anything optional or autonomously evolving, but grow up
in connection and relationship with each other, that,
however suddenly and arbitrarily they seem to appear in
the history of thought, they nevertheless belong just as
much to a system as the collective members of the fauna of
a Continent—is betrayed in the end by the circumstance:
how unfailingly the most diverse philosophers always fill in
again a definite fundamental scheme of POSSIBLE
philosophies. Under an invisible spell, they always revolve
once more in the same orbit, however independent of
each other they may feel themselves with their critical or
systematic wills, something within them leads them,
something impels them in definite order the one after the
other—to wit, the innate methodology and relationship of
their ideas. Their thinking is, in fact, far less a discovery
than a re-recognizing, a remembering, a return and a
home-coming to a far-off, ancient common-household of
the soul, out of which those ideas formerly grew:
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philosophizing is so far a kind of atavism of the highest
order. The wonderful family resemblance of all Indian,
Greek, and German philosophizing is easily enough
explained. In fact, where there is affinity of language,
owing to the common philosophy of grammar—I mean
owing to the unconscious domination and guidance of
similar grammatical functions—it cannot but be that
everything is prepared at the outset for a similar
development and succession of philosophical systems, just
as the way seems barred against certain other possibilities
of world- interpretation. It is highly probable that
philosophers within the domain of the Ural-Altaic
languages (where the conception of the subject is least
developed) look otherwise ‘into the world,’ and will be
found on paths of thought different from those of the
Indo-Germans and Mussulmans, the spell of certain
grammatical functions is ultimately also the spell of
PHYSIOLOGICAL valuations and racial conditions.—So
much by way of rejecting Locke’s superficiality with
regard to the origin of ideas.
21. The CAUSA SUI is the best self-contradiction that
has yet been conceived, it is a sort of logical violation and
unnaturalness; but the extravagant pride of man has
managed to entangle itself profoundly and frightfully with
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this very folly. The desire for ‘freedom of will’ in the
superlative, metaphysical sense, such as still holds sway,
unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated, the desire
to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one’s
actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors,
chance, and society therefrom, involves nothing less than
to be precisely this CAUSA SUI, and, with more than
Munchausen daring, to pull oneself up into existence by
the hair, out of the slough of nothingness. If any one
should find out in this manner the crass stupidity of the
celebrated conception of ‘free will’ and put it out of his
head altogether, I beg of him to carry his ‘enlightenment’
a step further, and also put out of his head the contrary of
this monstrous conception of ‘free will": I mean ‘non-free
will,’ which is tantamount to a misuse of cause and effect.
One should not wrongly MATERIALISE ‘cause’ and
‘effect,’ as the natural philosophers do (and whoever like
them naturalize in thinking at present), according to the
prevailing mechanical doltishness which makes the cause
press and push until it ‘effects’ its end; one should use
‘cause’ and ‘effect’ only as pure CONCEPTIONS, that is
to say, as conventional fictions for the purpose of
designation and mutual understanding,—NOT for
explanation. In ‘being-in-itself’ there is nothing of ‘casual-
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connection,’ of ‘necessity,’ or of ‘psychological non-
freedom"; there the effect does NOT follow the cause,
there ‘law’ does not obtain. It is WE alone who have
devised cause, sequence, reciprocity, relativity, constraint,
number, law, freedom, motive, and purpose; and when
we interpret and intermix this symbol-world, as ‘being-in-
itself,’ with things, we act once more as we have always
acted—MYTHOLOGICALLY. The ‘non-free will’ is
mythology; in real life it is only a question of STRONG
and WEAK wills.—It is almost always a symptom of what
is lacking in himself, when a thinker, in every ‘causal-
connection’ and ‘psychological necessity,’ manifests
something of compulsion, indigence, obsequiousness,
oppression, and non-freedom; it is suspicious to have such
feelings—the person betrays himself. And in general, if I
have observed correctly, the ‘non-freedom of the will’ is
regarded as a problem from two entirely opposite
standpoints, but always in a profoundly PERSONAL
manner: some will not give up their ‘responsibility,’ their
belief in THEMSELVES, the personal right to THEIR
merits, at any price (the vain races belong to this class);
others on the contrary, do not wish to be answerable for
anything, or blamed for anything, and owing to an inward
self-contempt, seek to GET OUT OF THE BUSINESS,
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no matter how. The latter, when they write books, are in
the habit at present of taking the side of criminals; a sort of
socialistic sympathy is their favourite disguise. And as a
matter of fact, the fatalism of the weak-willed embellishes
itself surprisingly when it can pose as ‘la religion de la
souffrance humaine"; that is ITS ‘good taste.’
22. Let me be pardoned, as an old philologist who
cannot desist from the mischief of putting his finger on
bad modes of interpretation, but ‘Nature’s conformity to
law,’ of which you physicists talk so proudly, as though—
why, it exists only owing to your interpretation and bad
‘philology.’ It is no matter of fact, no ‘text,’ but rather just
a naively humanitarian adjustment and perversion of
meaning, with which you make abundant concessions to
the democratic instincts of the modern soul! ‘Everywhere
equality before the law—Nature is not different in that
respect, nor better than we": a fine instance of secret
motive, in which the vulgar antagonism to everything
privileged and autocratic—likewise a second and more
refined atheism—is once more disguised. ‘Ni dieu, ni
maitre’—that, also, is what you want; and therefore
‘Cheers for natural law!’— is it not so? But, as has been
said, that is interpretation, not text; and somebody might
come along, who, with opposite intentions and modes of
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interpretation, could read out of the same ‘Nature,’ and
with regard to the same phenomena, just the tyrannically
inconsiderate and relentless enforcement of the claims of
power—an interpreter who should so place the
unexceptionalness and unconditionalness of all ‘Will to
Power’ before your eyes, that almost every word, and the
word ‘tyranny’ itself, would eventually seem unsuitable, or
like a weakening and softening metaphor—as being too
human; and who should, nevertheless, end by asserting the
same about this world as you do, namely, that it has a
‘necessary’ and ‘calculable’ course, NOT, however,
because laws obtain in it, but because they are absolutely
LACKING, and every power effects its ultimate
consequences every moment. Granted that this also is only
interpretation—and you will be eager enough to make this
objection?—well, so much the better.
23. All psychology hitherto has run aground on moral
prejudices and timidities, it has not dared to launch out
into the depths. In so far as it is allowable to recognize in
that which has hitherto been written, evidence of that
which has hitherto been kept silent, it seems as if nobody
had yet harboured the notion of psychology as the
Morphology and DEVELOPMENT-DOCTRINE OF
THE WILL TO POWER, as I conceive of it. The power
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of moral prejudices has penetrated deeply into the most
intellectual world, the world apparently most indifferent
and unprejudiced, and has obviously operated in an
injurious, obstructive, blinding, and distorting manner. A
proper physio-psychology has to contend with
unconscious antagonism in the heart of the investigator, it
has ‘the heart’ against it even a doctrine of the reciprocal
conditionalness of the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ impulses,
causes (as refined immorality) distress and aversion in a still
strong and manly conscience—still more so, a doctrine of
the derivation of all good impulses from bad ones. If,
however, a person should regard even the emotions of
hatred, envy, covetousness, and imperiousness as life-
conditioning emotions, as factors which must be present,
fundamentally and essentially, in the general economy of
life (which must, therefore, be further developed if life is
to be further developed), he will suffer from such a view
of things as from sea-sickness. And yet this hypothesis is far
from being the strangest and most painful in this immense
and almost new domain of dangerous knowledge, and
there are in fact a hundred good reasons why every one
should keep away from it who CAN do so! On the other
hand, if one has once drifted hither with one’s bark, well!
very good! now let us set our teeth firmly! let us open our
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eyes and keep our hand fast on the helm! We sail away
right OVER morality, we crush out, we destroy perhaps
the remains of our own morality by daring to make our
voyage thither—but what do WE matter. Never yet did a
PROFOUNDER world of insight reveal itself to daring
travelers and adventurers, and the psychologist who thus
‘makes a sacrifice’—it is not the sacrifizio dell’ intelletto,
on the contrary!—will at least be entitled to demand in
return that psychology shall once more be recognized as
the queen of the sciences, for whose service and
equipment the other sciences exist. For psychology is once
more the path to the fundamental problems.
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CHAPTER II: THE FREE
SPIRIT
24. O sancta simplicitiatas! In what strange
simplification and falsification man lives! One can never
cease wondering when once one has got eyes for
beholding this marvel! How we have made everything
around us clear and free and easy and simple! how we
have been able to give our senses a passport to everything
superficial, our thoughts a godlike desire for wanton
pranks and wrong inferences!—how from the beginning,
we have contrived to retain our ignorance in order to
enjoy an almost inconceivable freedom, thoughtlessness,
imprudence, heartiness, and gaiety—in order to enjoy life!
And only on this solidified, granitelike foundation of
ignorance could knowledge rear itself hitherto, the will to
knowledge on the foundation of a far more powerful will,
the will to ignorance, to the uncertain, to the untrue! Not
as its opposite, but—as its refinement! It is to be hoped,
indeed, that LANGUAGE, here as elsewhere, will not get
over its awkwardness, and that it will continue to talk of
opposites where there are only degrees and many
refinements of gradation; it is equally to be hoped that the
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incarnated Tartuffery of morals, which now belongs to our
unconquerable ‘flesh and blood,’ will turn the words
round in the mouths of us discerning ones. Here and there
we understand it, and laugh at the way in which precisely
the best knowledge seeks most to retain us in this
SIMPLIFIED, thoroughly artificial, suitably imagined, and
suitably falsified world: at the way in which, whether it
will or not, it loves error, because, as living itself, it loves
life!
25. After such a cheerful commencement, a serious
word would fain be heard; it appeals to the most serious
minds. Take care, ye philosophers and friends of
knowledge, and beware of martyrdom! Of suffering ‘for
the truth’s sake’! even in your own defense! It spoils all the
innocence and fine neutrality of your conscience; it makes
you headstrong against objections and red rags; it stupefies,
animalizes, and brutalizes, when in the struggle with
danger, slander, suspicion, expulsion, and even worse
consequences of enmity, ye have at last to play your last
card as protectors of truth upon earth—as though ‘the
Truth’ were such an innocent and incompetent creature as
to require protectors! and you of all people, ye knights of
the sorrowful countenance, Messrs Loafers and Cobweb-
spinners of the spirit! Finally, ye know sufficiently well
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that it cannot be of any consequence if YE just carry your
point; ye know that hitherto no philosopher has carried
his point, and that there might be a more laudable
truthfulness in every little interrogative mark which you
place after your special words and favourite doctrines (and
occasionally after yourselves) than in all the solemn
pantomime and trumping games before accusers and law-
courts! Rather go out of the way! Flee into concealment!
And have your masks and your ruses, that ye may be
mistaken for what you are, or somewhat feared! And pray,
don’t forget the garden, the garden with golden trellis-
work! And have people around you who are as a garden—
or as music on the waters at eventide, when already the
day becomes a memory. Choose the GOOD solitude, the
free, wanton, lightsome solitude, which also gives you the
right still to remain good in any sense whatsoever! How
poisonous, how crafty, how bad, does every long war
make one, which cannot be waged openly by means of
force! How PERSONAL does a long fear make one, a
long watching of enemies, of possible enemies! These
pariahs of society, these long-pursued, badly-persecuted
ones—also the compulsory recluses, the Spinozas or
