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everything that happened according to a Christian scheme,
and in every occurrence to rediscover and justify the
Christian God:—all this violence, arbitrariness, severity,
dreadfulness, and unreasonableness, has proved itself the
disciplinary means whereby the European spirit has
attained its strength, its remorseless curiosity and subtle
mobility; granted also that much irrecoverable strength
and spirit had to be stifled, suffocated, and spoilt in the
process (for here, as everywhere, ‘nature’ shows herself as
she is, in all her extravagant and INDIFFERENT
magnificence, which is shocking, but nevertheless noble).
That for centuries European thinkers only thought in
order to prove something-nowadays, on the contrary, we
are suspicious of every thinker who ‘wishes to prove
something’—that it was always settled beforehand what
WAS TO BE the result of their strictest thinking, as it was
perhaps in the Asiatic astrology of former times, or as it is
still at the present day in the innocent, Christian-moral
explanation of immediate personal events ‘for the glory of
God,’ or ‘for the good of the soul":—this tyranny, this
arbitrariness, this severe and magnificent stupidity, has
EDUCATED the spirit; slavery, both in the coarser and
the finer sense, is apparently an indispensable means even
of spiritual education and discipline. One may look at
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every system of morals in this light: it is ‘nature’ therein
which teaches to hate the laisser-aller, the too great
freedom, and implants the need for limited horizons, for
immediate duties—it teaches the NARROWING OF
PERSPECTIVES, and thus, in a certain sense, that
stupidity is a condition of life and development. ‘Thou
must obey some one, and for a long time; OTHERWISE
thou wilt come to grief, and lose all respect for thyself’—
this seems to me to be the moral imperative of nature,
which is certainly neither ‘categorical,’ as old Kant wished
(consequently the ‘otherwise’), nor does it address itself to
the individual (what does nature care for the individual!),
but to nations, races, ages, and ranks; above all, however,
to the animal ‘man’ generally, to MANKIND.
189. Industrious races find it a great hardship to be idle:
it was a master stroke of ENGLISH instinct to hallow and
begloom Sunday to such an extent that the Englishman
unconsciously hankers for his week—and work-day
again:—as a kind of cleverly devised, cleverly intercalated
FAST, such as is also frequently found in the ancient
world (although, as is appropriate in southern nations, not
precisely with respect to work). Many kinds of fasts are
necessary; and wherever powerful influences and habits
prevail, legislators have to see that intercalary days are
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appointed, on which such impulses are fettered, and learn
to hunger anew. Viewed from a higher standpoint, whole
generations and epochs, when they show themselves
infected with any moral fanaticism, seem like those
intercalated periods of restraint and fasting, during which
an impulse learns to humble and submit itself—at the same
time also to PURIFY and SHARPEN itself; certain
philosophical sects likewise admit of a similar
interpretation (for instance, the Stoa, in the midst of
Hellenic culture, with the atmosphere rank and
overcharged with Aphrodisiacal odours).—Here also is a
hint for the explanation of the paradox, why it was
precisely in the most Christian period of European history,
and in general only under the pressure of Christian
sentiments, that the sexual impulse sublimated into love
(amour-passion).
190. There is something in the morality of Plato which
does not really belong to Plato, but which only appears in
his philosophy, one might say, in spite of him: namely,
Socratism, for which he himself was too noble. ‘No one
desires to injure himself, hence all evil is done unwittingly.
The evil man inflicts injury on himself; he would not do
so, however, if he knew that evil is evil. The evil man,
therefore, is only evil through error; if one free him from
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error one will necessarily make him—good.’—This mode
of reasoning savours of the POPULACE, who perceive
only the unpleasant consequences of evil-doing, and
practically judge that ‘it is STUPID to do wrong"; while
they accept ‘good’ as identical with ‘useful and pleasant,’
without further thought. As regards every system of
utilitarianism, one may at once assume that it has the same
origin, and follow the scent: one will seldom err.— Plato
did all he could to interpret something refined and noble
into the tenets of his teacher, and above all to interpret
himself into them—he, the most daring of all interpreters,
who lifted the entire Socrates out of the street, as a
popular theme and song, to exhibit him in endless and
impossible modifications —namely, in all his own disguises
and multiplicities. In jest, and in Homeric language as
well, what is the Platonic Socrates, if not— [Greek words
inserted here.]
191. The old theological problem of ‘Faith’ and
‘Knowledge,’ or more plainly, of instinct and reason—the
question whether, in respect to the valuation of things,
instinct deserves more authority than rationality, which
wants to appreciate and act according to motives,
according to a ‘Why,’ that is to say, in conformity to
purpose and utility—it is always the old moral problem
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that first appeared in the person of Socrates, and had
divided men’s minds long before Christianity. Socrates
himself, following, of course, the taste of his talent—that
of a surpassing dialectician—took first the side of reason;
and, in fact, what did he do all his life but laugh at the
awkward incapacity of the noble Athenians, who were
men of instinct, like all noble men, and could never give
satisfactory answers concerning the motives of their
actions? In the end, however, though silently and secretly,
he laughed also at himself: with his finer conscience and
introspection, he found in himself the same difficulty and
incapacity. ‘But why’—he said to himself— ‘should one
on that account separate oneself from the instincts! One
must set them right, and the reason ALSO—one must
follow the instincts, but at the same time persuade the
reason to support them with good arguments.’ This was
the real FALSENESS of that great and mysterious ironist;
he brought his conscience up to the point that he was
satisfied with a kind of self-outwitting: in fact, he
perceived the irrationality in the moral judgment.— Plato,
more innocent in such matters, and without the craftiness
of the plebeian, wished to prove to himself, at the
expenditure of all his strength—the greatest strength a
philosopher had ever expended—that reason and instinct
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lead spontaneously to one goal, to the good, to ‘God"; and
since Plato, all theologians and philosophers have followed
the same path—which means that in matters of morality,
instinct (or as Christians call it, ‘Faith,’ or as I call it, ‘the
herd’) has hitherto triumphed. Unless one should make an
exception in the case of Descartes, the father of rationalism
(and consequently the grandfather of the Revolution),
who recognized only the authority of reason: but reason is
only a tool, and Descartes was superficial.
192. Whoever has followed the history of a single
science, finds in its development a clue to the
understanding of the oldest and commonest processes of all
‘knowledge and cognizance": there, as here, the premature
hypotheses, the fictions, the good stupid will to ‘belief,’
and the lack of distrust and patience are first developed—
our senses learn late, and never learn completely, to be
subtle, reliable, and cautious organs of knowledge. Our
eyes find it easier on a given occasion to produce a picture
already often produced, than to seize upon the divergence
and novelty of an impression: the latter requires more
force, more ‘morality.’ It is difficult and painful for the ear
to listen to anything new; we hear strange music badly.
When we hear another language spoken, we involuntarily
attempt to form the sounds into words with which we are
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more familiar and conversant—it was thus, for example,
that the Germans modified the spoken word
ARCUBALISTA into ARMBRUST (cross-bow). Our
senses are also hostile and averse to the new; and generally,
even in the ‘simplest’ processes of sensation, the emotions
DOMINATE—such as fear, love, hatred, and the passive
emotion of indolence.—As little as a reader nowadays
reads all the single words (not to speak of syllables) of a
page —he rather takes about five out of every twenty
words at random, and ‘guesses’ the probably appropriate
sense to them—just as little do we see a tree correctly and
completely in respect to its leaves, branches, colour, and
shape; we find it so much easier to fancy the chance of a
tree. Even in the midst of the most remarkable
experiences, we still do just the same; we fabricate the
greater part of the experience, and can hardly be made to
contemplate any event, EXCEPT as ‘inventors’ thereof.
All this goes to prove that from our fundamental nature
and from remote ages we have been—ACCUSTOMED
TO LYING. Or, to express it more politely and
hypocritically, in short, more pleasantly—one is much
more of an artist than one is aware of.—In an animated
conversation, I often see the face of the person with
whom I am speaking so clearly and sharply defined before
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me, according to the thought he expresses, or which I
believe to be evoked in his mind, that the degree of
distinctness far exceeds the STRENGTH of my visual
faculty—the delicacy of the play of the muscles and of the
expression of the eyes MUST therefore be imagined by
me. Probably the person put on quite a different
expression, or none at all.
193. Quidquid luce fuit, tenebris agit: but also
contrariwise. What we experience in dreams, provided we
experience it often, pertains at last just as much to the
general belongings of our soul as anything ‘actually’
experienced; by virtue thereof we are richer or poorer, we
have a requirement more or less, and finally, in broad
daylight, and even in the brightest moments of our waking
life, we are ruled to some extent by the nature of our
dreams. Supposing that someone has often flown in his
dreams, and that at last, as soon as he dreams, he is
conscious of the power and art of flying as his privilege
and his peculiarly enviable happiness; such a person, who
believes that on the slightest impulse, he can actualize all
sorts of curves and angles, who knows the sensation of a
certain divine levity, an ‘upwards’ without effort or
constraint, a ‘downwards’ without descending or
lowering—without TROUBLE!—how could the man
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with such dream- experiences and dream-habits fail to find
‘happiness’ differently coloured and defined, even in his
waking hours! How could he fail—to long
DIFFERENTLY for happiness? ‘Flight,’ such as is
described by poets, must, when compared with his own
‘flying,’ be far too earthly, muscular, violent, far too
‘troublesome’ for him.
194. The difference among men does not manifest itself
only in the difference of their lists of desirable things—in
their regarding different good things as worth striving for,
and being disagreed as to the greater or less value, the
order of rank, of the commonly recognized desirable
things:—it manifests itself much more in what they regard
as actually HAVING and POSSESSING a desirable thing.
As regards a woman, for instance, the control over her
body and her sexual gratification serves as an amply
sufficient sign of ownership and possession to the more
modest man; another with a more suspicious and
ambitious thirst for possession, sees the ‘questionableness,’
the mere apparentness of such ownership, and wishes to
have finer tests in order to know especially whether the
woman not only gives herself to him, but also gives up for
his sake what she has or would like to have— only THEN
does he look upon her as ‘possessed.’ A third, however,
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has not even here got to the limit of his distrust and his
desire for possession: he asks himself whether the woman,
when she gives up everything for him, does not perhaps
do so for a phantom of him; he wishes first to be
thoroughly, indeed, profoundly well known; in order to
be loved at all he ventures to let himself be found out.
Only then does he feel the beloved one fully in his
possession, when she no longer deceives herself about him,
when she loves him just as much for the sake of his devilry
and concealed insatiability, as for his goodness, patience,
and spirituality. One man would like to possess a nation,
and he finds all the higher arts of Cagliostro and Catalina
suitable for his purpose. Another, with a more refined
thirst for possession, says to himself: ‘One may not deceive
where one desires to possess’—he is irritated and impatient
at the idea that a mask of him should rule in the hearts of
the people: ‘I must, therefore, MAKE myself known, and
first of all learn to know myself!’ Among helpful and
charitable people, one almost always finds the awkward
craftiness which first gets up suitably him who has to be
helped, as though, for instance, he should ‘merit’ help,
seek just THEIR help, and would show himself deeply
grateful, attached, and subservient to them for all help.
With these conceits, they take control of the needy as a
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