try to convince him that it is not so! In fact, it would
sound nicer, if, instead of our cruelty, perhaps our
‘extravagant honesty’ were talked about, whispered about,
and glorified—we free, VERY free spirits—and some day
perhaps SUCH will actually be our—posthumous glory!
Meanwhile— for there is plenty of time until then—we
should be least inclined to deck ourselves out in such
florid and fringed moral verbiage; our whole former work
has just made us sick of this taste and its sprightly
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exuberance. They are beautiful, glistening, jingling, festive
words: honesty, love of truth, love of wisdom, sacrifice for
knowledge, heroism of the truthful— there is something
in them that makes one’s heart swell with pride. But we
anchorites and marmots have long ago persuaded ourselves
in all the secrecy of an anchorite’s conscience, that this
worthy parade of verbiage also belongs to the old false
adornment, frippery, and gold-dust of unconscious human
vanity, and that even under such flattering colour and
repainting, the terrible original text HOMO NATURA
must again be recognized. In effect, to translate man back
again into nature; to master the many vain and visionary
interpretations and subordinate meanings which have
hitherto been scratched and daubed over the eternal
original text, HOMO NATURA; to bring it about that
man shall henceforth stand before man as he now,
hardened by the discipline of science, stands before the
OTHER forms of nature, with fearless Oedipus-eyes, and
stopped Ulysses-ears, deaf to the enticements of old
metaphysical bird-catchers, who have piped to him far too
long: ‘Thou art more! thou art higher! thou hast a
different origin!’—this may be a strange and foolish task,
but that it is a TASK, who can deny! Why did we choose
it, this foolish task? Or, to put the question differently:
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‘Why knowledge at all?’ Every one will ask us about this.
And thus pressed, we, who have asked ourselves the
question a hundred times, have not found and cannot find
any better answer….
231. Learning alters us, it does what all nourishment
does that does not merely ‘conserve’—as the physiologist
knows. But at the bottom of our souls, quite ‘down
below,’ there is certainly something unteachable, a granite
of spiritual fate, of predetermined decision and answer to
predetermined, chosen questions. In each cardinal problem
there speaks an unchangeable ‘I am this"; a thinker cannot
learn anew about man and woman, for instance, but can
only learn fully—he can only follow to the end what is
‘fixed’ about them in himself. Occasionally we find certain
solutions of problems which make strong beliefs for us;
perhaps they are henceforth called ‘convictions.’ Later
on—one sees in them only footsteps to self-knowledge,
guide-posts to the problem which we ourselves ARE—or
more correctly to the great stupidity which we embody,
our spiritual fate, the UNTEACHABLE in us, quite
‘down below.’—In view of this liberal compliment which
I have just paid myself, permission will perhaps be more
readily allowed me to utter some truths about ‘woman as
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she is,’ provided that it is known at the outset how literally
they are merely—MY truths.
232. Woman wishes to be independent, and therefore
she begins to enlighten men about ‘woman as she is’—
THIS is one of the worst developments of the general
UGLIFYING of Europe. For what must these clumsy
attempts of feminine scientificality and self- exposure bring
to light! Woman has so much cause for shame; in woman
there is so much pedantry, superficiality,
schoolmasterliness, petty presumption, unbridledness, and
indiscretion concealed—study only woman’s behaviour
towards children!—which has really been best restrained
and dominated hitherto by the FEAR of man. Alas, if ever
the ‘eternally tedious in woman’—she has plenty of it!—is
allowed to venture forth! if she begins radically and on
principle to unlearn her wisdom and art-of charming, of
playing, of frightening away sorrow, of alleviating and
taking easily; if she forgets her delicate aptitude for
agreeable desires! Female voices are already raised, which,
by Saint Aristophanes! make one afraid:—with medical
explicitness it is stated in a threatening manner what
woman first and last REQUIRES from man. Is it not in
the very worst taste that woman thus sets herself up to be
scientific? Enlightenment hitherto has fortunately been
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men’s affair, men’s gift-we remained therewith ‘among
ourselves"; and in the end, in view of all that women
write about ‘woman,’ we may well have considerable
doubt as to whether woman really DESIRES
enlightenment about herself—and CAN desire it. If
woman does not thereby seek a new ORNAMENT for
herself—I believe ornamentation belongs to the eternally
feminine?—why, then, she wishes to make herself feared:
perhaps she thereby wishes to get the mastery. But she
does not want truth—what does woman care for truth?
From the very first, nothing is more foreign, more
repugnant, or more hostile to woman than truth—her
great art is falsehood, her chief concern is appearance and
beauty. Let us confess it, we men: we honour and love
this very art and this very instinct in woman: we who have
the hard task, and for our recreation gladly seek the
company of beings under whose hands, glances, and
delicate follies, our seriousness, our gravity, and profundity
appear almost like follies to us. Finally, I ask the question:
Did a woman herself ever acknowledge profundity in a
woman’s mind, or justice in a woman’s heart? And is it
not true that on the whole ‘woman’ has hitherto been
most despised by woman herself, and not at all by us?—
We men desire that woman should not continue to
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compromise herself by enlightening us; just as it was man’s
care and the consideration for woman, when the church
decreed: mulier taceat in ecclesia. It was to the benefit of
woman when Napoleon gave the too eloquent Madame
de Stael to understand: mulier taceat in politicis!—and in
my opinion, he is a true friend of woman who calls out to
women today: mulier taceat de mulierel.
233. It betrays corruption of the instincts—apart from
the fact that it betrays bad taste—when a woman refers to
Madame Roland, or Madame de Stael, or Monsieur
George Sand, as though something were proved thereby
in favour of ‘woman as she is.’ Among men, these are the
three comical women as they are—nothing more!—and
just the best involuntary counter-arguments against
feminine emancipation and autonomy.
234. Stupidity in the kitchen; woman as cook; the
terrible thoughtlessness with which the feeding of the
family and the master of the house is managed! Woman
does not understand what food means, and she insists on
being cook! If woman had been a thinking creature, she
should certainly, as cook for thousands of years, have
discovered the most important physiological facts, and
should likewise have got possession of the healing art!
Through bad female cooks—through the entire lack of
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reason in the kitchen—the development of mankind has
been longest retarded and most interfered with: even
today matters are very little better. A word to High School
girls.
235. There are turns and casts of fancy, there are
sentences, little handfuls of words, in which a whole
culture, a whole society suddenly crystallises itself. Among
these is the incidental remark of Madame de Lambert to
her son: ‘MON AMI, NE VOUS PERMETTEZ
JAMAIS QUE DES FOLIES, QUI VOUS FERONT
GRAND PLAISIR’—the motherliest and wisest remark,
by the way, that was ever addressed to a son.
236. I have no doubt that every noble woman will
oppose what Dante and Goethe believed about woman—
the former when he sang, ‘ELLA GUARDAVA SUSO,
ED IO IN LEI,’ and the latter when he interpreted it, ‘the
eternally feminine draws us ALOFT"; for THIS is just
what she believes of the eternally masculine.
237.
SEVEN APOPHTHEGMS FOR WOMEN
How the longest ennui flees, When a man comes to
our knees!
Age, alas! and science staid, Furnish even weak virtue
aid.
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Sombre garb and silence meet: Dress for every dame—
discreet.
Whom I thank when in my bliss? God!—and my good
tailoress!
Young, a flower-decked cavern home; Old, a dragon
thence doth roam.
Noble title, leg that’s fine, Man as well: Oh, were HE
mine!
Speech in brief and sense in mass—Slippery for the
jenny-ass!
237A. Woman has hitherto been treated by men like
birds, which, losing their way, have come down among
them from an elevation: as something delicate, fragile,
wild, strange, sweet, and animatingbut as something also
which must be cooped up to prevent it flying away.
238. To be mistaken in the fundamental problem of
‘man and woman,’ to deny here the profoundest
antagonism and the necessity for an eternally hostile
tension, to dream here perhaps of equal rights, equal
training, equal claims and obligations: that is a TYPICAL
sign of shallow-mindedness; and a thinker who has proved
himself shallow at this dangerous spot—shallow in
instinct!—may generally be regarded as suspicious, nay
more, as betrayed, as discovered; he will probably prove
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too ‘short’ for all fundamental questions of life, future as
well as present, and will be unable to descend into ANY
of the depths. On the other hand, a man who has depth of
spirit as well as of desires, and has also the depth of
benevolence which is capable of severity and harshness,
and easily confounded with them, can only think of
woman as ORIENTALS do: he must conceive of her as a
possession, as confinable property, as a being predestined
for service and accomplishing her mission therein—he
must take his stand in this matter upon the immense
rationality of Asia, upon the superiority of the instinct of
Asia, as the Greeks did formerly; those best heirs and
scholars of Asia—who, as is well known, with their
INCREASING culture and amplitude of power, from
Homer to the time of Pericles, became gradually
STRICTER towards woman, in short, more Oriental.
HOW necessary, HOW logical, even HOW humanely
desirable this was, let us consider for ourselves!
239. The weaker sex has in no previous age been
treated with so much respect by men as at present—this
belongs to the tendency and fundamental taste of
democracy, in the same way as disrespectfulness to old
age—what wonder is it that abuse should be immediately
made of this respect? They want more, they learn to make
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claims, the tribute of respect is at last felt to be well-nigh
galling; rivalry for rights, indeed actual strife itself, would
be preferred: in a word, woman is losing modesty. And let
us immediately add that she is also losing taste. She is
unlearning to FEAR man: but the woman who ‘unlearns
to fear’ sacrifices her most womanly instincts. That woman
should venture forward when the fear-inspiring quality in
man—or more definitely, the MAN in man—is no longer
either desired or fully developed, is reasonable enough and
also intelligible enough; what is more difficult to
understand is that precisely thereby— woman deteriorates.
This is what is happening nowadays: let us not deceive
ourselves about it! Wherever the industrial spirit has
triumphed over the military and aristocratic spirit, woman
strives for the economic and legal independence of a clerk:
‘woman as clerkess’ is inscribed on the portal of the
modern society which is in course of formation. While she
thus appropriates new rights, aspires to be ‘master,’ and
inscribes ‘progress’ of woman on her flags and banners, the
very opposite realises itself with terrible obviousness:
WOMAN RETROGRADES. Since the French
Revolution the influence of woman in Europe has
DECLINED in proportion as she has increased her rights
and claims; and the ‘emancipation of woman,’ insofar as it
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is desired and demanded by women themselves (and not
only by masculine shallow-pates), thus proves to be a
remarkable symptom of the increased weakening and
deadening of the most womanly instincts. There is
STUPIDITY in this movement, an almost masculine
stupidity, of which a well-reared woman—who is always a
sensible woman—might be heartily ashamed. To lose the
intuition as to the ground upon which she can most surely
achieve victory; to neglect exercise in the use of her
proper weapons; to let-herself-go before man, perhaps
even ‘to the book,’ where formerly she kept herself in
control and in refined, artful humility; to neutralize with
her virtuous audacity man’s faith in a VEILED,
fundamentally different ideal in woman, something
eternally, necessarily feminine; to emphatically and
loquaciously dissuade man from the idea that woman must
be preserved, cared for, protected, and indulged, like some
delicate, strangely wild, and often pleasant domestic
animal; the clumsy and indignant collection of everything
of the nature of servitude and bondage which the position
of woman in the hitherto existing order of society has
entailed and still entails (as though slavery were a counter-
argument, and not rather a condition of every higher
culture, of every elevation of culture):—what does all this
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betoken, if not a disintegration of womanly instincts, a
defeminising? Certainly, there are enough of idiotic friends
and corrupters of woman among the learned asses of the
