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05 - The Natural History of Morals - Beyond Good and Evil - Friedrich Nietzsche · The Philosophy Insights Collection

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Chapter five, The Natural History of Morals one hundred and eighty six. The
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moral sentiment in Europe at present is perhaps as subtle, related, diverse,
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sensitive, and refined as the science of morals, belonging there too is recent,
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initial, awkward, and cose fingered, an interesting contrast which sometimes becomes
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incarnate and obvious in the very person of a moralist. Indeed, the expression
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science of morals is in respect to what is designated thereby farch presumptuous, encountered
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to good taste, which is always a foretaste of more modest expressions. One
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ought to avow with the utmost fairness, what is still necessary here for a
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long time, what is alone proper for the present, namely, the collection
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of material, the comprehensive survey and classification of an immense domain of delicate sentiments
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of and distinction of verse, which live, grow, propagate, and perish,
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and perhaps attempts to give a clear idea of the recurring and more common
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forms of these living crystallizations, as preparation for a theory of types of morality.
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To be sure, people have not Histheroe been so modest, or the
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philosophers with the pedantic and ridiculous seriousness demanded of themselves something very much higher,
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more pretentious and ceremonious. When their concern to themselves as morality as a science.
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They wanted to give a basic to morality, and every philosopher hithero has
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believed that he has given it a basis. Morality itself, however, has
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been regarded as something given. How far from their awkward pride, was a
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seemingly insignificant problem left in Doten't decay of a description of forms of morality,
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notwithstanding that the finest hands and senses could hardly be fine enough for it.
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It was precisely owing to moral philosophers knowing the moral facts imperfectly in an arbitrary
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abitomee or accidental abridgment, perhaps as the morality of their environment. Their position
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their church is that sidgeist their climate and sown. It was precisely because they
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were badly instructed with regards to nations, eras and past ages, and whereby
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no means eager to know about these matters, that they did not even come
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in sight of the real problems of morals, problems which only disclose themselves by
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a comparison of many kinds of morality. And every signs of moral syerow.
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Strange as it may sound, the problem of morality itself has been omitted.
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There has been no suspicion that there was anything problematic there that, with philosophers
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called giving a basis to morality and endeavored to realize, has, when seen
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in a right light, proved merely a learned form of good faith and prevailing
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morality, a new means of its expression. Consequently just a matter of fact
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within the sphere of a definite morality, yeah its ultimate motive, a sort
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of denial that it is lawful for this morality to be called in question and
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in any cave, the reverse of the testing, analyzing, doubting, and
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with exacting of this very faith. Here for instant what was innocent, almost
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worthy of honor. Schopmuer represents his own task and drawer conclusions concerning the scientificness
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of his science, whose latest master still talks in the strain of children and
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old wives. The principle, he says, page one hundred and thirty six
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of the kron problemata etic the axiom about the purport of which all moralists are
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practically agreed neminem lade imo omneus quantum purtis uva is really the proposition which all
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moral teachers strive to establish the real basis of ethics, which has been thought
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like the philosopher's stone for centuries. The difficulty of establishing the proposition referred to
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may indeed be great. It is well known that Schupenhaower also was unsuccessful in
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his efforts, And whoever has thoroughly realized how absurd he falls and sentimental this
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proposition is in a world whose essence is a will to power, may be
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reminded that Schupmahaower, also a pessimist, actually played the flute daily after dinner.
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One may read about the matter in his biography. A question, by
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the way, a pessimist, a repudiator of God and of the world,
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who makes a halt at morality, who assents to morality and plays the flute
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to a lady naming im morals, what is that really a pessimist one hundred
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and eighty seven. Apart from the value of such a surgeon, as there
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is a categorical imperative in us, one can always ask what does such an
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assertion indicate about him who makes it? There are a system of morals which
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are meant to justify their also in the eyes of other people. Other systems
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of morals are meant to tranquilize him and make himself satisfied. With other systems.
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He wants to crucify and humble himself with others. He wishes to take
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revenge with others, to conceal himself with others, to glorify himself and give
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superiority and distinction. This system of morals helps its author to forget. That
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system makes him or something of him forgotten. Many a moralist would like to
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exercise power and creative arbitrariness over mankind. Many another, perhaps kind especially,
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gives us to understand by his morals that what is estimable in me is that
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I know how to obey, and with you it shall not be otherwise than
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with me. In short, systems of morals are only a sign language of
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the emotions one hundred and eighty eight. In contrast to lesser Alie, every
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system of morals is a sort of tyranny against nature and also against reason.
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That is, however, no objection unless one should again decree by some system
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of morals, that all kinds of tyranny and unreasonableness are unlawful. What is
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essential and invaluable in every system of morals is that it is a long constraint.
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In order to understand stoicism, or portrayal or politanism, one should remember
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the constraint under which every language has attained to strength and freedom, symmetrical constraint,
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the tyranny of rhyme and rhythm. How much trouble have the poets and
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orators of every nation given themselves, not accepting some of the prose writers of
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today, in whose ear dwells in exorable consciousness, not accepting some of the
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prose rights of today, in whose ear dwells an exorable consciousness for the sake
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of a folly, a utilitarian bungler say, and thereby deem themselves wise from
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submission to arbitrary law, as the anarchists say, and thereby fancy themselves free,
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even free spirited. The singular fact remains, however, that everything of
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the nature of freedom, elegance, boldness, dance, and masterly certainty which
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exists, or has existed, whether it be in thought itself, or in
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admiration, or in speaking and persuading, in an art, as in conduct,
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has only developed by means of the tyranny of such arbitrary law, and
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in all seriousness, it is not at all improbable that precisely this is nature
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and natural, and not less early. Every artist knows how different from the
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state of letting himself go is his most natural condition, the free arranging,
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locating, disposing, and constructing in the moments of inspiration, And how strictly
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and delicately he then obeys a thousand laws which the very rigidness and precision defy
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all formulation by means of ideas. Even the most stable idea has in comparsion
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therewith something floating, manifold and ambitious in it. The essential thing in heaven
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and in earth is apparently to repeat it once more. When there should be
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long obedience in the same direction. There thereby results, and has always resulted,
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in the long run, something which has made the life worth living.
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For instance, virture, art, music, dancing, reason, spirituality,
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anything whatever that is transfiguring, refined, foolish or divine, the long bondage
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of the spirit, the distrustful constraint in the communicability of ideas, the discipline
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which the thinker imposed on himself to sink in a chord with the rules of
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a church, or a court or comfortable. To Aristotelian premises, the persistent
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spirital was to interpret everything that happened according to a Christian scheme, and in
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every occurrence to rediscover and justify the Christian God. All the violence, arbiterness,
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severity, dreadfulness, and unreasonableness has proved itself as disciplinary means, whereby
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the European spirit has attained its strench, its remorseless curiosity, and subtle mobility.
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Granted also that much irrecoverable strench in spirit has to be stifled, suffocated,
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and spoiled in the process. For here, as everywhere, nature shows
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herself as she is in all her extravagant and indifferent magnificent, which is shocking
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but nevertheless noble that for centuries thinkers only thought in order to prove something.
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Nowadays, on the contrary, we are suspicious of every thinker who wishes to
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prove something that it was always settled beforehand, What was to be the result
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of the strictest thinking, as it was perhaps in the asiatic astrology of former
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times, or as it is still at the present day, in the innocent
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Christian moral explanation of the immediate personal events for the glory of God or for
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the good of the soul. This tyranny, this arbitrariness, the severe and
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magnificent stupidity, has educated the spirit. Slavery, both in the course and
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the finer sense, is apparently an indispensable means, even of spiritual education discipline.
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One may look at every system of morals in this light. It is
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nature therein which teaches to hate the lesser early, the too great freedom,
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and implants the need for limited horizons for immediate duties. It teaches the narrowing
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of perspectives, and thus, in a certain sense that stupidity is a condition
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of life and development. You must obey someone and for a long time,
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otherwise you will come to grief and lose all respect for yourself. This seems
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to me the moral imperative of nature, which is certainly neither categorical, as
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old Kunt wished. Consequently the otherwise, nor does it address itself to the
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individual. What does nature care for the individual but to nations, races,
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ages, and ranks above all, however, to the animal man generally,
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to mankind one hundred and eighty nine industrious races find it a great hardship to
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be idle. It was a master stroke of English instinct to hallow and be
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gloom Sunday to such an extent that the Englishman unconsciously hankers for his week and
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workday again as a kind of cleverly devised, cleverly intercalated fast, such as
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is also frequently found in the ancient world, although as is appropriate in southern
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nations, not precisely with respect to work. Many kinds of fasts are necessary,
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and wherever powerful influences and habits prevail, legislators have to see that intercolorie
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days are appointed on which such impulses are fettered and learn to hunger. Anew
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fewed from a highest standpoint, holding a rations and epochs when they show themselves
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infected with any moral phanitism, seem like those intercalated periods of restraint and fasting,
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during which an impulse learns to humble and submit itself, at the same
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time also to purify and sharpen itself. Certain philosophical sects likewise admit of similar
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interpretation. For instance, the Stoa in the midst of Hellenic culture, with
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the atmosphere rank and overcharged with afrothesiacal odors. Here also is a hint for
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the explanation of the paradox why it was precisely in the most Christian period of
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European history, and in general, only under the pressure of Christian sentiments,
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that the sexual impulse sublimated into love Armoor Passion one hundred ninety. There is
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something in the morality of Plato which does not really belong to Plato, but
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which only appears in his philosophy, one might say, in spite of him,
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namely so chatism, for which he himself was too noble. No one
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desires to injure himself. Hence all evil is done unwittingly. The evil man
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inflicts injury on himself, he would not do so, however, if he
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knew that evil is evil. The evil man therefore is only evil through error,
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if, when free and from error, one will necessarily make him good.
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This mode of reasoning the savors of the populace, who perceive only the
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unpleasant consequences of evil doing, and practically judge that it is stupid to do
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wrong, while they accept good as identical with useful and pleasant without further thought.
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As regards every system of utiliterism, one may at once assume that it
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has the same origin and follow a scent, one will seldom err platted all
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he could to interpret something refined and noble into the tenets of his teacher,
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and above all, to interpret himself into them. He the most daring of
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all interpreters, who lifted the entire Socrates out of the street as a popular
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theme and song, to exhibit him in endless and impossible modifications, namely in
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all his own disguises and multiplicities in yest in numeric language as well, what
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is the Platonic Socrates if not cross the platon or biten the platon teses Tchemaira
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one hundred and ninety one. The old theologis problem of faith and knowledge,
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or more plainly, of instinct and reason, the question whether, in respect
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to the valuation of things, instinct deserves more authority than rationality, which wants
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to appreciate and act according to motives according to a why, that is to
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say, in conformity to purpose and utility. It is always the old moral
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problem that first appeared in the person of Socrates, and had divided men's minds
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long before Christianity. Socritus himself, following, of course, the taste of
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his talent that of a surpassing dialectician took at first a side of reason,
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And in fact, what did he do all his life but love at the
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awkward incapacity of the noble Athenians, who were men of instinct, like all
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noble men, and could never give satisfactory answers concerning the motives of directions.
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In the end, however, though silently and secretly, he loved also at
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himself. With his finer conscience and introspection, he found in himself the same
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difficulty and incapacity. But why, he said to himself, should one,
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on that account separate one's self from the instincts. One must set them right
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and the reason also one must follow the instinct, but the same time persuade
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the reason to support them with good arguments. This was the real falseness of
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that great and mysterious ironist. He brought his conscience up to the point that
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he was satisfied with the kind of self outwitting. In fact, he perceived
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the irrationality in the moral judgment. Plato, more innocent in such matters,
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and without the craftiness of the Plebeian, wish to prove to himself the ex
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expenditure of all his change, the greatest change a philosopher had ever expanded the
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reason and instinct leads spontaneously to one goal, to the good, to God,
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And since Plato all theologians and philosophers have followed the same path, which
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means that in matters of morality, instinct, or as Christian call it faith,
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or as I call it the heard the sistero triumphed, unless one should
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make an exception the case of the card, the father of rationalism and consequently
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grandfather of the Revolution, who recognized only the authority of reason, but the
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reasons only a tool, and the card was superficial one hundred and ninety two.
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Whoever has followed the history of a single science finds in its development a
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clue to the understanding of the oldest and commonest process of all knowledge and cognizance.
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There As here the premature hypothesis, the fiction the good, stupid will
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to believe, and the lack of distrust and patience are first developed. Our
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senses learn late, and never learn completely, to be subtle, reliable,
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and cautious organs of knowledge. Our eyes find it easier, on a given
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occasion to produce a picture already often produced, than to seize upon the divergence
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and novelty of an impression. The latter requires more force, more morality.
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It is difficult and painful for the ear to listen to anything new. We
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hear strange music badly. When we hear another language spoken, we involuntarily attempt
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to form the sounds into words with which we are more familiar and conversant.
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It was thus, for example, that the Germans modified the spoken word ar
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kubalista into armbost that means crossbow. Our senses are also hostile and our worse
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to the new, and generally, even in the simplest procession of sensation,
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the emotions dominate, such as fear, love, hatred, and the passive
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emotion of indolence. As little as a reader nowadays reads all the single words,
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not to speak of syllables of a page, he rather takes about five
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out of every twenty words at random and guesses the probably appropriate sense to them.
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Just as little do we see a tree correctly and completely in respect to
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its leaves, branches, color, and shape. We find it so much
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easier to fancy the chance of a tree. Even the midst of the most
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remarkable experiences, we still do just the same. We fabricate the greater part
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of the experience, and can hardly be made to contemplate any event, and
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except as in ventures thereof all this goes to prove that from our fundamental nature
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and from remote ages, we have been accustomed to lying, or to express
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it more politely and hypocritically, In short, more pleasantly. One is much
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more of an artist than one is aware of. In an animated conversion,
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I often see the face of the person with whom I am speaking so clearly
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and sharply defined before me according to the thought he expresses, or which I
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believe to be evoked in his mind, that the degree of distinctnessphar exceeds the
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strenge of my visual faculty. The delicacy of the play of the muscles and
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of the expression of the eyes must therefore be imagined by me. Probably the
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person put on quite a different expression, or none at all. One hundred
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and ninety three quick coldlude the fuet Te Neebres argit. But also contrariwise,
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what we experience in dreams, provided we experience it, often pertains at last
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just as much as the general belongings of our soul as anything actually experienced by
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virtual. Thereof we are richer or poorer, we have a requirement more or
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less, and finally, in broad daylight, and even in the brightest moments
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of our waking life, we are ruled to some extent by the nature of
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our dreams. Supposing that someone has often flown in his dreams, and then
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at last, as soon as he dreams, he is conscious of the power
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and art of flying as his privilege and his peculiarly inviolable happiness. Such a
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person who beliefs that on the slightest impulse he can actually all sorts of curves
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and angels, who knows this sation of a certain divine levity, and upwards
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without effort or constraint, and downwards without standing or lowering without trouble. How
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could the man with such dream experiences and dream habits fail to find happiness differently
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colored and defined even in his waking hours. How could he fail to long
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differently for happiness? Flight such as is described by poets, must, when
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compared with his own flying, be far too earthly, muscular, violent,
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far too troublesome for him one hundred and ninety four. The difference among men
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does not manifest itself only in the difference of their lists of desirable things.
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In the regarding different good things as worth striving for, and being disagreed as
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to the greater or less value the order of rank of the commonly recognized desirable
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things. It manifests itself much more in what they regard as actually having and
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possessing a desirable thing. As regards to a woman, for instance, the
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control over her body and her sexual gratification serves as an amply sufficient sign of
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ownership and possession. To the more modest man, another with the most suspicious
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and ambitious first for possession, sees the questionableness, the mere apparentness of such
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ownership, and wishes to have finer tests in order to know, especially whether
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the woman not only gives herself to him, but also gives up for the
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sake what she has or would not like to have. Only then does he
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look upon her as possessed. A third, however, has not even here
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got to the limit of his distrust and his desire for possession, asks himself
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whether the woman, when she gives up everything for him, does not perhaps
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do so far for a phantom of him. Her wishes first to be thoroughly
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indeed profoundly well known. In order to be loved at all, he ventures
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to let himself be found out only then as he feels the beloved one fully
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in his possession, when she no longer deceives herself about him, when she
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loves him just as much for the sake of his devilry and concealed in seatability
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as for his goodness, patience, and spirituality. One man would like to
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possess a nation, and he finds all the higher arts of Cagliosto and Catalina
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suitable for his purpose. Another with a more refined source of possession, sighs
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to himself. One may not deceive where one desires to possess. He is
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irritated and impatient at the ideas that a mask of him should rule in the
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hearts of the people. I must therefore make myself known, and first of
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all learn to know myself. Among helpful and charitable people, one almost always
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finds the awkward craftiness which first gets up suitable him who has to be helped,
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As though, for instance, he should merit help, seek just their
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help, and would show himself deeply grateful, attached, and subservient to them
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for all help. With these conceits. They take control of the needy as
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a property, just as in general they are charitable and helpful out of a
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desire for property. One finds them jealous when they are crossed or forestalled.
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In their charity, parents involuntarily make something like themselves out of their children.
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They call that education. No more the doubts at the bottom of her heart.
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With the al she is born, as thereby her property. No father
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hesitates about his right to his own ideas and notions of worth. Indeed,
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in former times, fathers seemed to try to use their discretion concerning the life
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or death of the newly born, as among the ancient Germans. And like
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the father, so also do the teacher, the class, the priest,
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and the prince still see in every new individual and unobjectionable opportunity for new possession.
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The consequence is one hundred and ninety five. The Jews, a people
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born for slavery, as Tasitus in the whole ancient world say of them the
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chosen people among the nations. As they themselves say and believe, the Jews
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performed the miracle of the inversion of valuations, by means of which their life
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on earth obtained a new and dangerous charm. For a couple of millenniums,
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prophets fused into one the expressions rich, godless, wicked, violent, sensual,
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and for the first time coined the word world as a term of reproach.
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In this inversion of variations, in which is also included the use of
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the word poor a synonym with saint and friend, the significance of the Jewish
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people is to be found. It is with them that the slave insurrection in
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Morals commences one hundred ninety six. It is to be inferred that there are
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countless dark bodies near the sun, such as we shall never see among ourselves.
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This is an allegory, and the psychologist of morals reads the whole star
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writing merely as an allegorical and symbolic language in which much may be unexpressed.
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One hundred and ninety seven. The beast of prey and the men of prey,
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for instant saesa borgia, are fundamentally misunderstood. Nature is misunderstood so long
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as one seeks a morbidness in the constitution of these healthiest of all tropical monsters
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and growth, or even an innate hell in them. As almost all moralists
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have done. Hitherto, does it not seem that there is a hated of
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the virgin forest and of the tropics among moralists, and that the tropical man
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must be discredited at all costs, whether as a disease and deterioration of mankind,
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or as his own hell and self torture. And why in favor of
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the temperate zones, in favor of the temperate man, the moral, the
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mediocre. This for the chapter Morals es Timidity one hundred and ninety eight.
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All the systems of morals which address themselves with a few of their happiness,
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as it is called, What else are they but suggestion for behavior adapted to
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the degree of danger from themselves, in which the individuals live, recipes for
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their passions, their good and bad propensities, and so far as such have
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the will to power and would like to play the master. Small and great
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expediencies and elaborations permeated with the musty odor of old family medicines and old wife
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wisdom, all of them grotesque and absurd in their form, because they address
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themselves to all, because they generalize, whether generalization is not authorized, all
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of them speaking unconditionally, and taking themselves unconditionally all of them flavored not merely
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with some grain of salt, but rather endurable only, and sometimes even seductive
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when they are overspiced and begin to smell dangerously, especially of the other world,
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that is all of little value when estimated intellectually, and is far from
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being science, much less wisdom. But repeat it once more, and three
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times repeated. It is expediency, expediency, expediency mixed with stupidity, stupidity,
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stupidity, whether it be indifference and stato as coldness towards the heated folly
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of the emotions, which the Stokes are advised and fostered, or the no
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moral laughing and no more weeping of Spinoza, the destruction of the motions by
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their analysis and vivisection, which he recommended so naively, or the lowering of
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the emotions to an innocent mean at which they all may be satisfied. The
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Aristotelianism of morals, or even morality as the enjoyment of the emotions in a
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voluntary attenuation and spiritualization, but in symbolism of art, perhaps as music,
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or as love of God and of mankind for God's sake. For in religion,
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the passions are once more enfranchised, provided that, or finally, even
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the complaisant and wanton surrender of the emotions, as have been taught by halves
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and guilty, the bold letting go of the range the spiritual incorporeal lizentsia morum,
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in the exceptional cases of wise, cold cultures and drunkards, with whom
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it no longer has much danger. This also for the chapter moral as Timidity
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one hundred ninety nine. Inasmuch as in all ages, as long as mankind
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has existed, there have also been human herts, family alliances, communities,
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tribes, peoples, states, churches, and always a great number of who
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obey in proportion to the small number who command. In view, therefore,
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of the fact that obedience has been most practiced and fostered among mankind, to
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throw, one may reasonably suppose that generally speaking, the needs thereof is now
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innate in every one, as a kind of formal conscience, which gives the
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command you shall unconditionally do something, unconditionally refrain from something. In short,
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you shall This need tries to satisfy itself and to fill its form with the
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content according to its strength, impatience, and eagerness. It at once ceases
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as an omnivorous appetite with little a selection, and accepts whatever is shouted into
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its ear. They're all sorts of commanders, parents, teachers, laws,
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class, tragedice or public opinion. The extraordinary limitation of human development, the
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hesitation, protractedness, frequent retrogression, and turning thereof is attributable to the fact
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that the herd instinct of obedience is transmitted best and at the course of the
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art of command. If one imagines this instinct increasing to its greatest extent,
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commanders in independent individuals will finally be lacking altogether, or they will suffer inwardly
35:31
from a bad conscience and will have to impose a deception of themselves in their
35:37
first place in order to be able to command, just as if they also
35:40
were only obeying with condition of things actually exists in Europe at present I called
35:47
the moral hypocrisy of the commanding class. They know no other way of protecting
35:53
themselves from their bad conscience, that by playing the role of executors of older
35:59
and higher orders, of predecessors of the constitution of justice, of the law,
36:07
or of God himself. Or they even justify themselves by maxims from the
36:12
current opinions of the herd as first servants of their people or instruments of the
36:19
public will. On the other hand, the gregarious European man nowadays assumes an
36:24
air as if he were the only kind of man that is allowable. He
36:30
glorifies his qualities such as public spirit, kindness, deference, industry, temperance,
36:37
modesty, indulgence, sympathy, by vity of which he is gentle,
36:44
endurable, and useful to the herd, as the peculiarly human virtues. In
36:50
cases, however, where it is believed that the leader in belwether cannot be
36:53
dispensed with, attempt after attempt is made nowadays to replace command wonders by the
37:00
summing together of clever, gregarious men. All representative constitutions, for example,
37:07
are of this origin. In spite of all, what a blessing, what
37:10
a deliverance from a weight becoming unendurable, is the appearance of an absolute ruler.
37:16
For these gregarious Europeans. Of this fact, the effect of the appearance
37:22
of Napoleon was the last great proof the history of the influence of Napoleon is
37:29
almost the three of the higher happiness to which the entire century has attained.
37:34
In its versies, individuals and periods two hundred. The man of an age
37:40
of dissolution, which mixes the races of one another, who has the inheritance
37:45
of a diversified descent in his body, that is to say, contrary and
37:51
often not only contrary instincts and as standards of value, which struggle with one
37:57
another and are seldom at peace. Such a man of late culture and broken
38:01
lights will on an average be a weak man. His fundamental desire is that
38:07
the war which is in him should come to an end. Happiness appears to
38:14
him in the character of as soothing, medicine, and mode of thought.
38:17
For instant Epiqurean or Christian, it is above all things the happiness of repose,
38:24
of undisturbedness, of repression of final unity. It is the sabbat of
38:30
Sabbaths, to use the expression of the holy rhetorician Saint Augustine, who was
38:37
himself such a man. Should, however, the contrary and conflict in such
38:43
natures operate as an additional incentive and stimulus to life. And if, on
38:50
the other hand, in addition to their powerful and irreconcible instinct they have also
38:55
inherited and indoctrinated into them a proper mastery and subtlety for carrying on the conflict
39:02
rich themselves, that is to say, the faculty of self control and self
39:07
deception. There then arise those marvelously incomprehensible and inexplicable beings, those enigmatical men
39:17
predestined for conquering and circumventing others, the finest examples of which are Elisibades and
39:25
Caesar, with whom I should like to associate the first of Europeans, accounting
39:31
to my taste, the houn Chauphan Frederic the second, and among artists perhaps
39:37
Leonardo da Vinci. They appear precisely in the same periods when that weaker type,
39:45
which is longing for repose, comes to the front. The two types
39:50
are complimentary to each other and spring from the same causes two hundred and one.
39:58
As long as the utility which determines moral estimates as only gregarious utility,
40:04
As long as the preservation of the community is only kept in few and the
40:08
immoral is thought precisely and exclusively in what seems dangerous to the maintenance of the
40:15
community, there can be no morality of love to one's neighbor. Granted,
40:21
even that there is already a little constant exercise of consideration sympathy, fairness,
40:28
gentleness, and mutual assistance. Granted that even in this condition of society,
40:34
all those instincts are already active, which are latterly distinguished by honorable names as
40:39
virtues, and eventually almost coincide with the conception morality. In that period,
40:47
they do not as yet belong to the domain of moral valuations. They are
40:52
still ultra moral. A sympathetic action, for instance, is neither called good
41:00
nor bad, moral or immoral in the best periods of the Romans, and
41:06
should it be praised a sort of resentful disdain as compatible with this praise,
41:12
even at the best. Directly, the sympathetic action is compared with bond,
41:16
which contributes to the welfare of the whole, to the race publica. After
41:22
all, love to our neighbor is always a secondary matter, partly conventional and
41:30
arbitrarily manifested in relation to our fear of our neighbor. After the fabric of
41:37
society seems on the whole established and secured against external dangers, it is the
41:43
fear of our neighbour which again creates new perspectives of moral valuation. Certain strong
41:50
and dangerous instincts such as the love of enterprise, foolhardiness, revengefulness, astuteness,
41:59
rapacity, and love of power, which up toil then has not only
42:02
been honored from the point of view of general utility under other names, of
42:08
course, that those here given, but had to be fostered and cultivated because
42:15
they were perpetually required. And the common danger against the common enemies are now
42:21
felt in the dangerousness to be doubly strong when the outlets for them are lacking
42:28
and are gradually branded as immoral and given over calumny the contrary instincts and inclinations
42:36
now attained to moral honor. The gregarious instinct gradually draws its conclusions how much
42:44
or how little dangerousness to the community or to equality is contained in an opinion,
42:51
a condition, an emotion, a disposition, or an endowment that is
42:57
now the moral perspective. Here again in Fear, the mother of morals.
43:02
It is by the loftiest and strongest instinct when they break out passionately and carry
43:07
the individual far above and beyond the average and the low level of the gregarious
43:14
conscience, that the self reliance of the community is destroyed, its belief in
43:20
itself, its backbone, as it were, breaks. Consequently, these very
43:25
instincts will be most branded and defamed. The lofty, independent spirituality, the
43:32
will to stand alone, and even the cogate reason are felt to be dangerous.
43:38
Everything that elevates the individual above the heard and is a source of fear
43:44
to the neighbour is hencefor called evil. The tolerant, unassuming, self adapting,
43:52
self equalizing disposition, the mediocrity of desires attains the moral distinction and honour.
44:00
Finally, under very peaceful circumstances, there is always less opportunity and necessity
44:07
for training the feelings to severity and rigor. And now every form of severity,
44:14
even in justice, begins disturb the conscience. A lofty and rigorous nobleness
44:20
and self responsibility almost offense and awakens distrust the lamp, and still more the
44:29
sheep wins respect. There is a point of deceased mellowness and effeminacy in the
44:37
history of society, at which society itself takes a part of him who injures
44:42
it the part of the criminal, and does so in fact seriously and honestly.
44:50
To punish appears to it to be somehow unfair. It is certain that
44:53
the idea of punishment and the obligation to punish are then pain and alarming to
45:00
people. Is it not sufficient and the criminal be rendered harmless? Why should
45:06
we still punish? Punishment itself is terrible? With these questions gregarious morality,
45:14
the morality of fear draws its ultimate conclusion. If one could at all do
45:20
away with danger the cause of fear, one would have done away with this
45:23
morality. At the same time, it would no longer be necessary. It
45:29
would not consider itself any longer necessary. Whoever examines the conscience of the presenter,
45:37
European will always elicit the same imperative from its thousand moral faults and hidden
45:44
recesses, the imperative of the timidity of the heard. We wish that some
45:49
time or other there may be nothing more to fear. Sometime or other,
45:57
the will and the way there too, is nowadays called progress all over Europe
46:06
two hundred and two. Let us at once say again what we have already
46:10
said a hundred times, for people's ears nowadays are unwilling to hear such truths,
46:16
our truths. We know well enough how offensive it sounds when any one
46:22
plainly and without tougher counts men among the animals. But it will be accounted
46:29
to us almost a crime, that it is precisely in respect to men of
46:34
modern ideas, that we have constantly applied the terms heard, heard, instincts,
46:40
and such like expressions. What avail is it? We cannot do otherwise,
46:47
for it is precisely here that our new inside is. We have found
46:52
that in all the principal moral judgments, Europe has become unenamious, including likewise
47:00
the countries where European influence prevails. In Europe, people evidently know what so
47:06
gret A thought he did not know, and what the famous serpent of old
47:10
once promised to teach. They know today what is good and evil. It
47:17
must then sound hard and be distasteful to the ear when we always insist that
47:24
that which here thinks it knows, that which here glorifies itself with praise and
47:30
blame and calls itself good is the instinct of the herding human animal, the
47:37
instinct which has come, and is ever coming more and more to the front
47:40
to preponderance and supremacy over other instincts, according to the increasing physiological approximation and
47:50
resemblance of which is the symptom. Morality in Europe at present is herding animal
47:58
morality, and therefore, as we understand the matter, only one kind of
48:04
human morality, besides which, before which, and after which, many other
48:08
moralities, and above all higher moralities are or should be possible. Against such
48:17
a possibility, against such a should be. However, this morality defends itself
48:23
with all its strenge. It says, obstinately and inexorably, I am morality
48:30
itself, and nothing else is morality. Indeed, with the help of a
48:37
religion which had humored and flattered the sublime's desires of the herding animal, things
48:43
have reached such a point that we always find a more visible expression of this
48:47
morality even in political and social arrangements. The democratic movement is the inheritance of
48:55
the Christian movement. That its temple, however, is much too slow and
49:00
sleep before the more impatient ones for those who are sick and distracted by the
49:06
herding instinct. Is indicated by the increasingly furious, howling and always less disguised
49:13
tea snashing of the anarchist dogs who are now roving through the highways of European
49:19
culture, apparently in opposition to the peacefully industrious democrats and revolution ideologies, and
49:28
still more so to the awkward philosophastas and fraternity visionaries who call themselves socialists and
49:36
want a free society. Those are really at one with them in all their
49:42
thorough and instinctive hostility to every form of society other than the autonomous herd,
49:50
to the extent even of repudiating the notions master and servant Nidia Nimitre says a
49:59
social lists formula at one in the tenacious opposition to every special claim, every
50:06
special right and privilege. This means ultimately opposition to every right, for when
50:14
we all equal, no one needs the rights any longer. At one in
50:19
their distrust of punitive justice, as though it were a violation of the weak,
50:24
unfair to the necessary consequences of all former society, but equally at one
50:30
in their religion of sympathy, in their compassion for all that feels, lives,
50:36
and suffers, down to the very animals, up even to God.
50:42
The extravagance of the sympathy for God belongs to a democratic age, altogether at
50:49
one in the cry and impatience of the sympathy, in their deadly hatred of
50:53
suffering, generality, in their almost feminine incapacity for witnessing it or allowing it.
51:02
At one in their involuntarily be glooming in heart softening under the spell of
51:07
which Europe seems to be threatened with a new Buddhism. At one in their
51:13
belief in the morality of mutual sympathy, as though it were morality in itself,
51:19
the climax, the attained climax of mankind, the sole hope of the
51:23
future, the consolation of the present, the great discharge from all the obligations
51:30
of the past, altogether at one in their belief in the community as a
51:34
deliverer in the heart and therefore in themselves. Two hundred and three We who
51:44
hold a different belief, we who regards the democratic movement not only as a
51:50
degenerating form of political organization, but as equivalent to a generating a waning type
51:57
of man, as involving his mediocrizing and deprecation. Where have we to fix
52:04
our hopes in new philosophers? There is no other alternative in minds strong and
52:13
original enough to initiate opposite estimates of values, to trans value and invert eternal
52:20
valuations. In foreigunners, in men of the futures, who in the present
52:25
shall fix the constraints and fasten the knots which will compel millennians to take new
52:32
paths, to teach men the future of humanity as is a will, as
52:38
depending on human will, and to make preparation for vast, hazardous enterprises and
52:45
collective attempts in rearing and educating, in order thereby to put an end to
52:52
the frightful rule of folly and chance, which are citherao gone by the name
52:58
of history. The folly of the greatest number is only its last form.
53:05
For that purpose, a new type of philosopher and commander will sometime or other
53:12
be needed. And the very idea of which everything that has existed in the
53:17
way of occult, terrible and benevolent beings might look pale and dwarfed the image
53:24
of such leaders hovers before our eyes. Is lawful for me to say aloud,
53:31
we free spirits. The conditions which one would partly have to create and
53:37
partly utilize for their genesis, the presumptive methods and tests by virtue of which
53:45
a soul should grow up to such an avolation and power as to feel a
53:49
constraint to these tasks. A transvaluation of values under the new pressure and hammer
53:57
of which a conscience should be steeled and a heart transformed into brass, so
54:02
as to bear the weight of such responsibility. And on the other hand,
54:07
the necessity for our such leaders, and on the other hand, the necessity
54:13
for such leaders the dreadful danger that they might be lacking, or miscarry and
54:19
degenerate. These are our real anxieties and glooms. We know it well,
54:25
we free spirits. These are the heavy, distant thoughts and storms which sweep
54:32
across the heaven of our life. There are few pains so grievous as to
54:37
have seen, divined or experienced how an exceptional man has missed his way and
54:45
deteriorated. But he who has a rare eye for the universal danger of man
54:51
himself deteriorating. He who, like us, has recognized the extraordinariative fortitudes which
55:00
have hitherto played its game in respect of the future of mankind, a game
55:06
in which neither the hand nor even a finger of God has participated. He
55:12
who divines the fate that is hidden under the idiotic unwariness and blind confidence of
55:19
modern ideas, and still more under the whole of crystal. European morality suffers
55:27
from an anguish with which no other is to be compared. He sees at
55:31
a glance all that could still be made out of man through a favorable accumulation
55:38
and augmentation of human powers and arrangements. He knows with all the knowledge of
55:45
his conviction, how unexhausted man still is for the greatest possibilities, and how
55:52
often in the past the type man has stood in presence of mysterious decisions and
55:58
new paths. He knows still better from his painfullest recollections on what wretched obstacles
56:06
promising developments of the highest rank have hitherto usually gone to pieces, broken down,
56:13
sunk, and become contentable. The universal degeneracy of mankind to the level
56:22
of the man of the future as idealized by the socialist fools and shallow pains.
56:29
This degeneracy and dwarfing of men to an absolutely gregarious animal, or as
56:36
they call it, to a man of free society. In this brutalizing of
56:42
man into a pygmy with equal rights and claims, is undoubtedly possible. He
56:50
who had thought out this possibility to his ultimate conclusion, knows and other low
56:55
thing unknown to the rest of mankind, and Perrabs also a new mission end
57:04
of chapter five.