Part 17

_What our Cheerfulness Signifies._--The most important of more recent events--that "God is dead," that the belief in the Christian God has become unworthy of belief--already begins to cast its first shadows over Europe. To the few at least whose eye, whose _suspecting_ glance, is strong enough and subtle enough for this drama, some sun seems to have set, some old, profound confidence seems to have changed into doubt: our old world must seem to them daily more darksome, distrustful, strange and "old." In the main, however, one may say that the event itself is far too great, too remote, too much beyond most people's power of apprehension, for one to suppose that so much as the report of it could have _reached_ them; not to speak of many who already knew _what_ had taken place, and what must all collapse now that this belief had been undermined,--because so much was built upon it, so much rested on it, and had become one with it: for example, our entire European morality. This lengthy, vast and uninterrupted process of crumbling, destruction, ruin and overthrow which is now imminent: who has realised it sufficiently to-day to have to stand up as the teacher and herald of such a tremendous logic of terror, as the prophet of a period of gloom and eclipse, the like of which has probably never taken place on earth before?... Even we, the born riddle-readers, who wait as it were on the mountains posted 'twixt to-day and to-morrow, and engirt by their contradiction, we, the firstlings and premature children of the coming century, into whose sight especially the shadows which must forthwith envelop Europe _should_ already have come--how is it that even we, without genuine sympathy for this period of gloom, contemplate its advent without any _personal_ solicitude or fear? Are we still, perhaps, too much under the _immediate effects_ of the event--and are these effects, especially as regards _ourselves,_ perhaps the reverse of what was to be expected--not at all sad and depressing, but rather like a new and indescribable variety of light, happiness, relief, enlivenment, encouragement, and dawning day?... In fact, we philosophers and "free spirits" feel ourselves irradiated as by a new dawn by the report that the "old God is dead"; our hearts overflow with gratitude, astonishment, presentiment and expectation. At last the horizon seems open once more, granting even that it is not bright; our ships can at last put out to sea in face of every danger; every hazard is again permitted to the discerner; the sea, _our_ sea, again lies open before us; perhaps never before did such an "open sea" exist.--

344.

_To what Extent even We are still Pious._--It is said with good reason that convictions have no civic rights in the domain of science: it is only when a conviction voluntarily condescends to the modesty of an hypothesis, a preliminary standpoint for experiment, or a regulative fiction, that its access to the realm of knowledge, and a certain value therein, can be conceded,--always, however, with the restriction that it must remain under police supervision, under the police of our distrust.--Regarded more accurately, however, does not this imply that only when a conviction _ceases_ to be a conviction can it obtain admission into science? Does not the discipline of the scientific spirit just commence when one no longer harbours any conviction?... It is probably so: only, it remains to be asked whether, _in order that this discipline may commence,_ it is not necessary that there should already be a conviction, and in fact one so imperative and absolute, that it makes a sacrifice of all other convictions. One sees that science also rests on a belief: there is no science at all "without premises." The question whether _truth_ is necessary, must not merely be affirmed beforehand, but must be affirmed to such an extent that the principle, belief, or conviction finds expression, that "there is _nothing more necessary_ than truth, and in comparison with it everything else has only secondary value."--This absolute will to truth: what is it? Is it the will _not to allow ourselves to be deceived?_ Is it the will _not to deceive?_ For the will to truth could also be interpreted in this fashion, provided one included under the generalisation, "I will not deceive," the special case, "I will not deceive myself." But why not deceive? Why not allow oneself to be deceived?--Let it be noted that the reasons for the former eventuality belong to a category quite different from those for the latter: one does not want to be deceived oneself, under the supposition that it is injurious, dangerous, or fatal to be deceived,--in this sense science would be a prolonged process of caution, foresight and utility; against which, however, one might reasonably make objections. What? is not-wishing-to-be-deceived really less injurious, less dangerous, less fatal? What do you know of the character of existence in all its phases to be able to decide whether the greater advantage is on the side of absolute distrust, or of absolute trustfulness? In case, however, of both being necessary, much trusting _and_ much distrusting, whence then should science derive the absolute belief, the conviction on which it rests, that truth is more important than anything else, even than every other conviction? This conviction could not have arisen if truth _and_ untruth had both continually proved themselves to be useful: as is the case. Thus--the belief in science, which now undeniably exists, cannot have had its origin in such a utilitarian calculation, but rather _in spite of_ the fact of the inutility and dangerousness of the "Will to truth," of "truth at all costs," being continually demonstrated. "At all costs": alas, we understand that sufficiently well, after having sacrificed and slaughtered one belief after another at this altar!--Consequently, "Will to truth" does _not_ imply, "I will not allow myself to be deceived," but--there is no other alternative--"I will not deceive, not even myself": _and thus we have reached the realm of morality._ For, let one just ask oneself fairly: "Why wilt thou not deceive?" especially if it should seem--and it does seem--as if life were laid out with a view to appearance, I mean, with a view to error deceit, dissimulation, delusion, self-delusion; and when on the other hand it is a matter of fact that the great type of life has always manifested itself on the side of the most unscrupulous πολύτροποι. Such an intention might perhaps, to express it mildly, be a piece of Quixotism, a little enthusiastic craziness; it might also, however, be something worse, namely, a destructive principle, hostile to life.... "Will to Truth,"--that might be a concealed Will to Death.--Thus the question Why is there science? leads back to the moral problem: _What in general is the purpose of morality,_ if life, nature, and history are "non-moral"? There is no doubt that the conscientious man in the daring and extreme sense in which he is presupposed by the belief in science, _affirms thereby a world other than_ that of life, nature, and history; and in so far as he affirms this "other world," what? must he not just thereby--deny its counterpart, this world, _our_ world?... But what I have in view will now be understood, namely, that it is always a _metaphysical belief_ on which our belief in science rests,--and that even we knowing ones of to-day, landless and anti-metaphysical, still take _our_ fire from the conflagration kindled by a belief a millennium old, the Christian belief, which was also the belief of Plato, that God is truth, that the truth is divine.... But what if this itself always becomes more untrustworthy, what if nothing any longer proves itself divine, except it be error, blindness, and falsehood;--what if God himself turns out to be our most persistent lie?--

345.

_Morality as a Problem._--A defect in personality revenges itself everywhere: an enfeebled, lank, obliterated, self-disavowing and disowning personality is no longer fit for anything good--it is least of all fit for philosophy. "Selflessness" has no value either in heaven or on earth; the great problems all demand _great love,_ and it is only the strong, well-rounded, secure spirits, those who have a solid basis, that are qualified for them. It makes the most material difference whether a thinker stands personally related to his problems, having his fate, his need, and even his highest happiness therein; or merely impersonally, that is to say, if he can only feel and grasp them with the tentacles of cold, prying thought. In the latter case I warrant that nothing comes of it: for the great problems, granting that they let themselves be grasped at all, do not let themselves be _held_ by toads and weaklings: that has ever been their taste--a taste also which they share with all high-spirited women.--How is it that I have not yet met with any one, not even in books, who seems to have stood to morality in this position, as one who knew morality as a problem, and this problem as _his own_ personal need, affliction, pleasure and passion? It is obvious that up to the present morality has not been a problem at all; it has rather been the very ground on which people have met after all distrust, dissension and contradiction, the hallowed place of peace, where thinkers could obtain rest even from themselves, could recover breath and revive. I see no one who has ventured to _criticise_ the estimates of moral worth. I miss in this connection even the attempts of scientific curiosity, and the fastidious, groping imagination of psychologists and historians, which easily anticipates a problem and catches it on the wing, without rightly knowing what it catches. With difficulty I have discovered some scanty data for the purpose of furnishing a _history of the origin_ of these feelings and estimates of value (which is something different from a criticism of them, and also something different from a history of ethical systems). In an individual case I have done everything to encourage the inclination and talent for this kind of history--in vain, as it would seem to me at present. There is little to be learned from those historians of morality (especially Englishmen): they themselves are usually, quite unsuspiciously, under the influence of a definite morality, and act unwittingly as its armour-bearers and followers--perhaps still repeating sincerely the popular superstition of Christian Europe, that the characteristic of moral action consists in abnegation, self-denial, self-sacrifice, or in fellow-feeling and fellow-suffering. The usual error in their premises is their insistence on a certain _consensus_ among human beings, at least among civilised human beings, with regard to certain propositions of morality, from thence they conclude that these propositions are absolutely binding even upon you and me; or reversely, they come to the conclusion that _no_ morality is binding, after the truth has dawned upon them that among different peoples moral valuations are _necessarily_ different: both of which conclusions are equally childish follies. The error of the more subtle amongst them is that they discover and criticise the probably foolish opinions of a people about its own morality, or the opinions of mankind about human morality generally (they treat accordingly of its origin, its religious sanctions, the superstition of free will, and such matters), and they think that just by so doing they have criticised the morality itself. But the worth of a precept, "Thou shalt," is fundamentally different from and independent of such opinions about it, and must be distinguished from the weeds of error with which it has perhaps been overgrown: just as the worth of a medicine to a sick person is altogether independent of the question whether he has a scientific opinion about medicine, or merely thinks about it as an old wife would do. A morality could even have grown _out of_ an error: but with this knowledge the problem of its worth would not even be touched.--Thus, no one hitherto has tested the _value_ of that most celebrated of all medicines, called morality: for which purpose it is first of all necessary for one--_to call it in question._ Well, that is just our work.--

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_Our Note of Interrogation._--But you don't understand it? As a matter of fact, an effort will be necessary in order to understand us. We seek for words; we seek perhaps also for ears. Who are we after all? If we wanted simply to call ourselves in older phraseology, atheists, unbelievers, or even immoralists, we should still be far from thinking ourselves designated thereby: we are all three in too late a phase for people generally to conceive, for _you,_ my inquisitive friends, to be able to conceive, what is our state of mind under the circumstances. No! we have no longer the bitterness and passion of him who has broken loose, who has to make for himself a belief, a goal, and even a martyrdom out of his unbelief! We have become saturated with the conviction (and have grown cold and hard in it) that things are not at all divinely ordered in this world, nor even according to human standards do they go on rationally, mercifully, or justly: we know the fact that the world in which we live is ungodly, immoral, and "inhuman,"--we have far too long interpreted it to ourselves falsely and mendaciously, according to the wish and will of our veneration, that is to say, according to our _need._ For man is a venerating animal! But he is also a distrustful animal: and that the world is _not_ worth what we believed it to be worth is about the surest thing our distrust has at last managed to grasp. So much distrust, so much philosophy! We take good care not to say that the world is of _less_ value: it seems to us at present absolutely ridiculous when man claims to devise values _to surpass_ the values of the actual world,--it is precisely from that point that we have retraced our steps; as from an extravagant error of human conceit and irrationality, which for a long period has not been recognised as such. This error had its last expression in modern Pessimism; an older and stronger manifestation in the teaching of Buddha; but Christianity also contains it, more dubiously, to be sure, and more ambiguously, but none the less seductive on that account. The whole attitude of "man _versus_ the world," man as world-denying principle, man as the standard of the value of things, as judge of the world, who in the end puts existence itself on his scales and finds it too light--the monstrous impertinence of this attitude has dawned upon us as such, and has disgusted us,--we now laugh when we find, "Man _and_ World" placed beside one another, separated by the sublime presumption of the little word "and"! But how is it? Have we not in our very laughing just made a further step in despising mankind? And consequently also in Pessimism, in despising the existence cognisable _by us?_ Have we not just thereby awakened suspicion that there is an opposition between the world in which we have hitherto been at home with our venerations--for the sake of which we perhaps _endure_ life--and another world _which we ourselves are:_ an inexorable, radical, most profound suspicion concerning ourselves, which is continually getting us Europeans more annoyingly into its power, and could easily face the coming generation with the terrible alternative: Either do away with your venerations, or--_with yourselves!"_ The latter would be Nihilism--but would not the former also be Nihilism? This is _our_ note of interrogation.

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_Believers and their Need of Belief._--How much _faith_ a person requires in order to flourish, how much "fixed opinion" he requires which he does not wish to have shaken, because he _holds_ himself thereby--is a measure of his power (or more plainly speaking, of his weakness). Most people in old Europe, as it seems to me, still need Christianity at present, and on that account it still finds belief. For such is man: a theological dogma might be refuted to him a thousand times,--provided, however, that he had need of it, he would again and again accept it as "true,"--according to the famous "proof of power" of which the Bible speaks. Some have still need of metaphysics; but also the impatient _longing for certainty_ which at present discharges itself in scientific, positivist fashion among large numbers of the people, the longing by all means to get at something stable (while on account of the warmth of the longing the establishing of the certainty is more leisurely and negligently undertaken):--even this is still the longing for a hold, a support; in short, the _instinct of weakness,_ which, while not actually creating religions, metaphysics, and convictions of all kinds, nevertheless--preserves them. In fact, around all these positivist systems there fume the vapours of a certain pessimistic gloom, something of weariness, fatalism, disillusionment, and fear of new disillusionment--or else manifest animosity, ill-humour, anarchic exasperation, and whatever there is of symptom or masquerade of the feeling of weakness. Even the readiness with which our cleverest contemporaries get lost in wretched corners and alleys, for example, in Vaterländerei (so I designate Jingoism, called _chauvinisme_ in France, and "_deutsch_" in Germany), or in petty æsthetic creeds in the manner of Parisian _naturalisme_ (which only brings into prominence and uncovers--_that_ aspect of nature which excites simultaneously disgust and astonishment--they like at present to call this aspect _la vérité vraie_, or in Nihilism in the St Petersburg style (that is to say, in the _belief in unbelief,_ even to martyrdom for it):--this shows always and above all the need of belief, support, backbone, and buttress.... Belief is always most desired, most pressingly needed, where there is a lack of will: for the will, as emotion of command, is the distinguishing characteristic of sovereignty and power. That is to say, the less a person knows how to command, the more urgent is his desire for that; which commands, and commands sternly,--a God, a prince, a caste, a physician, a confessor, a dogma, a party conscience. From whence perhaps it could be inferred that the two world-religions, Buddhism and Christianity, might well have had the cause of their rise, and especially of their rapid extension, in an extraordinary _malady of the will_ And in truth it has been so: both religions lighted upon a longing, monstrously exaggerated by malady of the will, for an imperative, a "Thou-shalt," a longing going the length of despair; both religions were teachers of fanaticism in times of slackness of will-power, and thereby offered to innumerable persons a support, a new possibility of exercising will, an enjoyment in willing. For in fact fanaticism is the sole "volitional strength" to which the weak and irresolute can be excited, as a sort of hypnotising of the entire sensory-intellectual system, in favour of the over-abundant nutrition (hypertrophy) of a particular point of view and a particular sentiment, which then dominates--the Christian calls it his _faith._ When a man arrives at the fundamental conviction that he _requires_ to be commanded, he becomes "a believer." Reversely, one could imagine a delight and a power of self-determining, and a _freedom_ of will, whereby a spirit could bid farewell to every belief, to every wish for certainty, accustomed as it would be to support itself on slender cords and possibilities, and to dance even on the verge of abysses. Such a spirit would be the _free spirit par excellence._

348.

_The Origin of the Learned._--The learned man in Europe grows out of all the different ranks and social conditions, like a plant requiring no specific soil: on that account he belongs essentially and involuntarily to the partisans of democratic thought. But this origin betrays itself. If one has trained one's glance to some extent to recognise in a learned book or scientific treatise the intellectual _idiosyncrasy_ of the learned man--all of them have such idiosyncrasy,--and if we take it by surprise, we shall almost always get a glimpse behind it of the "antecedent history" of the learned man and his family, especially of the nature of their callings and occupations. Where the feeling finds expression, "That is at last proved, I am now done with it," it is commonly the ancestor in the blood and instincts of the learned man that approves of the "accomplished work" in the nook from which he sees things;--the belief in the proof is only an indication of what has been looked upon for ages by a laborious family as "good work." Take an example: the sons of registrars and office-clerks of every kind, whose main task has always been to arrange a variety of material, distribute it in drawers, and systematise it generally, evince, when they become learned men, an inclination to regard a problem as almost solved when they have systematised it There are philosophers who are at bottom nothing but systematising brains--the formal part of the paternal occupation has become its essence to them. The talent for classifications, for tables of categories, betrays something; it is not for nothing that a person is the child of his parents. The son of an advocate will also have to be an advocate as investigator: he seeks as a first consideration, to carry the point in his case, as a second consideration, he perhaps seeks to be in the right. One recognises the sons of Protestant clergymen and schoolmasters by the naïve assurance with which as learned men they already assume their case to be proved, when it has but been presented by them staunchly and warmly: they are thoroughly accustomed to people _believing_ in them,--it belonged to their fathers' "trade"! A Jew, contrariwise, in accordance with his business surroundings and the past of his race, is least of all accustomed--to people believing him. Observe Jewish scholars with regard to this matter,--they all lay great stress on logic, that is to say, on _compelling_ assent by means of reasons; they know that they must conquer thereby, even when race and class antipathy is against them, even where people are unwilling to believe them. For in fact, nothing is more democratic than logic: it knows no respect of persons, and takes even the crooked nose as straight. (In passing we may remark that in respect to logical thinking, in respect to _cleaner_ intellectual habits, Europe is not a little indebted to the Jews; above all the Germans, as being a lamentably _déraisonnable_ race, who, even at the present day, must always have their "heads washed"[1] in the first place. Wherever the Jews have attained to influence, they have taught to analyse more subtly, to argue more acutely, to write more clearly and purely: it has always been their problem to bring a people "to _raison._")

[1] In German the expression _Kopf zu waschen,_ besides the literal sense, also means "to give a person a sound drubbing."--TR.

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