even in a mediocre artist, one finds a very remarkable
man.
138. We do the same when awake as when dreaming:
we only invent and imagine him with whom we have
intercourse—and forget it immediately.
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139. In revenge and in love woman is more barbarous
than man.
140. ADVICE AS A RIDDLE.—‘If the band is not to
break, bite it first—secure to make!’
141. The belly is the reason why man does not so
readily take himself for a God.
142. The chastest utterance I ever heard: ‘Dans le
veritable amour c’est I l’ame qui enveloppe le corps.’
143. Our vanity would like what we do best to pass
precisely for what is most difficult to us.—Concerning the
origin of many systems of morals.
144. When a woman has scholarly inclinations there is
generally something wrong with her sexual nature.
Barrenness itself conduces to a certain virility of taste; man,
indeed, if I may say so, is ‘the barren animal.’
145. Comparing man and woman generally, one may
say that woman would not have the genius for adornment,
if she had not the instinct for the SECONDARY role.
146. He who fights with monsters should be careful lest
he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into
an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.
147. From old Florentine novels—moreover, from life:
Buona femmina e mala femmina vuol bastone.—Sacchetti,
Nov. 86.
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148. To seduce their neighbour to a favourable
opinion, and afterwards to believe implicitly in this
opinion of their neighbour—who can do this conjuring
trick so well as women?
149. That which an age considers evil is usually an
unseasonable echo of what was formerly considered
good—the atavism of an old ideal.
150. Around the hero everything becomes a tragedy;
around the demigod everything becomes a satyr-play; and
around God everything becomes—what? perhaps a
‘world’?
151. It is not enough to possess a talent: one must also
have your permission to possess it;—eh, my friends?
152. ‘Where there is the tree of knowledge, there is
always Paradise": so say the most ancient and the most
modern serpents.
153. What is done out of love always takes place
beyond good and evil.
154. Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of
irony are signs of health; everything absolute belongs to
pathology.
155. The sense of the tragic increases and declines with
sensuousness.
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156. Insanity in individuals is something rare—but in
groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.
157. The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by
means of it one gets successfully through many a bad
night.
158. Not only our reason, but also our conscience,
truckles to our strongest impulse—the tyrant in us.
159. One MUST repay good and ill; but why just to
the person who did us good or ill?
160. One no longer loves one’s knowledge sufficiently
after one has communicated it.
161. Poets act shamelessly towards their experiences:
they exploit them.
162. ‘Our fellow-creature is not our neighbour, but
our neighbour’s neighbour":—so thinks every nation.
163. Love brings to light the noble and hidden qualities
of a lover—his rare and exceptional traits: it is thus liable
to be deceptive as to his normal character.
164. Jesus said to his Jews: ‘The law was for servants;—
love God as I love him, as his Son! What have we Sons of
God to do with morals!’
165. IN SIGHT OF EVERY PARTY.—A shepherd
has always need of a bell-wether—or he has himself to be
a wether occasionally.
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166. One may indeed lie with the mouth; but with the
accompanying grimace one nevertheless tells the truth.
167. To vigorous men intimacy is a matter of shame—
and something precious.
168. Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not
die of it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice.
169. To talk much about oneself may also be a means
of concealing oneself.
170. In praise there is more obtrusiveness than in
blame.
171. Pity has an almost ludicrous effect on a man of
knowledge, like tender hands on a Cyclops.
172. One occasionally embraces some one or other, out
of love to mankind (because one cannot embrace all); but
this is what one must never confess to the individual.
173. One does not hate as long as one disesteems, but
only when one esteems equal or superior.
174. Ye Utilitarians—ye, too, love the UTILE only as
a VEHICLE for your inclinations,—ye, too, really find the
noise of its wheels insupportable!
175. One loves ultimately one’s desires, not the thing
desired.
176. The vanity of others is only counter to our taste
when it is counter to our vanity.
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177. With regard to what ‘truthfulness’ is, perhaps
nobody has ever been sufficiently truthful.
178. One does not believe in the follies of clever men:
what a forfeiture of the rights of man!
179. The consequences of our actions seize us by the
forelock, very indifferent to the fact that we have
meanwhile ‘reformed.’
180. There is an innocence in lying which is the sign of
good faith in a cause.
181. It is inhuman to bless when one is being cursed.
182. The familiarity of superiors embitters one, because
it may not be returned.
183. ‘I am affected, not because you have deceived me,
but because I can no longer believe in you.’
184. There is a haughtiness of kindness which has the
appearance of wickedness.
185. ‘I dislike him.’—Why?—‘I am not a match for
him.’—Did any one ever answer so?
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CHAPTER V: THE NATURAL
HISTORY OF MORALS
186. The moral sentiment in Europe at present is
perhaps as subtle, belated, diverse, sensitive, and refined, as
the ‘Science of Morals’ belonging thereto is recent, initial,
awkward, and coarse-fingered:—an interesting contrast,
which sometimes becomes incarnate and obvious in the
very person of a moralist. Indeed, the expression, ‘Science
of Morals’ is, in respect to what is designated thereby, far
too presumptuous and counter to GOOD taste,—which is
always a foretaste of more modest expressions. One ought
to avow with the utmost fairness WHAT is still necessary
here for a long time, WHAT is alone proper for the
present: namely, the collection of material, the
comprehensive survey and classification of an immense
domain of delicate sentiments of worth, and distinctions of
worth, which live, grow, propagate, and perish—and
perhaps attempts to give a clear idea of the recurring and
more common forms of these living crystallizations—as
preparation for a THEORY OF TYPES of morality. To
be sure, people have not hitherto been so modest. All the
philosophers, with a pedantic and ridiculous seriousness,
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demanded of themselves something very much higher,
more pretentious, and ceremonious, when they concerned
themselves with morality as a science: they wanted to
GIVE A BASIC to morality— and every philosopher
hitherto has believed that he has given it a basis; morality
itself, however, has been regarded as something ‘given.’
How far from their awkward pride was the seemingly
insignificant problem—left in dust and decay—of a
description of forms of morality, notwithstanding that the
finest hands and senses could hardly be fine enough for it!
It was precisely owing to moral philosophers’ knowing the
moral facts imperfectly, in an arbitrary epitome, or an
accidental abridgement—perhaps as the morality of their
environment, their position, their church, their Zeitgeist,
their climate and zone—it was precisely because they were
badly instructed with regard to nations, eras, and past ages,
and were by no means eager to know about these matters,
that they did not even come in sight of the real problems
of morals—problems which only disclose themselves by a
comparison of MANY kinds of morality. In every
‘Science of Morals’ hitherto, strange as it may sound, the
problem of morality itself has been OMITTED: there has
been no suspicion that there was anything problematic
there! That which philosophers called ‘giving a basis to
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morality,’ and endeavoured to realize, has, when seen in a
right light, proved merely a learned form of good FAITH
in prevailing morality, a new means of its EXPRESSION,
consequently just a matter-of-fact within the sphere of a
definite morality, yea, in its ultimate motive, a sort of
denial that it is LAWFUL for this morality to be called in
question—and in any case the reverse of the testing,
analyzing, doubting, and vivisecting of this very faith.
Hear, for instance, with what innocence—almost worthy
of honour—Schopenhauer represents his own task, and
draw your conclusions concerning the scientificness of a
‘Science’ whose latest master still talks in the strain of
children and old wives: ‘The principle,’ he says (page 136
of the Grundprobleme der Ethik), [Footnote: Pages 54-55
of Schopenhauer’s Basis of Morality, translated by Arthur
B. Bullock, M.A. (1903).] ‘the axiom about the purport of
which all moralists are PRACTICALLY agreed: neminem
laede, immo omnes quantum potes juva—is REALLY the
proposition which all moral teachers strive to establish, …
the REAL basis of ethics which has been sought, like the
philosopher’s stone, for centuries.’—The difficulty of
establishing the proposition referred to may indeed be
great—it is well known that Schopenhauer also was
unsuccessful in his efforts; and whoever has thoroughly
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realized how absurdly false and sentimental this
proposition is, in a world whose essence is Will to Power,
may be reminded that Schopenhauer, although a pessimist,
ACTUALLY—played the flute … daily after dinner: one
may read about the matter in his biography. A question by
the way: a pessimist, a repudiator of God and of the world,
who MAKES A HALT at morality—who assents to
morality, and plays the flute to laede-neminem morals,
what? Is that really—a pessimist?
187. Apart from the value of such assertions as ‘there is
a categorical imperative in us,’ one can always ask: What
does such an assertion indicate about him who makes it?
There are systems of morals which are meant to justify
their author in the eyes of other people; other systems of
morals are meant to tranquilize him, and make him self-
satisfied; with other systems he wants to crucify and
humble himself, with others he wishes to take revenge,
with others to conceal himself, with others to glorify
himself and gave superiority and distinction,—this system
of morals helps its author to forget, that system makes him,
or something of him, forgotten, many a moralist would
like to exercise power and creative arbitrariness over
mankind, many another, perhaps, Kant especially, gives us
to understand by his morals that ‘what is estimable in me,
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is that I know how to obey—and with you it SHALL not
be otherwise than with me!’ In short, systems of morals are
only a SIGN-LANGUAGE OF THE EMOTIONS.
188. In contrast to laisser-aller, every system of morals
is a sort of tyranny against ‘nature’ and also against
‘reason’, that is, however, no objection, unless one should
again decree by some system of morals, that all kinds of
tyranny and unreasonableness are unlawful What is
essential and invaluable in every system of morals, is that it
is a long constraint. In order to understand Stoicism, or
Port Royal, or Puritanism, one should remember the
constraint under which every language has attained to
strength and freedom—the metrical constraint, the tyranny
of rhyme and rhythm. How much trouble have the poets
and orators of every nation given themselves!—not
excepting some of the prose writers of today, in whose ear
dwells an inexorable conscientiousness— ‘for the sake of a
folly,’ as utilitarian bunglers say, and thereby deem
themselves wise—‘from submission to arbitrary laws,’ as
the anarchists say, and thereby fancy themselves ‘free,’
even free-spirited. The singular fact remains, however,
that everything of the nature of freedom, elegance,
boldness, dance, and masterly certainty, which exists or has
existed, whether it be in thought itself, or in
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administration, or in speaking and persuading, in art just as
in conduct, has only developed by means of the tyranny of
such arbitrary law, and in all seriousness, it is not at all
improbable that precisely this is ‘nature’ and ‘natural’—and
not laisser-aller! Every artist knows how different from the
state of letting himself go, is his ‘most natural’ condition,
the free arranging, locating, disposing, and constructing in
the moments of ‘inspiration’—and how strictly and
delicately he then obeys a thousand laws, which, by their
very rigidness and precision, defy all formulation by means
of ideas (even the most stable idea has, in comparison
therewith, something floating, manifold, and ambiguous in
it). The essential thing ‘in heaven and in earth’ is,
apparently (to repeat it once more), that there should be
long OBEDIENCE in the same direction, there thereby
results, and has always resulted in the long run, something
which has made life worth living; for instance, virtue, art,
music, dancing, reason, spirituality— anything whatever
that is transfiguring, refined, foolish, or divine. The long
bondage of the spirit, the distrustful constraint in the
communicability of ideas, the discipline which the thinker
imposed on himself to think in accordance with the rules
of a church or a court, or conformable to Aristotelian
premises, the persistent spiritual will to interpret
