EQUIPPING YOUTH FOR TOMORROW
Prophet T.B. Joshua is right now addressing the overwhelming response from viewers worldwide concerning his call for job creation among graduates worldwide. He said, "I have contacted an international body which is a 
section in the United Nations and they are ready to join me in this battle." Glory be to God Almighty!
KIDNEY STONES FLUSHED OUT THROUGH THE ANOINTING WATER
Mr Jeff Motsetsi, a teacher by profession was diagnosed with kidney stones in 2009. This would cause him unbearable pain making him unable to teach the children. In 2011, he was privileged to come to The SCOAN and received the Anointing Water. He went home and one day he was outside in the evening enjoying the breeze and he experienced an excruciating pain caused by the kidney stones. In desperation, he remembered that he had the Anointing Water with him. He managed to drag himself into the house and reached for the Anointing Water, adding it to a cup of ordinary drinking water. He then drank it, praying in faith that God would flush out the kidney stones from his system once and for all. The next morning, when he went to the toilet, he passed out the kidney stones in his urine to his amazement. He had gone to many hospitals to no avail but with the Anointing Water, the kidney stones were urinated out. 

He displayed his before and after healing medical reports and also showed the actual kidney stones that he had urinated out, to the glory of God. His active lifestyle is now restored and he is completely free from pain or discomfort. His advice was that we should not underrate the Anointing Water because it is an atomic bomb that will flush out whatever is not of Jesus in us.

sickness, and burial sprang up in the lowest stratum of contemporary society, amid which the chief antidote against depression, the little joy experi- enced in mutual benefits, was deliberately fostered. Perchance this was then a novelty, a real dis- covery ? This conjuring up of the will for co-operation, for family organisation, for communal life, for " Ccenacula" necessarily brought the Will
for Power, which had been already infinitesimally stimulated, to a new and much fuller manifestation. The herd organisation is a genuine advance and triumph in the fight with depression. With
the growth of the community there matures even
to individuals a new interest, which often enough
takes him out of the more personal element in his discontent, his aversion to himself, the ," despectus sui" of Geulincx. f^U sick and diseased people
strive instinctively after a herd-organisation, out of a desire to shake off their sense of oppressive discomfort and weakness ; the ascetic priest divines this instinct and promotes it ; wherever a herd exists it is the instinct of weakness which
has wished for the herd, and the cleverness of the
priests /which has organised it, for, mark this: by
an equally natural necessity the strong strive as much for isolation as the weak for union : when
the former bind themselves it is only with a view
to an aggressive joint action and joint satisfaction of their Will for Power, much against the wishes of their individual consciences ; the latter, on the contrary, range themselves together with positive delight in such a muster—their instincts are as much gratified thereby as the instincts of theWHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 1 77
"born master" (that is, the solitary beast-of-prey
species of man) are disturbed and wounded to the
quick by organisation. | There is always lurking beneath every oligarchy—such is the universal
lesson of history—the desire for tyranny. Every
oligarchy is continually quivering with the tension
of the effort required by each individual to keep
mastering this desire. (Such, e.g., was the Greek ; Plato shows it in a hundred places, Plato, who
knew his contemporaries—and himself^
19.
I The methods employed by the ascetic priest, which we have already learnt to know—stifling of all vitality, mechanical energy, the little joy, and especially the method of " love your neigh- bour" herd-organisation, the awaking of the communal consciousness of power, to such a pitch
that the individual's disgust with himself becomes
eclipsed by his delight in the thriving of the community—these are, according to modern
standards, the " innocent " methods employed in the fight with depression ;^ let us turn now to
the more interesting topic of the '' guilty
"
methods. The guilty methods spell one thing
:
to produce emotional excess—which is used as the most efficacious anaesthetic against their depressing state of protracted pain ; this is why priestly ingenuity has proved quite inexhaustible in thinking out this one question : " By what means
can you produce an emotional excess ? " This
sounds harsh : it is manifest that it would sound M178 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
nicer and would grate on one's ears less, if I were to say, forsooth : " The ascetic priest made
use at all times of the enthusiasm contained in
all strong emotions." But what is the good of
still soothing the delicate ears of our modern
effeminates ? What is the good on our side of budging one single inch before their verbal Pecksniffianism. For us psychologists to do that would be at once practical Pecksniffianism, apart from the fact of its nauseating us. The good
taste (others might say, the righteousness) of a psychologist nowadays consists, if at all, in combating the shamefully moralised language with which all modern judgments on men and things are smeared. For, do not deceive yourself: what
constitutes the chief characteristic of modern souls and of modern books is not the lying, but the innocence which is part and parcel of their intel- lectual dishonesty. The inevitable running up
against this "innocence" everywhere constitutes the most distasteful feature of the somewhat
dangerous business which a modern psychologist has to undertake: it is a part of our great danger—it is a road which perhaps leads us
straight to the great nausea—I know quite well the purpose which all modern books will and can
serve (granted that they last, which I am not
afraid of, and granted equally that there is to be at some future day a generation with a more
rigid, more severe, and healthier taste)—the function which all modernity generally will serve with posterity: that of an emetic,—and this by
reason of its moral sugariness and falsity, itsWHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS? 1 79
ingrained feminism, which it is pleased to call
" Idealism," and at any rate believes to be
idealism. Our cultured men of to-day, our
" good " men, do not lie—that is true ; but it does
not redound to their honour ! The real lie, the
genuine, determined, " honest " lie (on whose
value you can listen to Plato) would prove too tough and strong an article for them by a long way ; it would be asking them to do what people
have been forbidden to ask them to do, to open
their eyes to their own selves, and to learn to
distinguish between " true " and " false " in their own selves. The dishonest lie alone suits them : everything which feels a good man is perfectly
incapable of any other attitude to anything than
that of a dishonourable liar, an absolute liar, but
none the less an innocent liar, a blue-eyed liar, a virtuous liar. These " good men," they are
all now tainted with morality through and
through, and as far as honour is concerned they
are disgraced and corrupted for all eternity. Which of them could stand a further truth ' about man"? or, put more tangibly, which of them
could put up with a true biography? One or two instances : Lord Byron composed a most
personal autobiography, but Thomas Moore was
" too good " for it ; he burnt his friend's papers.
Dr. Gwinner, Schopenhauer's executor, is said
to have done the same ; for Schopenhauer as well wrote much about himself, and perhaps also
«(g"amj^ himself (ei? eavrov). The virtuous American Thayer, Beethoven's biographer, suddenly
stopped his work : he had come to a certainl8o THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
point in that honourable and simple life, and
could stand it no longer. Moral : What sensible man nowadays writes one honest word about himself? He must already belong to the Order
of Holy Foolhardiness. We are promised an autobiography of Richard Wagner ; who doubts but that it would be a clever autobiography? Think, forsooth, of the grotesque horror which
the Catholic priest Janssen aroused in Germany
with his inconceivably square and harmless
pictures of the German Reformation ; what
wouldn't people do if some real psychologist were to tell us about a genuine Luther, tell us, not with the moralist simplicity of a country
priest or the sweet and cautious modesty of a Protestant historian, but say with the fearlessness of a Taine, that springs from force of character and not from a prudent toleration of force. (The Germans, by the bye, have already produced the
classic specimen of this toleration—they may
well be allowed to reckon him as one of their own, in Leopold Ranke, that bom classical advocate of every causa fortior, that cleverest of all the clever opportunists.)
20. But you will soon understand me.—Putting it shortly, there is reason enough, is there not, for JUS___ps.yd^o^sts nowadays never getting^~a^^ from a, certain ...miatrust of out own selves^^ Probably even we ourselves are still " too good
"
for our ^ work • probably, whatever contempt weWHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ?(l8
1
feel for this popular craze^ for morality, we
7wsRlves_jfe_perhaps none the iess-its victims^ vrsy\~3.nd slayggj_.prQbaMy_Jt_jnfects_even us. Of what was that diplomat warning us, when
he said to his colleagues : " Let us especially mistrust our first impulses, gentlemen ! tkey are
almost always gvod" t So should nowadays every
psychologist talk to his colleagues. And thus we get back to our problem, which in point of
fact does require from us a certain severity, a
certain mistrust especially against " first impulses." The ascetic ideal in the__servj££.—qf—p-mfected
^emotional excessT-—hewho remembers the previous
essay will already partially anticipate the essential meaning compressed into these above ten words. The thorough unswitching of thgJruman_§Qul,_thg
plunging of it into terror, frost, ardour, rapture,
so as to free"Tt^"as through ~som^JightnIi^]JEock7
from all the smallness and pettiness of unhappiness, depression, and discomfort : what waysHead"
to ^w_goal? AnJwhich ol these ways"does~s6
inost safely ? ... At bottom all great emotions ^^MgJhisjiQHgcjprovided that they find a sudden
outlet
—
emotions such as rage, fear, lust, revenge,
hope, triumph, despair, cruelty ^ and, in sooth, the
ascetic priest has had no scruples in taking into
his service the whole pack of hounds that rage
in the human kennel, unleashing now these and now those, with the same constant object of waking man out of his protracted melancholy,
of chasing away, at any rate for a time, his dull
pain, his shrinking misery, but always under the
sanction of a religious^ interpretation and justifica-1 82 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
tion. This emotional excess has subsequently to be paid /or~ this is self-evident—it makes"The tlt^more in^:^^^ana~'EEeretore tEis~Tan3~~oT remedy
for pain is~ according to moderrT stanHarcls^a
" guilty ^nong. " The dictates of fairness, however, require that we should all the more emphasise the fact that
this remedy is applied with a good conscience, that the ascetic priest has prescribed it in the most implicit belief in its utility and indispensability;—often enough almost collapsing in the presence of the pain which he created ;—that we
should similarly emphasise the fact that the violent physiological revenges of such excesses, even perhaps the mental disturbances, are not absolutely inconsistent with the general tenor of
this kind of remedy ; this remedy, which, as we
have shown previously, is not for the purpose of healing diseases, but of fighting the unhappiness
of that depression, the alleviation and deadening
of which was its object. The object was conse- quently achieved. /The keynote by which the
ascetic priest was enabled to get every kind of agonising and ecstatic music to play on the
fibres of the human soul—was, as every one knows,
the exploitation of the feeling of "guilt."] I have already indicated in the pf'evious essay the
origin of this feeling—as a piece of animal psychology and nothing else : we were thus con- fronted with the feeling of " guilt," in its crude
state, as it were. It was first in the hands of the priest, real artist that he was in the feeling of
guilt, that it took shape—oh, what a shape
!WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS? 1 83
r^Sin "—for that is the name of the new priestly
version of the animal " bad-conscience " (the in- verted cruelty)—has up to the present been the
Efreatest event in the history of the diseased soul
:
in " sin " we find the most perilous and fatal masterpiece of religious interpretation,^ \ Imagine_^ man,
suffering from himself, some way or other but at any
rate physiologically, perhaps like an animal shut up in a cage, norcleaFas to the why and the
wheretore ! Tmagme him iri~TTis"desire for reasons —reasons briiig'' relief
—
in his desire again for
remedies, n^xqtics at last, consulting one, who
knows even the occult—^an3^~see71o~an3~^beH51(f,Tie
gets a hmt trom his wizard, the ascetic priest, hi^
first hint on the " cause " of his trouble : he iriiisl search tor it in himself., in his guiltiness, in a piece "oTthe past, he must understand his very suffering
as a state ojT^unishmentT^Y^ hzs, heard, he has
understood, has the unfortunate : he is now in the
plight of a hen round which a line has been drawn. He never gets out of the circle of lines. The sick man has been turned into " the sinner "—and now
for a few thousand years we never get away from
the sight of this new invalid, of " a sinner "—shall we ever get away from it ?—wherever we just look, everywhere the hypnotic gaze of the sinner always moving in one direction (in the direction of guilt, the only cause of suffering) ; everywhere the evil conscience, this ^^ greuliche thier" * to use Luther's language ; everywhere rumination over the past, a
distorted view of action, the gaze of the "green-eyed
* " Horrible beast."184 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
monster" turned on all action; everywhere thewilful misunderstanding of suffering, its transvaluation
into feelings of guilt, fear of retribution ; every- where the scourge, the hairy shirt, the starvingbody,
contrition ; everywhere the sinner breaking himself on the ghastly wheel of a restless and morbidly
eager conscience ; leverywhere mute pain, extreme
fear, the agony of a tortured heart, the spasms of an unknown happiness, the shriek for "redemption,"
J
In point of fact, thanks to this system of procedure, the old depression, dullnesSj andjati^ue were abso- l.uSiv:.£Qnq5e£e3ZIife itself became verfjntsrestius again, awake, eternally awake, sleepless, glowing, ~Bi5rnraway, exhausted and yet not tired—^^suSiwas" the figure cut by man, "the siriner,"'wKo was initi- ated into these mysteries. This grand old wizard of an ascetic priest fighting with depression—he had clearly triumphed, Ms kingdom had come
:
men no longer grumbled at pain, men panted after pain : '^_^oy£_^ciin ! More pain ! " So for centuries on end shrieked the demand of his acolytes and initiates. Every emotional excess which hurt ; everything which_broke,~bvertfirew/ crushed. transporTgdj^avished ; the mystery of torture-chambers, the inggaiutyloILheirjtgglf—^all this was now discovered, divined, exploited, all this was at the service of the wizard, all this served to promote the triumph of his ideal, the ascetic ideal. " My kingdom is not of this world" quoth he, both
at the beginning and at the end : had he still the
right to talk like that?—Goethe has maintained
that there are only thirty-six tragic situations : we
would infer from that, did we not know otherwiseWHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 1 85
that Goethe was no ascetic priest. He—knows
more.
21.
So far as all this kind of priestly medicinemongering, the " guilty " kind, is concerned, every word of criticism is superfluous. As for the suggestion that emotional excess of the type, which
in these cases the ascetic priest is fain to order to
his sick patients (under the most sacred euphemism,
as is obvious, and equally impregnated with the
sanctity of his purpose)' has ever really been of
use to any sick man, who, forsooth, would feel inclined to maintain a proposition of that character ? At any rate, some understanding should, be come
to as to the expression " be of use." Ilf you only
wish to express that such a system of treatment
has reformed man, I do not gainsay it : I merely
add that " reformed " conveys to my mind as much as "tamed," "weakened," "discouraged," "refined," " daintified," " emasculated " (and thus it means almost as much as injured^ But when you
have to deal principally with sick, depressed, and
oppressed creatures, such a system, even granted
that it makes the ill " better," under any circumstances also makes them more ill : ask the maddoctors the invariable result of a methodical application of penance-torture, contrition, and salvation
ecstasies. Similarly ask history, fin every body
politic where the ascetic priest has established
this treatment of the sick, disease has on every
occasion spread with sinister speed throughout1 86 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
its length and breadthj What was always the "result"? A shattered nervous system, in addition to the existing malady, and this in the greatest as in the smallest, in the individuals as in masses. We find, in consequence of the penance and re- demption-training, awful epileptic epidemics, the greatest known to history, such as the St. Vitus and
St. John dances of the Middle Ages ; we find, as another phase of its after-effect, frightful mutilations and chronic depressions, by means of which
the temperament of a nation or a city (Geneva, Bale) is turned once for all into its opposite ;
—
this training, again, is responsible for the witchhysteria, a phenomenon analogous to somnambulism (eight great epidemic outbursts of this only between i 564 and 1605) ; —we find similarly in its train those delirious death-cravings of large masses, whose awful "shriek," "evvivala morte!" was heard over the whole of Europe, now interrupted byvolup- tuous variations and anon by a rage for destruction, just as the same emotional sequence with the same intermittencies and sudden changes is now
universally observed in every case where the ascetic doctrine of sin scores once more a great success
(religious neurosis appears as a manifestation of the devil,thereis no doubt of it. What is it? QucBritur).
I Speaking generally,the ascetic ideal and its sublime- moral cult, this most ingenious, reckless, and peril- ous systematisation of all methods of emotional
excess, is writ large in a dreadful and unforgettable
fashion on the whole history of man, and unfortunately not only on historyj^ I was scarcely able to put forward any other element which attacked theWHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 1 87
and race efficiency of Europeans with more
destructive power than did this ideal ; it can be
dubbed,without exaggeration, the realfatality in the
history of the health of the European man. At the most you can merely draw a comparison with the
specifically German influence : I mean the alcohol
poisoning of Europe, which up to the present has
kept pace exactly with the political and racial pre- dominance of the Germans (where they inoculated
their blood, there too did they inoculate their vice). Third in the series comes syphilis
—
magno sed
proximo intervallo.
22. The ascetic priest has, wherever he has obtained
the mastery, corrupted the health of the soul, he
has consequently also corrupted taste in artibus
et litteris—he corrupts it still. " Consequently ? "
I hope I shall be granted this " consequently "
;
at any rate, I am not going to prove it first. One
solitary indication, it concerns the arch-book of
Christian literature, their real model, their " bookin-itself." In the very midst of the Grseco-Roman
splendour, which was also a splendour of books,
face to face with an ancient world of writings which had not yet fallen into decay and ruin, at a
time when certain books were still to be read, to
possess which we would give nowadays half our
literature in exchange, at that time the simplicity and vanity of Christian agitators (they are generally called Fathers of the Church) dared to declare
:
"We too have our classical literature, we do not
need that of the Greeks"—and meanwhile they1 88 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
proudly pointed to their books of legends, their letters of apostles, and their apologetic tractlets, just in the same way that to-day the English
" Salvation Army " wages its fight against Shakespeare and other " heathens " with an analogous
literature. You already guess it, I do not like the
" New Testament " ; it almost upsets me that I stand so isolated in my taste so far as concerns
this valued, this over-valued Scripture ; the taste of two thousand years is against me ; but what
boots it ! " Here I stand ! I cannot help myself " *—I have the courage of my bad taste. The
Old Testament—yes, that is something quite
different, all honour to the Old Testament ! I find therein great men, an heroic landscape, and one
of the rarest phenomena in the world, the in- comparable naivete of the strong heart; further
still, I find a people. In the New, on the contrary,
just a hostel of petty sects, pure rococo of the
soul, twisting angles and fancy touches, nothing but conventicle air, not to forget an occasional whiff of bucolic sweetness which appertains to the epoch {and the Roman province) and is less Jewish than
Hellenistic. Meekness and braggadocio cheek by
jowl ; an emotional garrulousness that almost deafens ; passionate hysteria, but no passion ; painful pantomime ; here manifestly every one lacked good breeding. How dare any one make so much
fuss about their little failings as do these pious
little fellows ! No one cares a straw about it—let
* " Here I stand ! I cannot help myself. God help me ! Amen"—were Luther's words before the Reichstag at Worms.—H. B. S.WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 1 89
alone God. Finally they actually wish to have
"the crown of eternal life," do all these little provincials ! In return for what, in sooth ? For
what end? It is impossible to carry insolence any further. An immortal Peter ! who could
stand him ! They have an ambition which makes
one laugh: the thing dishes up cut and dried his most personal life, his melancholies, and commonor-garden troubles, as though the Universe itself were under an obligation to bother itself about
them, for it never gets tired of wrapping up God
Himself in the petty misery in which its troubles
are involved. And how about the atrocious form of
this chronic hobnobbing with God ? This Jewish, and not merely Jewish, slobbering and clawing
importunacy towards God ! —There exist little despised " heathen nations " in East Asia, from whom these first Christians could have learnt something worth learning, a little tact in worshiping ; these nations do not allow themselves to say
aloud the name of their God. This seems to me
delicate enough, it is certain that it is too delicate, and not only for primitive Christians ; to take a
contrast, just recollect Luther, the most " eloquent
"
and insolent peasant whom Germany has had,
think of the Lutherian tone, in which he felt quite
the most in his element during his tite-d-tites with God. Luther's opposition to the mediaeval
saints of the Church (in particular, against " that
devil's hog, the Pope "), was, there is no doubt, at bottom the opposition of a boor, who was offended
at the good etiquette of the Church, that worshipetiquette of the sacerdotal code, which only admits1 90 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
to the holy of holies the initiated and the silent, and shuts the door against the boors. These
definitely were not to be allowed a hearing in this planet—but Luther the peasant simply wished it otherwise ; as it was, it was not German enough for him. He personally wished himself to talk direct, to talk personally, to talk " straight from the shoulder" with his God. Well, he's done it. The ascetic ideal, you will guess, was at no time and in no place, a school of good taste, still less of good manners—at the best it was a school for sacerdotal manners : that is, it contains in itself something which was a deadly enemy to all good
manners. Lack of measure, opposition to measure
it is itself a " non plus ultra"
23- The ascetic ideal has corrupted not only health and taste, there are also third, fourth, fifth, and
sixth things which it has corrupted—I shall take care not to go through the catalogue (when should
I get to the end ?). I have here to expose not what this ideal effected ; but rather only what it means, on what it is based, what lies lurking behind it and under it, that of which it is the pro- visional expression, an obscure expression bristling with queries and misunderstandings. And with
this object only in view I presumed " not to spare
" my readers a glance at the awfulness of its results, a glance at its fatal results ; I did this to prepare them for the final and most awful aspect presented
to me by the question of the significance of thatWHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS? 191
ideal. Vyh^t is the significance pX..the„ power of
that idealjJbe_monstjousness_ofjts ^ower ? Whyis it given such an amount of scope? Why is not a better resistance offered against it ? The
ascetic ideal expresses one will : where is the
opposition will, in which an opposition ideal expresses itself? The ascetic ideal has an aim-
—
this goal is, putting it generally, that all the other
interests of human life should, measured by its standard, appear petty and narrow ; it explains
epochs, nations, men, in reference to this one end
;
it forbids any other interpretation, any other end ;
it repudiates, denies, affirms, confirms, only in the
sense of its own interpretation (and was there ever
a more thoroughly elaborated system of interpretation ?) ; it subjects itself to no power, rather does
it believe In its own precedence over everjr"power
^^^^it~believes that nothing~p6w^firl exists "in-the world that has not first got to receive~fronr""it""~a meaningj_a_j;ight_to^^^exist,_a^ Y^^, as ^eing an
instrument in its work,_a-..wa-V-and_means^tQ_iis,
end, to one end. Where is the counterpart o{
tS5~"complete system of will, end, and interpretation ? Why is the counterpart lacking WKere
is the other " one aim " ? But I am told it is not
lacking, tnat not "only has it fought a long and
fortunate fight with that ideal, but that further ^
has_ already won the mastery over that ideal in
a1] ^sppntialc Ipf- ni^r w^^"le_iiiodern scjmce^ attest
_this—that modern science, which, like the genuine
reality-philosophy which it is, manifestly believes
in itself alone, manifestlyTias the courage to"l3e
itSelf, the will to be itself, and has got oiTwell192 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
enough without God, another world, and negative virtues. " —
WltR~all their noisy agitator-babble, however, they effect nothing with me ; these trumpeters of
reality are bad musicians, their voices do not come
from the deeps with sufificient audibility, they are not
I the mouthpiece for the abYSS,ofscientificiaiQwledge
I -—for to-day scientific k52^?^S5_i^ ^" abyss—the word " science," in such trumpeter-niquths, is a pros"
titution, an abuse^ an impertinence. The truth is
\ j usT tTie~oppositg^from what is maintainej_jn~lEe" asceHcjEiory.. Science has to-day absolutely no
belief in itself, let alone m aiTTdeal superior"to
Itself, and wherever science still consistTorpassidiT7
/ love, ardour, suffering, it is not the opposition to that ascetic ideal, but rather the incarnation of its
\ latest and noblestform. Does that ring strange ? 'There are enough brave and decent working people, even among the learned men of to-day, who like their little corner, and who, just because they are pleased so to do, become at times indecently loud with their demand, that people to-day should be
quite content, especially in science—for in science there is so much useful work to do. I do not deny
it—-there is nothing I should like less than to spoil the delight of these honest workers in their handi- work ; for I rejoice in their work. But the fact of science requiring hard work, the fact of its having contented workers, is absolutely no proof of science as a whole having to-day one end, one will, one
ideal, one passion for a great faith ; the contrary, as
I have said, is the case. When science is not the
latest manifestation of the ascetic ideal—but theseWHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 1 93
are cases of such rarity, selectness, and exquisiteness, as to preclude the general judgment being
affected thereby—science is a hiding-place for every
kind of cowardice, disbelief, remorse, despectio sui, bad conscience—it is the very anxiety that springs from having no ideal, the suffering from the lack
of a great love, the discontent with an enforced
moderation. Oh, what does all science not cover
to-day? How mucETaranvTate. does itlnoF try Jfo^oxer ? The diligence of our best scholars, their
senseless industry, their burning the candle of their brain at both ends—their very mastery in their handiwork
—
how often is the real meaning of all that to prevent themselves conTiiiumg to see a
certain thing ? Science as a self-anaesthetic : doyou
Unow that? You wound them—every one who
consorts with scholars experiences this—you wound
them sometimes to the quick through just a harmless word ; when you think you are paying them a compliment you embitter them beyond all bounds,
simply because you didn't have {he finesse to infer the real kind of customers you had to tackle, the sufferer kind (who won't own up even to
themselves what they really are), the dazed and
iinrni;ifjriniis ki'nijjyho have only one' fear
—
coming
to consciousness. -^ 24 And now look at the other side, at those rare
cases, of which I spoke, the most supreme idealists
to be found nowadays among philosophers and
scholars. Have we, perchance, found in them the
sought-for opponents of the ascetic ideal, its anti- N194 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
idealists} In fact, they believe themselves to be
such, these " unbelievers " (for they are all of them
that) : It seeriisThat this ideajs their last remnant of faith, tEe~i3ea of being opponents of this ideal, so earnest are they on this subject, so passionate
in word and gesture;—but does it follow that what they believe must necessarily be truel We
" knowers " have grown by degrees suspicious of
all kinds of believers, our suspicion has step by
step habituated us to draw just the opposite conclusions to what people have drawn before ; that
is to say, wherever the strength of a belief is parti- cularly prominent to draw the conclusion of the
difficulty of proving what is believed, the conclusion of its actual improbability. f We do not again deny
that " faith produces salvation " Vfor~iMf^very
'^«/5«Jwe._d^'3enyJ:hat faith /roz'4J_anytHingjJ^~ a .strong faith, which produces happiness, causes suspicion of the object of that faith, it does not "establish ~its " truth," it does establish a certain probability of
—
illusiou^ What is now the~position in these cases ? These solitaries and deniers of to-day; these fanatics in one thing, in their claim
to intellectual cleanness ; these hard, stern, continent, heroic spirits, who constitute the glory of our time ; all these pale atheists, anti- Christians, immoralists. Nihilists; these sceptics, " ephectics," and
" hectics " of the intellect (in a certain sense they
are the latter, both collectively and individually); these supreme idealists of knowledge, in whom
alone nowadays the intellectual conscience dwells and is alive—in point of fact they believe themselves as far away as possible from the asceticWHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 195
ideal, do these " free, very free spirits " : and yet,
if I may reveal what they themselves cannot see —for they stand too near themselves : this ideal is simply their ideal, they represent it nowadays and
perhaps no one else, they themselves are its most
spiritualised product, its most advanced picket of
skirmishers and scouts, its most insidious delicate and elusive form of seduction.—If I am in any way a reader of riddles, then I will be one with this sentence : for some time past there have been no
free spirits ; for they siiir~BeUeve in WufK.~ When
the Christian TS'usaSers in the East came into
collision with that invincible order of assassins,
that order of free spirits /ar excellence, whose lowest
grade lives in a state of discipline such as no order
of monks has ever attained, then in some way or
other they managed to get an inkling of that symbol and tally-word, that was reserved for the
highest grade alone as their secretum, " Nothing is" true, everything is allowed,"—in sooth, that was
freedom of thought, thereby was taking leave of the
very belief in truth. Has indeed any European,
any Christian freethinker, ever yet wandered into
this proposition and its labyrinthine consequences ? Does he know from experience the Minotauros of
this den.—I doubt it—nay, I know otherwise. Nothing is more really alien to these " monofanatics," these so-called " free spirits," than freedom
and unfettering in that sense ; in no respect are they more closely tied, the absolute fanaticism of
their belief in truth is unparalleled. I know all this perhaps too much from experience at close quarters —that dignified philosophic abstinence to which196 ^ THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
-subelief like that binds its adherents, that stoicism of the intellect, which eventually vetoes negation
as rigidly as it does affirmation, that wish for standing still in front of the actual, the factum
brutum, that fatalism in "fetitsfaits" [ce petitfaital- ism, as I call it), in which French Science now
attempts a kind of moral superiority over German,
this renunciation of interpretation generally (that
is, of forcing, doctoring, abridging, omitting, suppressing, inventing, falsifying, and all the other
essential attributes of interpretation)—all this, con- sidered broadly, expresses the asceticism of virtue, quite as efficiently as does any repudiation of the senses (it is at bottom only a modus of that repudiation). But what forces it intq^that unqualified
will_for truth is iihe faith in the ascetic ideal itself, even_thougH"Tf "taKe~tEeTorm of its unconscious
iniperatives,-—make lio"' mistake about it, it is~tEe~
faith, I repeat, in a metaphysical valuej^nintrinsic^ j^"ueortruth, of a cKaracter which is only w^ranted_ and guaranteed in this ideal (it stands and falls with thartd"eal)7~ Judged strictly, there does not exist a science without its " hypotheses," the thought of such a science is inconceivable, illogical : a philo- sophy, a faith, must always exist first to enable science to gain thereby a direction, a meaning, a
limit and method, a ri£:ht to existence. (He who
holds a contrary opinion on the subject—^he, for ex- ample, who takes it upon himself to establish philo- sophy " upon a strictly scientific basis "—has first got to " turn up-side-down " not only philosophy but also truth itself—the gravest insult which
could possibly be offered to two such respectableWHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS? 197
females !) Yes, there is no doubt about it—and
here I quote my Joyful Wisdom, cp. Book V. Aph.
344 : " The tnan who is truthful in that daring and extreme fashion, which is the presupposition
of the faith in science, asserts thereby a different' -world from that of life, nature, and history ; and In
soTaTas he asserts the existence ofjhat^different
world, come, must he notsinularly repudiate jts
counterpartT^rs" world, oar world? The belief on
which our faith in science is based has remained to
this ^y a metaphysjcaLbelief—even we knowers
of to-day, we godless foes of metaphysics, we too
take our fire from that conflagration which was
kindled by a thousand-year-old faith, from that Christian belief, which was also Plato's benef7tHe
belief that God is truth, that truth is Siyine. . . . But what if this belief becomes more and more incredible, what if nothing proves itself tob^ divine,
unless It be error, blindness, lies-—-what if God
Himse^^roved_Himself_.to- be^our oldest lie?
"
—
It is necessary to stop at this point and to consider
the situation carefully. Science itself now needs a
j ustification (which is not for a minute to say that
there is such a justification). Turn in this context
to the most ancient and the most modern philo- sophers : they all fail to realise the extent of the need of a justification on the part of the Will for Truth—here is a gap in every philosophy—what
is it caused by ? Because up to the present the
ascetic ideal dominated all philosophy, because
Truth was fixed as Being, as God, as the Supreme
Court of Appeal, because Truth was not allowed
to be a problem. Do you understand this(igS \ THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
" allowed " ? 1 From the minute that the belief in the God of the ascetic ideal is repudiatedTthere " exTsts a itew^odlem : the problem of the vaTueoT^^
truth. [ The Will for Truth needed a critiq^ue^^^r'
us "define by these words-QUt-DisoLlask^iJhe value of truth is tentatively toJbe_ccMedin_^uestionr7y~:^
' (If this seems too laconically expressed, I recom- mend the reader to peruse again that passage from
the Joyful Wisdom which bears the title, " How far we also are still pious," Aph. 344, and best of all the whole fifth book of that work, cis well as the Preface to The Dawn of Day!)
25. No ! You can't get round me with science, when
I search for the natural antagonists of the ascetic
ideal, when I put the question : " Where is the op- posed will in which the opponent ideal expresses
itself? " Science is not, by a long way, independent enough to fulfil this function ; in every department
science needs an ideal value, a power which creates values,_aild.Jn__whose service it can believe in iSelf —science itself never creates values. Its relation to the aacetic ideal js ^ot in itself antagOTiiSc"; speaking roughly, it rather represents the progressive force in the^ inner _ evolution of thaTTdealT Tested more exactly, its opposition and antagori^ isHL-are--XQncgnjM_XLQt_mtL_the ideal JtsafTlJat only with that ideal's niitwnrks^'ts^ outer^arb, its masquerade, with itstemporary harciening,stiffenm"g, and_dogmatising;;-it_makes-the- life jE^the ideal free once more, while it repudiates its superficialWHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS
elements. These two phenomena, science and'lEe'
ascetic ideal, both rest on the same basis—I have
already made this clear—
t
he basis,! say, ofthe same
over-appreciation of truth (more accurately the sSme beliet m tbElmpossibtlity of valuing and of
criticising tru5EJ, and consequently they are necessarily allies, so that, in the event of their being
attacked, they must always be attacked and called
into question together. A valuation of the ascetic
ideal inevitably entails a~vaIu"ation '61 sclen'ce~as wettT'lose no time in seeing this clearly, and be
sharp" to catch it ! {Art, I am speaking provisionally, for I will treat it on some other occasion in greater detail,—art, I repeat, in which lying is sanctified and the will for deception has good conscience on its side, is much more fundamentally
opposed to the^ascetic Heal than is science : Plato's
instinctlelt this—Plato, the greatest enemy of art which Europe has produced up to the present.
Plato versus Homer, that is the complete, the true antagonismr^on the oiTe jide7Tfie~wHole4iearted
" transcendental," the great defamer of life ; on the
other, its involuntary panegyrist, the golden nature. An artistic subservience to the servjce ofthe ascetic"
ideal is consequently the most absolute artistic corruption that there can be, though~unfortunaterv^
it is one of the most frequent phases, for nothing
is more corruptible than an artist.') Considered
physiologically, moreover, science rests on the samci
basis as does the ascetic ideal : a certain impovensh~\
mep,t of life is the presuppositioEToTtEeTatter as of\ the former—add, frijjidity.of the emotions, slacken- mg ol the tempo, the substitution of dialectic for200 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
instinct, seriousness impressed on mien and gesture
(^HTiousneis, that^most unmistakable sign of strenu-~" ous metabolism, of struggling, toiling life). Consider the periods in a nation in which the learned man comes into prominence ; they are the periods of exhaustion, often of sunset, of decay—the effervescing strength, the confidence in life, the confidence in the future are no more. The preponder- ence of the mandarins never signifies any good, any more than does the advent of democracy, or arbi- tration instead of war, equal rights for women, the
religion of pity, and all the other symptoms of declining life. (Science handled as a problem ! what
is the meaning of science ?—upon this point the Preface to the Birth of Tragedy^ No ! this
" modern_ science "—mark you this well-—is at times the best ally for the ascetic ideal, 3nd_S2Ee
very'Teason that_itJs_jLlk_ally^jvhicr^_mostjjncoriscious, most automatic, most secret, and most
subterranean ! They have been playing into each
'Other's" hands up to the present, have these "poor
in spirit" and the scientific opponents of that
ideal (take care, by the bye, not to think that these opponents are the antithesis of this ideal, that they are the rich in spirit—that they are not; I have called them the hectic in spirit). As for these celebrated victories of science; there is no doubt that they are victories—but
victories over what ? There was not for a single minute any victory among their list over the
ascetic ideal, rather was it made stronger, that is to say, more elusive, more abstract, more insidious, from the fact that a wall, an outwork, that had gotWHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 20I
built on to the main fortress and disfigured its appearance, should from time to time be ruthlessly destroyed and broken down by science. Does any
one seriously suggest that the downfall of the theological astronomy signified the downfall of that
ideal ?—Has, perchance, man grown /ess in need of
a transcendental solution of his riddle of existence, because since that time this existence has become
more random, casual, and superfluous in the visible order of the universe? Has there not been since
the time of Copernicus an unbroken progress in the
self-belittling of man and his will for belittling himself? Alas, his belief in his dignity, his uniqueness, his irreplaceableness in the scheme of existence,
is gone—he has become animal, literal, unqualified, and unmitigated animal, he who in his earlier belief was almost God (" child of God," " demi-God "). Since Copernicus man seems to have fallen on to a steep plane—he rolls faster and faster away from
the centre—whither ? into nothingness ? into the
"thrilling sensation ofhis own nothingness"!—Well
!
this would be the straight way—to the o/<3f ideal ?
—
All science (and by no means only astronomy, with
regard to the humiliating and deteriorating effect of which Kant has made a remarkable confession, " it annihilates my own importance"), all science, natural
as much as unnatural—by unnaturaT"! mean'fKe
^^^^^in^5j2iJ[^-?3=^~"°^'^?:5i^l£f^°'^* tol:alk man out of his present opinion ofhimself, as_thou^
tHat^oginion hadJBeen nothing Butabizarre piece
of conceit ; you might go so far as to say that science
""
finds its peculiar pride, its peculiar bitter fcmnlSf"
stoical ataraxia, in preserving man's contempt of202 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
himself, that state which it took so much trouble
to bring about, as man's final apd most serious claim
to self-appreciation (rightly so, in point of fact, for he who despises is always " one who has not for- gotten how to appreciate "). But does all this involve anyreal effort to counteract the ascetic ideal ? Is it really seriously suggested that Kant's victory over the theological dogmatism about "God,"
" Soul," " Freedom," " Immortality," has damaged
that ideal in any way (as the theologians have imagined to be the case for a long time past) ?
—
And in this connection it does not concern us for a single minute, if Kant himself intended any such consummation. It is certain that from the time of Kant every type of transcendentalist is playing a winning game—they are emancipated from the theologians ; what luck ! —he has revealed to them
that secret art, by which they can now pursue their " heart's desire " on their own responsibility, and
with all the respectability of science. Similarly, who can grumble at the agnostics, reverers, as they are, of the unknown and the absolute mystery, if they now worship their very query as God? (Xaver Doudan talks somewhere of the ravages which I'habitude dadmirer rinintelligible au lieu de rester tout simplement dans Vinconnu has produced—the ancients, he thinks, must have been exempt from those ravages.) Supposing
that everything, " known " to man, lails to ^tisty_iiisj(ifiaEEs,_and^onjffie contrary contradicts" ancLhorrifies them, what a divine way out of all this to be able to look for the responsibility, not
in jhe _iLdesJjdng-!!-l)ut, ia "Jsnojving 'M;^-" There"~WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 203
knowledge. Consequently^^^&xe. _jg__„a ^wHaF'irn'ovel elegantia syllogismi\ what
a triumph for the ascetic ideal
!
26.
Or, perchance, does the whole olmodem-history
show in its demeanouiL_greater confi dence in life, greater confidence in its ideals ? Its 1nftiest_.pre-
^
tension is now to be a mirror \ it repudiates all teleology: it will have no more " proving " ; it disdains to play the judge, and thereby shows its good taste
—
it asserts as little as it denies, it
fixes, it " describes." All this is to a high
degree ascetic , but~aF the same time it~is~"Ccr'a' mnrVi frrpafpi- Ae-<^rc-f- n-!hiN<:fic make no mistake
about this ! You see in the historian a gloomy,
hard, but determined gaze,—an eye that looks out
as an isolated North Pole explorer looks out
(perhaps so as not to look within, so as not to
look back ?)—there is snow—here is life silenced, the last crows which caw here are called "whither?" "Vanity," "Nada" —here nothing more flourishes and grows, at the most the
metapolitics of St. Petersburg and the " pity
"
of Tolstoi. But as for that other school of
historians, a perhaps still more " modern " school, a voluptuous and lascivious school which ogles
life and the ascetic ideal with equal fervour, which
uses., the word " artist " as a glove, and has nowadays established a " corner " for itself, in all the praise given to contemplation ; oh, what a
thirst do these sweet intellectuals excite even for204 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
ascetics and winter landscapes ! Nay ! The
devil take these " contemplative " folk ! How
much liefer would I wander with those histoficaT"
Nihilists through the glooniiest, gr^7~coiTmist P:^"--- nay, I shall not mind listening (supposing I have To choosej to one who is_£ompletely unhistorical and antUhistorical (a man, like Diihring for in- ""slance, over whose periods a hitherto shy and unavowed species of " beautiful souls " has grown
intoxicated in contemporary Germany, the species anarchistica within the educated proletariate). The "contemplative" are a hundred times worse —I never knew anything which produced such
intense nausea as one of those " objective " chairs^ one of those scented mannikins - about - town
of history, a thing half-priest, half-satyr (Renan
parfuni), which betrays by the high, shrill falsetto of his applause what he lacks and where he lacks
it, who betrays where in this case the Fates have
plied their ghastly shears, alas ! in too surgeonlike a fashion ! This is distasteful to me, and
irritates my patience ; let him keep patient at such
sights who has nothing to lose thereby,—such a sight enrages me, such spectators embitter me
against the " play," even more than does the play
itself (history itself, you understand) ; Anacreontic moods imperceptibly come over me. This Nature, who gave to the steer its horn, to the lion its Xaay! oSovTcov, for what purpose did Nature give me my foot ?—To kick, by St. Anacreon, and not merely to run away ! To trample on all the
* E.ff. Lectureships.WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 205
worm-eaten " chairs," the cowardly contemglators,
tEe lascivious "eunuchs ^history, the .flir±er&„with^ ascetE"T(3eals,)the righteous hypocrites of im^
potenSTj All reverence on my part to the ascetic
ideal, tn so far as it is honourable ! So long as
irtielieves in Itseli" and plays no pranks on us
!
But I like not all these coquettish bugs who have
an ' msatiate aiiTWtitm-"iT]r^mell"~of'The jflfinjte7-
until eventually the infinite smells of bugs ; I like not the whited sepulchres with their stagey re- production of life ; I likenot_the_,iii:gd_and^ the
used up who wrap themselves in wisdom and look '£oH^^^21^ like not the agitators dressed up
as B&oes, who hide their dummy-heads behind the
stalking-horse of an ideal ; I like not the ambitious
artists who would fain play the ascetic and the
priest, and are at bottom nothing but tragic clowns ; I like not, again, these newest speculators
in idealism, the Anti-Semites, who nowadays roll their eyes in the patent Christian-Aryan-man-ofhonour fashion, and by an abuse of moralist atti- tudes and agitation dodges, so cheap as to exhaust any patience, strive to excite all the blockhead
elements in the populace (the invariable success
of every kind of intellectual charlatanism in present-day Germany hangs together with the
almost indisputable and already quite palpable
desolation of the German mind, whose cause I look for in a too exclusive diet, of papers, politics, beer, and Wagnerian music, not forgetting the
condition precedent of this diet, the national
exclusiveness and vanity, the strong but narrow
principle, " Germany, Germany above every-206 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
thing,"* and finally the paralysis agitans of
" modern ideas "). Europe nowadays is, above
all, wealthy and ingenious in means of excite- ment; it apparently has no more crying necessity than stimulantia and alcohol. Hence the enormous
counterfeiting of ideals, those most fiery spirits of the mind ; hence too the repulsive, evil- smelling, perjured, pseudo - alcoholic air everywhere. I should like to know how many cargoes of imita- tion idealism, of hero-costumes and high falutin' clap-trap, how many casks of sweetened pity liqueur (Firm : la religion de la souffrance), how many crutches of righteous indignation for the help of these flat-footed intellects/liow many comedians
of the Christian moral ideal would need to-day
to be exported from Europe, to enable its air to smell pure againj It is obvious that, in regard
to this over-production, a new trade possibility
lies open ; it is obvious that there is a new
business to be done in little ideal idols and
obedient " idealists "—don't pass over this tip
!
Who has sufficient courage? We have in our hands the possibility of idealising the whole earth. But what am I talking about courage ? we only need one thing here—a hand, a free, a very free hand.
27. Enough ! enough ! let us leave these curiosities and complexities of the modern spirit, which excite as much laughter as disgust. Our problem can
* An allusion to the well-known patriotic song.—H. B. SWHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 207
certainly do without them, the problem of the meaning of the ascetic ideal—what has it got to do with yesterday or to-day ? those things shall be handled by me more thoroughly and severely
in another connection (under the title " A Contribution to the History of European Nihilism," I refer
for this to a work which I am preparing: The
Will to Power, an Attempt at a Transvaluation
of All Values). The only reason why I come to
allude to it here is this : the ^cetic ideal has at
times, even in the most intellgctuaLapherey^only one real^^^;,of«iOTdes_jjTdj/«»2«^^rj„;,„ these are_
the comedians of this ideal—for they awake mistrust. PLyerywhere otherwi^j_w]^£g_the_ mind Is at work seriously, powerfully, and without counterfeiting, it dispenses altogether now wjth_an ideal
(the pSpnlar expression for this abstinence is " Atheism ")
—
with the exception of the will for\
truth. But this will, this7i?iw«5«/'"of^fTTdeal, is.
It you win believe~me, 'fEaF ideal itself in its severest and cleverest formulation, esoteric through
and through, stripped of all outworks, and consequently not so much its rernnant as its kernel. UnqualiHed honest atheism (and its air only'cTo we breathe, we, the most intellectual men of this age) is not opposed to that ideal, to the extent
that "it appears to be; it is rather one of the final phases of its evolution, one of its syllogisms and
,
pieces of inherent logic—it_is the awe-inspiring
catastrophe of a two-thousand-year training ini truth, Which"Trnally forbids itself the lie of the ^e[ief~in'God. l^The same course of development m india-^quite independently, and consequently208 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
of some demonstrative value—the same ideal driving to the same conclusion the decisive point reached five hundred years before the European
era, or more precisely at the time of Buddha
—
it started in the Sankhyam philosophy, and then
this was popularised through Buddha, and made
into a religion.) What, I put the question with all strictness, has really triumphed over the Christian God? The answer stands in my Joyful Wisdom, Aph. 357: " the Christian morality itself, the idea of
truth, taken as it was with increasing seriousness, the confessor-subtlety of the Christian conscience
translated and sublimated into the scientific con- science into intellectual cleanness at any price. Regarding Nature as though it were a proof of the goodness and guardianship of God ; interpret- ing history in honour of a divine reason, as a con- stanF proof"6r~armbfal order of the world and a moral teTeology
:
explaining our own personal ex- periences, as pious men have for long enough ex- plained them, as though every arrangement, every nod, every single thing were invented and sent out of love for the salvation of the soul ; all this
is now done away with, all this has the conscience
'Sgainst^-^^ a«d-is—regardeJ" By every subtler con- science~as' disreputable, dishonourableTasTying,
feminism, w^akness,~cbwai^ice-^-^by"tneans of tliis severity, if by means of anything at all, are we,
in sooth, good Europeans and heirs of^ Europe's
longest and bravest self-mastery." . . 1 All great things go to ruin by reasoji of themselves, by reason
ofiaiTact of self-dissolution : so wills the law oflife,WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS Y 209
the law of necessary " self-masitery:-'Leven.Jn the
essence oOife-^^ver is the law-giver finally expbsedToThe^cry, " patere legem quam ipse tulisti" ; in thus wise did Christianity go to ruin as a dogma,
through its own morality^ Tn 'tFus wise must
Christianity go" again to ruin to-day "as~a~m6rality
-^Wfe are standing on tRe lfhfeshold of this evenj^
lX?ter^Christian_ truthfulness has^ drawn, oiie inclusion after the other, it finally draws its strongest cdndaston^'^s'^ncXusiow against itself; this, howBV5i7 happensTwhen it puts the question, "jsihat is
the meaning of every will for truth V^ And here
again do I touch on my problem, on our problem, my unknown friends (for as yet / know of no
friends) : what sense has our whole being, if it does not 'mean that in our own selv^that wTT
15r truth has'co'Hrg'to its "own consciousness as problem}-—By reason of this attainment
""consciousness'Tifi the part of the wTTT _
fiiorality Irom henceforward—;4here js no doubt about It—goes to pieces
:
this is that great
hundfeJ-act play that is reserved for the next two
centuries of Europe, the most terrible, the most
mysterious, and perhaps also the most hopeful of
all plays. ~~ ~"
28.
If you except the ascetic ideal, man, the animal man had no meaning. His existence on earth
contained no end ; " What is the purpose of man
at all ? " was a question without an answer ; the
will ior man and the world was lacking; befilnd every great human destiny rang as a refrain a still2IO -\ THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
! gUgater " Vanity ! " The ascetic ideal simpW
means this rffiaFsomething was lacking, that^
trenrentfous^T^^ encircled man—he did not know" how to justify himself, to explain himself, to afHrni himself, Tie suffered Trom the problem'of his owir memimg. He sufTered also in other ways, he wai
in the main a diseased animal ; but_Jiispro^leiH_^ was not suffering itself, but the lack of an answer
to ~that~cryrng~questibri," " ~To'wEatpurpose^sP^^
suffer ? " \ Man7 the bravest animal and l:lie~one most inured to suffering, does not repudiate suffering
in itself : he wills it, he even seeks it out, provIHed that he is shown a meaning for it, a purpose of suffering. (T^-A^'i'^ suffering, but the senselessness of suffering was the curse whichtin_then lay spread over humanity
—
-and the ascetic ideal gave~ii~a meaning !l~rF was up till then the only meaning;
but any meaning~is~BeReF than no meaning; the Ascetic ideaFwas in that connection the "fdute de mieux" par excellence that existed at that time. In that ideal suffering found an explanation ; the tremendous gap seemed filled ; the door to all suicidal Nihilism was closed. The explanation
—
there is no doubt about it—brought in its train new suffering, deeper, more penetrating, more venomous, gnawing more brutally into lifeOt
brought all suffering under the_perspective oT"
"g mlt; bPt'tn" spite of^ all that—;man was saved the'reby7Tle'^d a meaning, and from henceforth vfantS'Tnore like a leaf in the wind, a shuttle- cock of chance, of nonsense, hejcould now " will
"
somethingj—absolutely immaterial to what end, to what purpose, with what means he wished
:WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 211
the will itself was saved. It is absolutely impossible to disguise what in point of fact is made
clear by every complete will that has taken its direction from the ascetic ideal : this hate of thel human, and even more of the animal, and more
still of the material, this horror of the senses, of
reason itself, this fear of happiness and beauty,]
this desire to get right away from all illusion,! change, growth, death, wishing and even desiring —airthis means-—-let us have the courage to
grasp it—a will for Nothingness, a will opposed
to life, a repudiation of the most fundamental
. condifiohs ot_lite, but it is and remains a will ! —
i
and Td" say at the end that which I said at thej beginning-pman will wish NothingnessjaX\^t\\^
not wish at oK]PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.
Translated by J. M. KENNEDY.[The following twenty-seven fragments were intended by
Nietzsche to form a supplement to Chapter VIII. oi Beyond
Good and Evil, dealing with Peoples and Countries.]
The Europeans now imagine themselves as re- presenting, in the main, the highest types of men
on earth.
A characteristic of Europeans : inconsistency between word and deed ; the Oriental is true to
himself in daily life. How the European has
established colonies is explained by his nature, which resembles that of a beast of prey. This inconsistency is explained by the fact that
Christianity has abandoned the class from which
it sprang. This is the difference between us and the
Hellenes: their morals grew up among the
governing castes. Thucydides' morals are the same as those that exploded everywhere with
Plato. Attempts towards honesty at the Renaissance,
for example : always for the benefit of the arts. Michael Angelo's conception of God as the "Tyrant of the World" was an honest one.2l6 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
I rate Michael Angelo higher than Raphael,
because, through all the Christian clouds and
prejudices of his time, he saw the ideal of a
culture nobler than the Christo - Raphaelian
:
whilst Raphael truly and modestly glorified only the values handed down to him, and did not carry within himself any inquiring, yearning instincts. Michael Angelo, on the other hand, saw and felt the problem of the law-giver of new values : the problem of the conqueror made perfect, who first had to subdue the " hero within himself," the man
exalted to his highest pedestal, master even of his pity, who mercilessly shatters and annihilates everything that does not bear his own stamp, shining in Olympian divinity. Michael Angelo was naturally only at certain moments so high and so far beyond his age and Christian Europe •
for the most part he adopted a condescending
attitude towards the eternal feminine in Christi- anity ; it would seem, indeed, that in the end he broke down before her, and gave up the ideal of
his most inspired hours. It was an ideal which
only a man in the strongest and highest vigour of
life could bear ; but not a man advanced in years ! Indeed, he would have had to demolish Christi- anity with his ideal ! But he was not thinker and philosopher enough for that. Perhaps Leonardo da Vinci alone of those artists had a
really super-Christian outlook. He knows the East, the " land of dawn," within himself as well as without himself. There is something super-PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES. 217
European and silent in him : a characteristic of
every one who has seen too wide a circle of things good and bad.
4- How much we have learnt and learnt anew in
fifty years ! The whole Romantic School with
its belief in " the people " is refuted ! No Homeric
poetry as " popular " poetry ! No deification of
the great powers of Nature ! No deduction from
language-relationship to race-relationship ! No
" intellectual contemplations " of the supernatural
!
No truth enshrouded in religion
!
The problem of truthfulness is quite a new one.
I am astonished. From this standpoint we regard
such natures as Bismarck as culpable out of carelessness, such as Richard Wagner out of want of modesty; we would condemn Plato for his pia
fraus, Kant for the derivation of his Categorical
Imperative, his own belief certainly not having come to him from this source.
Finally, even doubt turns against itself: doubt
in doubt. And the question as to the value of
truthfulness and its extent lies there.
5. What I observe with pleasure in the German is his Mephistophelian nature ; but, to tell the truth, one must have a higher conception of Mephistopheles than Goethe had, who found it necessary
to diminish his Mephistopheles in order to magnify
his "inner Faust." The true German Mephis-2l8 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
topheles is much more dangerous, bold, wicked, and cunning, and consequently more open-hearted: remember the nature of Frederick the Great, or of that much greater Frederick, the Hohenstaufen, Frederick li. The real German Mephistopheles crosses the Alps, and believes that everything there belongs
to him. Then he recovers himself, like Winckel- mann, like Mozart. He looks upon Faust and Hamlet as caricatures, invented to be laughed at, and upon Luther also. Goethe had his good German moments, when he laughed inwardly at
all these things. But then he fell back again
into his cloudy moods.
Perhaps the Germans have only grown up in a wrong climate ! There is something in them that might be Hellenic ! —something that is awakened when they are brought into touch with the South
—
Winckelmann, Goethe, Mozart. We should not
forget, however, that we are still young. Luther
is still our last event ; our last book is still the
Bible. The Germans have never yet " moralised." Also, the very food of the Germans was their doom : its consequence, Philistinism.
7- The Germans are a dangerous people: they
are experts at inventing intoxicants. Gothic, rococo (according to Semper), the historical sense and exoticism, Hegel, Richard Wagner—Leibniz,PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES. 219
too (dangerous at the present day)—(they even
idealised the serving soul as the virtue of scholars and soldiers, also as the simple mind). The
Germans may well be the most composite people
on earth.
" The people of the Middle," the inventors of
porcelain, and of a kind of Chinese breed of Privy
Councillor.
8. The smallness and baseness of the German
soul were not and are not consequences of the
system of small states ; for it is well known that
the inhabitants of much smaller states were proud
and independent : and it is not a large state per
se that makes souls freer and more manly. The
man whose soul obeys the slavish command
:
" Thou shalt and must kneel ! " in whose body
there is an involuntary bowing and scraping to
titles, orders, gracious glances from above—well, such a man in an " Empire " will only bow all the more deeply and lick the dust more fervently in
the presence of the greater sovereign than in the
presence of the lesser: this cannot be doubted. We can still see In the lower classes of Italians
that aristocratic self-sufficiency ; manly discipline and self-confidence still form a part of the long
history of their country : these are virtues which
once manifested themselves before their eyes. A
poor Venetian gondolier makes a far better figure than a Privy Councillor from Berlin, and is even
a better man in the end—any one can see this. Just ask the women.220 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
9- Most artists, even some of the greatest (in- cluding the historians) have up to the present belonged to the serving classes (whether they serve people of high position or princes or women
or " the masses "), not to speak of their dependence upon the Church and upon moral law. Thus Rubens portrayed the nobility of his age; but only according to their vague conception of taste, not according to his own measure of beauty—on
the whole, therefore, against his own taste. Van Dyck was nobler in this respect : who in all those whom he painted added a certain amount of what
he himself most highly valued : he did not descend from himself, but rather lifted up others to himself when he " rendered." The slavish humility of the artist to his public
(as Sebastian Bach has testified in undying and outrageous words in the dedication of his High
Mass) is perhaps more difficult to perceive in music ; but it is all the more deeply engrained. A hearing would be refused me if I endeavoured
to impart my views on this subject. Chopin
possesses distinction, like Van Dyck. The dis- position of Beethoven is that of a proud peasant
;
of Haydn, that of a proud servant. Mendelssohn,
too, possesses distinction—like Goethe, in the most natural way in the world.
lo. We could at any time have counted on the
fingers of one hand those German learned menPEOPLES AND COUNTRIES. 221
who possessed wit: the remainder have understanding, and a few of them, happily, that famous
"childlike character" which divines. ... It is our privilege : with this " divination " German
science has discovered some things which we can
hardly conceive of, and which, after all, do not
exist, perhaps. It is only the Jews among the Germans who do not " divine " like them.
II. As Frenchmen reflect the politeness and esprit
of French society, so do Germans reflect something of the deep, pensive earnestness of their mystics and musicians, and also of their silly childishness. The Italian exhibits a great deal
of republican distinction and art, and can show
himself to be noble and proud without vanity.
12. A larger number of the higher and better- endowed men will, I hope, have in the end so much self-restraint as to be able to get rid of their bad taste for affectation and sentimental darkness, and to turn against Richard Wagner as much as
against Schopenhauer. These two Germans are
leading us to ruin ; they flatter our dangerous
qualities. A stronger future is prepared for us in Goethe, Beethoven, and Bismarck than in these
racial aberrations. We have had no philosophers yet222 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
13- The peasant is the commonest type of noblesse,
for he is dependent upon himself most of all. Peasant blood is still the best blood in Germany —for example, Luther, Niebuhr, Bismarck. Bismarck a Slav. Let any one look upon the face of Germans. Everything that had manly, exuberant blood in it went abroad. Over the smug populace remaining, the slave-souled people, there came an improvement from abroad, especially by a mixture of Slavonic blood. The Brandenburg nobility and the Prussian
nobility in general (and the peasant of certain North German districts), comprise at present the most manly natures in Germany. That the manliest men shall rule : this is only the natural order of things.
14. The future of German culture rests with the sons of the Prussian officers.
15- There has always been a want of wit in Germany, and mediocre heads attain there to the highest honours, because even they are rare. What is most highly prized is diligence and per- severance and a certain cold-blooded, critical out- look, and, for the sake of such qualities, German
scholarship and the German military system have become paramount in Europe.PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.

spun the net of the most malignant conspiracy —the conspiracy of the sufferers against the sound and the victorious; here is the sight of the
victorious hated.
J And what lying so as not to acknowledge this hate as hate ! What a show
of big words and attitudes, what an art of
" righteous " calumniation ! These abortions
!
what a noble eloquence gushes from their lips! Pwhat an amount of sugary, slimy, humble sub- mission oozes in their eyes ! What do they
really want ? At any rate to represent righteousness, love, wisdom, superiority, that is the ambition of these " lowest ones," these sick gnesjj And how clever does such an arnbition make
them! You cannot, in fact, but admire the counterfeiter dexterity with which the stamp of
virtue, even the ring, the golden ring of virtue,
is here imitated. They have taken a lease of virtue absolutely for themselves, have these weaklings and wretched invalids, there is no doubt of it ; " We alone are the good, the righteous^^
so do they speak^' we alone are the homines bona voluntatis'.' pThey stalk about in our midst
as living reproaches, as warnings to us —as though health, fitness, strength, pride, the sensation of power, were really vicious things in themselves, for which one would have some day to do
penance, bitter penance. Oh, how they themselves
are ready in their hearts to exact penance, how
they thirst after being hangmen I j
I Among them is an abundance of revengeful ones disguised as judges, who ever mouth the word righteousness like a venomous spittle—withWHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS? 1 59
mouth, I say, always pursed, always ready to spit
at everything, which does not wear a discontented
look, but is of good cheer as it goes on its way. \ Among them, again, is that most loathsome species
of the vain, the lying abortions, who make a point
of representing " beautiful souls," and perchance
of bringing to the market as " purity of heart
"
their distorted sensualism swathed in verses and - other bandages ; the species of " self-comforters "
and masturbators of their own souls. iThe sick -
man's will to represent some form or other of
superiority, his itiatit ieiribr crooked-paths-whiich
lead to a' tj^anny over the healthy—wEere^ari it not be found, thfs' will to_j)qwer of Xlie_very weakest ? I The sick woman especially : no one
"SBrpassSSTier in refinements for ruling, oppressing,
tyrannising. The sick woman, moreover, spares nothing living, nothing dead ; she grubs up again
the most buried things (the Bogos say, " Woman
is a hyena "). Look into the background of every
family, of every body, of every community : every- where the fight of the sick against the healthy
—
a silent fight for the most part with minute poisoned
powfiers, with pin-pricks, with spiteful grimaces of
patience, but also at times with that diseased
Pharisaism of pure pantomime, which plays for choice the r61e of " righteous indignation." Right
into the hallowed chambers of knowledge can it make itself heard, can this hoarse yelping of sick hounds, this rabid lying and frenzy of such " noble "
Pharisees (I remind readers, who have ears, once more of that Berlin apostle of revenge, Eugen
Duhring, who makes the most disreputable andl6o THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
revolting use in all present-day Germany of moral
refuse ; DUhring, the paramount moral blusterer that there is to-day, even among his own kidney, the Anti-Semites). TThey are all men of, resent- ment, are these physiological distortions and
worm-riddled objects, a whole quiverinig kingd^^
of burrowing revenge, indefatigable and insatiable" in its outbursts against the happy, and equallj^sq
in disguises for revenge, in pretexts for revenge^ when will they really reach their final, fondest, most sublime triumph of revenge ? \ At that time, doubtless, when they succeed in pushing their own
misery, in fact, all misery, inio the consciousmsspi
the happy ; so that the latter begin one day to be ashamed of their happiness, and perchance say to themselves when they meet, " It is a shame to be happy ! there is too much misery .'"... But there could not possibly be a greater and more fatal misunderstanding than that of the happy, the fit, the strong in body and soul, beginning in this way
to doubt their right to happiness. Away with
this " perverse world " ! Away with this shameful soddenness of sentiment ! Preventing the sick making the healthy sick—for that is what such a soddenness comes to—this ought to be our supreme
object in the world—but for this it is above all essential that the healthy should remain separated from the sick, that they should even guard themselves from the look of the sick, that they should not even associate with the sick. Or may it, perchance, be their mission to be nurses or doctors ? But they could not mistake and disown their mission more grossly-|-the higher must notWHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS? l6l
degrade itself to be the tool of the lower, the
pathos of distance must to all eternity keep
their missions also separateJ The right of the happy to existence, the right of bells with a full tone over the discordant cracked bells, is verily a thousand times greater : they alone are the
sureties of the future, they alone are bound to man's future. What they can, what they must do,
that can the sick never do, should never do ! but
if they are to be enabled to do what only they must
do, how can they possibly be free to play the doctor,
the comforter, the " Saviour " of the sick ? . . . And
therefore good air ! good air ! and away, at any
rate, from the neighbourhood of all the madhouses
and hospitals of civilisation ! And therefore good
company, our own company, or solitude, if it must
be so ! but away, at any rate, from the evil fumes
of internal corruption and the secret worm-eat|n
state of the sick ! that, forsooth, my friends,(we may defend ourselves, at any rate for still a time,
against the two worst plagues that could have
been reserved for us—against the great nausea
with man ! against the great pity for man ! \
ISIf you have understood in all their depths—and
I demand that you should grasp them profoundly and understand them profoundly—the reasons for the impossibility of its being the business of the
healthy to nurse the sick, to make the sick healthy,
it follows that you have grasped this further
necessity—the necessity of doctors and nurses L1 62 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
who themselves are sick. And now we have and
hold with both our hands the essence of the
ascetic priest. The ascetic priest must be accepted by us as the predestined saviour, herdsman, and champion of the sick herd: thereby do we first understand his awful historic mission. The lord- ship over sufferers is his kingdom, to that points
his instinct, in that he finds his own special art, his master-skill, his kind of happiness. He must
himself be sick, he must be kith and kin to the
sick and the abortions so as to understand them,
so as to arrive at an understanding with them
;
but he must also be strong, even more master of himself than of others, impregnable, forsooth, in his
will for power, so as to acquire the trust and the awe of the weak, so that he can be their hold, bulwark, prop, compulsion, overseer, tyrant, god. He has to protect them, protect his hsxAs—against whom ? Against the healthy, doubtless also against the envy towards the healthy. He must
be the natural adversary and scorner of every rough, stormy, reinless, hard, violently-predatory health and power. The priest is the first form of the more delicate animal that scorns more easily than
it hates. He will not be spared the waging of war
with the beasts of prey, a war of guile (of " spirit ") rather than of force, as is self-evident—he will in certain cases find it necessary to conjure up out of himself, or at any rate to represent practically a new type of the beast of prey—a new animal
monstrosity in which the polar bear, the supple,
cold, crouching panther, and, not least important, the fox, are joined together in a trinity as fascinatingWHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 163
as it is fearsome. If necessity exacts it, then will he come on the scene with bearish seriousness,
venerable, wise, cold, full of treacherous superiority,
as the herald and mouthpiece of mysterious powers, sometimes going among even the other kind of
beasts of prey, determined as he is to sow on their
soil, wherever he can, suffering, discord, self-contradiction, and only too sure of his art, always to be
lord of sufferers at all times. He brings with him,
doubtless, salve and balsam ; but before he can
play the physician he must first wound ; so, while he soothes the pain which the wound makes, he at
the same time poisons the wound. (Well versed is he in this above all things, is this wizard and wild
beast tamer, in whose vicinity everything healthy must needs become ill, and everything ill must
needs become tam^ He protects, in sooth, his
sick herd well enough, does this strange herdsman ; he protects them also against themselves, against
the sparks (even in the centre of the herd) of
wickedness, knavery, malice, and all the other ills that the plaguey and the sick are heir to ; he fights with cunning, hardness, and stealth against anarchy
and against the ever imminent break-up inside the herd, where resentment, that most dangerous
brastihg-stuff and explosive, ever accumulates and
accumulates. Getting rid of this blasting-stuff in such a way that it does not blow up the herd and
the herdsman, that is his real feat, his supreme
utility ; if, you ^wish to comprise in the shortest formula the value of the priestl;>Mife, it would be
correct to say the priest Tslhie diverter of the course of resentment. Every sufferer," in fa'cf,' searchesl64 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
instinctively for a cause of his suffering ; to put it more exactly, a doer,—to put it still more precisely, a sentient responsible dber,—in brief, something
living, on which, either actually or in effigie, he can on any pretext vent his emotions. For the venting
of emotions is the sufferer's greatest attempt at alleviation, that is to say, stupefaction, his mechanically desired narcotic against pain of any kind.
It is in this phenomenon alone that is found, according to my judgment, the real physiological cause of resentment, revenge, and their family is to be found—;-that is, in a . demand for i!&s.-deadmiag__ ofpain through emotion : this cause is generally, but
in my view very erroneously, looked for in the defensive parry of a bare protective principle of
reaction, of a " reflex movement " in the case of any sudden hurt and danger, after the manner
that a decapitated frog still moves in order to get away from a corrosive acid. But the difference
is fundamental. In one case the object is to prevent being hurt any more ; in the other case the object is to deaden a racking, insidious, nearly unbearable pain by a more violent emotion of any kind whatsoever, and at any rate for the time being to drive it out of the consciousness—for this purpose an emotion is needed, as wild an emotion as possible, and to excite that emotion some excuse or other is needed. " It must be somebody's fault that I feel bad"—this kind of reasoning is peculiar to all invalids, and
is but the more pronounced, the more ignorant they remain of the real cause of their feeling bad, the physiological cause (the cause may lie in aWHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? l6S
disease of the nervus sympathicus, or in an excessive secretion of bile, or in a want of sulphate and phosphate of potash in the blood, or in pressure
in the bowels which stops the circulation of the
blood, or in degeneration of the ovaries, and so
forth). Ail sufferers have an awful resourcefulness and ingenuity in finding excuses for painful emotions ; they even enjoy their jealousy, their broodings over base actions and apparent injuries, they burrow through the intestines of their past and present in their search for obscure mysteries, wherein they will be at liberty to wallow in a
torturing suspicion and get drunk on the venom
of their own malice—they tear open the oldest wounds, they make themselves bleed from the
scars which have long been healed, they make
evil-doers out of friends, wife, child, and everything which is nearest to them. " I suffer : it must be somebody's fault"—so thinks every sick
'sheep. But his herdsman, the ascetic priest, says
to him, " Quite so, my sheep, it must be the
fault of some one ; but thou thyself art that some
one, it is all the fault of thyself alone
—
it is the foMtt of thyself alone against thyself" : that is. bold
enough, false enough, but one thing is at least attained ; thereby, as I have said, the course of resentment is
—
diverted.
1 6. You can see now what the remedial instinct of
life has at least tried to effect, according to my
conception, through the ascetic priest, and the1 66 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
purpose for which he had to employ a temporary
, tyranny of such paradoxical and anomalous ideas as " guilt," " sin," " sinfulness," " corruption,"
I " damnation." What was done was to make the
; sick harmless up to a certain point, to destroy the
'.incurable by means of themselves, to turn the
'•milder cases severely on to themselves, to give
t their resentment a backward direction ("man
needs but one thing"), and to exploit similarly the bad instincts of all sufferers with a view to
self-discipline, self-surveillance, self-mastery. It is obvious that there can be no question at all in the case of a " medication " of this kind, a mere
emotional medication, of any real healing of the
sick in the physiological sense ; it cannot even
for a moment be asserted that in this connection
the instinct of life has taken healing as its goal and purpose. tOn the one hand, a kind of con- gestion and organisation of the sick (the word
" Church" is the most popular name for it)jj on the
other, a kind of provisional safeguarding of the comparatively healthy, the more perfect specimens, the cleavage of a rift between healthy and sick
—
for a long time that was all ! and it was much ! it was very much !
I am proceeding, as you see, in this essay, from an hypothesis which, as far as such readers
as I want are concerned, does not require to be proved ; the hypothesis that " sinfulness " in man
is not an actual fact, but rather merely the inter- pretation of a fact, of a physiological discomfort, —a discomfort seen through a moral religious perspective which is no longer binding upon us.WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 167
The fact, therefore, that any one feels " guilty,"
" sinful," is certainly not yet any proof that he
is right in feeling so, any more than any one is healthy simply because he feels healthy Re- member the celebrated witch-ordeals : in those days the most acute and humane judges had no
doubt but that in these cases they were confronted
with guilt,—the " witches " themselves had no doubt
on the point,—and yet the guilt was lacking. Let me elaborate this hypothesis : I do not for a minute accept the very " pain in the soul " as a
real fact, but only as an explanation (a casual
explanation) of facts that could not hitherto be
precisely formulated; I regard it therefore as something as yet absolutely in the air and devoid
of scientific cogency—^just a nice fat word in the
place of a lean note of interrogation. When any
one fails to get rid of his " pain in the soul," the
cause is, speaking crudely, to be found not in his " soul " but more probably in his stomach (speaking
crudely, I repeat, but by no means wishing there- by that you should listen to me or understand me
in a crude spirit). A strong and well-constituted man digests his experiences (deeds and misdeeds
all included) just as he digests his meats, even when he has some tough morsels to swallow. If he fails to " relieve himself" of an experience,
this kind of indigestion is quite as much physiological as the other indigestion—and indeed, in more ways than one, simply one of the results of the other. You can adopt such a theory, and yet
entre nous be nevertheless the strongest opponent
of all materialism.1 68 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
17.
But is he really 2. physician, this ascetic priest? We already understand why we are scarcely allowed to call him a physician, however much
he likes to feel a " saviour " and let himself be worshipped as a saviour.* It is only the actual
suffering, the discomfort of the sufferer, which he combats, not its cause, not the actual state of sick- ness—this needs must constitute our most radical objection to priestly medication. But just once put yourself into that point of view, of which the
priests have a monopoly, you will find it hard to exhaust your amazement, at what from that stand- point he has completely seen, sought, and found. The mitigation of suffering, every kind of " consoling '' —all this manifests itself as his very genius : with what ingenuity has he interpreted his mission of consoler, with what aplomb and audacity has he chosen weapons necessary for the part. Christi- anity in particular should be dubbed a great treasure-chamber of ingenious consolations,—such
a store of refreshing, soothing, deadening drugs has it accumulated within itself; so many of the most dangerous and daring expedients has it hazarded ; with such subtlety, refinement, Oriental refinement, has it divined what emotional stimulants can conquer, at any rate for a time, the deep
depression, the leaden fatigue, the black melan- choly of physiological cripples — for, speaking
* In the German text " Heiland." This has the double meaning of " healer " and " saviour."—H. B. S.WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 1 69
generally, all religions are mainly concerned with
fighting a certain fatigue and heaviness that has
infected everything. You can regard it as prima
facie probable that in certain places in the world
there was almost bound to prevail from time to
time among large masses of the population a
sense of physiological depression, which, however, owing to their lack of physiological knowledge,
did not appear to their consciousness as such,
so that consequently its " cause " and its cure can only be sought and essayed in the science
of moral psychology (this, in fact, is my most
general formula for what is generally called a
"religion"^ Such a feeling of depression can
have the most diverse origins ; it may be the
result of the crossing of too heterogeneous races
(or of classes—genealogical and racial differences
are also brought out in the classes : the European
" Weltschmerz," the " Pessimism " of the nineteenth
century, is really the result of an absurd and
sudden class-mixture) ; it may be brought about
by a mistaken emigration—a race falling into a climate for which its power of adaptation is insufficient (the case of the Indians in India) ; it may be the effect of old age and fatigue (the
Parisian pessimism from 1850 onwards); it may
be a wrong diet (the alcoholism of the Middle
Ages, the nonsense of vegetarianism —which,
however, have in their favour the authority of Sir Christopher in Shakespeare) ; it may be blooddeterioration, malaria, syphilis, and the like (German depression after the Thirty Years' War,
which infected half Germany with evil diseases,I70 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
and thereby paved the way for German servility, for German pusillanimity). In such a case there
is invariably recourse to a war on a grand scale with the feeling of depression ; let us inform ourselves briefly on its most important practices and
phases (I leave on one side, as stands to reason, the actual philosophic war against the feeling of depression which is usually simultaneous—it is interesting enough, but too absurd, too practically
negligible, too full of cobwebs, too much of a hole-and-corner affair, especially when pain is proved to be a mistake, on the naif hypothesis
that pain must needs vanish when the mistake underlying it is recognised—but behold ! it does anything but vanish . . .). That dominant de- pression is primarily fought by weapons which
reduce the consciousness of life itself to the lowest degree. Wherever possible, no more wishes, no more wants ; shun everything which produces emotion, which produces " blood " (eating no salt, the fakir hygiene) ; no love ; no hate ; equanimity
;
no revenge ; no getting rich ; no work ; begging
;
as far as possible, no woman, or as little woman
as possible ; as far as the intellect is concerned,
Pascal's principle, " il faut s'abetir." To put the
result in ethical and psychological language, " self- annihilation," " sanctification "
; to put it in physiological language, " hypnotism "—the attempt to find some approximate human equivalent for what
hibernation is for certain animals, for what cestiva- tion is for many tropical plants, a minimum of assimilation and metabolism in which life just manages to subsist without really coming into theWHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEAL,S ? 171
consciousness. An amazing amount of human
energy has been devoted to this object—perhaps
uselessly? There cannot be the slightest doubt
but that such sportsmen of " saintliness," in whom
at times nearly every nation has abounded, have
really found a genuine relief from that which
they have combated with such a rigorous training —in countless cases they really escaped by the
help of their system of hypnotism away from deep
physiological depression ; their method is consequently counted among the most universal ethnological facts. Similarly it is improper to consider
such a plan for starving the physical element and
the desires, as in itself a symptom of insanity (as a clumsy species of roast-beef-eating " freethinkers " and Sir Christophers are fain to do) ; all the more
certain is it that their method can and does pave
the way to all kinds of mental disturbances, for instance, " inner lights " (as far as the case of
the Hesychasts of Mount Athos), auditory and
visual hallucinations, voluptuous ecstasies and
effervescences of sensualism (the history of St. Theresa). The explanation of such events given by the victims is always the acme of fanatical falsehood ; this is self-evident. Note well, however,
the tone of implicit gratitude that rings in the
very will for an explanation of such a character. The supreme state, salvation itself, that.£nal. goal
of uriiversal hypnosis and peace, is always regarded by them as the mystery of mysteries, which even
the most supreme symbols are inadequate to express; it is regarded as an entry arid homecsining
to the essence of things, as a liberation from all172 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
illusions, as " knowledge," as " truth," as " heing" as
t an escape from every end, every wish, every action,
i as something even beyond Good and Evil.
I " Good and Evil," quoth the Buddhists, " both are
fetters. The perfect man is master of them both."
" The done and the undone," quoth the disciple of the Vedanta, " do him no hurt ; the good and
the evil he shakes from off him, sage that he is; his kingdom suffers no more from any act ; good and evil, he goes beyond them both."—An ab- solutely Indian conception, as much Brahmanist
as Buddhist. Neither in the Indian nor in the Christian doctrine is this " Redemption " regarded
as attainable by means of virtue and moral improve- ment, however high they may place the value of the hypnotic efficiency of virtue : keep clear on
this point—indeed it simply corresponds with the
facts. The fact that they remained irue on this point is perhaps to be regarded as the best speci- men of realism in the three great religions, absolutely soaked as they are with morality, with this one exception. " For those who know, there is no duty." " Redemption is not attained by the
acquisition of virtues ; for redemption consists
in being one with Brahman, who is incapable of acquiring any perfection ; and equally little does
it consist in the giving up of faults, for the Brahman, unity with whom is what constitutes redemption, is eternally pure" (these passages
are from the Commentaries of the Cankara, quoted from the first real European expert of the Indian philosophy, my friend Paul Deussen). We wish, therefore, to pay honour to the idea of " redemp-WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 173
tion " in the great religions, but it is somewhat
hard to remain serious in view of the appreciation meted out to the deep sleep by these exhausted
pessimists who are too tired even to dream—to
the deep sleep considered, that is, as already a
fusing into Brahman, as the attainment of tn^
unio mystica with God. " When he has completely gone to sleep," says on this point the
oldest and most venerable " script," " and come to
perfect rest, so that he sees no more any vision, then, oh dear one, is he united with Being, he has
entered into his own self—encircled by the Self
with its absolute knowledge, he has no more any
consciousness of that which is without or of that which is within. Day and night cross not these
bridges, nor age, nor death, nor suffering, nor
good deeds, nor evil deeds." " In deep sleep," say similarly the believers in this deepest of the
three great religions, " does the soul lift itself from
out this body of ours, enters the supreme light and
stands out therein in its true shape : therein is it the supreme spirit itself, which travels about, while
it jests and plays and enjoys itself, whether with women, or chariots, or friends ; there do its thoughts
turn no more back to this appanage of a body, to which the ' prana ' (the vital breath) is harnessed
like a beast of burden to the cart." None the
less we will take care to realise (as we did when
discussing " redemption ") that in spite of all its pomps of Oriental extravagance this simply expresses the same criticism on life as did the clear, cold, Greekly cold, but yet suffering Epicurus. jThe hypnotic sensation of nothingness, the peaceTHE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
of deepest sleep, anaesthesia in short—that is what
passes with the sufferers and the absolutely de- pressed for, forsooth, their suprenne good, their value of values ; that is what must be treasured by them as something positive, be felt by them as the essence of the Positive (according to the same
logic of the feelings, nothingness is in all pessi- mistic religions called God). j>
Such a hypnotic deadening of sensibility and
susceptibility to pain, which presupposes some- what rare powers, especially courage, contempt of opinion, intellectual stoicism, is less frequent than another and certainly easier training which is tried against states of depression. I mean
mechanical activity. It is indisputable that a
suffering existence can be thereby considerably
alleviated. This fact is called to-day by the somewhat ignoble title of the " Blessing of work." jTh The alleviation consists in the attention of the
sufferer being absolutely diverted from suffering, in
' the incessant monopoly of the consciousness by
action, so that~"consequently there is little Toom ^
iieftrfbr suffering—for narrow is it, this chamber of^
"human conscTousness ! | Mechanical__actiYily_aod
its corollaries, such as~absolute regularityjpunctili- ous iinreasoning obedience^jthe _chroiiic^routijie^
life, ^Ee^Tomplete occupation of time,_acertain
iTBerty to be ijmpersonal, nay, a jrainingjn " fm-"
pefsorialitYj^jelfjiorgetfulness. " incuria sui
"—with
~whaLt thoroughness and expert subtlety have allWHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS? 17S
these methods been exploited by the ascetic priest
in his war with pain ! When he has to tackle sufferers of the lower
orders, slaves, or prisoners (or women, who for the most part are a compound of labour-slave and
prisoner), all he has to do is to juggle a little with the names, and to rechristen, so as to make
them see henceforth a benefit, a comparative
happiness, in objects which they hated—the slave's discontent with his lot was at any rate not invented by the priests. An even more popular means of
fighting depression is the ordaining of a little joy, which is easily accessible and can be made into a
rule; this medication is frequently used in conjunction with the former ones. The most frequent] form in vjiich joy is prescribed as a cure is the
joy in producing joy (such as doing good, giving
presents, alleviating, helping, exhorting, comforting,
praising, treating with distinction) ; together with
the prescription of " love your neighbour."
| The
ascetic priest prescribes, though in the most
cautious doses, what is practically a stimulation
of the strongest and most life-assertive impulse
—
the Will for Power. The happiness involved in the " smallest superiority " which is the concomitant of all benefiting, helping, extolling, making one's self useful, is the most ample consolation, of which, if they are well-advised, physiological distortions avail themselves : in other
cases they hurt each other, and naturally in obedience to the same radical instinct. An investigation of the origin of Christianity in the Roman