As far as materialistic atomism goes: this is one of the most well-refuted things in existence. In Europe these days, nobody in the scholarly community is likely to be so unscholarly as to attach any real significance to it, except as a handy household tool (that is, as an abbreviated figure of speech). For this, we can thank that Pole, Boscovich, who, together with the Pole, Copernicus, was the greatest, most successful opponent of the visual evidence. While Copernicus convinced us to believe, contrary to all our senses, that the earth does not stand still, Boscovich taught us to renounce belief in the last bit of earth that did 'stand still,' the belief in 'matter,' in the 'material,' in the residual piece of earth and clump of an atom: it was the greatest triumph over the senses that the world had ever known. - But we must go further still and declare war-aruthless fight to the finish - on the 'atomistic need' that, like the more famous 'metaphysical need,' still leads a dangerous afterlife in regions where nobody would think to look. First of all, we must also put an end to that other and more disastrous atomism, the one Christianity has taught best and longest, the atomism of the soul . Let this expression signify the belief that the soul is something indestructible, eternal, indivisible, that it is a monad, an atomon : this belief must be thrown out of science! Between you and me, there is absolutely no need to give up 'the soul' itself, and relinquish one of the oldest and most venerable hypotheses - as often happens with naturalists: given their clumsiness, they barely need to touch 'the soul' to lose it. But the path lies open for new versions and sophistications of the soul hypothesis - and concepts like the 'mortal soul' and the 'soul as subject-multiplicity' and the 'soul as a society constructed out of drives and affects' want henceforth to have civil rights in the realm of science. Byputting an end to the superstition that until now has grown around the idea of the soul with an almost tropical luxuriance, the new psychologist clearly thrusts himself into a new wasteland and a new suspicion. The On the prejudices of philosophers


old psychologists might have found things easier and more enjoyable -: but, in the end, the new psychologist knows by this very token that he is condemned to invention - and, who knows? perhaps to discovery . -


Physiologists should think twice before positioning the drive for selfpreservation as the cardinal drive of an organic being. Above all, a living thing wants to discharge its strength - life itself is will to power -: selfpreservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent consequences of this. - In short, here as elsewhere, watch out for superfluous teleological principles! - such as the drive for preservation (which we owe to Spinoza's inconsistency -). This is demanded by method, which must essentially be the economy of principles.


Now it is beginning to dawn on maybe five or six brains that physics too is only an interpretation and arrangement of the world (according to ourselves! if I may say so) and not an explanation of the world. But to the extent that physics rests on belief in the senses, it passes for more, and will continue to pass for more, namely for an explanation, for a long time to come. It has our eyes and our fingers as its allies, it has visual evidence and tangibility as its allies. This helped it to enchant, persuade, convince an age with a basically plebeian taste - indeed, it instinctively follows the canon of truth of the eternally popular sensualism. What is plain, what 'explains'? Only what can be seen and felt, - this is as far as any problem has to be pursued. Conversely: the strong attraction of the Platonic way of thinking consisted in its opposition to precisely this empiricism. It was a noble way of thinking, suitable perhaps for people who enjoyed even stronger and more discriminating senses than our contemporaries, but who knew how to find a higher triumph in staying master over these senses. And they did this by throwing drab, cold, gray nets of concepts over the brightly colored whirlwind of the senses - the rabble of the senses, as Plato said. There was a type of enjoyment in overpowering Nietzsche is again making a pun by contrasting the terms Erfinden (invention) and Finden (discovery). Cf. Nomoi (Laws) a-b.


and interpreting the world in the manner of Plato, different from the enjoyment offered by today's physicists, or by the Darwinians and antiteleologists who work in physiology, with their principle of the 'smallest possible force' and greatest possible stupidity. 'Where man has nothing more to see and grasp, he has nothing more to do' - this imperative is certainly different from the Platonic one, but for a sturdy, industrious race of machinists and bridge-builders of the future, people with tough work to do, it just might be the right imperative for the job. Tostudy physiology with a good conscience, we must insist that the sense organs are not appearances in the way idealist philosophy uses that term: as such, they certainly could not be causes! Sensualism, therefore, at least as a regulative principle, if not as a heuristic principle. - What? and other people even say that the external world is the product of our organs? But then our body, as a piece of this external world, would really be the product of our organs! But then our organs themselves would really be - the product of our organs! This looks to me like a thorough reductio ad absurdum : given that the concept of a causa sui is something thoroughly absurd. So does it follow that the external world is not the product of our organs -? There are still harmless self-observers who believe in the existence of 'immediate certainties,' such as 'I think,' or the 'I will' that was Schopenhauer's superstition: just as if knowledge had been given an object here to seize, stark naked, as a 'thing-in-itself,' and no falsification took place from either the side of the subject or the side of the object. But I will say this a hundred times: 'immediate certainty,' like 'absolute knowledge' and the 'thing in itself ' contains a contradictio in adjecto. For once and for all, we should free ourselves from the seduction of words! Let the people believe that knowing means knowing to the very end; the philosopher has to say: 'When I dissect the process expressed in the proposition Reduction to an absurdity (contradiction). Cause of itself. Contradiction in terms. On the prejudices of philosophers


'I think,' I get a whole set of bold claims that are difficult, perhaps impossible, to establish, - for instance, that I am the one who is thinking, that there must be something that is thinking in the first place, that thinking is an activity and the effect of a being who is considered the cause, that there is an 'I,' and finally, that it has already been determined what is meant by thinking, - that I know what thinking is. Because if I had not already made up my mind what thinking is, how could I tell whether what had just happened was not perhaps 'willing' or 'feeling'? Enough: this 'I think' presupposes that I compare my present state with other states that I have seen in myself, in order to determine what it is: and because of this retrospective comparison with other types of 'knowing,' this present state has absolutely no 'immediate certainty' for me.' - In place of that 'immediate certainty' which may, in this case, win the faith of the people, the philosopher gets handed a whole assortment of metaphysical questions, genuinely probing intellectual questions of conscience, such as: 'Where do I get the concept of thinking from? Why do I believe in causes and effects? What gives me the right to speak about an I, and, for that matter, about an I as cause, and, finally, about an I as the cause of thoughts?' Whoever dares to answer these metaphysical questions right away with an appeal to a sort of intuitive knowledge, like the person who says: 'I think and know that at least this is true, real, certain' - he will find the philosopher of today ready with a smile and two question-marks. 'My dear sir,' the philosopher will perhaps give him to understand, 'it is improbable that you are not mistaken: but why insist on the truth?' -


As far as the superstitions of the logicians are concerned: I will not stop emphasizing a tiny little fact that these superstitious men are loath to admit: that a thought comes when 'it' wants, and not when 'I' want. It is, therefore, a falsification of the facts to say that the subject 'I' is the condition of the predicate 'think.' It thinks: but to say the 'it' is just that famous old 'I' - well that is just an assumption or opinion, to put it mildly, and by no means an 'immediate certainty.' In fact, there is already too much packed into the 'it thinks': even the 'it' contains an interpretation of the process, and does not belong to the process itself. People are following grammatical habits here in drawing conclusions, reasoning that 'thinking is an activity, behind every activity something is Beyond Good and Evil active, therefore -.' Following the same basic scheme, the older atomism looked behind every 'force' that produces effects for that little lump of matter in which the force resides, and out of which the effects are produced, which is to say: the atom. More rigorous minds finally learned how to make do without that bit of 'residual earth,' and perhaps one day even logicians will get used to making do without this little 'it' (into which the honest old I has disappeared).


That a theory is refutable is, frankly, not the least of its charms: this is precisely how it attracts the more refined intellects. The theory of 'free will,' which has been refuted a hundred times, appears to owe its endurance to this charm alone -: somebody will always come along and feel strong enough to refute it. Philosophers tend to talk about the will as if it were the most familiar thing in the world. In fact, Schopenhauer would have us believe that the will is the only thing that is really familiar, familiar through and through, familiar without pluses or minuses. But I have always thought that, here too, Schopenhauer was only doing what philosophers always tend to do: adopting and exaggerating a popular prejudice . Willing strikes me as, above all, something complicated , something unified only in a word - and this single word contains the popular prejudice that has overruled whatever minimal precautions philosophers might take. So let us be more cautious, for once - let us be 'unphilosophical.' Let us say: in every act of willing there is, to begin with, a plurality of feelings, namely: the feeling of the state awayfromwhich , the feeling of the state towards which , and the feeling of this 'away from' and 'towards' themselves. But this is accompanied by a feeling of the muscles that comes into play through a sort of habit as soon as we 'will,' even without our putting 'arms and legs' into motion. Just as feeling - and indeed many feelings - must be recognized as ingredients of the will, thought must be as well. In every act of will there is a commandeering thought, - and we really should not believe this thought can be divorced from the 'willing,' as if some will would then be left over! Third, the will is not just a complex of feeling and On the prejudices of philosophers


thinking; rather, it is fundamentally an affect : and specifically the affect of the command. What is called 'freedom of the will' is essentially the affect of superiority with respect to something that must obey: 'I am free, 'it' must obey' - this consciousness lies in every will, along with a certain straining of attention, a straight look that fixes on one thing and one thing only, an unconditional evaluation 'now this is necessary and nothing else,' an inner certainty that it will be obeyed, and whatever else comes with the position of the commander. A person who wills -, commands something inside himself that obeys, or that he believes to obey. But now we notice the strangest thing about the will - about this multifarious thing that people have only one word for. On the one hand, we are, under the circumstances, both the one who commands and the one who obeys, and as the obedient one we are familiar with the feelings of compulsion, force, pressure, resistance, and motion that generally start right after the act of willing. On the other hand, however, we are in the habit of ignoring and deceiving ourselves about this duality by means of the synthetic concept of the 'I.' As a result, a whole chain of erroneous conclusions, and, consequently, false evaluations have become attached to the will, - to such an extent that the one who wills believes, in good faith, that willing suffices for action. Since it is almost always the case that there is will only where the effect of command, and therefore obedience, and therefore action, may be expected , the appearance translates into the feeling, as if there were a necessity of effect . In short, the one who wills believes with a reasonable degree of certainty that will and action are somehow one; he attributes the success, the performance of the willing to the will itself, and consequently enjoys an increase in the feeling of power that accompanies all success. 'Freedom of the will' - that is the word for the multi-faceted state of pleasure of one who commands and, at the same time, identifies himself with the accomplished act of willing. As such, he enjoys the triumph over resistances, but thinks to himself that it was his will alone that truly overcame the resistance. Accordingly, the one who wills takes his feeling of pleasure as the commander, and adds to it the feelings of pleasure from the successful instruments that carry out the task, as well as from


the useful 'under-wills' or under-souls - our body is, after all, only a society constructed out of many souls -. L'effet c'est moi : what happens here is what happens in every well-constructed and The effect is I. Beyond Good and Evil happy community: the ruling class identifies itself with the successes of the community.Allwilling is simply a matter of commanding and obeying, on the groundwork, as I have said, of a society constructed out of many 'souls': from which a philosopher should claim the right to understand willing itself within the framework of morality: morality understood as a doctrine of the power relations under which the phenomenon of 'life' arises. -


That individual philosophical concepts are not arbitrary and do not grow up on their own, but rather grow in reference and relation to each other; that however suddenly and randomly they seem to emerge in the history of thought, they still belong to a system just as much as all the members of the fauna of a continent do: this is ultimately revealed by the certainty with which the most diverse philosophers will always fill out a definite basic scheme of possible philosophies. Under an invisible spell, they will each start out anew, only to end up revolving in the same orbit once again. Howeverindependent of each other they might feel themselves to be, with their critical or systematic wills, something inside of them drives them on, something leads them into a particular order, one after the other, and this something is precisely the innate systematicity and relationship of concepts. In fact, their thinking is not nearly as much a discovery as it is a recognition, remembrance, a returning and homecoming into a distant, primordial, total economy of the soul, from which each concept once grew: - to this extent, philosophizing is a type of atavism of the highest order. The strange family resemblance of all Indian, Greek, and German philosophizing speaks for itself clearly enough. Where there are linguistic affinities, then because of the common philosophy of grammar (I mean: due to the unconscious domination and direction through similar grammatical functions), it is obvious that everything lies ready from the very start for a similar development and sequence of philosophical systems; on the other hand, the way seems as good as blocked for certain other possibilities of interpreting the world. Philosophers of the Ural-Altaic language group (where the concept of the subject is the most poorly developed) are more likely to 'see the world' differently, and to be found on paths different from those taken by the Indo-Germans or Muslims: the spell of particular grammatical functions is in the last analysis the spell of On the prejudices of philosophers physiological value judgments and racial conditioning. - So much towards a rejection of Locke's superficiality with regard to the origin of ideas.


The causa sui is the best self-contradiction that has ever been conceived, a type of logical rape and abomination. But humanity's excessive pride has got itself profoundly and horribly entangled with precisely this piece of nonsense. The longing for 'freedom of the will' in the superlative metaphysical sense (which, unfortunately, still rules in the heads of the halfeducated), the longing to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for your actions yourself and to relieve God, world, ancestors, chance, and society of the burden - all this means nothing less than being that very causa sui and, with a courage greater than Munchhausen's, pulling yourself by the hair from the swamp of nothingness up into existence. Suppose someone sees through the boorish naivet'e of this famous concept of 'free will' and manages to get it out of his mind; I would then ask him to carry his 'enlightenment' a step further and to rid his mind of the reversal of this misconceived concept of 'free will': I mean the 'un-free will,' which is basically an abuse of cause and effect. We should not erroneously objectify 'cause' and 'effect' like the natural scientists do (and whoever else thinks naturalistically these days -) in accordance with the dominant mechanistic stupidity which would have the cause push and shove until it 'effects' something; we should use 'cause' and 'effect' only as pure concepts , which is to say as conventional fictions for the purpose of description and communication, not explanation. In the 'in-itself ' there is nothing like 'causal association,' 'necessity,' or 'psychological un-freedom.' There, the 'effect' does not follow 'from the cause,' there is no rule of 'law.' We are the ones who invented causation, succession, for-each-other, relativity, compulsion, numbers, law, freedom, grounds, purpose; and if we project and inscribe this symbol world onto things as an 'in-itself,' then this is the way we have always done things, namely mythologically . The 'un-free will' is mythology; in real life it is only a matter of strong and weak wills. It is almost always a symptom of what is lacking in a thinker when he senses some compulsion, need, having-to-follow, pressure, unfreedom in every 'causal connection' and 'psychological


necessity.' It is Cause of itself. Beyond Good and Evil very telling to feel this way - the person tells on himself. And in general, if I have observed correctly, 'un-freedom of the will' is regarded as a problem by two completely opposed parties, but always in a profoundly personal manner. The one party would never dream of relinquishing their 'responsibility,' a belief in themselves , a personal right to their own merit (the vain races belong to this group -). Those in the other party, on the contrary, do not want to be responsible for anything or to be guilty of anything; driven by an inner self-contempt, they long to be able to shift the blame for themselves to something else. When they write books these days, this latter group tends to side with the criminal; a type of socialist pity is their most attractive disguise. And, in fact, the fatalism of the weak of will starts to look surprisingly attractive when it can present itself as ' la religion de la souffrance humaine ': this is its 'good taste.'


You must forgive an old philologist like me who cannot help maliciously putting his finger on bad tricks of interpretation: but this 'conformity of nature to law,' which you physicists are so proud of, just as if - - exists only because of your interpretation and bad 'philology.' It is not a matter of fact, not a 'text,' but instead only a naive humanitarian correction and a distortion of meaning that you use in order to comfortably accommodate the democratic instincts of the modern soul! 'Everywhere, equality before the law, - in this respect, nature is no different and no better off than we are': a lovely case of ulterior motivation; and it serves once more to disguise the plebeian antagonism against all privilege and autocracy together with a second and more refined atheism. ' Ni dieu, ni matre ' -you want this too: and therefore 'hurray for the laws of nature!' - right? But, as I have said, this is interpretation, not text; and somebody with an opposite intention and mode of interpretation could come along and be able to read from the same nature, and with reference to the same set of appearances,atyrannicallyruthlessandpitilessexecutionofpowerclaims. This sort of interpreter would show the unequivocal and unconditional nature of all 'will to power' so vividly and graphically that almost every word, and even the word 'tyranny,' would ultimately seem useless or like weakening and mollifying metaphors - and too humanizing. Yet this The religion of human suffering. Neither God nor master.


interpreter might nevertheless end up claiming the same thing about this world as you, namely that it follows a 'necessary' and 'calculable' course, although not because laws are dominant in it, but rather because laws are totally absent , and every power draws its final consequences at every moment. Granted, this is only an interpretation too - and you will be eager enough to make this objection? - well then, so much the better.


All psychology so far has been stuck in moral prejudices and fears: it has not ventured into the depths. To grasp psychology as morphology and the doctrine of the development of the will to power , which is what I have done - nobody has ever come close to this, not even in thought: this, of course, to the extent that we are permitted to regard what has been written so far as a symptom of what has not been said until now. The power of moral prejudice has deeply affected the most spiritual world, which seems like the coldest world, the one most likely to be devoid of any presuppositions - and the effect has been manifestly harmful, hindering, dazzling, and distorting. A genuine physio-psychology has to contend with unconscious resistances in the heart of the researcher, it has 'the heart' against it. Even a doctrine of the reciprocal dependence of the 'good' and the 'bad' drives will (as a refined immorality) cause distress and aversion in a strong and sturdy conscience - as will, to an even greater extent, a doctrine of the derivation of all the good drives from the bad. But suppose somebody considers even the affects of hatred, envy, greed, and power-lust as the conditioning affects of life, as elements that fundamentally and essentially need to be present in the total economy of life, and consequently need to be enhanced where life is enhanced, - this person will suffer from such a train of thought as if from sea-sickness. Andyeteventhishypothesis is far from being the most uncomfortable and unfamiliar in this enormous, practically untouched realm of dangerous knowledge: - and there are hundreds of good reasons for people to keep out of it, if they can ! On the other hand, if you are ever cast loose here with your ship, well now! come on! clench your teeth! open your eyes! and grab hold of the helm! - we are sailing straight over and away from morality; we are crushing and perhaps destroying the remnants of our own morality by daring to travel there - but what do we matter! Never before have intrepid voyagers and adventurers opened up a more


profound world of insight: and the psychologist who 'makes sacrifices' (they are not the sacrifizio dell'intelletto - to the contrary!) can at least demand in return that psychology again be recognized as queen of the sciences, and that the rest of the sciences exist to serve and prepare for it. Because, from now on, psychology is again the path to the fundamental problems. Sacrifice of the intellect. In German: Wissenschaften . Wissenschaft has generally been translated as 'science' throughout the text, but the German term is broader than the English, and includes the humanities as well as the natural and social sciences.


Osancta simplicitas ! Whatastrangesimplification and falsification people live in! The wonders never cease, for those who devote their eyes to such wondering. How we have made everything around us so bright and easy and free and simple! How we have given our senses a carte blanche for everything superficial, given our thoughts a divine craving for high-spirited leaps and false inferences! - How we have known from the start to hold on to our ignorance in order to enjoy a barely comprehensible freedom, thoughtlessness, recklessness, bravery, and joy in life; to delight in life itself! And, until now, science could arise only on this solidified, granite foundation of ignorance, the will to know rising up on the foundation of a much more powerful will, the will to not know, to uncertainty, to untruth! Not as its opposite, but rather - as its refinement! Even when language , here as elsewhere, cannot get over its crassness and keeps talking about opposites where there are only degrees and multiple, subtle shades of gradation; even when the ingrained tartuffery of morals (which is now part of our 'flesh and blood,' and cannot be overcome) twists the words in our mouths (we who should know better); now and then we still realize what is happening, and laugh about how it is precisely the best science that will best know how to keep us in this simplified , utterly artificial, In German: der freie Geist . I have generally rendered Geist and words using Geist (such as geistig , Geistigkeit ) as 'spirit' and words using spirit (so: spiritual and spirituality). However, Geist is a broader term than spirit, meaning mind or intellect as well. Oholy simplicity. Beyond Good and Evil well-invented, well-falsified world, how unwillingly willing science loves error because, being alive, - it loves life!


After such a joyful entrance, there is a serious word that I want heard; it is intended for those who are most serious. Stand tall, you philosophers and friends of knowledge, and beware of martyrdom! Of suffering 'for the sake of truth'! Even of defending yourselves! You will ruin the innocence and fine objectivity of your conscience, you will be stubborn towards objections and red rags, you will become stupid, brutish, bullish if, while fighting against danger, viciousness, suspicion, ostracism, and even nastier consequences of animosity, you also have to pose as the worldwide defenders of truth. As if 'the Truth' were such a harmless and bungling little thing that she needed defenders! And you of all people, her Knights of the Most Sorrowful Countenance, my Lord Slacker and Lord Webweaver of the Spirit! In the end, you know very well that it does not matter whether you , of all people, are proved right, and furthermore, that no philosopher so far has ever been proved right. You also know that every little question-mark you put after your special slogans and favorite doctrines (and occasionally after yourselves) might contain more truth than all the solemn gestures and trump cards laid before accusers and courts of law! So step aside instead! Run away and hide! And be sure to have your masks and your finesse so people will mistake you for something else, or be a bit scared of you! And do not forget the garden, the garden with golden trelliswork! And have people around you who are like a garden, - or like music over the waters when evening sets and the day is just a memory. Choose the good solitude, the free, high-spirited, light-hearted solitude that, in some sense, gives you the right to stay good yourself! How poisonous, how cunning, how bad you become in every long war that cannot be waged out in the open! How personal you become when you have been afraid for a long time, keeping your eye on enemies, on possible enemies! These outcasts of society (the long-persecuted, the badly harassed, as well as those forced to become hermits, the Spinozas or Giordano Brunos): they may work under a spiritual guise, and might not even know what they are doing, but they will always end up subtly seeking A reference to Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote ( ).


vengeance and mixing their poisons ( just try digging up the foundation of Spinoza's ethics and theology!). Not to mention the absurd spectacle of moral indignation, which is an unmistakable sign that a philosopher has lost his philosophical sense of humor. The philosopher's martyrdom, his 'self-sacrifice for the truth,' brings to light the agitator and actor in him; and since we have only ever regarded him with artistic curiosity, it is easy to understand the dangerous wish to see many of these philosophers in their degeneration for once (degenerated into 'martyrs' or loud-mouths on their stage or soap-box). It's just that, with this sort of wish we have to be clear about what we will be seeing: - only a satyr-play, only a satirical epilogue, only the continuing proof that the long, real tragedy has come to an end (assuming that every philosophy was originally a long tragedy - ).


Every choice human being strives instinctively for a citadel and secrecy where he is rescued from the crowds, the many, the vast majority; where, as the exception, he can forget the human norm. The only exception is when he is driven straight towards this norm by an even stronger instinct, in search of knowledge in the great and exceptional sense. Anybody who, in dealing with people, does not occasionally glisten in all the shades of distress, green and gray with disgust, weariness, pity, gloominess, and loneliness - he is certainly not a person of higher taste. But if he does not freely take on all this effort and pain, if he keeps avoiding it and remains, as I said, placid and proud and hidden in his citadel, well then one thing is certain: he is not made for knowledge, not predestined for it. Because if he were, he would eventually have to say to himself: 'To hell with good taste! The norm is more interesting than the exception - than me, the exception!' - and he would wend his way downwards , and, above all, 'inwards.' The long and serious study of the average manrequires a great deal of disguise, self-overcoming, confidentiality, bad company (all company is bad company except with your equals); still, this is all a necessary part of the life story of every philosopher, perhaps the least pleasant, most foul-smelling part and the one richest in disappointments. But if he is lucky, as befits knowledge's child of fortune, the philosopher will find real shortcuts and aids to make his work easier. I mean he will find so-called cynics - people who easily recognize the animal, the commonplace, the 'norm' within themselves, and yet still have a degree of spiritedness and Beyond Good and Evil


an urge to talk about themselves and their peers in front of witnesses :-sometimes they even wallow in books as if in their own filth. Cynicism is the only form in which base souls touch upon that thing which is genuine honesty. And the higher man needs to open his ears to all cynicism, crude or refined, and congratulate himself every time the buffoon speaks up without shame, or the scientific satyr is heard right in front of him. There are even cases where enchantment mixes with disgust: namely, where genius, by a whim of nature, is tied to some indiscreet billy-goat and ape, like the Abb'e Galiani, the most profound, discerning, and perhaps also the filthiest man of his century. He was much more profound than Voltaire, and consequently a lot quieter. But, as I have already suggested, what happens more often is that the scientific head is placed on an ape's body, a more subtle and exceptional understanding is put in a base soul. This is not a rare phenomenon, particularly among physicians and physiologists of morals. And wherever even one person is speaking about man without any bitterness but instead quite innocuously, describing him as a stomach with dual needs and a head with one; wherever someone sees and seeks and wants to see only hunger, sex-drive and vanity, as if these were the sole and genuine motivating forces of human action; in short, wherever somebody is speaking 'badly' of people - and not even wickedly - this is wherethelover of knowledge should listen with subtle and studious attention. He should keep his ears open wherever people are speaking without anger. Because the angry man, and anyone who is constantly tearing and shredding himself with his own teeth (or, in place of himself, the world, or God, or society), may very well stand higher than the laughing and selfsatisfied satyr, considered morally. But considered in any other way, he is the more ordinary, more indifferent, less instructive case. And nobody lies as much as the angry man. -


It is hard to be understood, particularly when you think and live gangasrotogati amongpeople who think and live differently, namely kurmagati or at best 'walking like frogs,' mandeikagati (am I doing everything I can to be hard to understand myself?), and you should give heartfelt thanks for Sanskrit for 'as the current of the [river] Ganges moves.' Sanskrit for 'as the tortoise moves.' the goodwill apparent in any subtlety of interpretation. But as far as 'good friends' are concerned, they are always too easy-going and think that they have a right to be easy-going, just because they are friends. So it is best to grant them some leeway from the very start, and leave some latitude for misunderstandings: - and then you can even laugh. Or, alternatively, get rid of them altogether, these good friends, - and then laugh some more!


The hardest thing to translate from one language into another is the tempo of its style, which is grounded in the character of the race, or - to be more physiological - in the average tempo of its 'metabolism.' There are well-meaning interpretations that are practically falsifications; they involuntarily debase the original, simply because it has a tempo that cannot be translated - a tempo that is brave and cheerful and leaps over and out of every danger in things and in words. Germans are almost incapable of a presto in their language: and so it is easy to see that they are incapable of many of the most delightful and daring nuances of free, free-spirited thought. Since the buffo and the satyr are alien to the German in body and in conscience, Aristophanes and Petronius are as good as untranslatable. Everythingponderous,lumbering,solemnlyawkward,everylong-winded and boring type of style is developed by the Germans in over-abundant diversity. Forgive me for pointing out that even Goethe's prose, with its mixture of the stiff and the delicate, is no exception; it is both a reflection of the 'good old days' to which it belonged and an expression of the Germantaste back when there still was a 'German taste': it was a Rococo taste, in moribus et artibus . Lessing is an exception, thanks to his actor's nature that understood and excelled at so much. He was not the translator of Bayle for nothing; he gladly took refuge in the company of Diderot and Voltaire, and still more gladly among the Roman writers of comedy. Even in tempo, Lessing loved free-thinking and the escape from Germany. But how could the German language - even in the prose of a Lessing imitate Machiavelli's tempo - Machiavelli who, in his Principe , lets us breathe the fine, dry air of Florence? He cannot help presenting the most serious concerns in a boisterous allegrissimo , and is, perhaps, not without In customs and arts. In German: Freigeisterei . Il Principe ( The Prince )( ). Beyond Good and Evil


a malicious, artistic sense for the contrast he is risking: thoughts that are long, hard, tough, and dangerous, and a galloping tempo and the very best and most mischievous mood. Who, finally, would dare to translate Petronius into German, a man who, more than any great musician so far, wasthemasterofthe presto in inventions, ideas, and words. What do all the swamps of the sick and wicked world - even the 'ancient world' - matter in the end for someone like him, with feet of wind, with the breath and the force and the liberating scorn of a wind that makes everything healthy by making everything run ! And as for Aristophanes, that transfiguring, complementaryspiritforwhosesakewecan forgive the whole Greek world for existing (as long as we have realized in full depth and profundity what needs to be forgiven and transfigured here): - nothing I know has given me a better vision of Plato's secrecy and Sphinx nature than that happily preserved petit fait : under the pillow of his deathbed they did not find a 'Bible' or anything Egyptian, Pythagorean, or Platonic - but instead, Aristophanes. How would even a Plato have endured life - a Greek life that he said No to - without an Aristophanes! - Independenceisanissuethatconcernsveryfewpeople:-itisaprerogative of the strong. And even when somebody has every right to be independent, if he attempts such a thing without having to do so, he proves that he is probably not only strong, but brave to the point of madness. He enters a labyrinth, he multiplies by a thousand the dangers already inherent in the very act of living, not the least of which is the fact that no one with eyes will see how and where he gets lost and lonely and is torn limb from limb by some cave-Minotaur of conscience. And assuming a man like this is destroyed, it is an event so far from human comprehension that people do not feel it or feel for him: - and he cannot go back again! He cannot go back to their pity again! - - Our highest insights must - and should! - sound like stupidities, or possibly crimes, when they come without permission to people whose ears have Little fact.


no affinity for them and were not predestined for them. The distinction between the exoteric and the esoteric, once made by philosophers, was found among the Indians as well as among Greeks, Persians, and Muslims. Basically, it was found everywhere that people believed in an order of rank and not in equality and equal rights. The difference between these terms is not that the exoteric stands outside and sees, values, measures, and judges from this external position rather than from some internal one. What is more essential is that the exoteric sees things up from below - while the esoteric sees them down from above! There are heights of the soul from whose vantage point even tragedy stops having tragic effects; and who would dare to decide whether the collective sight of the world's many woes would necessarily compel and seduce us into a feeling of pity, a feeling that would only serve to double these woes? ... What helps feed or nourish the higher type of man must be almost poisonous to a very different and lesser type. The virtues of a base man could indicate vices and weaknesses in a philosopher. If a higher type of man were to degenerate and be destroyed, this very destruction could give him the qualities needed to make people honor him as a saint down in the lower realm where he has sunk. There are books that have inverse values for soul and for health, depending on whether they are used by the lower souls and lowlier life-forces, or by the higher and more powerful ones. In the first case, these books are dangerous and cause deterioration and dissolution; in the second case, they are the heralds' calls that summon the most courageous to their courage. Books for the general public always smell foul: the stench of petty people clings to them. It usually stinks in places where the people eat and drink, even where they worship. You should not go to church if you want to breath clean air. - - When people are young, they admire and despise without any of that art of nuance which is life's greatest reward; so it is only fair that they will come to pay dearly for having assaulted people and things like this, with a Yes and a No. Everything is set up so that the worst possible taste, the In German: nicht daf ur geartet . The term geartet is related to the German word Art (type), which appears frequently in this section as well as throughout the text.


In German: dass er entartete .


taste for the unconditional, gets cruelly and foolishly abused until people learn to put some art into their feelings, and prefer the risk they run with artifice, just like real artists of life do. It seems as if the wrath and reverence that characterize youth will not rest easy until they have falsified people and things thoroughly enough to be able to vent themselves on these targets. Youth is itself intrinsically falsifying and deceitful. Later, after the young soul has been tortured by constant disappointments, it ends up turning suspiciously on itself, still raging and wild, even in the force of its suspicion and the pangs of its conscience. How furious it is with itself now, how impatiently it tears itself apart, what revenge it exacts for having blinded itself for so long, as if its blindness had been voluntary! In this transitional state, we punish ourselves by distrusting our feelings, we torture our enthusiasm with doubts, we experience even a good conscience as a danger, as if it were a veil wrapped around us, something marking the depletion of a more subtle, genuine honesty. And, above all, we become partisan, partisan on principle against 'youth.' - A decade later, we realize that all this - was youthfulness too!


Duringthelongestepochofhumanhistory(whichiscalledtheprehistoric age) an action's value or lack of value was derived from its consequences; the action itself was taken as little into account as its origin. Instead, the situation was something like that of present-day China, where the honor or dishonor of a child reflects back on the parents. In the same way, it was the retroactive force of success or failure that showed people whether to think of an action as good or bad. We can call this period the pre-moral period of humanity. At that point, the imperative 'knowthyself!' was still unknown. By contrast, over the course of the last ten millennia, people across a large part of the earth have gradually come far enough to see the origin, not the consequence, as decisive for the value of an action. By and large, this was a great event, a considerable refinement of outlook and criterion, an unconscious after-effect of the dominance of aristocratic values and the belief in 'origin,' and the sign of a period that we can signify as moral in a narrow sense. This marks the first attempt at self-knowledge. Origin rather than consequence: what a reversal of perspective! And, certainly, this reversal was only accomplished after long struggles and fluctuations! Granted: this meant that a disastrous


new superstition, a distinctive narrowness of interpretation gained dominance. The origin of the action was interpreted in the most determinate sense possible, as origin out of an intention . People were united in the belief that the value of an action was exhausted by the value of its intention. Intention as the entire origin and prehistory of an action: under this prejudice people have issued moral praise, censure, judgment, and philosophyalmosttothisday.-Buttoday,thankstoarenewedself-contemplation and deepening of humanity, shouldn't we be facing a renewed necessity to effect a reversal and fundamental displacement of values? Shouldn't we be standing on the threshold of a period that would be designated, negatively at first, as extra-moral ? Today, when we immoralists, at least, suspect that the decisive value is conferred by what is specifically unintentional about an action, and that all its intentionality, everything about it that can be seen, known, or raised to 'conscious awareness,' only belongs to its surface and skin - which, like every skin, reveals something but conceals even more? In short, we believe that the intention is only a sign and symptom that first needs to be interpreted, and that, moreover, it is a sign that means too many things and consequently means almost nothing by itself. We believe that morality in the sense it has had up to now (the morality of intentions) was a prejudice, a precipitousness, perhaps a preliminary, a thing on about the same level as astrology and alchemy, but in any case something that must be overcome. The overcoming of morality - even the self-overcoming of morality, in a certain sense: let this be the name for that long and secret labor which is reserved for the most subtle, genuinely honest, and also the most malicious consciences of the day, who are living touchstones of the soul. -


There is nothing else to be done: the feelings of utter devotion, of sacrifice for your neighbor, and the entire morality of self-abnegation have to be mercilessly taken to court and made to account for themselves. And the same holds for the aesthetic of 'disinterested contemplation,' the seductive guise under which the castration of art is presently trying to create a good conscience for itself. These feelings of 'for others,' of ' not for myself,' contain far too much sugar and sorcery for us not to need to become doubly suspicious here and ask: 'Aren't these perhaps seductions ?' To say that these feelings are pleasing (for the one who has Beyond Good and Evil them, for the one who enjoys their fruits, and even for the mere onlooker) is not yet an argument in their favor , but rather constitutes a demand for caution. So let us be cautious!


It does not matter what philosophical standpoint you might take these days: any way you look at it, the erroneousness of the world we think we live in is the most certain and solid fact that our eyes can still grab hold of. We find reason after reason for it, reasons that might lure us into speculations about a deceptive principle in 'the essence of things.' But anyone who makes thinking itself (and therefore 'the spirit') responsible for the falseness of the world (an honorable way out, taken by every conscious or unconscious advocatus dei ), anyone who considers this world, together with space, time, form, and motion, to be falsely inferred - such a person would at the very least have ample cause to grow suspicious of thinking altogether. Hasn't it played the biggest joke on us to date? And what guarantee would there be that it wouldn't keep doing what it has always done? In all seriousness, there is something touching and awe-inspiring about the innocence that, to this day, lets a thinker place himself in front of consciousness with the request that it please give him honest answers: for example, whether or not it is 'real,' and why it so resolutely keeps the external world at arm's length, and other questions like that. The belief in 'immediate certainties' is a moral naivet'e that does credit to us philosophers: but - we should stop being 'merely moral,' for once! Aside from morality, the belief in immediate certainties is a stupidity that does us little credit! In bourgeois life, a suspicious disposition might be a sign of 'bad character' and consequently considered unwise. But here with us, beyond the bourgeois sphere with its Yeses and Noes, - what is to stop us from being unwise and saying: 'As the creature who has been the biggest dupe the earth has ever seen, the philosopher pretty much has a right to a 'bad character.' It is his duty to be suspicious these days, to squint as maliciously as possible out of every abyss of mistrust.' - Forgive me for playing jokes with this gloomy grimace and expression: because when it comes to betrayal and being betrayed, I myself learned a long time ago to think differently and evaluate differently; and my elbow is ready with at Advocate of God (as opposed to the devil's advocate).


least a couple of nudges for the blind rage of philosophers as they struggle not to be betrayed. Why not ? It is no more than a moral prejudice that the truth is worth more than appearance; in fact, it is the world's most poorly proven assumption. Let us admit this much: that life could not exist except on the basis of perspectival valuations and appearances; and if, with the virtuous enthusiasm and inanity of many philosophers, someone wanted to completely abolish the 'world of appearances,' - well, assuming you could do that, - at least there would not be any of your 'truth' left either! Actually, why do we even assume that 'true' and 'false' are intrinsically opposed? Isn't it enough to assume that there are levels of appearance and, as it were, lighter and darker shades and tones of appearance - different valeurs , to use the language of painters? Why shouldn't the world that is relevant to us - be a fiction? And if someone asks: 'But doesn't fiction belong with an author?' - couldn't we shoot back: ' Why? Doesn't this 'belonging' belong, perhaps, to fiction as well? Aren't we allowed to be a bit ironic with the subject, as we are with the predicate and object? Shouldn't philosophers rise above the belief in grammar? With all due respect to governesses, isn't it about time philosophy renounced governess-beliefs?' - O Voltaire! O humanity! O nonsense! There is something to 'truth,' to the search for truth; and when a human being is too humane about it when ' il ne cherche le vrai que pour faire le bien ' - I bet he won't find anything! Assuming that our world of desires and passions is the only thing 'given' as real, that we cannot get down or up to any 'reality' except the reality of our drives (since thinking is only a relation between these drives) - aren't we allowed to make the attempt and pose the question as to whether something like this 'given' isn't enough to render the so-called mechanistic (and thus material) world comprehensible as well? I do not mean comprehensible as a deception, a 'mere appearance,' a 'representation' Values. 'He looks for truth only to do good.' Beyond Good and Evil


(in the sense of Berkeley and Schopenhauer); I mean it might allow us to understand the mechanistic world as belonging to the same plane of reality as our affects themselves -, as a primitive form of the world of affect, where everything is contained in a powerful unity before branching off and organizing itself in the organic process (and, of course, being softened and weakened -). We would be able to understand the mechanistic world as a kind of life of the drives, where all the organic functions (self-regulation, assimilation, nutrition, excretion, and metabolism) are still synthetically bound together - as a pre-form of life? - In the end, we are not only allowed to make such an attempt: the conscience of method demands it. Multiple varieties of causation should not be postulated until the attempt to make do with a single one has been taken as far as it will go (ad absurdum , if you will). This is a moral of method that cannot be escaped these days; - it follows 'from the definition,' as a mathematician would say. The question is ultimately whether we recognize the will as, in effect, efficacious , whether we believe in the causality of the will. If we do (and this belief is really just our belief in causality itself -), then we must make the attempt to hypothetically posit the causality of the will as the only type of causality there is. 'Will' can naturally have effects only on 'will' - and not on 'matter' (not on 'nerves' for instance -). Enough: wemustventure the hypothesis that everywhere 'effects' are recognized, will is effecting will - and that every mechanistic event in which a force is active is really a force and effect of the will. - Assuming, finally, that we succeeded in explaining our entire life of drives as the organization and outgrowth of one basic form of will (namely, of the will to power, which is my claim); assuming we could trace all organic functions back to this will to power and find that it even solved the problem of procreation and nutrition (which is a single problem); then we will have earned the right to clearly designate all efficacious force as: will to power . The world seen from inside, the world determined and described with respect to its 'intelligible character' - would be just this 'will to


power' and nothing else. - 'What? Doesn't that mean, to use a popular idiom: God is refuted but the devil is not - ?' On the contrary! On the contrary, my friends! And who the devil is forcing you to use popular idioms! -


This is what has finally happened, in the bright light of more recent times, to the French Revolution, that gruesome and (on close consideration) pointless farce: noble and enthusiastic spectators across Europe have, from a distance, interpreted their own indignations and enthusiasms into it, and for so long and with such passion that the text has finally disappeared under the interpretation . In the same way, a noble posterity could again misunderstand the entire past, and in so doing, perhaps, begin to make it tolerable to look at. - Or rather: hasn't this happened already? weren't we ourselves this 'noble posterity'? And right now, since we're realizing this to be the case - hasn't it stopped being so? No one would consider a doctrine to be true just because it makes people happy or virtuous, with the possible exception of the darling 'Idealists,' who wax enthusiastic over the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, and let all sorts of colorful, clumsy, and good-natured desiderata swim through their pond in utter confusion. Happiness and virtue are not arguments. Butweliketoforget(eventhoughtfulspiritslike to forget) that being made unhappy and evil are not counter-arguments either. Something could be true even if it is harmful and dangerous to the highest degree. It could even be part of the fundamental character of existence that people with complete knowledge get destroyed, - so that the strength of a spirit would be proportionate to how much of the 'truth' he could withstand - or, to put it more clearly, to what extent he needs it to be thinned out, veiled over, sweetened up, dumbed down, and lied about. But there is no doubt that when it comes to discovering certain aspects of the truth, people who are evil and unhappy are more fortunate and have a greater probability of success (not to mention those who are both evil and happy - a species that the moralists don't discuss). Perhaps harshness and cunning provide more favorable conditions for the origin of the strong, independent spirit and philosopher than that gentle, fine, yielding good nature and art of taking things lightly that people value, and value rightly, in a scholar. Assuming first of all that we do not limit our notion of the 'philosopher' to the philosophers who write books - or put their own philosophy into books! - One last feature for the picture of the free-spirited philosopher


Beyond Good and Evil is provided by Stendhal; and for the sake of the German taste, I will not overlook the chance to underscore this character - since it goes against the Germantaste. ' Pour etre bon philosophe ,' says this last, great psychologist, ' il faut etre sec, clair, sans illusion. Un banquier, qui a fait fortune, a une partie du caract'ere requis pour faire des d'ecouvertes en philosophie, c'est-'a-dire pour voir clair dans ce qui est .' Everything profound loves masks; the most profound things go so far as to hate images and likenesses. Wouldn't just the opposite be a proper disguise for the shame of a god? A questionable question: it would be odd if some mystic hadn't already risked something similar himself. There are events that are so delicate that it is best to cover them up with some coarseness and make them unrecognizable. There are acts of love and extravagant generosity in whose aftermath nothing is more advisable than to take a stick and give the eye-witnesses a good beating: this will obscure any memory traces. Many people are excellent at obscuring and abusing their own memory, so they can take revenge on at least this one accessory: shame is highly resourceful. It is not the worst things that we are the most ashamed of. Malicious cunning is not the only thing behind a mask there is so much goodness in cunning. I could imagine that a man with something precious and vulnerable to hide would roll through life, rough and round like an old, green, heavy-hooped wine cask; the subtlety of his shame will want it this way. A man with something profound in his shame encounters even his fate and delicate decisions along paths that few people have ever found, paths whose existence must be concealed from his closest and most trusted friends. His mortal danger is hidden from their eyes, and so is his regained sense of confidence in life. Somebody hidden in this way - who instinctively needs speech in order to be silent and concealed, and is tireless in evading communication wants and encourages a mask of himself to wander around, in his place, through the hearts and heads of his friends. And even if this is not what he wants, he will eventually realize that a mask of him has been there all the same, - and that this is for the best.


'To be a good philosopher you have to be dry, clear, and without illusions. A banker who has made a fortune has to a certain degree the right sort of character for making philosophical discoveries, i.e. for seeing clearly into what is.' From Stendhal's Correspondance in edite ( Unedited Correspondence )( ).


Every profound spirit needs a mask: what's more, a mask is constantly growing around every profound spirit, thanks to the consistently false (which is to say shallow ) interpretation of every word, every step, every sign of life he displays. - Wehaveto test ourselves to see whether we are destined for independence and command, and we have to do it at the right time. We should not sidestep our tests, even though they may well be the most dangerous game we can play, and, in the last analysis, can be witnessed by no judge other than ourselves. Not to be stuck to any person, not even somebody we love best - every person is a prison and a corner. Not to be stuck in any homeland, even the neediest and most oppressed - it is not as hard to tear your heart away from a victorious homeland. Not to be stuck in some pity: even for higher men, whose rare torture and helplessness we ourselves have accidentally glimpsed. Not to be stuck in some field of study: however much it tempts us with priceless discoveries, reserved, it seems, for us alone. Not to be stuck in our own detachment, in the ecstasy of those foreign vistas where birds keep flying higher so that they can keep seeing more below them: - the danger of those who fly. Not to be stuck to our own virtues and let our whole self be sacrificed for some one of our details, our 'hospitality,' for instance: this is the danger of dangers for rich souls of a higher type, who spend themselves extravagantly, almost indifferently, pushing the virtue of liberality to the point of vice. We must know to conserve ourselves : the greatest test of independence. A new breed of philosophers is approaching. I will risk christening them with a name not lacking in dangers. From what I can guess about them, from what they allow to be guessed (since it is typical of them to want to remain riddles in some respect), these philosophers of the future might have the right (and perhaps also the wrong) to be described as those who attempt . Ultimately, this name is itself only an attempt, and, if you will, a temptation. In German: Versucher . Nietzsche frequently uses the terms Versuch (attempt or experiment) and Versuchung (temptation), and plays on their similarity. Beyond Good and Evil


Are they new friends of 'truth,' these upcoming philosophers? Probably, since all philosophers so far have loved their truths. But they certainly will not be dogmatists. It would offend their pride, as well as their taste, if their truth were a truth for everyone (which has been the secret wish and hidden meaning of all dogmatic aspirations so far). 'My judgment is my judgment: other people don't have an obvious right to it too' - perhaps this is what such a philosopher of the future will say. We must do away with the bad taste of wanting to be in agreement with the majority. 'Good' is no longer good when it comes from your neighbor's mouth. And how could there ever be a 'common good'! The term is self-contradictory: whatever can be common will never have much value. In the end, it has to be as it is and has always been: great things are left for the great, abysses for the profound, delicacy and trembling for the subtle, and, all in all, everything rare for those who are rare themselves. -


After all this, do I really need to add that they will be free, very free spirits, these philosophers of the future - and that they certainly will not just be free spirits, but rather something more, higher, greater, and fundamentally different, something that does not want to be misunderstood or mistaken for anything else? But, in saying this, I feel - towards them almostasmuchastowardsourselves(whoaretheirheraldsandprecursors, we free spirits!) - an obligation to sweep away a stupid old prejudice and misunderstanding about all of us that has hung like a fog around the concept of the 'free spirit' for far too long, leaving it completely opaque. In all the countries of Europe, and in America as well, there is now something that abuses this name: a very narrow, restricted, chainedup type of spirit whose inclinations are pretty much the opposite of our own intentions and instincts (not to mention the fact that this restricted type will be a fully shut window and bolted door with respect to these approaching new philosophers). In a word (but a bad one): they belong to the levelers , these misnamed 'free spirits' - as eloquent and prolifically scribbling slaves of the democratic taste and its 'modern ideas.' They are all people without solitude, without their own solitude, clumsy, solid folks whose courage and honest decency cannot be denied - it's just that they are un-free and ridiculously superficial, particularly given their basic


tendency to think that all human misery and wrongdoing is caused by traditional social structures: which lands truth happily on its head! What they want to strive for with all their might is the universal, green pasture happiness of the herd, with security, safety, contentment, and an easier life for all. Their two most well-sung songs and doctrines are called: 'equal rights' and 'sympathy for all that suffers' - and they view suffering itself as something that needs to be abolished . We, who are quite the reverse, have kept an eye and a conscience open to the question of where and how the plant 'man' has grown the strongest, and we think that this has always happened under conditions that are quite the reverse. We think that the danger of the human condition has first had to grow to terrible heights, its power to invent and dissimulate (its 'spirit' -) has had to develop under prolonged pressure and compulsion into something refined and daring, its life-will has had to be intensified to an unconditional powerwill. We think that harshness, violence, slavery, danger in the streets and in the heart, concealment, Stoicism, the art of experiment, and devilry of every sort; that everything evil, terrible, tyrannical, predatory, and snakelike in humanity serves just as well as its opposite to enhance the species 'humanity.' But to say this much is to not say enough, and, in any event, this is the point we have reached with our speaking and our silence, at the other end of all modern ideology and herd desires: perhaps as their antipodes? Is it any wonder that we 'free spirits' are not exactly the most communicative spirits? That we do not want to fully reveal what a spirit might free himself from and what he will then perhaps be driven towards ? And as to the dangerous formula 'beyond good and evil,' it serves to protect us, at least from being mistaken for something else. We are something different from ' libres-penseurs ,' ' liberi pensatori ,' ' Freidenker ' and whatever else all these sturdy advocates of 'modern ideas' like to call themselves. At home in many countries of the spirit, at least as guests; repeatedly slipping away from the musty, comfortable corners where preference and prejudice, youth, origin, accidents of people and books, and even the fatigue of traveling seem to have driven us; full of malice


at the lures of dependency that lie hidden in honors, or money, or duties, or enthusiasms of the senses; grateful even for difficulties and inconstant health, because they have always freed us from some rule and In German: Versucherkunst (see note above). These are terms meaning 'free thinker' in French, Italian, and German.


its 'prejudice,' grateful to the god, devil, sheep, and maggot in us, curious to a fault, researchers to the point of cruelty, with unmindful fingers for the incomprehensible, with teeth and stomachs for the indigestible, ready for any trade that requires a quick wit and sharp senses, ready for any risk, thanks to an excess of 'free will,' with front and back souls whose ultimate aim is clear to nobody, with fore- and backgrounds that no foot can fully traverse, hidden under the cloak of light, conquerors, even if we look like heirs and prodigals, collectors and gatherers from morning until evening, miserly with our riches and our cabinets filled to the brim, economical with what we learn and forget, inventive in schemata, sometimes proud of tables of categories, sometimes pedants, sometimes night owls at work, even in bright daylight; yes, even scarecrows when the need arises - and today the need has arisen: inasmuch as we are born, sworn, jealous friends of solitude , our own deepest, most midnightly, noon-likely solitude. This is the type of people we are, we free spirits! and perhaps you are something of this yourselves, you who are approaching? you new philosophers? -


The human soul and its limits, the scope of human inner experience to date, the heights, depths, and range of these experiences, the entire history of the soul so far and its still unexhausted possibilities: these are the predestined hunting grounds for a born psychologist and lover of the 'great hunt.' But how often does he have to turn to himself in despair and say: 'Only one! only a single one! and this huge forest, this primeval forest!' And then he wishes he had a few hundred hunting aides and welltrained bloodhounds he could drive into the history of the human soul to round up his game. To no avail: time and again he gets an ample and bitter reminder of how hard it is to find hounds and helpers for the very things that prick his curiosity. The problem with sending scholars into new and dangerous hunting grounds, where courage, intelligence, and subtlety in every sense are needed, is that they stop being useful the very moment the ' great hunt'(butalsothegreatdanger)begins:-thisisjustwhentheylose their sharp eye and keen nose. For instance, it might take somebody who is himself as deep, as wounded, and as monstrous as Pascal's intellectual conscience to figure out the sort of history that the problem of science and conscience has had in the soul of homines religiosi so far. And, even then, such a person would still need that vaulting sky of bright, malicious spirituality from whose heights this throng of dangerous and painful experiences could be surveyed, ordered, and forced into formulas. - But who would do me this service! But who would have the time to wait for such servants! - it is clear that they grow too rarely; they are so Religious people. Beyond Good and Evil unlikely in every age! In the end, you have to do everything yourself if you want to know anything: which means you have a lot to do! - But a curiosity like mine is still the most pleasant vice of all; - oh sorry! I meant to say: the love of truth finds its reward in heaven and even on earth. -


The sort of faith demanded (and often achieved) by early Christianity in the middle of a skeptical, southern, free-spirited world, a world that had century-long struggles between schools of philosophy behind and inside it, not to mention the education in tolerance given by the imperium Romanum - this faith is not the simple, rude, peon's faith with which a Luther or a Cromwell or some other northern barbarian of the spirit clung to its God and its Christianity. It is much closer to Pascal's faith, which has the gruesome appearance of a protracted suicide of reason - a tough, longlived, worm-like reason that cannot be killed all at once and with a single stroke. From the beginning, Christian faith has been sacrifice: sacrifice of all freedom, of all pride, of all self-confidence of the spirit; it is simultaneously enslavement and self-derision, self-mutilation. There is cruelty and religious Phoenicianism in this faith, which is expected of a worn-down, many-sided,badlyspoiledconscience.Itspresuppositionisthatthesubjugation of spirit causes indescribable pain , and that the entire past and all the habits of such a spirit resist the absurdissimum presented to it as 'faith.' Obtuse to all Christian terminology, modern people can no longer relate to the hideous superlative found by an ancient taste in the paradoxical formula 'god on the cross.' Nowhere to date has there been such a bold inversion or anything quite as horrible, questioning, and questionable as this formula. It promised a revaluation of all the values of antiquity. This was the revenge of the Orient, the deep Orient, this was the revenge of the oriental slave on Rome with its noble and frivolous tolerance, on Roman 'Catholicity' of faith. And what infuriated the slaves about and against their masters was never faith itself, but rather the freedom from faith, that half-stoic and smiling nonchalance when it came to the seriousness of faith. Enlightenment is infuriating. Slaves want the unconditional; Roman Empire. Height of absurdity.


they understand only tyranny, even in morality. They love as they hate, without nuance, into the depths, to the point of pain and sickness - their copious, hidden suffering makes them furious at the noble taste that seems to deny suffering. Skepticism about suffering (which is basically just an affectation of aristocratic morality) played no small role in the genesis of the last great slave revolt, which began with the French Revolution.


Wherever the religious neurosis has appeared so far, we find it connected with three dangerous dietary prescriptions: solitude, fasting, and sexual abstinence, - but without being able to say for sure which is the cause and which is the effect and whether in fact there is a causal relation at all. This last doubt seems justified by the fact that another one of the most regular symptoms of the religious neurosis, in both wild and tame peoples, is the most sudden and dissipated display of voluptuousness, which then turns just as suddenly into spasms of repentance and negations of the world and will: perhaps both can be interpreted as epilepsy in disguise? But here is where interpretation must be resisted the most: no type to date has been surrounded by such an overgrowth of inanity and superstition; and none so far has seemed to hold more interest for people, or even for philosophers. It might be time to calm down a bit, as far as this topic goes, to learn some caution, or even better: to look away, to go away . - This gruesome question-mark of religious crisis and awakening still stands in the background of the newest arrival in philosophy (which is to say: the Schopenhauerian philosophy), almost as the problem in itself. How is negation of the will possible ? Howis the saint possible? This really seems to have been the question that started Schopenhauer off and made him into a philosopher. And so it was a true Schopenhauerian consequence that his most devoted follower (and perhaps also his last, as far as Germany was concerned -), namely Richard Wagner, finished his own life's work at this very point, and finally brought to the stage the life and times of that awful and eternal type in the character of Kundry, type v'ecu . And, at the same time, psychiatrists in almost every European country had the opportunity to study this type up close, wherever the religious neurosis - or, as I call it, 'the religious character' - was having its latest epidemic outbreak and A type that has lived. Kundry is a character from Wagner's last opera, Parsifal . Beyond Good and Evil


pageant as the 'Salvation Army.' - But if someone asks what it really was in the whole phenomenon of the saint that caused such inordinate interest among people of all kinds in all ages, and even among philosophers, it was undoubtedly the aura of a miracle that clung to it; it displayed the immediate succession of opposites , of antithetically valorized moral states of soul. It seemed palpable that here was a 'bad man' turning suddenly into a good man, a 'saint.' Psychology to date has been shipwrecked on this spot. Wasn't this primarily because it had put itself under the dominance of morality, because it actually believed in opposing moral values, and saw, read, and interpreted these opposites into texts and into facts? - What? So 'miracles' are just errors of interpretation? A lack of philology? -


The Latin races seem to have much more of an affinity to their Catholicism than we northerners do to Christianity in general. Consequently, a lack of belief means something very different in Catholic countries than in Protestant ones. In Catholic countries it is a sort of anger against the spirit of the race, while with us it is more like a return to the spirit (or un-spirit -) of the race. There is no doubt that we northerners are descended from barbarian races, even as far as our talent for religion goes-itisa meager talent. The Celts are an exception, which is why they also furnished the best soil for the spread of the Christian infection to the north: - the Christian ideal came into bloom in France, at least as far as the pale northern sun would allow. Even these recent French skeptics, how strangely pious they strike our tastes, to the extent that there is some Celtic blood in their lineage! How Catholic, how un-German Auguste Comte's sociology smells to us, with its Roman logic of the instincts! How Jesuitical Sainte-Beuve is, that amiable and intelligent cicerone of Port-Royal, inspiteofallhishostilitytowardstheJesuits!AndespeciallyErnestRenan: how inaccessible the language of such as Renan sounds to us northerners, this man with a soul that is voluptuous (in a more refined sense) and inclined to rest quite comfortably, but is always being thrown off balance by some nothingness of religious tension! Let us repeat these beautiful sentences after him, - along with the sort of malice and arrogance that stirs in our souls in immediate reply, souls that are probably harsher and not nearly as beautiful, being German souls! - ' disons donc hardiment que


la religion est un produit de l'homme normal, que l'homme est le plus dans le vrai quand il est le plus religieux et le plus assur'e d'une destin'ee infinie ... C'est quand il est bon qu'il veut que la vertu corresponde 'a un ordre 'eternel, c'est quand il contemple les choses d'une mani'ere d'esint'eress'ee qu'il trouve la mort r'evoltante et absurde. Comment ne pas supposer que c'est dans ces moments-l'a, que l'homme voit le mieux ? ... ' These sentences are so utterly antipodal to my ears and habits that when I found them, my initial rage wrote ' la niaiserie religieuse par excellence !' next to them - until my final rage actually started to like them, these sentences whose truth is standing on its head! It is so elegant, so distinguished, to have your own antipodes! What is amazing about the religiosity of ancient Greeks is the excessive amount of gratitude that flows out from it: - it takes a very noble type of person to face nature and life like this ! - Later, when the rabble gained prominence in Greece, religion became overgrown with fear as well, and Christianity was on the horizon. - The passion for God: there is the peasant type, naive and presumptuous - like Luther. The whole of Protestantism is devoid of any southern delicatezza . It has a certain oriental ecstasy, as when an undeserving slave has been pardoned or promoted - in Augustine, for example, who is offensively lacking any nobility of demeanor and desire. It has a certain womanly tenderness and lustfulness that pushes coyly and unsuspectingly towards a unio mystica et physica : like Madame de Guyon. It often appears, strangely enough, as a disguise for the puberty of some girl or boy; now and then it even appears as the hysteria of an old maid, and her


'So we strongly affirm that religion is a product of the normal man, that man is most in the right when he is most religious and most assured of an infinite destiny ... It is when he is good that he wants virtue to correspond to an eternal order, it is when he contemplates things in a disinterested manner that he finds death revolting and absurd. How could we fail to suppose that these are the moments when man sees best?' Religious silliness par excellence . Delicacy. Mystical and physical union. Beyond Good and Evil final ambition: - in such cases, the church often declares the woman to be a saint. To this day, the most powerful people have still bowed down in veneration before the saint, as the riddle of self-conquest and deliberate, final renunciation: why have they bowed down like this? They sensed a superior force in the saint and, as it were, behind the question-mark of his frail and pathetic appearance, a force that wants to test itself through this sort of conquest. They sensed a strength of will in which they could recognize and honor their own strength and pleasure in domination. When they honored the saint, they honored something in themselves. Furthermore, the sight of the saint made them suspicious: 'No one would desire such a monstrosity of negation, of anti-nature, for nothing,' they said to (and asked of) themselves. 'Perhaps there is a reason for it, perhaps the ascetic has inside information about some very great danger, thanks to his secret counselors and visitors?' Enough: in front of the saint, the powerful of the world learned a new fear, they sensed a new power, an alien, still unconquered enemy: - it was the 'will to power' that made them stop in front of the saint. They had to ask him - -


The Jewish 'Old Testament,' the book of divine justice, has people, things, and speeches in such grand style that it is without parallel in the written works of Greece and India. We stand in horror and awe before this monstrous vestige of what humanity once was, and then reflect sadly on old Asia and its protruding little peninsula of Europe that desperately wants (over and against Asia) to stand for the 'progress of humanity.' Of course: there will be nothing in these ruins to astonish or distress anyone whoisjust a dull, tame, house pet himself, and understands only house pet needs (like educated people today, including the Christians of 'educated' Christianity) - the taste for the Old Testament is a touchstone for the 'great' and the 'small.' Perhaps he will still find the New Testament, the book of mercy, more to his liking (it is full of the proper, tender, musty stench of true believers and small souls). The fact that this New Testament (which is a type of Rococo of taste in every respect) gets pasted together with the Old Testament to make a single book, a 'Bible,' a 'book in itself ': this is probably the greatest piece of temerity and 'sin against the spirit' that literary Europe has on its conscience. Why atheism today? God 'the Father' has been thoroughly refuted; and so has 'the Judge' and 'the Reward-giver.' The same for God's 'free will': he doesn't listen, - and even if he did, he wouldn't know how to help anyway. The worst part of it is: he seems unable to communicate in an intelligible manner: is he unclear? - After hearing, questioning, discussing many things, these are the causes I have found for the decline of Europeantheism.It seems to me that the religious instinct is indeed growing vigorously - but that it rejects any specifically theistic gratification with profound distrust.


So what is really going on with the whole of modern philosophy? Since Descartes (and, in fact, in spite of him more than because of him) all the philosophers have been out to assassinate the old concept of the soul, undertheguiseofcritiquingtheconceptsofsubjectandpredicate.Inother words, they have been out to assassinate the fundamental presupposition of the Christian doctrine. As a sort of epistemological skepticism, modern philosophy is, covertly or overtly, anti-Christian (although, to state the point for more subtle ears, by no means anti-religious). People used to believe in 'the soul' as they believed in grammar and the grammatical subject: people said that 'I' was a condition and 'think' was a predicate and conditioned - thinking is an activity, and a subject must be thought of as its cause. Now, with admirable tenacity and cunning, people are wondering whether they can get out of this net - wondering whether the reverse might be true: that 'think' is the condition and 'I' is conditioned, in which case 'I' would be a synthesis that only gets produced through thought itself. Kant essentially wanted to prove that the subject cannot be proven on the basis of the subject - and neither can the object. The possibility that the subject (and therefore 'the soul') has a merely apparent existence might not always have been foreign to him, this thought that, Beyond Good and Evil in the form of the Vedanta philosophy, has already arisen on earth once before and with enormous power.


There is a great ladder of religious cruelty, and, of its many rungs, three are the most important. People used to make human sacrifices to their god, perhaps even sacrificing those they loved the best - this sort of phenomenon can be found in the sacrifice of the firstborn (a practice shared by all prehistoric religions), as well as in Emperor Tiberius' sacrifice in the Mithras grotto on the Isle of Capri, that most gruesome of all Roman anachronisms. Then, during the moral epoch of humanity, people sacrificed the strongest instincts they had, their 'nature,' to their god; the joy of this particular festival shines in the cruel eyes of the ascetic, that enthusiastic piece of 'anti-nature.' Finally: what was left to be sacrificed? In the end, didn't people have to sacrifice all comfort and hope, everything holy or healing, any faith in a hidden harmony or a future filled with justice and bliss? Didn't people have to sacrifice God himself and worship rocks, stupidity, gravity, fate, or nothingness out of sheer cruelty to themselves? To sacrifice God for nothingness - that paradoxical mystery of the final cruelty has been reserved for the race that is now approaching: by now we all know something about this. -


Anyone like me, who has tried for a long time and with some enigmatic desire, to think pessimism through to its depths and to deliver it from the half-Christian, half-German narrowness and naivet'e with which it has finally presented itself to this century, namely in the form of the Schopenhauerian philosophy; anyone who has ever really looked with an Asiatic and supra-Asiatic eye into and down at the most world-negating of all possible ways of thinking - beyond good and evil, and no longer, like SchopenhauerandtheBuddha,underthespellanddelusionofmorality -; anyone who has done these things (and perhaps precisely by doing these things) will have inadvertently opened his eyes to the inverse ideal: to the ideal of the most high-spirited, vital, world-affirming individual, who has learned not just to accept and go along with what was and what is, but who wants it again just as it was and is through all eternity, insatiably shouting


da capo not just to himself but to the whole play and performance, and not just to a performance, but rather, fundamentally, to the one who needs precisely this performance - and makes it necessary: because again and again he needs himself - and makes himself necessary. - - What? and that wouldn't be circulus vitiosus deus ? As humanity's spiritual vision and insight grows stronger, the distance and, as it were, the space that surrounds us increases as well; our world gets more profound, and new stars, new riddles and images are constantly coming into view. Perhaps everything the mind's eye has used to quicken its wit and deepen its understanding was really just a chance to practice, a piece of fun, something for children and childish people. Perhaps the day will come when the concepts of 'God' and 'sin,' which are the most solemn concepts of all and have caused the most fighting and suffering, will seem no more important to us than a child's toy and a child's pain seem to an old man, - and perhaps 'the old man' will then need another toy and another pain, - still enough of a child, an eternal child!


Has anyone really noticed the extent to which being outwardly idle or half-idle is necessary for a genuinely religious life (and for its favorite job of microscopic self-examination just as much as for that tender state of composure which calls itself 'prayer' and is a constant readiness for the 'coming of God')?-Imeananidleness with a good conscience, passed down over the ages, through the bloodline, an idleness that is not entirely alien to the aristocratic feeling that work is disgraceful , which is to say it makes the soul and the body into something base. And has anyone noticed that, consequently, it is the modern, noisy, time-consuming, self-satisfied, stupidly proud industriousness which, more than anything else, gives people an education and preparation in 'un-belief '? For example, among those in Germany today who have distanced themselves from religion, From the beginning. In musical scores, this directs the performer to return to an earlier point in the piece and repeat what has already been played. God as a vicious circle.


I find representatives of various types and extractions of 'free-thinking'; but, above all, a majority whose industriousness has, over generations, dissolved any religious instinct, so that they no longer know what religion is good for, and only register its presence in the world with a type of dull amazement. They feel they are already busy enough, these good people, whether it is with their businesses or their pleasures, not to mention the 'fatherland' and the newspapers and 'familial obligations.' They do not seem to have any time to spare for religion, particularly when it is unclear to them whether it would be a new business or a new pleasure - 'since people can't possibly be going to church just to spoil a good mood,' they tell themselves. They are not enemies of religious customs; if circumstance (or the state) requires them to take part in such customs, they do what is required, like people tend to do -, and they do it with a patient and unassuming earnestness, without much in the way of curiosity or unease: they just live too far apart and outside to even think they need a For or Against in such matters. Today, most middle-class German Protestants are also among the ranks of the indifferent, particularly in the industrious large trade and transportation centers; the same is true for the majority of industrious scholars, and the whole university apparatus (except for the theologians, whose presence and possibility here gives the psychologist increasingly many and increasingly subtle riddles to resolve). People who are devout or even just church-goers will rarely imagine howmuch goodwill (or may be 'whimsical will') is required for a German scholar to take the problem of religion seriously. On the basis of his whole craft (and, as mentioned before, on the basis of the craftsman-like industriousness his modernconsciencecommitshimto),hetendstoregardreligionwithanair of superior, almost gracious amusement, which is sometimes mixed with a slight contempt for what he assumes to be an 'uncleanliness' of spirit that exists wherever anyone still supports the church. Only with the help of history (and therefore not on the basis of his personal experience) does the scholar succeed in approaching religion with a reverential seriousness and a certain cautious consideration. But even if he reaches the point where he feels grateful for religion, he does not come a single step closer to


what still passes for church or piety: possibly even the reverse. The practical indifference towards religious matters with which he was born and raised tends, in his case, to be sublimated into a caution and cleanliness that shuns contact with religious people and religious affairs; and it can be the very depth of his tolerance and humanity that urges him to evade the subtle


crises intrinsic to toleration itself. - Every age has its own, divine type of naivet'e that other ages may envy; and how much naivet'e - admirable, childish, boundlessly foolish naivet'e - lies in the scholar's belief in his own superiority, in the good conscience he has of his tolerance, in the clueless, simple certainty with which he instinctively treats the religious man as an inferior, lesser type, something that he himself has grown out of, away from, and above , - he, who is himself a presumptuous little dwarf and rabble-man, a brisk and busy brain- and handiworker of 'ideas,' of 'modern ideas'!


Anyone who has looked deeply into the world will probably guess the wisdom that lies in human superficiality. An instinct of preservation has taught people to be flighty, light, and false. We occasionally find both philosophers and artists engaging in a passionate and exaggerated worship of 'pure forms.' Let there be no doubt that anyone who needs the cult of the surface this badly has at some point reached beneath the surface with disastrous results. Perhaps there is even an order of rank for these wounded children, the born artists, who find pleasure in life only by intending to falsify its image, in a sort of prolonged revenge against life -. We can infer the degree to which life has been spoiled for them from the extent to which they want to see its image distorted, diluted, deified, and cast into the beyond - considered as artists, the homines religiosi would belong to the highest rank. Entire millennia sink their teeth into a religious interpretation of existence, driven by a deep, suspicious fear of an incurable pessimism; this fear comes from an instinct which senses that we could get hold of the truth too soon , before people have become strong enough, hard enough, artistic enough ... Seen in this light, piety - the 'life in God' - appears as the last and most subtle monstrosity produced by fear of the truth; it appears as the artists' worship and intoxication before the most consistent of all falsifications, as the will to invert the truth, the will to untruth at any price. Perhaps piety has been the most potent method yet for the beautification of humanity: it can turn people into art, surface, plays of colors, benevolence, and to such an extent that we can finally look at them without suffering. - Religious people. Beyond Good and Evil


To love humanity for the sake of God - that has been the noblest and most bizarre feeling people have attained so far. That the love of humanity, in the absence of any sanctifying ulterior motive, is one more stupidity and abomination; that the tendency to love humanity like this can only get its standard, its subtlety, its grain of salt and pinch of ambergris from a higher tendency: - whoever it was that first felt and 'experienced' all this, however much his tongue might have stumbled as it tried to express such a tenderness, let him be forever holy and admirable to us as the man who has flown the highest so far and has got the most beautifully lost! The philosopher as we understand him, we free spirits -, as the man with the most comprehensive responsibility, whose conscience bears the weight of the overall development of humanity, this philosopher will make useofreligion for his breeding and education work, just as he will make use of the prevailing political and economic situation. The influence that can be exerted over selection and breeding with the help of religions (and this influence is always just as destructive as it is creative and formative) varies according to the type of person who falls under their spell and protection. For people who are strong, independent, prepared, and predestined for command, people who come to embody the reason and art of a governing race, religion is an additional means of overcoming resistances, of being able to rule. It binds the ruler together with the ruled, giving and handing the consciences of the ruled over to the rulers - which is to say: handing over their hidden and most interior aspect, and one which would very much like to escape obedience. And if individuals from such a noble lineage are inclined, by their high spirituality, towards a retiring and contemplative life, reserving for themselves only the finest sorts of rule (over exceptional young men or monks), then religion can even be used as a means of securing calm in the face of the turmoil and tribulations of the cruder forms of government, and purity in the face of the necessary dirt of politics. This is how the Brahmins, for instance, understood the matter. With the help of a religious organization, they assumed the power to appoint kings for the people, while they themselves kept and felt removed and outside, a people of higher, over-kingly tasks.


Meanwhile, religion also gives some fraction of the ruled the instruction and opportunity they need to prepare for eventual rule and command. This is particularly true for that slowly ascending class and station in which, through fortunate marriage practices, the strength and joy of the will, the will to self-control is always on the rise. Religion tempts and urges them to take the path to higher spirituality and try out feelings of great self-overcoming, of silence, and of solitude. Asceticism and Puritanism are almost indispensable means of educating and ennobling a race that wants to gain control over its origins among the rabble, and work its way up to eventual rule. Finally, as for the common people, the great majority, who exist and are only allowed to exist to serve and to be of general utility, religion gives them an invaluable sense of contentment with their situation and type; it puts their hearts greatly at ease, it glorifies their obedience, it gives them (and those like them) one more happiness and one more sorrow, it transfigures and improves them, it provides something of a justification for everything commonplace, for all the lowliness, for the whole half-bestial poverty of their souls. Religion, and the meaning religion gives to life, spreads sunshine over such eternally tormented people and makes them bearable even to themselves. It has the same effect that an Epicurean philosophy usually has on the suffering of higher ranks: it refreshes, refines, and makes the most of suffering, as it were. In the end it even sanctifies and justifies. Perhaps there is nothing more venerable about Christianity and Buddhism than their art of teaching even the lowliest to use piety in order to situate themselves in an illusory higher order of things, and in so doing stay satisfied with the actual order, in which their lives are hard enough (in which precisely this hardness is necessary!).


Finally, to show the downside of these religions as well and throw light on their uncanny dangers: there is a high and horrible price to pay when religions do not serve as means for breeding and education in the hands of a philosopher, but instead serve themselves and become sovereign , when they want to be the ultimate goal instead of a means alongside other means. With humans as with every other type of animal, there is a surplus of failures and degenerates, of the diseased and infirm, of those who necessarily suffer. Even with humans, successful cases are always the exception and, Beyond Good and Evil


since humans are the still undetermined animals , the infrequent exception. But it gets worse: people who represent more nobly bred types are less likely to turn out well . Chance, that law of nonsense in the overall economy of mankind, is most terribly apparent in its destructive effect on the higher men, whose conditions of life are subtle, multiple, and difficult to calculate. So how is this surplus of failures treated by the two greatest religions, those mentioned above? They try to preserve, to keep everything living that can be kept in any way alive. In fact, they take sides with the failures as a matter of principle, as religions of the suffering . They give rights to all those who suffer life like a disease, and they want to make every other feeling for life seem wrong and become impossible. Whatever merit we might find in this indulgent, preserving care, which was and is meant for the highest types of people (since these are the ones that, historically, have almost always suffered the most), along with everyone else - nevertheless, in the final analysis, the religions that have existed so far (which have all been sovereign ) have played a principal role in keeping the type 'man' on a lower level. They have preserved too much of what should be destroyed . They have done invaluable service, these religions, and who is so richly endowedwithgratitude not to grow poor in the face of everything that, for instance, the 'spiritual men' of Christianity have done for Europe so far! Andyet, after they gave comfort to the suffering, courage to the oppressed anddespairing, a staff and support to the dependent, after they found people who were inwardly destroyed or had grown wild and lured them away from society, into cloisters and spiritual prisons: what else did they have to do, to work in good conscience and conviction for the preservation of all the sick and suffering, which really means working in word and in deed for the deterioration of the European race ? Stand all valuations on their head -that is what they had to do! And crush the strong, strike down the great hopes, throw suspicion on the delight in beauty, skew everything self-satisfied, manly, conquering, domineering, every instinct that belongs to the highest and best-turned-out type of 'human,' twist them into uncertainty, crisis of conscience, self-destruction; at the limit, invert the whole love of the earth and of earthly dominion