FIRST ESSAY. "GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD."


1.

Those English psychologists, who up to the present are the only
philosophers who are to be thanked for any endeavour to get as far
as a history of the origin of morality--these men, I say, offer us
in their own personalities no paltry problem;--they even have, if I
am to be quite frank about it, in their capacity of living riddles,
an advantage over their books--_they themselves are interesting!_
These English psychologists--what do they really mean? We always
find them voluntarily or involuntarily at the same task of pushing
to the front the _partie honteuse_ of our inner world, and looking
for the efficient, governing, and decisive principle in that precise
quarter where the intellectual self-respect of the race would be
the most reluctant to find it (for example, in the _vis inertiæ_ of
habit, or in forgetfulness, or in a blind and fortuitous mechanism
and association of ideas, or in some factor that is purely passive,
reflex, molecular, or fundamentally stupid)--what is the real motive
power which always impels these psychologists in precisely _this_
direction? Is it an instinct for human disparagement somewhat sinister,
vulgar, and malignant, or perhaps incomprehensible even to itself? or
perhaps a touch of pessimistic jealousy, the mistrust of disillusioned
idealists who have become gloomy, poisoned, and bitter? or a petty
subconscious enmity and rancour against Christianity (and Plato), that
has conceivably never crossed the threshold of consciousness? or just a
vicious taste for those elements of life which are bizarre, painfully
paradoxical, mystical, and illogical? or, as a final alternative, a
dash of each of these motives--a little vulgarity, a little gloominess,
a little anti-Christianity, a little craving for the necessary piquancy?

But I am told that it is simply a case of old frigid and tedious frogs
crawling and hopping around men and inside men, as if they were as
thoroughly at home there, as they would be in a _swamp_.

I am opposed to this statement, nay, I do not believe it; and if, in
the impossibility of knowledge, one is permitted to wish, so do I wish
from my heart that just the converse metaphor should apply, and that
these analysts with their psychological microscopes should be, at
bottom, brave, proud, and magnanimous animals who know how to bridle
both their hearts and their smarts, and have specifically trained
themselves to sacrifice what is desirable to what is true, any truth
in fact, even the simple, bitter, ugly, repulsive, unchristian, and
immoral truths--for there are truths of that description.


2.

All honour, then, to the noble spirits who would fain dominate these
historians of morality. But it is certainly a pity that they lack the
_historical sense_ itself, that they themselves are quite deserted
by all the beneficent spirits of history. The whole train of their
thought runs, as was always the way of old-fashioned philosophers, on
thoroughly unhistorical lines: there is no doubt on this point. The
crass ineptitude of their genealogy of morals is immediately apparent
when the question arises of ascertaining the origin of the idea and
judgment of "good." "Man had originally," so speaks their decree,
"praised and called 'good' altruistic acts from the standpoint of
those on whom they were conferred, that is, those to whom they were
_useful_; subsequently the origin of this praise was _forgotten_, and
altruistic acts, simply because, as a sheer matter of habit, they were
praised as good, came also to be felt as good--as though they contained
in themselves some intrinsic goodness." The thing is obvious:--this
initial derivation contains already all the typical and idiosyncratic
traits of the English psychologists--we have "utility," "forgetting,"
"habit," and finally "error," the whole assemblage forming the basis
of a system of values, on which the higher man has up to the present
prided himself as though it were a kind of privilege of man in general.
This pride _must_ be brought low, this system of values _must_ lose its
values: is that attained?

Now the first argument that comes ready to my hand is that the real
homestead of the concept "good" is sought and located in the wrong
place: the judgment "good" did not originate among those to whom
goodness was shown. Much rather has it been the good themselves,
that is, the aristocratic, the powerful, the high-stationed, the
high-minded, who have felt that they themselves were good, and that
their actions were good, that is to say of the first order, in
contradistinction to all the low, the low-minded, the vulgar, and
the plebeian. It was out of this pathos of distance that they first
arrogated the right to create values for their own profit, and to
coin the names of such values: what had they to do with utility? The
standpoint of utility is as alien and as inapplicable as it could
possibly be, when we have to deal with so volcanic an effervescence of
supreme values, creating and demarcating as they do a hierarchy within
themselves: it is at this juncture that one arrives at an appreciation
of the contrast to that tepid temperature, which is the presupposition
on which every combination of worldly wisdom and every calculation of
practical expediency is always based--and not for one occasional, not
for one exceptional instance, but chronically. The pathos of nobility
and distance, as I have said, the chronic and despotic _esprit de
corps_ and fundamental instinct of a higher dominant race coming into
association with a meaner race, an "under race," this is the origin of
the antithesis of good and bad.

(The masters' right of giving names goes so far that it is permissible
to look upon language itself as the expression of the power of the
masters: they say "this _is_ that, and that," they seal finally every
object and every event with a sound, and thereby at the same time take
possession of it.) It is because of this origin that the word "good"
is far from having any necessary connection with altruistic acts, in
accordance with the superstitious belief of these moral philosophers.
On the contrary, it is on the occasion of the _decay_ of aristocratic
values, that the antitheses between "egoistic" and "altruistic"
presses more and more heavily on the human conscience--it is, to use
my own language, the _herd instinct_ which finds in this antithesis an
expression in many ways. And even then it takes a considerable time
for this instinct to become sufficiently dominant, for the valuation
to be inextricably dependent on this antithesis (as is the case in
contemporary Europe); for to-day that prejudice is predominant, which,
acting even now with all the intensity of an obsession and brain
disease, holds that "moral," "altruistic," and "_désintéressé_" are
concepts of equal value.


3.

In the second place, quite apart from the fact that this hypothesis as
to the genesis of the value "good" cannot be historically upheld, it
suffers from an inherent psychological contradiction. The utility of
altruistic conduct has presumably been the origin of its being praised,
and this origin has become _forgotten_:--But in what conceivable way is
this forgetting _possible_! Has perchance the utility of such conduct
ceased at some given moment? The contrary is the case. This utility has
rather been experienced every day at all times, and is consequently
a feature that obtains a new and regular emphasis with every fresh
day; it follows that, so far from vanishing from the consciousness, so
far indeed from being forgotten, it must necessarily become impressed
on the consciousness with ever-increasing distinctness. How much
more logical is that contrary theory (it is not the truer for that)
which is represented, for instance, by Herbert Spencer, who places
the concept "good" as essentially similar to the concept "useful,"
"purposive," so that in the judgments "good" and "bad" mankind is
simply summarising and investing with a sanction its _unforgotten_ and
_unforgettable_ experiences concerning the "useful-purposive" and the
"mischievous-non-purposive." According to this theory, "good" is the
attribute of that which has previously shown itself useful; and so
is able to claim to be considered "valuable in the highest degree,"
"valuable in itself." This method of explanation is also, as I have
said, wrong, but at any rate the explanation itself is coherent, and
psychologically tenable.


4.

The guide-post which first put me on the right track was this
question--what is the true etymological significance of the various
symbols for the idea "good" which have been coined in the various
languages? I then found that they all led back to _the same evolution
of the same idea_--that everywhere "aristocrat," "noble" (in the
social sense), is the root idea, out of which have necessarily
developed "good" in the sense of "with aristocratic soul," "noble,"
in the sense of "with a soul of high calibre," "with a privileged
soul"--a development which invariably runs parallel with that other
evolution by which "vulgar," "plebeian," "low," are made to change
finally into "bad." The most eloquent proof of this last contention
is the German word "_schlecht_" itself: this word is identical with
"_schlicht_"--(compare "_schlechtweg_" and "_schlechterdings_")--which,
originally and as yet without any sinister innuendo, simply denoted
the plebeian man in contrast to the aristocratic man. It is at the
sufficiently late period of the Thirty Years' War that this sense
becomes changed to the sense now current. From the standpoint of
the Genealogy of Morals this discovery seems to be substantial: the
lateness of it is to be attributed to the retarding influence exercised
in the modern world by democratic prejudice in the sphere of all
questions of origin. This extends, as will shortly be shown, even to
the province of natural science and physiology, which, _prima facie_
is the most objective. The extent of the mischief which is caused by
this prejudice (once it is free of all trammels except those of its own
malice), particularly to Ethics and History, is shown by the notorious
case of Buckle: it was in Buckle that that _plebeianism_ of the modern
spirit, which is of English origin, broke out once again from its
malignant soil with all the violence of a slimy volcano, and with that
salted, rampant, and vulgar eloquence with which up to the present time
all volcanoes have spoken.


5.

With regard to our problem, which can justly be called an intimate
problem, and which elects to appeal to only a limited number of ears:
it is of no small interest to ascertain that in those words and roots
which denote "good" we catch glimpses of that arch-trait, on the
strength of which the aristocrats feel themselves to be beings of
a higher order than their fellows. Indeed, they call themselves in
perhaps the most frequent instances simply after their superiority
in power (_e.g._ "the powerful," "the lords," "the commanders"), or
after the most obvious sign of their superiority, as for example
"the rich," "the possessors" (that is the meaning of _arya_; and the
Iranian and Slav languages correspond). But they also call themselves
after some _characteristic idiosyncrasy_; and this is the case which
now concerns us. They name themselves, for instance, "the truthful":
this is first done by the Greek nobility whose mouthpiece is found in
Theognis, the Megarian poet. The word ἐσθλος, which is coined for the
purpose, signifies etymologically "one who _is_," who has reality, who
is real, who is true; and then with a subjective twist, the "true,"
as the "truthful": at this stage in the evolution of the idea, it
becomes the motto and party cry of the nobility, and quite completes
the transition to the meaning "noble," so as to place outside the pale
the lying, vulgar man, as Theognis conceives and portrays him--till
finally the word after the decay of the nobility is left to delineate
psychological _noblesse_, and becomes as it were ripe and mellow. In
the word κακός as in δειλός (the plebeian in contrast to the ἀγαθός)
the cowardice is emphasised. This affords perhaps an inkling on what
lines the etymological origin of the very ambiguous ἀγαθός is to be
investigated. In the Latin _malus_ (which I place side by side with
μέλας) the vulgar man can be distinguished as the dark-coloured, and
above all as the black-haired ("_hic niger est_"), as the pre-Aryan
inhabitants of the Italian soil, whose complexion formed the clearest
feature of distinction from the dominant blondes, namely, the Aryan
conquering race:--at any rate Gaelic has afforded me the exact
analogue--_Fin_ (for instance, in the name Fin-Gal), the distinctive
word of the nobility, finally--good, noble, clean, but originally the
blonde-haired man in contrast to the dark black-haired aboriginals. The
Celts, if I may make a parenthetic statement, were throughout a blonde
race; and it is wrong to connect, as Virchow still connects, those
traces of an essentially dark-haired population which are to be seen
on the more elaborate ethnographical maps of Germany with any Celtic
ancestry or with any admixture of Celtic blood: in this context it is
rather the _pre-Aryan_ population of Germany which surges up to these
districts. (The same is true substantially of the whole of Europe: in
point of fact, the subject race has finally again obtained the upper
hand, in complexion and the shortness of the skull, and perhaps in
the intellectual and social qualities. Who can guarantee that modern
democracy, still more modern anarchy, and indeed that tendency to the
"Commune," the most primitive form of society, which is now common to
all the Socialists in Europe, does not in its real essence signify a
monstrous reversion--and that the conquering and _master_ race--the
Aryan race, is not also becoming inferior physiologically?) I believe
that I can explain the Latin _bonus_ as the "warrior": my hypothesis
is that I am right in deriving _bonus_ from an older _duonus_ (compare
_bellum_ = _duellum_ = _duen-lum_, in which the word _duonus_ appears
to me to be contained). Bonus accordingly as the man of discord, of
variance, "entzweiung" (_duo_), as the warrior: one sees what in
ancient Rome "the good" meant for a man. Must not our actual German
word _gut_ mean "_the godlike_, the man of godlike race"? and be
identical with the national name (originally the nobles' name) of the
_Goths_?

The grounds for this supposition do not appertain to this work.


6.

Above all, there is no exception (though there are opportunities for
exceptions) to this rule, that the idea of political superiority
always resolves itself into the idea of psychological superiority, in
those cases where the highest caste is at the same time the _priestly_
caste, and in accordance with its general characteristics confers on
itself the privilege of a title which alludes specifically to its
priestly function. It is in these cases, for instance, that "clean" and
"unclean" confront each other for the first time as badges of class
distinction; here again there develops a "good" and a "bad," in a sense
which has ceased to be merely social. Moreover, care should be taken
not to take these ideas of "clean" and "unclean" too seriously, too
broadly, or too symbolically: all the ideas of ancient man have, on
the contrary, got to be understood in their initial stages, in a sense
which is, to an almost inconceivable extent, crude, coarse, physical,
and narrow, and above all essentially unsymbolical. The "clean man" is
originally only a man who washes himself, who abstains from certain
foods which are conducive to skin diseases, who does not sleep with
the unclean women of the lower classes, who has a horror of blood--not
more, not much more! On the other hand, the very nature of a priestly
aristocracy shows the reasons why just at such an early juncture
there should ensue a really dangerous sharpening and intensification
of opposed values: it is, in fact, through these opposed values that
gulfs are cleft in the social plane, which a veritable Achilles of
free thought would shudder to cross. There is from the outset a
certain _diseased taint_ in such sacerdotal aristocracies, and in the
habits which prevail in such societies--habits which, _averse_ as they
are to action, constitute a compound of introspection and explosive
emotionalism, as a result of which there appears that introspective
morbidity and neurasthenia, which adheres almost inevitably to all
priests at all times: with regard, however, to the remedy which they
themselves have invented for this disease--the philosopher has no
option but to state, that it has proved itself in its effects a hundred
times more dangerous than the disease, from which it should have been
the deliverer. Humanity itself is still diseased from the effects of
the naïvetés of this priestly cure. Take, for instance, certain kinds
of diet (abstention from flesh), fasts, sexual continence, flight
into the wilderness (a kind of Weir-Mitchell isolation, though of
course without that system of excessive feeding and fattening which
is the most efficient antidote to all the hysteria of the ascetic
ideal); consider too the whole metaphysic of the priests, with its
war on the senses, its enervation, its hair-splitting; consider its
self-hypnotism on the fakir and Brahman principles (it uses Brahman as
a glass disc and obsession), and that climax which we can understand
only too well of an unusual satiety with its panacea of _nothingness_
(or God:--the demand for a _unio mystica_ with God is the demand of the
Buddhist for nothingness, Nirvana--and nothing else!). In sacerdotal
societies _every_ element is on a more dangerous scale, not merely
cures and remedies, but also pride, revenge, cunning, exaltation, love,
ambition, virtue, morbidity:--further, it can fairly be stated that it
is on the soil of this _essentially dangerous_ form of human society,
the sacerdotal form, that man really becomes for the first time an
_interesting animal_, that it is in this form that the soul of man has
in a higher sense attained _depths_ and become _evil_--and those are
the two fundamental forms of the superiority which up to the present
man has exhibited over every other animal.


7.

The reader will have already surmised with what ease the priestly mode
of valuation can branch off from the knightly aristocratic mode, and
then develop into the very antithesis of the latter: special impetus
is given to this opposition, by every occasion when the castes of the
priests and warriors confront each other with mutual jealousy and
cannot agree over the prize. The knightly-aristocratic "values" are
based on a careful cult of the physical, on a flowering, rich, and
even effervescing healthiness, that goes considerably beyond what
is necessary for maintaining life, on war, adventure, the chase,
the dance, the tourney--on everything, in fact, which is contained
in strong, free, and joyous action. The priestly-aristocratic mode
of valuation is--we have seen--based on other hypotheses: it is bad
enough for this class when it is a question of war! Yet the priests
are, as is notorious, _the worst enemies_--why? Because they are the
weakest. Their weakness causes their hate to expand into a monstrous
and sinister shape, a shape which is most crafty and most poisonous.
The really great haters in the history of the world have always been
priests, who are also the cleverest haters--in comparison with the
cleverness of priestly revenge, every other piece of cleverness is
practically negligible. Human history would be too fatuous for anything
were it not for the cleverness imported into it by the weak--take at
once the most important instance. All the world's efforts against the
"aristocrats," the "mighty," the "masters," the "holders of power,"
are negligible by comparison with what has been accomplished against
those classes by _the Jews_--the Jews, that priestly nation which
eventually realised that the one method of effecting satisfaction on
its enemies and tyrants was by means of a radical transvaluation of
values, which was at the same time an act of the _cleverest revenge_.
Yet the method was only appropriate to a nation of priests, to a nation
of the most jealously nursed priestly revengefulness. It was the Jews
who, in opposition to the aristocratic equation (good = aristocratic
= beautiful = happy = loved by the gods), dared with a terrifying
logic to suggest the contrary equation, and indeed to maintain with
the teeth of the most profound hatred (the hatred of weakness) this
contrary equation, namely, "the wretched are alone the good; the poor,
the weak, the lowly, are alone the good; the suffering, the needy, the
sick, the loathsome, are the only ones who are pious, the only ones
who are blessed, for them alone is salvation--but you, on the other
hand, you aristocrats, you men of power, you are to all eternity the
evil, the horrible, the covetous, the insatiate, the godless; eternally
also shall you be the unblessed, the cursed, the damned!" We know who
it was who reaped the heritage of this Jewish transvaluation. In the
context of the monstrous and inordinately fateful initiative which
the Jews have exhibited in connection with this most fundamental of
all declarations of war, I remember the passage which came to my pen
on another occasion (_Beyond Good and Evil_, Aph. 195)--that it was,
in fact, with the Jews that the _revolt of the slaves_ begins in the
sphere _of morals_; that revolt which has behind it a history of two
millennia, and which at the present day has only moved out of our
sight, because it--has achieved victory.


8.

But you understand this not? You have no eyes for a force which
has taken two thousand years to achieve victory?--There is nothing
wonderful in this: all _lengthy_ processes are hard to see and to
realise. But _this_ is what took place: from the trunk of that tree
of revenge and hate, Jewish hate,--that most profound and sublime
hate, which creates ideals and changes old values to new creations,
the like of which has never been on earth,--there grew a phenomenon
which was equally incomparable, _a new love_, the most profound and
sublime of all kinds of love;--and from what other trunk could it have
grown? But beware of supposing that this love has soared on its upward
growth, as in any way a real negation of that thirst for revenge, as
an antithesis to the Jewish hate! No, the contrary is the truth! This
love grew out of that hate, as its crown, as its triumphant crown,
circling wider and wider amid the clarity and fulness of the sun, and
pursuing in the very kingdom of light and height its goal of hatred,
its victory, its spoil, its strategy, with the same intensity with
which the roots of that tree of hate sank into everything which was
deep and evil with increasing stability and increasing desire. This
Jesus of Nazareth, the incarnate gospel of love, this "Redeemer"
bringing salvation and victory to the poor, the sick, the sinful--was
he not really temptation in its most sinister and irresistible form,
temptation to take the tortuous path to those very _Jewish_ values and
those very Jewish ideals? Has not Israel really obtained the final goal
of its sublime revenge, by the tortuous paths of this "Redeemer," for
all that he might pose as Israel's adversary and Israel's destroyer? Is
it not due to the black magic of a really _great_ policy of revenge,
of a far-seeing, burrowing revenge, both acting and calculating with
slowness, that Israel himself must repudiate before all the world the
actual instrument of his own revenge and nail it to the cross, so
that all the world--that is, all the enemies of Israel--could nibble
without suspicion at this very bait? Could, moreover, any human mind
with all its elaborate ingenuity invent a bait that was more truly
_dangerous_? Anything that was even equivalent in the power of its
seductive, intoxicating, defiling, and corrupting influence to that
symbol of the holy cross, to that awful paradox of a "god on the
cross," to that mystery of the unthinkable, supreme, and utter horror
of the self-crucifixion of a god for the _salvation of man_? It is
at least certain that _sub hoc signo_ Israel, with its revenge and
transvaluation of all values, has up to the present always triumphed
again over all other ideals, over all more aristocratic ideals.


9.

"But why do you talk of nobler ideals? Let us submit to the facts;
that the people have triumphed--or the slaves, or the populace, or the
herd, or whatever name you care to give them--if this has happened
through the Jews, so be it! In that case no nation ever had a greater
mission in the world's history. The 'masters' have been done away
with; the morality of the vulgar man has triumphed. This triumph may
also be called a blood-poisoning (it has mutually fused the races)--I
do not dispute it; but there is no doubt but that this intoxication
has succeeded. The 'redemption' of the human race (that is, from the
masters) is progressing swimmingly; everything is obviously becoming
Judaised, or Christianised, or vulgarised (what is there in the
words?). It seems impossible to stop the course of this poisoning
through the whole body politic of mankind--but its _tempo_ and pace
may from the present time be slower, more delicate, quieter, more
discreet--there is time enough. In view of this context has the Church
nowadays any necessary purpose? has it, in fact, a right to live? Or
could man get on without it? _Quæritur_. It seems that it fetters and
retards this tendency, instead of accelerating it. Well, even that
might be its utility. The Church certainly is a crude and boorish
institution, that is repugnant to an intelligence with any pretence at
delicacy, to a really modern taste. Should it not at any rate learn to
be somewhat more subtle? It alienates nowadays, more than it allures.
Which of us would, forsooth, be a freethinker if there were no Church?
It is the Church which repels us, not its poison--apart from the Church
we like the poison." This is the epilogue of a freethinker to my
discourse, of an honourable animal (as he has given abundant proof),
and a democrat to boot; he had up to that time listened to me, and
could not endure my silence, but for me, indeed, with regard to this
topic there is much on which to be silent.


10.

The revolt of the slaves in morals begins in the very principle of
_resentment_ becoming creative and giving birth to values--a resentment
experienced by creatures who, deprived as they are of the proper outlet
of action, are forced to find their compensation in an imaginary
revenge. While every aristocratic morality springs from a triumphant
affirmation of its own demands, the slave morality says "no" from the
very outset to what is "outside itself," "different from itself," and
"not itself": and this "no" is its creative deed. This volte-face of
the valuing standpoint--this _inevitable_ gravitation to the objective
instead of back to the subjective--is typical of "resentment": the
slave-morality requires as the condition of its existence an external
and objective world, to employ physiological terminology, it requires
objective stimuli to be capable of action at all--its action is
fundamentally a reaction. The contrary is the case when we come to
the aristocrat's system of values: it acts and grows spontaneously,
it merely seeks its antithesis in order to pronounce a more grateful
and exultant "yes" to its own self;--its negative conception, "low,"
"vulgar," "bad," is merely a pale late-born foil in comparison with its
positive and fundamental conception (saturated as it is with life and
passion), of "we aristocrats, we good ones, we beautiful ones, we happy
ones."

When the aristocratic morality goes astray and commits sacrilege on
reality, this is limited to that particular sphere with which it
is _not_ sufficiently acquainted--a sphere, in fact, from the real
knowledge of which it disdainfully defends itself. It misjudges, in
some cases, the sphere which it despises, the sphere of the common
vulgar man and the low people: on the other hand, due weight should be
given to the consideration that in any case the mood of contempt, of
disdain, of superciliousness, even on the supposition that it _falsely_
portrays the object of its contempt, will always be far removed from
that degree of falsity which will always characterise the attacks--in
effigy, of course--of the vindictive hatred and revengefulness of
the weak in onslaughts on their enemies. In point of fact, there is
in contempt too strong an admixture of nonchalance, of casualness,
of boredom, of impatience, even of personal exultation, for it to be
capable of distorting its victim into a real caricature or a real
monstrosity. Attention again should be paid to the almost benevolent
_nuances_ which, for instance, the Greek nobility imports into all
the words by which it distinguishes the common people from itself;
note how continuously a kind of pity, care, and consideration imparts
its honeyed _flavour_, until at last almost all the words which are
applied to the vulgar man survive finally as expressions for "unhappy,"
"worthy of pity" (compare δειλο, δείλαιος, πονηρός, μοχθηρός]; the
latter two names really denoting the vulgar man as labour-slave
and beast of burden)--and how, conversely, "bad," "low," "unhappy"
have never ceased to ring in the Greek ear with a tone in which
"unhappy" is the predominant note: this is a heritage of the old noble
aristocratic morality, which remains true to itself even in contempt
(let philologists remember the sense in which ὀιζυρός, ἄνολβος, τλήμων,
δυστυχεῑν, ξυμφορά used to be employed). The "well-born" simply
_felt_ themselves the "happy"; they did not have to manufacture their
happiness artificially through looking at their enemies, or in cases
to talk and _lie themselves_ into happiness (as is the custom with all
resentful men); and similarly, complete men as they were, exuberant
with strength, and consequently _necessarily_ energetic, they were too
wise to dissociate happiness from action--activity becomes in their
minds necessarily counted as happiness (that is the etymology of εὖ
πρἆττειν)--all in sharp contrast to the "happiness" of the weak and
the oppressed, with their festering venom and malignity, among whom
happiness appears essentially as a narcotic, a deadening, a quietude,
a peace, a "Sabbath," an enervation of the mind and relaxation
of the limbs,--in short, a purely _passive_ phenomenon. While the
aristocratic man lived in confidence and openness with himself
(gennaios, "noble-born," emphasises the nuance "sincere," and perhaps
also "naïf"), the resentful man, on the other hand, is neither sincere
nor naïf, nor honest and candid with himself. His soul _squints_; his
mind loves hidden crannies, tortuous paths and back-doors, everything
secret appeals to him as _his_ world, _his_ safety, _his_ balm; he is
past master in silence, in not forgetting, in waiting, in provisional
self-depreciation and self-abasement. A race of such _resentful_ men
will of necessity eventually prove more _prudent_ than any aristocratic
race, it will honour prudence on quite a distinct scale, as, in fact, a
paramount condition of existence, while prudence among aristocratic men
is apt to be tinged with a delicate flavour of luxury and refinement;
so among them it plays nothing like so integral a part as that complete
certainty of function of the governing _unconscious_ instincts, or
as indeed a certain lack of prudence, such as a vehement and valiant
charge, whether against danger or the enemy, or as those ecstatic
bursts of rage, love, reverence, gratitude, by which at all times
noble souls have recognised each other. When the resentment of the
aristocratic man manifests itself, it fulfils and exhausts itself in
an immediate reaction, and consequently instills no _venom_: on the
other hand, it never manifests itself at all in countless instances,
when in the case of the feeble and weak it would be inevitable. An
inability to take seriously for any length of time their enemies,
their disasters, their _misdeeds_--that is the sign of the full strong
natures who possess a superfluity of moulding plastic force, that
heals completely and produces forgetfulness: a good example of this in
the modern world is Mirabeau, who had no memory for any insults and
meannesses which were practised on him, and who was only incapable
of forgiving because he forgot. Such a man indeed shakes off with a
shrug many a worm which would have buried itself in another; it is
only in characters like these that we see the possibility (supposing,
of course, that there is such a possibility in the world) of the real
"_love_ of one's enemies." What respect for his enemies is found,
forsooth, in an aristocratic man--and such a reverence is already
a bridge to love! He insists on having his enemy to himself as his
distinction. He tolerates no other enemy but a man in whose character
there is nothing to despise and much to honour! On the other hand,
imagine the "enemy" as the resentful man conceives him--and it is here
exactly that we see his work, his creativeness; he has conceived "the
evil enemy," the "evil one," and indeed that is the root idea from
which he now evolves as a contrasting and corresponding figure a "good
one," himself--his very self!


11

The method of this man is quite contrary to that of the aristocratic
man, who conceives the root idea "good" spontaneously and straight
away, that is to say, out of himself, and from that material then
creates for himself a concept of "bad"! This "bad" of aristocratic
origin and that "evil" out of the cauldron of unsatisfied hatred--the
former an imitation, an "extra," an additional nuance; the latter,
on the other hand, the original, the beginning, the essential act in
the conception of a slave-morality--these two words "bad" and "evil,"
how great a difference do they mark, in spite of the fact that they
have an identical contrary in the idea "good." But the idea "good" is
not the same: much rather let the question be asked, "Who is really
evil according to the meaning of the morality of resentment?" In
all sternness let it be answered thus:--_just_ the good man of the
other morality, just the aristocrat, the powerful one, the one who
rules, but who is distorted by the venomous eye of resentfulness,
into a new colour, a new signification, a new appearance. This
particular point we would be the last to deny: the man who learnt to
know those "good" ones only as enemies, learnt at the same time not
to know them only as "_evil enemies_" and the same men who _inter
pares_ were kept so rigorously in bounds through convention, respect,
custom, and gratitude, though much more through mutual vigilance
and jealousy _inter pares_, these men who in their relations with
each other find so many new ways of manifesting consideration,
self-control, delicacy, loyalty, pride, and friendship, these men
are in reference to what is outside their circle (where the foreign
element, a _foreign_ country, begins), not much better than beasts
of prey, which have been let loose. They enjoy there freedom from
all social control, they feel that in the wilderness they can give
vent with impunity to that tension which is produced by enclosure and
imprisonment in the peace of society, they _revert_ to the innocence
of the beast-of-prey conscience, like jubilant monsters, who perhaps
come from a ghastly bout of murder, arson, rape, and torture, with
bravado and a moral equanimity, as though merely some wild student's
prank had been played, perfectly convinced that the poets have now an
ample theme to sing and celebrate. It is impossible not to recognise
at the core of all these aristocratic races the beast of prey; the
magnificent _blonde brute_, avidly rampant for spoil and victory;
this hidden core needed an outlet from time to time, the beast must
get loose again, must return into the wilderness--the Roman, Arabic,
German, and Japanese nobility, the Homeric heroes, the Scandinavian
Vikings, are all alike in this need. It is the aristocratic races who
have left the idea "Barbarian" on all the tracks in which they have
marched; nay, a consciousness of this very barbarianism, and even
a pride in it, manifests itself even in their highest civilisation
(for example, when Pericles says to his Athenians in that celebrated
funeral oration, "Our audacity has forced a way over every land and
sea, rearing everywhere imperishable memorials of itself for _good_
and for _evil_"). This audacity of aristocratic races, mad, absurd,
and spasmodic as may be its expression; the incalculable and fantastic
nature of their enterprises,Pericles sets in special relief and
glory the ᾽ραθυμία of the Athenians, their nonchalance and contempt for
safety, body, life, and comfort, their awful joy and intense delight
in all destruction, in all the ecstasies of victory and cruelty,--all
these features become crystallised, for those who suffered thereby
in the picture of the "barbarian," of the "evil enemy," perhaps of
the "Goth" and of the "Vandal." The profound, icy mistrust which
the German provokes, as soon as he arrives at power,--even at the
present time,--is always still an aftermath of that inextinguishable
horror with which for whole centuries Europe has regarded the wrath
of the blonde Teuton beast (although between the old Germans and
ourselves there exists scarcely a psychological, let alone a physical,
relationship). I have once called attention to the embarrassment of
Hesiod, when he conceived the series of social ages, and endeavoured
to express them in gold, silver, and bronze. He could only dispose
of the contradiction, with which he was confronted, by the Homeric
world, an age magnificent indeed, but at the same time so awful and
so violent, by making two ages out of one, which he henceforth placed
one behind each other--first, the age of the heroes and demigods, as
that world had remained in the memories of the aristocratic families,
who found therein their own ancestors; secondly, the bronze age, as
that corresponding age appeared to the descendants of the oppressed,
spoiled, ill-treated, exiled, enslaved; namely, as an age of bronze,
as I have said, hard, cold, terrible, without feelings and without
conscience, crushing everything, and bespattering everything with
blood. Granted the truth of the theory now believed to be true, that
the very _essence of all civilisation_ is to _train_ out of man, the
beast of prey, a tame and civilised animal, a domesticated animal,
it follows indubitably that we must regard as the real _tools of
civilisation_ all those instincts of reaction and resentment, by the
help of which the aristocratic races, together with their ideals,
were finally degraded and overpowered; though that has not yet come
to be synonymous with saying that the bearers of those tools also
_represented_ the civilisation. It is rather the contrary that is
not only probable--nay, it is _palpable_ to-day; these bearers of
vindictive instincts that have to be bottled up, these descendants of
all European and non-European slavery, especially of the pre-Aryan
population--these people, I say, represent the _decline_ of humanity!
These "tools of civilisation" are a disgrace to humanity, and
constitute in reality more of an argument against civilisation, more
of a reason why civilisation should be suspected. One may be perfectly
justified in being always afraid of the blonde beast that lies at
the core of all aristocratic races, and in being on one's guard: but
who would not a hundred times prefer to be afraid, when one at the
same time admires, than to be immune from fear, at the cost of being
perpetually obsessed with the loathsome spectacle of the distorted, the
dwarfed, the stunted, the envenomed? And is that not our fate? What
produces to-day our repulsion towards "man"?--for we _suffer_ from
"man," there is no doubt about it. It is not fear; it is rather that
we have nothing more to fear from men; it is that the worm "man" is in
the foreground and pullulates; it is that the "tame man," the wretched
mediocre and unedifying creature, has learnt to consider himself a goal
and a pinnacle, an inner meaning, an historic principle, a "higher
man"; yes, it is that he has a certain right so to consider himself,
in so far as he feels that in contrast to that excess of deformity,
disease, exhaustion, and effeteness whose odour is beginning to pollute
present-day Europe, he at any rate has achieved a relative success, he
at any rate still says "yes" to life.


12.

I cannot refrain at this juncture from uttering a sigh and one last
hope. What is it precisely which I find intolerable? That which I alone
cannot get rid of, which makes me choke and faint? Bad air! bad air!
That something misbegotten comes near me; that I must inhale the odour
of the entrails of a misbegotten soul!--That excepted, what can one
not endure in the way of need, privation, bad weather, sickness, toil,
solitude? In point of fact, one manages to get over everything, born
as one is to a burrowing and battling existence; one always returns
once again to the light, one always lives again one's golden hour of
victory--and then one stands as one was born, unbreakable, tense, ready
for something more difficult, for something more distant, like a bow
stretched but the tauter by every strain. But from time to time do ye
grant me--assuming that "beyond good and evil" there are goddesses who
can grant--one glimpse, grant me but one glimpse only, of something
perfect, fully realised, happy, mighty, triumphant, of something
that still gives cause for fear! A glimpse of a man that justifies
the existence of man, a glimpse of an incarnate human happiness that
realises and redeems, for the sake of which one may hold fast to _the
belief in man_! For the position is this: in the dwarfing and levelling
of the European man lurks _our_ greatest peril, for it is this outlook
which fatigues--we see to-day nothing which wishes to be greater, we
surmise that the process is always still backwards, still backwards
towards something more attenuated, more inoffensive, more cunning,
more comfortable, more mediocre, more indifferent, more Chinese, more
Christian--man, there is no doubt about it, grows always "better"
--the destiny of Europe lies even in this--that in losing the fear of
man, we have also lost the hope in man, yea, the will to be man. The
sight of man now fatigues.--What is present-day Nihilism if it is not
_that_?--We are tired of _man_.


13.

But let us come back to it; the problem of another origin of the
_good_--of the good, as the resentful man has thought it out--demands
its solution. It is not surprising that the lambs should bear a grudge
against the great birds of prey, but that is no reason for blaming the
great birds of prey for taking the little lambs. And when the lambs
say among themselves, "These birds of prey are evil, and he who is as
far removed from being a bird of prey, who is rather its opposite,
a lamb,--is he not good?" then there is nothing to cavil at in the
setting up of this ideal, though it may also be that the birds of prey
will regard it a little sneeringly, and perchance say to themselves,
"_We_ bear no grudge against them, these good lambs, we even like them:
nothing is tastier than a tender lamb." To require of strength that it
should not express itself as strength, that it should not be a wish to
overpower, a wish to overthrow, a wish to become master, a thirst for
enemies and antagonisms and triumphs, is just as absurd as to require
of weakness that it should express itself as strength. A quantum of
force is just such a quantum of movement, will, action--rather it
is nothing else than just those very phenomena of moving, willing,
acting, and can only appear otherwise in the misleading errors of
language (and the fundamental fallacies of reason which have become
petrified therein), which understands, and understands wrongly, all
working as conditioned by a worker, by a "subject." And just exactly
as the people separate the lightning from its flash, and interpret the
latter as a thing done, as the working of a subject which is called
lightning, so also does the popular morality separate strength from the
expression of strength, as though behind the strong man there existed
some indifferent neutral _substratum_, which enjoyed a _caprice and
option_ as to whether or not it should express strength. But there
is no such _substratum_, there is no "being" behind doing, working,
becoming; "the doer" is a mere appanage to the action. The action is
everything. In point of fact, the people duplicate the doing, when they
make the lightning lighten, that is a "doing-doing": they make the same
phenomenon first a cause, and then, secondly, the effect of that cause.
The scientists fail to improve matters when they say, "Force moves,
force causes," and so on. Our whole science is still, in spite of all
its coldness, of all its freedom from passion, a dupe of the tricks of
language, and has never succeeded in getting rid of that superstitious
changeling "the subject" (the atom, to give another instance, is such
a changeling, just as the Kantian "Thing-in-itself"). What wonder,
if the suppressed and stealthily simmering passions of revenge and
hatred exploit for their own advantage this belief, and indeed hold no
belief with a more steadfast enthusiasm than this--"that the strong
has the _option_ of being weak, and the bird of prey of being a lamb."
Thereby do they win for themselves the right of attributing to the
birds of prey the _responsibility_ for being birds of prey: when the
oppressed, down-trodden, and overpowered say to themselves with the
vindictive guile of weakness, "Let us be otherwise than the evil,
namely, good! and good is every one who does not oppress, who hurts
no one, who does not attack, who does not pay back, who hands over
revenge to God, who holds himself, as we do, in hiding; who goes out
of the way of evil, and demands, in short, little from life; like
ourselves the patient, the meek, the just,"--yet all this, in its cold
and unprejudiced interpretation, means nothing more than "once for
all, the weak are weak; it is good to do _nothing for which we are not
strong enough_"; but this dismal state of affairs, this prudence of the
lowest order, which even insects possess (which in a great danger are
fain to sham death so as to avoid doing "too much"), has, thanks to
the counterfeiting and self-deception of weakness, come to masquerade
in the pomp of an ascetic, mute, and expectant virtue, just as though
the _very_ weakness of the weak--that is, forsooth, its _being_, its
working, its whole unique inevitable inseparable reality--were a
voluntary result, something wished, chosen, a deed, an act of _merit_.
This kind of man finds the belief in a neutral, free-choosing "subject"
_necessary_ from an instinct of self-preservation, of self-assertion,
in which every lie is fain to sanctify itself. The subject (or, to
use popular language, the _soul_) has perhaps proved itself the best
dogma in the world simply because it rendered possible to the horde
of mortal, weak, and oppressed individuals of every kind, that most
sublime specimen of self-deception, the interpretation of weakness as
freedom, of being this, or being that, as _merit_.


14.

Will any one look a little into--right into--the mystery of how _ideals
are manufactured_ in this world? Who has the courage to do it? Come!

Here we have a vista opened into these grimy workshops. Wait just a
moment, dear Mr. Inquisitive and Foolhardy; your eye must first grow
accustomed to this false changing light--Yes! Enough! Now speak! What
is happening below down yonder? Speak out that what you see, man of the
most dangerous curiosity--for now _I_ am the listener.

"I see nothing, I hear the more. It is a cautious, spiteful, gentle
whispering and muttering together in all the corners and crannies. It
seems to me that they are lying; a sugary softness adheres to every
sound. Weakness is turned to _merit_, there is no doubt about it--it is
just as you say."

Further!

"And the impotence which requites not, is turned to 'goodness,' craven
baseness to meekness, submission to those whom one hates, to obedience
(namely, obedience to one of whom they say that he ordered this
submission--they call him God). The inoffensive character of the weak,
the very cowardice in which he is rich, his standing at the door, his
forced necessity of waiting, gain here fine names, such as 'patience,'
which is also called 'virtue'; not being able to avenge one's self, is
called not wishing to avenge one's self, perhaps even forgiveness (for
_they_ know not what they do--we alone know what _they_ do). They also
talk of the 'love of their enemies' and sweat thereby."

Further!

"They are miserable, there is no doubt about it, all these whisperers
and counterfeiters in the corners, although they try to get warm by
crouching close to each other, but they tell me that their misery is
a favour and distinction given to them by God, just as one beats the
dogs one likes best; that perhaps this misery is also a preparation, a
probation, a training; that perhaps it is still more something which
will one day be compensated and paid back with a tremendous interest in
gold, nay in happiness. This they call 'Blessedness.'"

Further!

"They are now giving me to understand, that not only are they better
men than the mighty, the lords of the earth, whose spittle they have
got to lick (not out of fear, not at all out of fear! But because
God ordains that one should honour all authority)--not only are they
better men, but that they also have a 'better time,' at any rate,
will one day have a 'better time.' But enough! Enough! I can endure
it no longer. Bad air! Bad air! These workshops _where ideals are
manufactured_--verily they reek with the crassest lies."

Nay. Just one minute! You are saying nothing about the masterpieces
of these virtuosos of black magic, who can produce whiteness, milk,
and innocence out of any black you like: have you not noticed what a
pitch of refinement is attained by their _chef d'œuvre_, their most
audacious, subtle, ingenious, and lying artist-trick? Take care! These
cellar-beasts, full of revenge and hate--what do they make, forsooth,
out of their revenge and hate? Do you hear these words? Would you
suspect, if you trusted only their words, that you are among men of
resentment and nothing else?

"I understand, I prick my ears up again (ah! ah! ah! and I hold my
nose). Now do I hear for the first time that which they have said so
often: 'We good, _we are the righteous_'--what they demand they call
not revenge but 'the triumph of _righteousness_'; what they hate is
not their enemy, no, they hate 'unrighteousness,' 'godlessness'; what
they believe in and hope is not the hope of revenge, the intoxication
of sweet revenge (--"sweeter than honey," did Homer call it?), but the
victory of God, of the _righteous_ _God_ over the 'godless'; what is
left for them to love in this world is not _their_ brothers in hate,
but their 'brothers in love,' as they say, all the good and righteous
on the earth."

And how do they name that which serves them as a solace against all
the troubles of life--their phantasmagoria of their anticipated future
blessedness?

"How? Do I hear right? They call it 'the last judgment,' the advent of
their kingdom, 'the kingdom of God'--but _in the meanwhile_ they live
'in faith,' 'in love,' 'in hope.'"

Enough! Enough!


15.

In the faith in what? In the love for what? In the hope of what? These
weaklings!--they also, forsooth, wish to be the strong some time; there
is no doubt about it, some time _their_ kingdom also must come--"the
kingdom of God" is their name for it, as has been mentioned: they are
so meek in everything! Yet in order to experience _that_ kingdom it
is necessary to live long, to live beyond death,--yes, _eternal_ life
is necessary so that one can make up for ever for that earthly life
"in faith," "in love," "in hope." Make up for what? Make up by what?
Dante, as it seems to me, made a crass mistake when with awe-inspiring
ingenuity he placed that inscription over the gate of his hell, "Me too
made eternal love": at any rate the following inscription would have
a much better right to stand over the gate of the Christian Paradise
and its "eternal blessedness"--"Me too made eternal hate"--granted
of course that a truth may rightly stand over the gate to a lie! For
what is the blessedness of that Paradise? Possibly we could quickly
surmise it; but it is better that it should be explicitly attested by
an authority who in such matters is not to be disparaged, Thomas of
Aquinas, the great teacher and saint. "_Beati in regno celesti_" says
he, as gently as a lamb, "_videbunt pœnas damnatorum, ut beatitudo
illis magis complaceat_." Or if we wish to hear a stronger tone, a word
from the mouth of a triumphant father of the Church, who warned his
disciples against the cruel ecstasies of the public spectacles--But
why? Faith offers us much more,--says he, _de Spectac._, c. 29
ss.,--something much stronger; thanks to the redemption, joys of quite
another kind stand at our disposal; instead of athletes we have our
martyrs; we wish for blood, well, we have the blood of Christ--but
what then awaits us on the day of his return, of his triumph. And
then does he proceed, does this enraptured visionary: "_at enim
supersunt alia spectacula, ille ultimas et perpetuus judicii dies, ille
nationibus insperatus, ille derisus, cum tanta sæculi vetustas et tot
ejus nativitates uno igne haurientur. Quæ tunc spectaculi latitudo!
Quid admirer! quid rideam! Ubigaudeam! Ubi exultem, spectans tot et
tantos reges, qui in cœlum recepti nuntiabantur, cum ipso Jove et ipsis
suis testibus in imis tenebris congemescentes! Item præsides_" (the
provincial governors) "_persecutores dominici nominis sævioribus quam
ipsi flammis sævierunt insultantibus contra Christianos liquescentes!
Quos præterea sapientes illos philosophos coram discipulis suis una
conflagrantibus erubescentes, quibus nihil ad deum pertinere suadebant,
quibus animas aut nullas aut non in pristina corpora redituras
affirmabant! Etiam poetas non ad Rhadamanti nec ad Minois, sed ad
inopinati Christi tribunal palpitantes! Tunc magis tragœdi audiendi,
magis scilicet vocales_" (with louder tones and more violent shrieks)
"_in sua propria calamitate; tunc histriones cognoscendi, solutiores
multo per ignem; tunc spectandus auriga in flammea rota totus rubens,
tunc xystici contemplandi non in gymnasiis, sed in igne jaculati, nisi
quod ne tunc quidem illos velim vivos, ut qui malim ad eos potius
conspectum insatiabilem conferre, qui in dominum scevierunt. Hic est
ille, dicam fabri aut quæstuariæ filius_" (as is shown by the whole of
the following, and in particular by this well-known description of the
mother of Jesus from the Talmud, Tertullian is henceforth referring to
the Jews), "_sabbati destructor, Samarites et dæmonium habens. Hic est
quem a Juda redemistis, hic est ille arundine et colaphis diverberatus,
sputamentis de decoratus, felle et acete potatus. Hic est, quem
clam discentes subripuerunt, ut resurrexisse dicatur vel hortulanus
detraxit, ne lactucæ suæ frequentia commeantium laderentur. Ut talia
species, ut talibus exultes, quis tibi prætor aut consul aut sacerdos
de sua liberalitate prastabit? Et tamen hæc jam habemus quodammodo per
fidem spiritu imaginante repræsentata. Ceterum qualia illa sunt, quæ
nec oculus vidit nec auris audivit nec in cor hominis ascenderunt?_" (I
Cor. ii. 9.) "_Credo circo et utraque cavea_" (first and fourth row,
or, according to others, the comic and the tragic stage) "_et omni
studio gratiora._" _Per fidem_: so stands it written.


16.

Let us come to a conclusion. The two _opposing values_, "good and bad,"
"good and evil," have fought a dreadful, thousand-year fight in the
world, and though indubitably the second value has been for a long time
in the preponderance, there are not wanting places where the fortune
of the fight is still undecisive. It can almost be said that in the
meanwhile the fight reaches a higher and higher level, and that in the
meanwhile it has become more and more intense, and always more and more
psychological; so that nowadays there is perhaps no more decisive mark
of the _higher nature_, of the more psychological nature, than to be in
that sense self-contradictory, and to be actually still a battleground
for those two opposites. The symbol of this fight, written in a writing
which has remained worthy of perusal throughout the course of history
up to the present time, is called "Rome against Judæa, Judæa against
Rome." Hitherto there has been no greater event than _that_ fight,
the putting of _that_ question, _that_ deadly antagonism. Rome found
in the Jew the incarnation of the unnatural, as though it were its
diametrically opposed monstrosity, and in Rome the Jew was held to
be _convicted of hatred_ of the whole human race: and rightly so, in
so far as it is right to link the well-being and the future of the
human race to the unconditional mastery of the aristocratic values, of
the Roman values. What, conversely, did the Jews feel against Rome?
One can surmise it from a thousand symptoms, but it is sufficient to
carry one's mind back to the Johannian Apocalypse, that most obscene
of all the written outbursts, which has revenge on its conscience.
(One should also appraise at its full value the profound logic of the
Christian instinct, when over this very book of hate it wrote the name
of the Disciple of Love, that self-same disciple to whom it attributed
that impassioned and ecstatic Gospel--therein lurks a portion of
truth, however much literary forging may have been necessary for
this purpose.) The Romans were the strong and aristocratic; a nation
stronger and more aristocratic has never existed in the world, has
never even been dreamed of; every relic of them, every inscription
enraptures, granted that one can divine _what_ it is that writes the
inscription. The Jews, conversely, were that priestly nation of
resentment par excellence, possessed by a unique genius for popular
morals: just compare with the Jews the nations with analogous gifts,
such as the Chinese or the Germans, so as to realise afterwards what is
first rate, and what is fifth rate.

Which of them has been provisionally victorious, Rome or Judæa? but
there is not a shadow of doubt; just consider to whom in Rome itself
nowadays you bow down, as though before the quintessence of all the
highest values--and not only in Rome, but almost over half the world,
everywhere where man has been tamed or is about to be tamed--to _three
Jews_, as we know, and _one Jewess_ (to Jesus of Nazareth, to Peter
the fisher, to Paul the tent-maker, and to the mother of the aforesaid
Jesus, named Mary). This is very remarkable: Rome is undoubtedly
defeated. At any rate there took place in the Renaissance a brilliantly
sinister revival of the classical ideal, of the aristocratic valuation
of all things: Rome herself, like a man waking up from a trance,
stirred beneath the burden of the new Judaised Rome that had been built
over her, which presented the appearance of an œcumenical synagogue
and was called the "Church": but immediately Judæa triumphed again,
thanks to that fundamentally popular (German and English) movement
of revenge, which is called the Reformation, and taking also into
account its inevitable corollary, the restoration of the Church--the
restoration also of the ancient graveyard peace of classical Rome.
Judæa proved yet once more victorious over the classical ideal in the
French Revolution, and in a sense which was even more crucial and even
more profound: the last political aristocracy that existed in Europe,
that of the _French_ seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, broke into
pieces beneath the instincts of a resentful populace--never had the
world heard a greater jubilation, a more uproarious enthusiasm: indeed,
there took place in the midst of it the most monstrous and unexpected
phenomenon; the ancient ideal _itself_ swept before the eyes and
conscience of humanity with all its life and with unheard-of splendour,
and in opposition to resentment's lying war-cry of _the prerogative
of the most_, in opposition to the will to lowliness, abasement, and
equalisation, the will to a retrogression and twilight of humanity,
there rang out once again, stronger, simpler, more penetrating than
ever, the terrible and enchanting counter-warcry of _the prerogative of
the few_! Like a final signpost to other ways, there appeared Napoleon,
the most unique and violent anachronism that ever existed, and in him
the incarnate problem _of the aristocratic ideal in itself_--consider
well what a problem it is:--Napoleon, that synthesis of Monster and
Superman.


17.

Was it therewith over? Was that greatest of all antitheses of ideals
thereby relegated _ad acta_ for all time? Or only postponed, postponed
for a long time? May there not take place at some time or other a
much more awful, much more carefully prepared flaring up of the old
conflagration? Further! Should not one wish _that_ consummation with
all one's strength?--will it one's self? demand it one's self? He who
at this juncture begins, like my readers, to reflect, to think further,
will have difficulty in coming quickly to a conclusion,--ground enough
for me to come myself to a conclusion, taking it for granted that for
some time past what I mean has been sufficiently clear, what I exactly
_mean_ by that dangerous motto which is inscribed on the body of my
last book: _Beyond Good and Evil_--at any rate that is not the same as
"Beyond Good and Bad."


Note.--I avail myself of the opportunity offered by this treatise to
express, openly and formally, a wish which up to the present has only
been expressed in occasional conversations with scholars, namely,
that some Faculty of philosophy should, by means of a series of prize
essays, gain the glory of having promoted the further study of the
_history of morals_--perhaps this book may serve to give forcible
impetus in such a direction. With regard to a possibility of this
character, the following question deserves consideration. It merits
quite as much the attention of philologists and historians as of actual
professional philosophers.

"_What indication of the history of the evolution of the moral ideas is
afforded by philology, and especially by etymological investigation?_"

On the other hand, it is of course equally necessary to induce
physiologists and doctors to be interested in these problems (_of the
value of the valuations_ which have prevailed up to the present): in
this connection the professional philosophers may be trusted to act
as the spokesmen and intermediaries in these particular instances,
after, of course, they have quite succeeded in transforming the
relationship between philosophy and physiology and medicine, which
is originally one of coldness and suspicion, into the most friendly
and fruitful reciprocity. In point of fact, all tables of values,
all the "thou shalts" known to history and ethnology, need primarily
a _physiological_, at any rate in preference to a psychological,
elucidation and interpretation; all equally require a critique from
medical science. The question, "What is the _value_ of this or that
table of 'values' and morality?" will be asked from the most varied
standpoints. For instance, the question of "valuable _for what_" can
never be analysed with sufficient nicety. That, for instance, which
would evidently have value with regard to promoting in a race the
greatest possible powers of endurance (or with regard to increasing its
adaptability to a specific climate, or with regard to the preservation
of the greatest number) would have nothing like the same value, if it
were a question of evolving a stronger species. In gauging values,
the good of the majority and the good of the minority are opposed
standpoints: we leave it to the naïveté of English biologists to regard
the former standpoint as _intrinsically_ superior. _All_ the sciences
have now to pave the way for the future task of the philosopher; this
task being understood to mean, that he must solve the problem of
_value_, that he has to fix the _hierarchy of values_.




