancipated itself_ from the dominion of _ideals._ A certain absence of "needs" and wishes makes our scientific curiosity and rigour possible--this is our kind of virtue.

Romanticism is the _counterstroke_ of the eighteenth century; a sort of accumulated longing for its grand style of exaltation (as a matter of fact, largely mingled with mummery and self-deception: the desire was to represent _strong nature_ and _strong passion_).

The nineteenth century instinctively goes in search of _theories_ by means of which it may feel its _fatalistic, submission to the empire of facts_ justified. Hegel's success against sentimentality and romantic idealism was already a sign of its fatalistic trend of thought, in its belief that superior reason belongs to the triumphant side, and in its justification of the actual "state" (in the place of "humanity," etc.).--Schopenhauer: we are something foolish, and at the best self-suppressive. The success of determinism, the genealogical derivation of _obligations_ which were formerly held to be absolute, the teaching of environment and adaptation, the reduction of will to a process of reflex movement, the denial of the will as a "working cause"; finally--a real process of re-christening: so little will is observed that the word itself becomes _available_ for another purpose. Further theories: the teaching of _objectivity,_ "will-less" contemplation, as the only road to truth, _as also_ to _beauty_ (also the belief in "genius," in order to have _the right to be submissive_); mechanism, the determinable rigidity of the mechanical process; so-called "Naturalism," the elimination of the choosing, directing, interpreting subject, on principle.

Kant, with his "practical reason," with his _moral fanaticism,_ is quite eighteenth century style; still completely outside the historical movement, without any notion whatsoever of the reality of his time, for instance, revolution; he is not affected by Greek philosophy; he is a phantasist of the notion of duty, a sensualist with a hidden leaning to dogmatic pampering.

_The return to Kant_ in our century means a _return to the eighteenth century,_ people desire to create themselves a right to the _old ideas_ and to the old exaltation--hence a theory of knowledge which "describes limits," that is to say, which admits _of the option of fixing a Beyond to the domain of reason._

_Hegel's_ way of thinking is not so very far removed from that of Goethe: see the latter on the subject of Spinoza, for instance. The will to deify the All and Life, in order to find both _peace_ and _happiness_ in contemplating them: Hegel looks for reason everywhere--in the presence of reason man may be _submissive_ and resigned. In Goethe we find a kind of _fatalism_ which is almost _joyous_ and _confiding,_ which neither revolts nor weakens, which strives to make a totality out of itself, in the belief that only in totality does everything seem good and justified, and find itself resolved.

96.

The period of _rationalism_--followed by a period of _sentimentality._ To what extent does Schopenhauer come under "sentimentality"? (Hegel under intellectuality?)

97.

The seventeenth century _suffers_ from _humanity_ as from a _host of contradictions_ ("_l'amas de contradictions_" that we are); it endeavours to discover man, to _co-ordinate him,_ to excavate him: whereas the eighteenth century tries to forget what is known of man's nature, in order to adapt him to its Utopia. "Superficial, soft, humane"--gushes over "humanity."

The seventeenth century tries to banish all traces of the individual in order that the artist's work may resemble life as much as possible. The eighteenth century strives _to create interest in the author_ by means of the work. The seventeenth century seeks art in art, a piece of culture; the eighteenth uses art in its propaganda for political and social reforms.

"Utopia," the "ideal man," the deification of Nature, the vanity of making one's own personality the centre of interest, subordination to the propaganda of _social ideas,_ charlatanism--all this we derive from the eighteenth century.

The style of the seventeenth century: _propre exact et libre._

The strong individual who is self-sufficient, or who appeals ardently to God--and that obtrusiveness and indiscretion of modern authors--these things are _opposites._ "Showing-oneself-off"--what a contrast to the Scholars of Port-Royal!

Alfieri had a sense for the _grand style._

The hate of the _burlesque_ (that which lacks dignity), _the lack of a sense of Nature_ belongs to the seventeenth century.

98.

_Against Rousseau.--Alas!_ man is no longer sufficiently evil; Rousseau's opponents, who say that "man is a beast of prey," are unfortunately wrong. Not the corruption of man, but the softening and moralising of him is the curse. In the sphere which Rousseau attacked most violently, the _relatively_ strongest and most successful type of man was still to be found (the type which still possessed the great passions intact: Will to Power, Will to Pleasure, the Will and Ability to Command). The man of the eighteenth century must be compared with the man of the Renaissance (also with the man of the seventeenth century in France) if the matter is to be understood at all: Rousseau is a symptom of self-contempt and of inflamed vanity--both signs that the dominating will is lacking: he moralises and seeks the _cause_ of his own misery after the style of a revengeful man in the _ruling_ classes.

99.

_Voltaire--Rousseau._--A state of nature is terrible; man is a beast of prey: our civilisation is an extraordinary _triumph_ over this beast of prey in nature--this was _Voltaires_ conclusion. He was conscious of the mildness, the refinements, the intellectual joys of the civilised state; he despised obtuseness, even in the form of virtue, and the lack of delicacy even in ascetics and monks.

The _moral depravity_ of man seemed to pre-occupy _Rousseau_; the words "unjust," "cruel," are the best possible for the purpose of exciting the instincts of the oppressed, who otherwise find themselves under the ban of the _vetitum_ and of disgrace; _so that their conscience is opposed to their indulging any insurrectional desires._ These emancipators seek one thing above all: to give their party the great accents and attitudes of _higher Nature_.

100.

_Rousseau_; the rule founded on sentiment; Nature as the source of justice; man perfects himself in proportion as he approaches _Nature_ (according to Voltaire, in proportion _as he leaves Nature behind_). The very same periods seem to the one to demonstrate the progress of _humanity_ and, to the other, the increase of injustice and inequality.

Voltaire, who still understood _umanità_ in the sense of the Renaissance, as also _virtù_ (as "higher culture"), fights for the cause of the "_honnêtes gens_" "_la bonne compagnie_" taste, science, arts, and even for the cause of progress and civilisation.

_The flare-up occurred towards 1760_: On the one hand the citizen of Geneva, on the other _le seigneur de Ferney._ It is only from that moment and henceforward that Voltaire was the man of his age, the philosopher, the representative of Toleration and of Disbelief (theretofore he had been merely _un bel esprit_). His envy and hatred of Rousseau's success forced him upwards.

"_Pour 'la canaille' un dieu rémunérateur et vengeur_"--Voltaire.

The criticism of both standpoints in regard to the _value of civilisation._ To Voltaire nothing seems finer than the _social invention_: there is no higher goal than to uphold and perfect it. _L'honnêteté_ consists precisely in respecting social usage; virtue in a certain obedience towards various necessary "prejudices" which favour the maintenance of society. _Missionary of Culture,_ aristocrat, representative of the triumphant and ruling classes and their values. But Rousseau remained a _plebeian,_ even as _hommes de lettres,_ this was _preposterous_; his shameless contempt for everything that was not himself.

The _morbid feature_ in Rousseau is the one which happens to have been most admired and _imitated._ (Lord Byron resembled him somewhat, he too screwed himself up to sublime attitudes and to revengeful rage--a sign of vulgarity; later on, when Venice restored his equilibrium, he understood what _alleviates most_ and does the _most good ... l'insouciance_.)

In spite of his antecedents, Rousseau is proud of himself; but he is incensed if he is reminded of his origin....

In Rousseau there was undoubtedly some brain trouble; in Voltaire--rare health and lightsomeness. _The revengefulness of the sick_; his periods of insanity as also those of his contempt of man, and of his mistrust.

Rousseau's defence of _Providence_ (against Voltaire's Pessimism): he _had need of_ God in order to be able to curse society and civilisation; everything must be good _per se,_ because God had created it; man _alone has corrupted man._ The "good man" as a man of Nature was pure fantasy; but with the dogma of God's authorship he became something probable and even not devoid of foundation.

_Romanticism_ à la _Rousseau_: passion ("the sovereign right of passion"); "naturalness"; the fascination of madness (foolishness reckoned as greatness); the senseless vanity of the weak; the revengefulness of the masses elevated to the position of _justice_ ("in politics, for one hundred years, the leader has always been this invalid").

101.

_Kant_: makes the scepticism of Englishmen, in regard to the theory of knowledge, _possible_ for Germans.

(1) By enlisting in its cause the interest of the German's religious and moral needs: just as the new academicians used scepticism for the same reasons, as a preparation for Platonism (_vide_ Augustine); just as Pascal even used _moral_ scepticism in order to provoke (to justify) the need of belief;

(2) By complicating and entangling it with scholastic flourishes in view of making it more acceptable to the German's scientific taste in form (for Locke and Hume, alone, were too illuminating, too clear--that is to say, judged according to the German valuing instinct, "too superficial").

_Kant_: a poor psychologist and mediocre judge of human nature, made hopeless mistakes in regard to great historical values (the French Revolution); a moral fanatic _à la_ Rousseau; with a subterranean current of Christian values; a thorough dogmatist, but bored to extinction by this tendency, to the extent of wishing to tyrannise over it, but quickly tired, even of 'scepticism; and not yet affected by any cosmopolitan thought or antique beauty ... a _dawdler_ and a _go-between,_ not at all original (like _Leibnitz,_ something between mechanism and spiritualism; like _Goethe,_ something between the taste of the eighteenth century and that of the "historical sense" [which _is_ essentially a sense of exoticism]; like _German music,_ between French and Italian music; like Charles the Great, who mediated and built bridges between the Roman Empire and Nationalism--a dawdler _par excellence_).

102.

In what respect have the _Christian_ centuries with their Pessimism been _stronger_ centuries than the eighteenth--and how do they correspond with the _tragic_ age of the Greeks?

The nineteenth century _versus_ the eighteenth. How was it an heir?--how was it a step backwards from the latter? (more lacking in "spirit" and in taste)--how did it show an advance on the latter? (more gloomy, more realistic, _stronger_).

103.