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ill of an action. Let us call this period the PRE-MORAL
period of mankind; the imperative, ‘Know thyself!’ was
then still unknown. —In the last ten thousand years, on
the other hand, on certain large portions of the earth, one
has gradually got so far, that one no longer lets the
consequences of an action, but its origin, decide with
regard to its worth: a great achievement as a whole, an
important refinement of vision and of criterion, the
unconscious effect of the supremacy of aristocratic values
and of the belief in ‘origin,’ the mark of a period which
may be designated in the narrower sense as the MORAL
one: the first attempt at self-knowledge is thereby made.
Instead of the consequences, the origin—what an
inversion of perspective! And assuredly an inversion
effected only after long struggle and wavering! To be sure,
an ominous new superstition, a peculiar narrowness of
interpretation, attained supremacy precisely thereby: the
origin of an action was interpreted in the most definite
sense possible, as origin out of an INTENTION; people
were agreed in the belief that the value of an action lay in
the value of its intention. The intention as the sole origin
and antecedent history of an action: under the influence of
this prejudice moral praise and blame have been bestowed,
and men have judged and even philosophized almost up to
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the present day.—Is it not possible, however, that the
necessity may now have arisen of again making up our
minds with regard to the reversing and fundamental
shifting of values, owing to a new self-consciousness and
acuteness in man—is it not possible that we may be
standing on the threshold of a period which to begin with,
would be distinguished negatively as ULTRA-MORAL:
nowadays when, at least among us immoralists, the
suspicion arises that the decisive value of an action lies
precisely in that which is NOT INTENTIONAL, and
that all its intentionalness, all that is seen, sensible, or
‘sensed’ in it, belongs to its surface or skin— which, like
every skin, betrays something, but CONCEALS still
more? In short, we believe that the intention is only a sign
or symptom, which first requires an explanation—a sign,
moreover, which has too many interpretations, and
consequently hardly any meaning in itself alone: that
morality, in the sense in which it has been understood
hitherto, as intention-morality, has been a prejudice,
perhaps a prematureness or preliminariness, probably
something of the same rank as astrology and alchemy, but
in any case something which must be surmounted. The
surmounting of morality, in a certain sense even the self-
mounting of morality— let that be the name for the long-
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secret labour which has been reserved for the most refined,
the most upright, and also the most wicked consciences of
today, as the living touchstones of the soul.
33. It cannot be helped: the sentiment of surrender, of
sacrifice for one’s neighbour, and all self-renunciation-
morality, must be mercilessly called to account, and
brought to judgment; just as the aesthetics of ‘disinterested
contemplation,’ under which the emasculation of art
nowadays seeks insidiously enough to create itself a good
conscience. There is far too much witchery and sugar in
the sentiments ‘for others’ and ‘NOT for myself,’ for one
not needing to be doubly distrustful here, and for one
asking promptly: ‘Are they not perhaps—
DECEPTIONS?’—That they PLEASE— him who has
them, and him who enjoys their fruit, and also the mere
spectator—that is still no argument in their FAVOUR,
but just calls for caution. Let us therefore be cautious!
34. At whatever standpoint of philosophy one may
place oneself nowadays, seen from every position, the
ERRONEOUSNESS of the world in which we think we
live is the surest and most certain thing our eyes can light
upon: we find proof after proof thereof, which would fain
allure us into surmises concerning a deceptive principle in
the ‘nature of things.’ He, however, who makes thinking
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itself, and consequently ‘the spirit,’ responsible for the
falseness of the world—an honourable exit, which every
conscious or unconscious advocatus dei avails himself of—
he who regards this world, including space, time, form,
and movement, as falsely DEDUCED, would have at least
good reason in the end to become distrustful also of all
thinking; has it not hitherto been playing upon us the
worst of scurvy tricks? and what guarantee would it give
that it would not continue to do what it has always been
doing? In all seriousness, the innocence of thinkers has
something touching and respect-inspiring in it, which
even nowadays permits them to wait upon consciousness
with the request that it will give them HONEST answers:
for example, whether it be ‘real’ or not, and why it keeps
the outer world so resolutely at a distance, and other
questions of the same description. The belief in
‘immediate certainties’ is a MORAL NAIVETE which
does honour to us philosophers; but—we have now to
cease being ‘MERELY moral’ men! Apart from morality,
such belief is a folly which does little honour to us! If in
middle-class life an ever- ready distrust is regarded as the
sign of a ‘bad character,’ and consequently as an
imprudence, here among us, beyond the middle- class
world and its Yeas and Nays, what should prevent our
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being imprudent and saying: the philosopher has at length
a RIGHT to ‘bad character,’ as the being who has hitherto
been most befooled on earth—he is now under
OBLIGATION to distrustfulness, to the wickedest
squinting out of every abyss of suspicion.—Forgive me the
joke of this gloomy grimace and turn of expression; for I
myself have long ago learned to think and estimate
differently with regard to deceiving and being deceived,
and I keep at least a couple of pokes in the ribs ready for
the blind rage with which philosophers struggle against
being deceived. Why NOT? It is nothing more than a
moral prejudice that truth is worth more than semblance;
it is, in fact, the worst proved supposition in the world. So
much must be conceded: there could have been no life at
all except upon the basis of perspective estimates and
semblances; and if, with the virtuous enthusiasm and
stupidity of many philosophers, one wished to do away
altogether with the ‘seeming world’—well, granted that
YOU could do that,—at least nothing of your ‘truth’
would thereby remain! Indeed, what is it that forces us in
general to the supposition that there is an essential
opposition of ‘true’ and ‘false’? Is it not enough to suppose
degrees of seemingness, and as it were lighter and darker
shades and tones of semblance—different valeurs, as the
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painters say? Why might not the world WHICH
CONCERNS US—be a fiction? And to any one who
suggested: ‘But to a fiction belongs an originator?’—might
it not be bluntly replied: WHY? May not this ‘belong’ also
belong to the fiction? Is it not at length permitted to be a
little ironical towards the subject, just as towards the
predicate and object? Might not the philosopher elevate
himself above faith in grammar? All respect to governesses,
but is it not time that philosophy should renounce
governess-faith?
35. O Voltaire! O humanity! O idiocy! There is
something ticklish in ‘the truth,’ and in the SEARCH for
the truth; and if man goes about it too humanely—‘il ne
cherche le vrai que pour faire le bien’—I wager he finds
nothing!
36. Supposing that nothing else is ‘given’ as real but our
world of desires and passions, that we cannot sink or rise
to any other ‘reality’ but just that of our impulses—for
thinking is only a relation of these impulses to one
another:—are we not permitted to make the attempt and
to ask the question whether this which is ‘given’ does not
SUFFICE, by means of our counterparts, for the
understanding even of the so-called mechanical (or
‘material’) world? I do not mean as an illusion, a
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‘semblance,’ a ‘representation’ (in the Berkeleyan and
Schopenhauerian sense), but as possessing the same degree
of reality as our emotions themselves—as a more primitive
form of the world of emotions, in which everything still
lies locked in a mighty unity, which afterwards branches
off and develops itself in organic processes (naturally also,
refines and debilitates)—as a kind of instinctive life in
which all organic functions, including self- regulation,
assimilation, nutrition, secretion, and change of matter, are
still synthetically united with one another—as a
PRIMARY FORM of life?—In the end, it is not only
permitted to make this attempt, it is commanded by the
conscience of LOGICAL METHOD. Not to assume
several kinds of causality, so long as the attempt to get
along with a single one has not been pushed to its furthest
extent (to absurdity, if I may be allowed to say so): that is a
morality of method which one may not repudiate
nowadays—it follows ‘from its definition,’ as
mathematicians say. The question is ultimately whether
we really recognize the will as OPERATING, whether
we believe in the causality of the will; if we do so—and
fundamentally our belief IN THIS is just our belief in
causality itself—we MUST make the attempt to posit
hypothetically the causality of the will as the only
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causality. ‘Will’ can naturally only operate on ‘will’—and
not on ‘matter’ (not on ‘nerves,’ for instance): in short, the
hypothesis must be hazarded, whether will does not
operate on will wherever ‘effects’ are recognized—and
whether all mechanical action, inasmuch as a power
operates therein, is not just the power of will, the effect of
will. Granted, finally, that we succeeded in explaining our
entire instinctive life as the development and ramification
of one fundamental form of will—namely, the Will to
Power, as my thesis puts it; granted that all organic
functions could be traced back to this Will to Power, and
that the solution of the problem of generation and
nutrition—it is one problem— could also be found
therein: one would thus have acquired the right to define
ALL active force unequivocally as WILL TO POWER.
The world seen from within, the world defined and
designated according to its ‘intelligible character’—it
would simply be ‘Will to Power,’ and nothing else.
37. ‘What? Does not that mean in popular language:
God is disproved, but not the devil?’—On the contrary!
On the contrary, my friends! And who the devil also
compels you to speak popularly!
38. As happened finally in all the enlightenment of
modern times with the French Revolution (that terrible
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farce, quite superfluous when judged close at hand, into
which, however, the noble and visionary spectators of all
Europe have interpreted from a distance their own
indignation and enthusiasm so long and passionately,
UNTIL THE TEXT HAS DISAPPEARED UNDER
THE INTERPRETATION), so a noble posterity might
once more misunderstand the whole of the past, and
perhaps only thereby make ITS aspect endurable.—Or
rather, has not this already happened? Have not we
ourselves been—that ‘noble posterity’? And, in so far as
we now comprehend this, is it not—thereby already past?
39. Nobody will very readily regard a doctrine as true
merely because it makes people happy or virtuous—
excepting, perhaps, the amiable ‘Idealists,’ who are
enthusiastic about the good, true, and beautiful, and let all
kinds of motley, coarse, and good-natured desirabilities
swim about promiscuously in their pond. Happiness and
virtue are no arguments. It is willingly forgotten, however,
even on the part of thoughtful minds, that to make
unhappy and to make bad are just as little counter-
arguments. A thing could be TRUE, although it were in
the highest degree injurious and dangerous; indeed, the
fundamental constitution of existence might be such that
one succumbed by a full knowledge of it—so that the
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strength of a mind might be measured by the amount of
‘truth’ it could endure—or to speak more plainly, by the
extent to which it REQUIRED truth attenuated, veiled,
sweetened, damped, and falsified. But there is no doubt
that for the discovery of certain PORTIONS of truth the
wicked and unfortunate are more favourably situated and
have a greater likelihood of success; not to speak of the
wicked who are happy—a species about whom moralists
are silent. Perhaps severity and craft are more favourable
conditions for the development of strong, independent
spirits and philosophers than the gentle, refined, yielding
good-nature, and habit of taking things easily, which are
prized, and rightly prized in a learned man. Presupposing
always, to begin with, that the term ‘philosopher’ be not
confined to the philosopher who writes books, or even
introduces HIS philosophy into books!—Stendhal
furnishes a last feature of the portrait of the free-spirited
philosopher, which for the sake of German taste I will not
omit to underline—for it is OPPOSED to German taste.
‘Pour etre bon philosophe,’ says this last great psychologist,
‘il faut etre sec, clair, sans illusion. Un banquier, qui a fait
fortune, a une partie du caractere requis pour faire des
decouvertes en philosophie, c’est-a-dire pour voir clair
dans ce qui est.’
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40. Everything that is profound loves the mask: the
profoundest things have a hatred even of figure and
likeness. Should not the CONTRARY only be the right
