of character, which lies beneath every act, and which finds expression in every act, were recognized by the individual as his fundamental trait of character, this individual would be driven to regard every moment of his existence in general, triumphantly as good. It would simply be necessary for that fundamental trait of character to be felt in oneself as something good, valuable, and pleasurable. Now, in the case of those men and classes of men who were treated with violence and oppressed by their fellows, morality saved life from despair and from the leap into nonentity: for impotence in relation to mankind and not in relation to nature is what generates the most desperate bitterness towards existence. Morality treated the powerful, the violent, and the "masters" in general, as enemies against whom the common man must be protected that is to say, emboldened, strengthened. Morality has therefore always taught the most profound hatred and contempt of the fundamental trait of character of all rulers i.e. their will to power. To suppress, to deny, and to decompose this morality, would mean to regard this most thoroughly detested instinct with the reverse of the old feeling and valuation. If the sufferer and the oppressed man were to lose his belief in his right to contemn the will to power, his position would be desperate. This would be so if the trait above-mentioned were essential to life, in which case it would follow that even that will to morality was only a cloak to this "will to power," as are also even that hatred and contempt. The oppressed man would then perceive that he stands on the same platform with the oppressor, and that he has no individual privilege, nor any higher rank than the latter. On the contrary! There is nothing on earth which can have any value, if it have not a modicum of power granted, of course, that life itself is the will to power. Morality protected the botched and bungled against nihilism, in that it gave every one of them infinite worth, metaphysical worth, and classed them altogether in one order which did not correspond with that of worldly power and order of rank: it taught submission, humility, etc. Admitting that the belief in this morality be destroyed, the botched and the bungled would no longer have any comfort, and would perish. This perishing seems like self-annihilation, like an instinctive selection of that which must be destroyed. The symptoms of this self-destruction of the botched and the bungled: self-vivisection, poisoning, intoxication, romanticism, and, above all, the instinctive constraint to acts whereby the powerful are made into mortal enemies (training, so to speak, one s own hangmen), the will to destruction as the will of a still deeper instinct of the instinct of self-destruction, of the will to nonentity. Nihilism is a sign that the botched and bungled have no longer any consolation, that they destroy in order to be destroyed, that, having been deprived of morality, they no longer have any reason to "resign themselves," that they take up their stand on the territory of the opposite principle, and will also exercise power themselves, by compelling the powerful to become their hangmen. This is the European form of Buddhism, that active negation, after all existence has lost its meaning. It must not be supposed that "poverty" has grown more acute, on the contrary! "God, morality, resignation" were remedies in the very deepest stages of misery: active nihilism made its appearance in circumstances which were relatively much more favorable. The fact, alone, that morality is regarded as overcome, presupposes a certain degree of intellectual culture; while this very culture, for its part, bears evidence to a certain relative well-being. A certain intellectual fatigue, brought on by the long struggle concerning philosophical opinions, and carried to hopeless skepticism against philosophy, shows moreover that the level of these nihilists is by no means a low one. Only think of the conditions in which Buddha appeared! The teaching of the eternal recurrence would have learned principles to go upon (just as Buddha s teaching, for instance, had the notion of causality, etc.). What do we mean today by the words "botched and bungled"? In the first place, they are used physiologically and not politically. The unhealthiest kind of man all over Europe (in all classes) is the soil out of which nihilism grows: this species of man will regard eternal recurrence as damnation once he is bitten by the thought, he can no longer recoil before any action. He would not extirpate passively, but would cause everything to be extirpated which is meaningless and without a goal to this extent; although it is only a spasm, or sort of blind rage in the presence of the fact that everything has existed again and again for an eternity even this period of nihilism and destruction. The value of such a crisis is that it purifies, that it unites similar elements, and makes them mutually destructive, that it assigns common duties to men of opposite persuasions, and brings the weaker and more un certain among them to the light, thus taking the first step towards a new order of rank among forces from the standpoint of health: recognizing commanders as commanders, subordinates as subordinates. Naturally irrespective of all the present forms of society. What class of men will prove they are strongest in this new order of things? The most moderate: they who do not require any extreme forms of belief, they who not only admit of, but actually like, a certain modicum of chance and nonsense; they who can think of man with a very moderate view of his value, without becoming weak and small on that account; the most rich in health, who are able to withstand a maximum amount of sorrow, and who are therefore not so very much afraid of sorrow, men who are certain of their power, and who represent with conscious pride the state of strength to which man has attained. How could such a man think of eternal recurrence?
56. The Periods of European Nihilism. The period of obscurity: all kinds of groping measures devised to preserve old institutions and not to arrest the progress of new ones. The period of light; men see that old and new are fundamental contraries; that the old values are born of descending life, and that the new ones are born of ascending life that all old ideals are unfriendly to life (born of decadence and determining it, however much they may be decked out in the Sunday finery of morality). We understand the old, but are far from being sufficiently strong for the new. The periods of the three great passions: contempt, pity, destruction. The periods of catastrophes: the rise of a teaching which will sift mankind...which drives the weak to some decision and the strong also.
II. CONCERNING THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN NIHILISM (a) MODERN GLOOMINESS.
57. My friends, we had a hard time as youths; we even suffered from youth itself as though it were a serious disease. This is owing to the age in which we were born an age of enormous internal decay and disintegration which, with all its weakness and even with the best of its strength, is opposed to the spirit of youth. Disintegration that is to say, uncertainty is peculiar to this age: nothing stands on solid ground or on a sound faith. People live for the morrow, because the day-after-tomorrow is doubtful. All our road is slippery and dangerous, while the ice which still bears us has grown unconscionably thin: we all feel the mild and gruesome breath of the thaw-wind soon, where we are walking, no one will any longer be able to stand!
58. If this is not an age of decay and of diminishing vitality, it is at least one of indiscriminate and arbitrary experimentalizing and it is probable that out of an excess of abortive experiments there has grown this general impression, as of decay: and perhaps decay itself.
59. Concerning the history of modern gloominess. The state-nomads (officials, etc.): "home less". The break-up of the family. The "good man" as a symptom of exhaustion. Justice as will to power (rearing). Lewdness and neurosis. Black music: whither has real music gone? The anarchist. Contempt of man, loathing. Most profound distinction: whether hunger or satiety is creative? The first creates the ideals of romanticism. Northern unnaturalness. The need of alcohol: the "need" of the working classes. Philosophical nihilism.
60. The slow advance and rise of the middle and lower classes (including the lower kind of spirit and body), which was already well under way before the French Revolution, and would have made the same progress forward without the latter, in short, then, the preponderance of the herd over all herdsmen and bell-wethers, brings in its train: (i) Gloominess of spirit (the juxtaposition of a stoical and a frivolous appearance of happiness, peculiar to noble cultures, is on the decline; much suffering is allowed to be seen and heard which formerly was borne in concealment; (2) Moral hypocrisy (a way of distinguishing oneself through morality, but by means of the values of the herd: pity, solicitude, moderation; and not by means of those virtues which are recognized and honored outside the herd s sphere of power); (3) A really large amount of sympathy with both pain and joy (a feeling of pleasure resulting from being herded together, which is peculiar to all gregarious animals "public spirit," "patriotism," everything, in fact, which is apart from the individual).
61. Our age, with its indiscriminate endeavors to mitigate distress, to honor it, and to wage war in advance with unpleasant possibilities, is an age of the poor. Our "rich people" they are the poorest! The real purpose of all wealth has been forgotten.
62. Criticism of modern man: "the good man," but corrupted and misled by bad institutions (tyrants and priests); reason elevated to a position of authority; history is regarded as the surmounting of errors; the future is regarded as progress; the Christian state ("God of the armies"); Christian sexual intercourse (as marriage); the realm of "justice" (the cult of "mankind"); "freedom." The romantic attitudes of the modern man: the noble man (Byron, Victor Hugo, George Sand), taking the part of the oppressed and the bungled and the botched: motto for historians and romancers; the Stoics of duty; disinterestedness regarded as art and as knowledge; altruism as the most mendacious form of egoism (utilitarianism), the most sentimental form of egoism. All this savors of the eighteenth century. But it had other qualities which were not inherited, namely, a certain insouciance, cheerfulness, elegance, spiritual clearness. The spiritual tempo has altered; the pleasure which was begotten by spiritual refinement and clearness has given room to the pleasure of color, harmony, mass, reality, etc. etc. Sensuality in spiritual things. In short, it is the eighteenth century of Rousseau.
63. Taken all in all, a considerable amount of humanity has been attained by our men of today. That we feel this is in itself a proof of the fact that we have become so sensitive in regard to small cases of distress, that we somewhat unjustly overlook what has been achieved. Here we must make allowances for the fact that a great deal of decadence is rife, and that, through such eyes, our world must appear bad and wretched. But these eyes have always seen in the same way, in all ages. (1) A certain hypersensitiveness, even in morality. (2) The quantum of bitterness and gloominess, which pessimism bears with it in its judgments- both together have helped to bring about the preponderance of the other and opposite point of view, that things are not well with our morality. The fact of credit, of the commerce of the world, and the means of traffic are expressions of an extraordinarily mild trustfulness in men...To that may also be added (3) The deliverance of science from moral and religious prejudices: a very good sign, though for the most part misunderstood. In my own way, I am attempting a justification of history.
64. The second appearance of Buddhism. Its precursory signs: the increase of pity. Spiritual exhaustion. The reduction of all problems to the question of pleasure and pain. The glory of war which calls forth a counter-stroke. Just as the sharp demarcation of nations generates a counter-movement in the form of the most hearty "fraternity." The fact that it is impossible for religion to carry on its work any longer with dogma and fables. The catastrophe of nihilism will put an end to all this Buddhistic culture.
65. That which is most sorely afflicted today is the instinct and will of tradition: all institutions which owe their origin to this instinct, are opposed to the tastes of the age...At bottom, nothing is thought or done which is not calculated to tear up this spirit of tradition by the roots. Tradition is looked upon as a fatality; it is studied and acknowledged (in the form of " heredity "), but people will not have anything to do with it. The extension of one will over long periods of time, the selection of conditions and valuations which make it possible to dispose of centuries in advance this, precisely, is what is most utterly anti-modern. From which it follows, that disorganizing principles give our age its specific character.
66. "Be simple" a demand which, when made to us complicated and incomprehensible triers of the heart and reins, is a simple absurdity...Be natural: but even if we are unnatural what then?
67. The means employed in former times in order to arrive at similarly constituted and lasting types, throughout long generations: entailed property and the respect of parents (the origin of the faith in gods and heroes as ancestors). Now, the subdivision of property belongs to the opposite tendency. The centralization of an enormous number of different interests in one soul: which, to that end, must be very strong and mutable. Nihilism.
68. Why does everything become mummery. The modern man is lacking in unfailing instinct (instinct being understood here to mean that which is the outcome of a long period of activity in the same occupation on the part of one family of men); the incapability of producing anything, is simply the result of this lack of instinct: one individual alone cannot make up for the schooling his ancestors should have transmitted to him. What a morality or book of law creates: that deep instinct which renders automatism and perfection possible in life and in work. But now we have reached the opposite point; yes, we wanted to reach it the most extreme consciousness, through introspection on the part of man and of history: and thus we are practically most distant from perfection in being, doing, and willing: our desires even our will to knowledge shows how prodigiously decadent we are. We are striving after the very reverse of what strong races and strong natures will have understanding is an end...That science is possible in the way in which it is practiced today, proves that all elementary instincts, the instincts which ward off danger and protect life, are no longer active. We no longer save, we are merely spending the capital of our forefathers, even in the way in which we pursue knowledge.
69. Nihilistic trait. (a) In the natural sciences ("purposelessness"), causality, mechanism, "conformity to law," an interval, a remnant. (b) Likewise in politics: the individual lacks the belief in his own right, innocence; falsehood rules supreme, as also the worship of the moment. (c) Likewise in political economy: the abolition of slavery: the lack of a redeeming class, and of one who justifies the rise of anarchy. "Education"? (d) Likewise in history: fatalism, Darwinism; the last attempts at reconciling reason and godliness fail. Sentimentality in regard to the past: biographies can no longer be endured! (Phenomenalism even here: character regarded as a mask; there are no facts.) (e) Likewise in art: romanticism and its counter-stroke (repugnance towards romantic ideals and lies). The latter, morally, as a sense of great est truthfulness, but pessimistic. Pure "artists" (indifference as to the "subject"). (The psychology of the father-confessor and puritanical psychology two forms of psychological romanticism: but also their counter-stroke, the attempt to maintain a purely artistic attitude towards "men" but even in this respect no one dares to make the opposite valuation.)
70. Against the teaching of the influence of environment and external causes: the power coming from inside is infinitely superior; much that appears like influence acting from without is merely the subjection of environment to this inner power. Precisely the same environment may be used and interpreted in opposite ways: there are no facts. A genius is not explained by such theories concerning origins.
71. "Modernity" regarded in the light of nutrition and digestion. Sensitiveness is infinitely more acute (beneath moral vestments: the increase of pity), the abund ance of different impressions is greater than ever. The cosmopolitanism of articles of diet, of literature, newspapers, forms, tastes, and even landscapes. The speed of this affluence is prestissimo; impressions are wiped out, and people instinctively guard against assimilating anything or against taking anything seriously and " digesting " it; the result is a weakening of the powers of digestion. There begin a sort of adaptation to this accumulation of impressions. Man unlearns the art of doing, and all he does is to react to stimuli coming from his environment. He spends his strength, partly in the process of assimilation, partly in defending himself, and again partly in responding to stimuli. Profound enfeeblement of spontaneity: the historian, the critic, the analyst, the interpreter, the observer, the collector, the reader, all reactive talents, all science! Artificial modification of one s own nature in order to make it resemble a "mirror"; one is interested, but only epidermally: this is systematic coolness, equilibrium, a steady low temperature, just beneath the thin surface on which warmth, movement, "storm," and undulations play. Opposition of external mobility to a certain dead heaviness and fatigue.
72. Where must our modern world be classed under exhaustion or under increasing strength? Its multiformity and lack of repose are brought about by the highest form of consciousness.
73. Overwork, curiosity and sympathy our modern vices.
74. A contribution to the characterization of "modernity." Exaggerated development of intermediate forms; the decay of types; the break-up of tradition, schools; the predominance of the instincts (philosophically prepared: the unconscious has the greater value) after the appearance of the enfeeblement of will power and of the will to an end and to the means thereto.
75. A capable artisan or scholar cuts a good figure if he have his pride in his art, and looks pleasantly and contentedly upon life. On the other hand, there is no sight more wretched than that of a cobbler or a schoolmaster who, with the air of a martyr, gives one to understand that he was really born for something better. There is nothing better than what is good! and that is: to have a certain kind of capacity and to use it. This is virtu in the Italian style of the Renaissance. Nowadays, when the state has a nonsensically oversized belly, in all fields and branches of work there are "representatives" over and above the real workman: for instance, in addition to the scholars, there are the journalists; in addition to the suffering masses, there is a crowd of jabbering and bragging ne'er-do-wells who "represent" that suffering not to speak of the professional politicians who, though quite satisfied with their lot, stand up in parliament and, with strong lungs, "represent" grievances. Our modern life is extremely expensive thanks to the host of middlemen that infest it; whereas in the city of antiquity, and in many a city of Spain and Italy today, where there is an echo of the ancient spirit, the man himself comes forward and will have nothing to do with a representative or an intermediary in the modern style except perhaps to kick him hence!
76. The pre-eminence of the merchant and the middleman, even in the most intellectual spheres: the journalist, the " representative," the historian (as an intermediary between the past and the pre sent), the exotic and cosmopolitan, the middleman between natural science and philosophy, the semi- theologians.
77. The men I have regarded with the most loathing, heretofore, are the parasites of intellect: they are to be found everywhere, already, in our modern Europe, and as a matter of fact their conscience is as light as it possibly can be. They may be a little turbid, and savor somewhat of Pessimism, but in the main they are voracious, dirty, dirtying, stealthy, insinuating, light-fingered gentry, scabby and as innocent as all small sinners and microbes are. They live at the expense of those who have intellect and who distribute it liberally: they know that it is peculiar to the rich mind to live in a disinterested fashion, without taking too much petty thought for the morrow, and to distribute its wealth prodigally. For intellect is a bad domestic economist, and pays no heed whatever to the fact that everything lives on it and devours it.
78. MODERN MUMMERY. The motleyness of modern men and its charm. Essentially a mask and a sign of boredom. The journalist. The political man (in the "national swindle"). Mummery in the arts: The lack of honesty in preparing and schooling oneself for them (Fromentin); The Romanticists (their lack of philosophy and science and their excess in literature); The novelists (Walter Scott, but also the monsters of the Nibelung with their inordinately nervous music); The lyricists. "Scientifically." Virtuosos (Jews). The popular ideals are overcome, but not yet in the presence of the people: The saint, the sage, the prophet.
79. The want of discipline in the modern spirit concealed beneath all kinds of moral finery. The show-words are: Toleration (for the " incapacity of saying yes or no "); la largeur de sympathie ( = a third of indifference, a third of curiosity, and a third of morbid susceptibility); "objectivity" (the lack of personality and of will, and the in ability to "love"); "freedom" in regard to the rule (Romanticism); "truth" as opposed to false hood and lying (Naturalism); the "scientific spirit" (the "human document": or, in plain English, the serial story which means "addition" instead of "composition"); "passion" in the place of disorder and intemperance; "depth" in the place of confusion and the pell-mell of symbols.
80. Concerning the criticism of big words. I am full of mistrust and malice towards what is called "ideal": this is my pessimism, that I have recognized to what extent "sublime sentiments" are a source of evil, that is to say, a belittling and depreciating of man. Every time "progress" is expected to result from an ideal, disappointment invariably follows; the triumph of an ideal has always been a retrograde movement. Christianity, revolution, the abolition of slavery, equal rights, philanthropy, love of peace, justice, truth: all these big words are only valuable in a struggle, as banners: not as realities, but as showy words, for something quite different (yea, even quite opposed to what they mean!).
81. The kind of man is known who has fallen in love with the sentence " tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner" It is the weak and, above all, the disillusioned: if there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to contemn! It is the philosophy of disappointment, which here swathes itself so humanly in pity, and gazes out so sweetly. They are Romanticists, whose faith has gone to pot: now they at least wish to look on and see how everything vanishes and fades. They call it I art pour I art, " objectivity," etc.
82. The main symptoms of Pessimism: Dinners at Magny s; Russian Pessimism (Tolstoy, Dostoiew- 69 sky); aesthetic Pessimism, fart pour I art, " de scription " (the romantic and the anti-romantic Pessimism); Pessimism in the theory of know ledge (Schopenhauer: phenomenalism); anarchical Pessimism; the " religion of pity," Buddhistic preparation; the Pessimism of culture (exoticness, cosmopolitanism); moral Pessimism, myself.
83. " Without the Christian Faith," said Pascal, " you would yourselves be like nature and history, un monstre et un chaos" We fulfilled this prophecy: once the weak and optimistic eighteenth century had embellished and rationalised man. Schopenhauer and Pascal. In one essential point, Schopenhauer is the first who takes up Pascals movement again: un monstre et un chaos, conse quently something that must be negatived...history, nature, and man himself! " Our inability to know the truth is the result of our corruption, of our moral decay" says Pascal. And Schopenhauer says essentially the same. " The more profound the corruption of reason is, the more necessary is the doctrine of salvation " or, putting it into Schopenhauerian phraseology, negation.
84. Schopenhauer as an epigone (state of affairs before the Revolution): Pity, sensuality, art, weakness of will, Catholicism of the most intel lectual desires that is, at bottom, the good old eighteenth century. 70 Schopenhauer s fundamental misunderstanding of the will (just as though passion, instinct, and desire were the essential factors of will) is typical: the depreciation of the will to the extent of mis taking it altogether. Likewise the hatred of willing: the attempt at seeing something superior yea, even superiority itself, and that which really matters, in non-willing, in the " subject-being without aim or intention." Great symptom of fatigue or of the weakness of will: for this, in reality, is what treats the passions as master, and directs them as to the way and to the measure...85. The undignified attempt has been made to regard Wagner and Schopenhauer as types of the mentally unsound: an infinitely more essential understanding of the matter would have been gained if the exact decadent type which each of them represents had been scientifically and accurately defined.
86. In my opinion, Henrik Ibsen has become very German. With all his robust idealism and " Will to Truth," he never dared to ring himself free from moral-illusionism which says " freedom," and will not admit, even to itself, what freedom is: the second stage in the metamorphosis of the " Will to Power" in him who lacks it. In the first stage, one demands justice at the hands of those who havepower. In the second one speaks of "freedom," 71 that is to say, one wishes to " shake oneself free " from those who have power. In the third stage, one speaks of " equal rights " that is to say, so long as one is not a predominant personality one wishes to prevent one s competitors from growing in power.
87. The Decline of Protestantism: theoretically and historically understood as a half-measure. Un deniable predominance of Catholicism today: Protestant feeling is so dead that the strongest anti- Protestant movements (Wagner s Parsifal, for instance) are no longer regarded as such. The whole of the more elevated intellectuality in France is Catholic in instinct; Bismarck recognized that there was no longer any such thing as Protestantism.
88. Protestantism, that spiritually unclean and tiresome form of decadence, in which Christianity has known how to survive in the mediocre North, is something incomplete and complexly valuable for knowledge, in so far as it was able to bring experiences of different kinds and origins into the same heads.
89. What has the German spirit not made out of Christianity! And, to refer to Protestantism again, how much beer is there not still in Protestant Christianity! Can a crasser, more indolent, and more lounging form of Christian belief be imagined, than that of the average German Protestant?...It is indeed a very humble Christianity. I call it the Homoeopathy of Christianity! I am reminded that, today, there also exists a less humble sort of Protestantism; it is taught by royal chaplains and anti-Semitic speculators: but nobody has ever maintained that any " spirit " " hovers " over these waters. It is merely a less respectable form of Christian faith, not by any means a more comprehensible one.
90. Progress. Let us be on our guard lest we deceive ourselves! Time flies forward apace, we would fain believe that everything flies forward with it, that evolution is an advancing development...That is the appearance of things which deceives the most circumspect. But the nineteenth century shows no advance whatever on the sixteenth: and the German spirit of 1888 is an example of a backward movement when compared with that of 1788...Mankind does not advance, it does not even exist. The aspect of the whole is much more like that of a huge experimenting workshop where some things in all ages succeed, while an incalculable number of things fail; where all order, logic, co-ordination, and responsibility is lacking. How dare we blink the fact that the rise of Christianity is a decadent movement? that the German Reformation was a recrudescence of Christian barbarism? that the Revolution destroyed the instinct for an organization of society on a large scale?...Man is not an example of progress as compared with animals: the tender son of culture is an abortion compared with the Arab or the Corsican; the Chinaman is a more successful type that is to say, richer in sustaining power than the European.
(b) THE LAST CENTURIES.
91. Gloominess and pessimistic influence necessarily follow in the wake of enlightenment. Towards 1770 a falling-off in cheerfulness was already noticeable; women, with that very feminine instinct which always defends virtue, believed that immor ality was the cause of it. Galiani hit the bull s eye: he quotes Voltaire s verse: " Un monstre gai vaut mieux Qu un sentimental ennuyeux." If now I maintain that I am ahead, by a century or two of enlightenment, of Voltaire and Galiani who was much more profound, how deeply must I have sunk into gloominess! This is also true, and betimes I somewhat reluctantly manifested some caution in regard to the German and Christian narrowness and inconsistency of Schopenhauerian or, worse still, Leopardian Pessim ism, and sought the most characteristic form (Asia). But, in order to endure that extreme Pessimism (which here and there peeps out of my Birth of Tragedy), to live alone " without God or morality," I was compelled to invent a counter-prop for my self. Perhaps I know best why man is the only animal that laughs: he alone suffers so excruciat ingly that he was compelled to invent laughter. The unhappiest and most melancholy animal is, as might have been expected, the most cheerful.
92. In regard to German culture, I have always had a feeling as of decline. The fact that I learned to know a declining form of culture has often made me unfair towards the whole phenomenon of European culture. The Germans always follow at some distance behind: they always go to the root of things, for instance: Dependance upon foreigners; Kant Rousseau, the sensualists, Hume, Swedenborg. Schopenhauer the Indians and Romanticism, Voltaire. Wagner the French cult of the ugly and of grand opera, Paris, and the flight into primitive barbarism (the marriage of brother and sister). The law of the laggard (the provinces go to Paris, Germany goes to France). How is it that precisely Germans discovered the Greek (the more an instinct is developed, the more it is tempted to run for once into its opposite). Music is the last breath of every culture.