self-expansion, still radiates in such sublimities. Man imagines the world itself to be overflowing with beauty,—he forgets that he is the cause of it all. He alone has endowed it with beauty. Alas! and only with human all-too-human beauty! Truth to tell man reflects himself in things, he thinks everything beautiful that throws his own image back at him. The judgment “beautiful” is the “vanity of his species.”...A little demon of suspicion may well whisper into the sceptic’s ear: is the world really beautified simply because man thinks it beautiful?
He has only humanised it—that is all. But nothing, absolutely nothing proves to us that it is precisely man who is the proper model of beauty. Who knows what sort of figure he would cut in the eyes of a higher judge of taste? He might seem a little _outré_? perhaps even somewhat amusing? perhaps a trifle arbitrary? “O Dionysus, thou divine one, why dost thou pull mine ears?” Ariadne asks on one occasion of her philosophic lover, during one of those famous conversations on the island of Naxos. “I find a sort of humour in thine ears, Ariadne: why are they not a little longer?”
20 Nothing is beautiful; man alone is beautiful: all æsthetic rests on this piece of ingenuousness, it is the first axiom of this science.
And now let us straightway add the second to it: nothing is ugly save the degenerate man,—within these two first principles the realm of æsthetic judgments is confined. From the physiological standpoint, everything ugly weakens and depresses man. It reminds him of decay, danger, impotence; he literally loses strength in its presence. The effect of ugliness may be gauged by the dynamometer. Whenever man’s spirits are downcast, it is a sign that he scents the proximity of something “ugly.” His feeling of power, his will to power, his courage and his pride—these things collapse at the sight of what is ugly, and rise at the sight of what is beautiful. In both cases an inference is drawn; the premises to which are stored with extra ordinary abundance in the instincts. Ugliness is understood to signify a hint and a symptom of degeneration: that which reminds us however remotely of degeneracy, impels us to the judgment “ugly.” Every sign of exhaustion, of gravity, of age, of fatigue; every kind of constraint, such as cramp, or paralysis; and above all the smells, colours and forms associated with decomposition and putrefaction, however much they may have been attenuated into symbols,—all these things provoke the same reaction which is the judgment “ugly.” A certain hatred expresses itself here: what is it that man hates? Without a doubt it is the _decline of his type._ In this regard his hatred springs from the deepest instincts of the race: there is horror, caution, profundity and far-reaching vision in this hatred,—it is the most profound hatred that exists. On its account alone Art is profound.
21 _Schopenhauer._—Schopenhauer, the last German who is to be reckoned with (—who is a European event like Goethe, Hegel, or Heinrich Heine, and who is not merely local, national), is for a psychologist a case of the first rank: I mean as a malicious though masterly attempt to enlist on the side of a general nihilistic depreciation of life, the very forces which are opposed to such a movement,—that is to say, the great self-affirming powers of the “will to live,” the exuberant forms of life itself. He interpreted Art, heroism, genius, beauty, great sympathy, knowledge, the will to truth, and tragedy, one after the other, as the results of the denial, or of the need of the denial, of the “will”—the greatest forgery, Christianity always excepted, which history has to show. Examined more carefully, he is in this respect simply the heir of the Christian interpretation; except that he knew how to approve in a Christian fashion (_i.e._, nihilistically) even of the great facts of human culture, which Christianity completely repudiates. (He approved of them as paths to “salvation,” as preliminary stages to “salvation,” as _appetisers_ calculated to arouse the desire for “salvation.”)
22 Let me point to one single instance. Schopenhauer speaks of beauty with melancholy ardour,—why in sooth does he do this? Because in beauty he sees a bridge on which one can travel further, or which stimulates one’s desire to travel further. According to him it constitutes a momentary emancipation from the “will”—it lures to eternal salvation.
He values it more particularly as a deliverance from the “burning core of the will” which is sexuality,—in beauty he recognises the negation of the procreative instinct. Singular Saint! Some one contradicts thee; I fear it is Nature. Why is there beauty of tone, colour, aroma, and of rhythmic movement in Nature at all? What is it forces beauty to the fore? Fortunately, too, a certain philosopher contradicts him. No less an authority than the divine Plato himself (thus does Schopenhauer call him), upholds another proposition: that all beauty lures to procreation,—that this precisely is the chief characteristic of its effect, from the lowest sensuality to the highest spirituality.
23 Plato goes further. With an innocence for which a man must be Greek and not “Christian,” he says that there would be no such thing as Platonic philosophy if there were not such beautiful boys in Athens: it was the sight of them alone that set the soul of the philosopher reeling with erotic passion, and allowed it no rest until it had planted the seeds of all lofty things in a soil so beautiful. He was also a singular saint!—One scarcely believes one’s ears, even supposing one believes Plato. At least one realises that philosophy was pursued differently in Athens; above all, publicly. Nothing is less Greek than the cobweb-spinning with concepts by an anchorite, _amor intellectualis dei_ after the fashion of Spinoza. Philosophy according to Plato’s style might be defined rather as an erotic competition, as a continuation and a spiritualisation of the old agonal gymnastics and the conditions on which they depend...What was the ultimate outcome of this philosophic eroticism of Plato’s? A new art-form of the Greek _Agon,_ dialectics.—In opposition to Schopenhauer and to the honour of Plato, I would remind you that all the higher culture and literature of classical France, as well, grew up on the soil of sexual interests. In all its manifestations you may look for gallantry, the senses, sexual competition, and “woman,” and you will not look in vain.
24 _L’Art pour l’Art._—The struggle against a purpose in art is always a struggle against the moral tendency in art, against its subordination to morality. _L’art pour l’art_ means, “let morality go to the devil!”
—But even this hostility betrays the preponderating power of the moral prejudice. If art is deprived of the purpose of preaching morality and of improving mankind, it does not by any means follow that art is absolutely pointless, purposeless, senseless, in short _l’art pour l’art_—a snake which bites its own tail. “No purpose at all is better than a moral purpose!”—thus does pure passion speak. A psychologist, on the other hand, puts the question: what does all art do? does it not praise? does it not glorify? does it not select? does it not bring things into prominence? In all this it strengthens or weakens certain valuations. Is this only a secondary matter? an accident?
something in which the artist’s instinct has no share? Or is it not rather the very prerequisite which enables the artist to accomplish something?...Is his most fundamental instinct concerned with art?
Is it not rather concerned with the purpose of art, with life? with a certain desirable kind of life? Art is the great stimulus to life; how can it be regarded as purpose less, as pointless, as _l’art pour l’art?_—There still remains one question to be answered: Art also reveals much that is ugly, hard and questionable in life,—does it not thus seem to make life intolerable?—And, as a matter of fact, there have been philosophers who have ascribed this function to art.
According to Schopenhauer’s doctrine, the general object of art was to “free one from the Will”; and what he honoured as the great utility of tragedy, was that it “made people more resigned.”—But this, as I have already shown, is a pessimistic standpoint; it is the “evil eye”: the artist himself must be appealed to. What is it that the soul of the tragic artist communicates to others? Is it not precisely his fearless attitude towards that which is terrible and questionable?
This attitude is in itself a highly desirable one; he who has once, experienced it honours it above everything else. He communicates it. He must communicate, provided he is an artist and a genius in the art of communication. A courageous and free spirit, in the presence of a mighty foe, in the presence of a sublime misfortune, and face to face with a problem that inspires horror—this is the triumphant attitude which the tragic artist selects and which he glorifies. The martial elements in our soul celebrate their Saturnalia in tragedy; he who is used to suffering, he who looks out for suffering, the heroic man, extols his existence by means of tragedy,—to him alone does the tragic artist offer this cup of sweetest cruelty.— 25 To associate in an amiable fashion with anybody; to keep the house of one’s heart open to all, is certainly liberal: but it is nothing else.
One can recognise the hearts that are capable of noble hospitality, by their wealth of screened windows and closed shutters: they keep their best rooms empty. Whatever for?—Because they are expecting guests who are somebodies.
26 We no longer value ourselves sufficiently highly when we communicate our soul’s content. Our real experiences are not at all garrulous. They could not communicate themselves even if they wished to. They are at a loss to find words for such confidences. Those things for which we find words, are things wehave already overcome. In all speech there lies an element of contempt. Speech, it would seem, was only invented for average, mediocre and communicable things.—Every spoken word proclaims the speaker vulgarised—(Extract from a moral code for deaf-and-dumb people and other philosophers.)
27 “This picture is perfectly beautiful!”[4] The dissatisfied and exasperated literary woman with a desert in her heart and in her belly, listening with agonised curiosity every instant to the imperative which whispers to her from the very depths of her being: _aut liberi, aut libri:_ the literary woman, sufficiently educated to understand the voice of nature, even when nature speaks Latin, and moreover enough of a peacock and a goose to speak even French with herself in secret “_Je me verrai, je me lirai, je m’extasierai et je dirai: Possible, que j’aie eu tant d’esprit?_”...28 The objective ones speak.—“Nothing comes more easily to us, than to be wise, patient, superior. We are soaked in the oil of indulgence and of sympathy, we are absurdly just, we forgive everything. Precisely on that account we should be severe with ourselves; for that very reason we ought from time to time to go in for a little emotion, a little emotional vice. It may seem bitter to us; and between ourselves we may even laugh at the figure which it makes us cut But what does it matter?
We have no other kind of self-control left. This is our asceticism, our manner of performing penance.” _To become personal_—the virtues of the “impersonal and objective one.”
29 _Extract from a doctor’s examination paper._—“What is the task of all higher schooling?”—To make man into a machine. “What are the means employed?”—He must learn how to be bored. “How is this achieved?”—By means of the concept duty. “What example of duty has he before his eyes?”—The philologist: it is he who teaches people how to swat.
“Who is the perfect man?”—The Government official. “Which philosophy furnishes the highest formula for the Government official?”—Kant’s philosophy: the Government official as thing-in-itself made judge over the Government official as appearance.
30 _The right to Stupidity._—The worn-out worker, whose breath is slow, whose look is good-natured, and who lets things slide just as they please: this typical figure which in this age of labour (and of “Empire!”) is to be met with in all classes of society, has now begun to appropriate even Art, including the book, above all the newspaper,—and how much more so beautiful nature, Italy! This man of the evening, with his “savage instincts lulled,” as Faust has it; needs his summer holiday, his sea-baths, his glacier, his Bayreuth.
In such ages Art has the right to be _purely foolish,_—as a sort of vacation for spirit, wit and sentiment. Wagner understood this. Pure _Yet another problem of diet._—The means with which Julius Cæsar preserved himself against sickness and headaches: heavy marches, the simplest mode of living, uninterrupted sojourns in the open air, continual hardships,—generally speaking these are the self-preservative and self-defensive measures against the extreme vulnerability of those subtle machines working at the highest pressure, which are called geniuses.
32 _The Immoralist speaks._—Nothing is more distasteful to true philosophers than man when he begins to wish...If they see man only at his deeds; if they see this bravest, craftiest and most enduring of animals even inextricably entangled in disaster, how admirable he then appears to them! They even encourage him...But true philosophers despise the man who wishes, as also the “desirable” man—and all the desiderata and _ideals_ of man in general. If a philosopher could be a nihilist, he would be one; for he finds only nonentity behind all human ideals. Or, not even nonentity, but vileness, absurdity, sickness, cowardice, fatigue and all sorts of dregs from out the quaffed goblets of his life...How is it that man, who as a reality is so estimable, ceases from deserving respect the moment he begins to desire? Must he pay for being so perfect as a reality? Must he make up for his deeds, for the tension of spirit and will which underlies all his deeds, by an eclipse of his powers in matters of the imagination and in absurdity?
Hitherto the history of his desires has been the _partie honteuse_ of mankind: one should take care not to read too deeply in this history.
That which justifies man is his reality,—it will justify him to all eternity. How much more valuable is a real man than any other man who is merely the phantom of desires, of dreams of stinks and of lies?—than any kind of ideal man?...And the ideal man, alone, is what the philosopher cannot abide.
33 _The Natural Value of Egoism._—Selfishness has as much value as the physiological value of him who practises it: its worth may be great, or it may be worthless and contemptible. Every individual may be classified according to whether he represents the ascending or the descending line of life. When this is decided, a canon is obtained by means of which the value of his selfishness may be determined.
If he represent the ascending line of life, his value is of course extraordinary—and for the sake of the collective life which in him makes one step _forward,_ the concern about his maintenance, about procuring his _optimum_ of conditions may even be extreme. The human unit, the “individual,” as the people and the philosopher have always understood him, is certainly an error: he is nothing in himself, no atom, no “link in the chain,” no mere heritage from the past,—he represents the whole direct line of mankind up to his own life...If he represent declining development, decay, chronic degeneration, sickness (—illnesses are on the whole already the outcome of decline, and not the cause thereof), he is of little worth, and the purest equity would have him _take away_ as little as possible from those who are lucky strokes of nature. He is then only a parasite upon them...34 _The Christian and the Anarchist._—When the anarchist, as the mouthpiece of the decaying strata of society, raises his voice in splendid indignation for “right,” “justice,” “equal rights,” he is only groaning under the burden of his ignorance, which cannot understand _why_ he actually suffers,—what his poverty consists of—the poverty of life. An instinct of causality is active in him: someone must be responsible for his being so ill at ease. His “splendid indignation” alone relieves him somewhat, it is a pleasure for all poor devils to grumble—it gives them a little intoxicating sensation of power. The very act of complaining, the mere fact that one bewails one’s lot, may lend such a charm to life that on that account alone, one is ready to endure it. There is a small dose of revenge in every lamentation. One casts one’s afflictions, and, under certain circumstances, even one’s baseness, in the teeth of those who are different, as if their condition were an injustice, an _iniquitous_ privilege. “Since I am _a blackguard_ you ought to be one too.” It is upon such reasoning that revolutions are based.—To bewail one’s lot is always despicable: it is always the outcome of weakness. Whether one ascribes one’s afflictions to others or to _one’s self,_ it is all the same. The socialist does the former, the Christian, for instance, does the latter. That which is common to both attitudes, or rather that which is equally ignoble in them both, is the fact that somebody must be to _blame_ if one suffers—in short that the sufferer drugs himself with the honey of revenge to allay his anguish. The objects towards which this lust of vengeance, like a lust of pleasure, are directed, are purely accidental causes. In all directions the sufferer finds reasons for cooling his petty passion for revenge. If he is a Christian, I repeat, he finds these reasons in himself. The Christian and the Anarchist—both are decadents. But even when the Christian condemns, slanders, and sullies the world, he is actuated by precisely the same instinct as that which leads the socialistic workman to curse, calumniate and cast dirt at society. The last “Judgment” itself is still the sweetest solace to revenge—revolution, as the socialistic workman expects it, only thought of as a little more remote...The notion of a “Beyond,” as well—why a Beyond, if it be not a means of splashing mud over a “Here,” over this world?...35 _A Criticism of the Morality of Decadence._—An “altruistic” morality, a morality under which selfishness withers, is in all circumstances a bad sign. This is true of individuals and above all of nations. The best are lacking when selfishness begins to be lacking. Instinctively to select that which is harmful to one, to be _lured_ by “disinterested” motives,—these things almost provide the formula for decadence. “Not to have one’s own interests at heart” —this is simply a moral fig-leaf concealing a very different fact, a physiological one, to wit:—“I no longer know how to find what is to my interest.”...Disintegration of the instincts!—All is up with man when he becomes altruistic.—Instead of saying ingenuously “I am no longer any good,” the lie of morality in the decadent’s mouth says: “Nothing is any good,—life is no good.”—A judgment of this kind ultimately becomes a great danger; for it is infectious, and it soon flourishes on the polluted soil of society with tropical luxuriance, now as a religion (Christianity), anon as a philosophy (Schopenhauerism). In certain circumstances the mere effluvia of such a venomous vegetation, springing as it does out of the very heart of putrefaction, can poison life for thousands and thousands of years.
36 _A moral for doctors._—The sick man is a parasite of society. In certain cases it is indecent to go on living. To continue to vegetate in a state of cowardly dependence upon doctors and special treatments, once the meaning of life, the right to life, has been lost, ought to be regarded with the greatest contempt by society. The doctors, for their part, should be the agents for imparting this contempt,—they should no longer prepare prescriptions, but should every day administer a fresh dose of _disgust_ to their patients. A new responsibility should be created, that of the doctor—the responsibility of ruthlessly suppressing and eliminating _degenerate_ life, in all cases in which the highest interests of life itself, of ascending life, demand such a course—for instance in favour of the right of procreation, in favour of the right of being born, in favour of the right to live.
One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly.
Death should be chosen freely,—death at the right time, faced clearly and joyfully and embraced while one is surrounded by one’s children and other witnesses. It should be affected in such a way that a proper farewell is still possible, that he who is about to take leave of us is still _himself,_ and really capable not only of valuing what he has achieved and willed in life, but also of _summing-up_ the value of life itself. Everything precisely the opposite of the ghastly comedy which Christianity has made of the hour of death. We should never forgive Christianity for having so abused the weakness of the dying man as to do violence to his conscience, or for having used his manner of dying as a means of valuing both man and his past—In spite of all cowardly prejudices, it is our duty, in this respect, above all to reinstate the proper—that is to say, the physiological, aspect of so-called _natural_ death, which after all is perfectly “unnatural” and nothing else than suicide. One never perishes through anybody’s fault but one’s own. The only thing is that the death which takes place in the most contemptible circumstances, the death that is not free, the death which occurs at the wrong time, is the death of a coward. Out of the very love one bears to life, one should wish death to be different from this—that is to say, free, deliberate, and neither a matter of chance nor of surprise. Finally let me whisper a word of advice to our friends the pessimists and all other decadents.
We have not the power to prevent ourselves from being born: but this error—for sometimes it is an error—can be rectified if we choose. The man who does away with himself, performs the most estimable of deeds: he almost deserves to live for having done so. Society—nay, life itself, derives more profit from such a deed than from any sort of life spent in renunciation, anæmia and other virtues,—at least the suicide frees others from the sight of him, at least he removes one objection against life. Pessimism _pur et vert,_ can _be proved only_ by the self-refutation of the pessimists themselves: one should go a step further in one’s consistency; one should not merely deny life with “The World as Will and Idea,” as Schopenhauer did; one should in the first place _deny Schopenhauer._...Incidentally, Pessimism, however infectious it may be, does not increase the morbidness of an age or of a whole species; it is rather the expression of that morbidness. One falls a victim to it in the same way as one falls a victim to cholera; one must already be predisposed to the disease. Pessimism in itself does not increase the number of the world’s _decadents_ by a single unit. Let me remind you of the statistical fact that in those years in which cholera rages, the total number of deaths does not exceed that of other years.
37 _Have we become more moral?_—As might have been expected, the whole _ferocity_ of moral stultification, which, as is well known, passes for morality itself in Germany, hurled itself against my concept “Beyond Good and Evil.” I could tell you some nice tales about this.
Above all, people tried to make me see the “incontestable superiority” of our age in regard to moral sentiment, and the _progress_ we had made in these matters. Compared with us, a Cæsar Borgia was by no means to be represented as “higher man,” the sort of _Superman,_ which I declared him to be. The editor of the Swiss paper the _Bund_ went so far as not only to express his admiration for the courage displayed by my enterprise, but also to pretend to “understand” that the intended purpose of my work was to abolish all decent feeling.
Much obliged!—In reply, I venture to raise the following question: _have we really become more moral?_ The fact that everybody believes that we have is already an objection to the belief. We modern men, so extremely delicate and susceptible, full of consideration one for the other, actually dare to suppose that the pampering fellow-feeling which we all display, this unanimity which we have at last acquired in sparing and helping and trusting one another marks a definite step forward, and shows us to be far ahead of the man of the Renaissance.
But every age thinks the same, it is _bound_ to think the same. This at least, is certain, that we should not dare to stand amid the conditions which prevailed at the Renaissance, we should not even dare to imagine ourselves in those conditions: our nerves could not endure that reality, not to speak of our muscles. The inability to do this however does not denote any progress; but simply the different and more senile quality of our particular nature, its greater weakness, delicateness, and susceptibility, out of which a morality _more rich in consideration_ was bound to arise. If we imagine our delicateness and senility, our physiological decrepitude as non-existent, our morality of “humanisation” would immediately lose all value—no morality has any value _per se_—it would even fill us with scorn. On the other hand, do not let us doubt that we moderns, wrapped as we are in the thick cotton wool of our humanitarianism which would shrink even from grazing a stone, would present a comedy to Cæsar Borgia’s contemporaries which would literally make them die of laughter. We are indeed, without knowing it, exceedingly ridiculous with our modern “virtues.”...The decline of the instincts of hostility and of those instincts that arouse suspicion,—for this if anything is what constitutes our progress—is only one of the results manifested by the general decline in _vitality_: it requires a hundred times more trouble and caution to live such a dependent and senile existence.
In such circumstances everybody gives everybody else a helping hand, and, to a certain extent, everybody is either an invalid or an invalid’s attendant. This is then called “virtue”: among those men who knew a different life—that is to say, a fuller, more prodigal, more superabundant sort of life, it might have been called by another name,—possibly “cowardice,” or “vileness,” or “old woman’s morality.”...Our mollification of morals—this is my cry; this it you will is my _innovation_—is the outcome of our decline; conversely hardness and terribleness in morals may be the result of a surplus of life.
When the latter state prevails, much is dared, much is challenged, and much is also _squandered_. That which formerly was simply the salt of life, would now be our _poison_. To be indifferent—even this is a form of strength—for that, likewise, we are too senile, too decrepit: our morality of fellow-feeling, against which I was the first to raise a finger of warning, that which might be called _moral impressionism_, is one symptom the more of the excessive physiological irritability which is peculiar to everything decadent. That movement which attempted to introduce itself in a scientific manner on the shoulders of Schopenhauer’s morality of pity—a very sad attempt!—is in its essence the movement of decadence in morality, and as such it is intimately related to Christian morality. Strong ages and noble cultures see something contemptible in pity, in the “love of one’s neighbour,” and in a lack of egoism and of self-esteem.—Ages should be measured according to their _positive forces_;—valued by this standard that prodigal and fateful age of the Renaissance, appears as the last _great_ age, while we moderns with our anxious care of ourselves and love of our neighbours, with all our unassuming virtues of industry, equity, and scientific method—with our lust of collection, of economy and of mechanism—represent a _weak_ age...Our virtues are necessarily determined, and are even stimulated, by our weakness. “Equality,” a certain definite process of making everybody uniform, which only finds its expression in the theory of equal rights, is essentially bound up with a declining culture: the chasm between man and man, class and class, the multiplicity of types, the will to be one’s self, and to distinguish one’s self—that, in fact, which I call the _pathos of distance_ is proper to all _strong_ ages. The force of tension,—nay, the tension itself, between extremes grows slighter every day,—the extremes themselves are tending to become obliterated to the point of becoming identical. All our political theories and state constitutions, not by any means excepting “The German Empire,” are the logical consequences, the necessary consequences of decline; the unconscious effect of _decadence_ has begun to dominate even the ideals of the various sciences. My objection to the whole of English and French sociology still continues to be this, that it knows only the _decadent form_ of society from experience, and with perfectly childlike innocence takes the instincts of decline as the norm, the standard, of sociological valuations. _Descending_ life, the decay of all organising power—that is to say, of all that power which separates, cleaves gulfs, and establishes rank above and below, formulated itself in modern sociology as _the_ ideal. Our socialists are decadents: but Herbert Spencer was also a _decadent,_—he saw something to be desired in the triumph of altruism!...38 _My Concept of Freedom._—Sometimes the value of a thing does not lie in that which it helps us to achieve, but in the amount we have to pay for it,—what it _costs_ us. For instance, liberal institutions straightway cease from being liberal, the moment they are soundly established: once this is attained no more grievous and more thorough enemies of freedom exist than liberal institutions! One knows, of course, what they bring about: they undermine the Will to Power, they are the levelling of mountain and valley exalted to a morality, they make people small, cowardly and pleasure-loving,—by means of them the gregarious animal invariably triumphs. Liberalism, or, in plain English, the _transformation of mankind into cattle._ The same institutions, so long as they are fought for, produce quite other results; then indeed they promote the cause of freedom quite powerfully. Regarded more closely, it is war which produces these results, war in favour of liberal institutions, which, as war, allows the illiberal instincts to subsist. For war trains men to be free.
What in sooth is freedom? Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves. It is to preserve the distance which separates us from other men. To grow more indifferent to hardship, to severity, to privation, and even to life itself. To be ready to sacrifice men for one’s cause, one’s self included. Freedom denotes that the virile instincts which rejoice in war and in victory, prevail over other instincts; for instance, over the instincts of “happiness.”
The man who has won his freedom, and how much more so, therefore, the spirit that has won its freedom, tramples ruthlessly upon that contemptible kind of comfort which tea-grocers, Christians, cows, women, Englishmen and other democrats worship in their dreams. The free man is a _warrior._—How is freedom measured in individuals as well as in nations? According to the resistance which has to be overcome, according to the pains which it costs to remain _uppermost._ The highest type of free man would have to be sought where the greatest resistance has continually to be overcome: five paces away from tyranny, on the very threshold of the danger of thraldom. This is psychologically true if, by the word “Tyrants” we mean inexorable and terrible instincts which challenge the _maximum_ amount of authority and discipline to oppose them—the finest example of this is Julius Cæsar; it is also true politically: just examine the course of history. The nations which were worth anything, which _got to be_ worth anything, never attained to that condition under liberal institutions: _great danger_ made out of them something which deserves reverence, that danger which alone can make us aware of our resources, our virtues, our means of defence, our weapons, our _genius,_—which _compels_ us to be strong. _First_ principle: a man must need to be strong, otherwise he will never attain it.—Those great forcing-houses of the strong, of the strongest kind of men that have ever existed on earth, the aristocratic communities like those of Rome and Venice, understood freedom precisely as I understand the word: as something that one has and that one has _not,_ as something that one _will_ have and that one _seizes by force._ 39 _A Criticism of Modernity._—Our institutions are no longer any good; on this point we are all agreed. But the fault does not lie with them; but with _us._ Now that we have lost all the instincts out of which institutions grow, the latter on their part are beginning to disappear from our midst because we are no longer fit for them.
Democracy has always been the death agony of the power of organisation: already in “Human All-too-Human,” Part I., Aph. 472, I pointed out that modern democracy, together with its half-measures, of which the “German Empire” is an example, was a decaying form of the State. For institutions to be possible there must exist a sort of will, instinct, imperative, which cannot be otherwise than antiliberal to the point of wickedness: the will to tradition, to authority, to responsibility for centuries to come, to _solidarity_ in long family lines forwards and backwards _in infinitum._ If this will is present, something is founded which resembles the _imperium Romanum;_ or Russia, the _only_ great nation to-day that has some lasting power and grit in her, that can bide her time, that can still promise something.—Russia the opposite of all wretched European petty-statism and neurasthenia, which the foundation of the German Empire has brought to a crisis. The whole of the Occident no longer possesses those instincts from which institutions spring, out of which a _future_ grows: maybe nothing is more opposed to its “modern spirit” than these things. People live for the present, the live at top speed,—they certainly live without any sense of responsibility; and this is precisely what they call “freedom.” Everything in institutions which makes them institutions, is scorned, loathed and repudiated: everybody is in mortal fear of a new slavery, wherever the word “authority” is so much as whispered.
The decadence of the valuing instinct, both in our politicians and in our political parties, goes so far, that they instinctively prefer that which acts as a solvent, that which precipitates the final catastrophe...As an example of this behold _modern_ marriage. All