ikonex: September 2020

ration, an attribution of infinity to every

thing. In the religion of love, " a fine young

man," " a beautiful woman," in some way divine ;

a bridegroom, a bride of the soul. (3) In art, as

a decorating force, e.g. just as the man sees the

woman and makes her a present of everything

that can enhance her personal charm, so the

sensuality of the artist adorns an object with

everything else that he honours and esteems,

and by this means perfects it (or idealises it).

Woman, knowing what man feels in regard to

her, tries to meet his idealising endeavours half

way by decorating herself, by walking and dancing

well, by expressing delicate thoughts : in addition,

she may practise modesty, shyness, reserve-

prompted by her instinctive feeling that the ideal

ising power of man increases with all this. (In

the extraordinary finesse of woman s instincts,

modesty must not by any means be considered as

conscious hypocrisy : she guesses that it is pre

cisely artlessness and real shame which seduces

man most and urges him to an exaggerated

THE WILL TO POWER IN ART. 249

esteem of her. On this account, woman is in

genuous, owing to the subtlety of her instincts

which reveal to her the utility of a state of

innocence. A wilful closing of one s eyes

to one s self. . . . Wherever dissembling has a

stronger influence by being unconscious it actually

becomes unconscious.)

807.

What a host of things can be accomplished by

the state of intoxication which is called by the

name of love, and which is something else besides

love ! And yet everybody has his own experience

of this matter. The muscular strength of a girl

suddenly increases as soon as a man comes into

her presence : there are instruments with which

this can be measured. In the case of a still closer

relationship of the sexes, as, for instance, in dancing

and in other amusements which society gatherings

entail, this power increases to such an extent

as to make real feats of strength possible : at

last one no longer trusts either one s eyes, or one s

watch ! Here at all events we must reckon with

the fact that dancing itself, like every form of

rapid movement, involves a kind of intoxication

of the whole nervous, muscular, and visceral

system. We must therefore reckon in this case

with the collective effects of a double intoxication.

And how clever it is to be a little off your head i

at times ! There are some realities which we -

cannot admit even to ourselves : especially when

we are women and have all sorts of feminine

250 THE WILL TO POWER.

" pudeurs" . . . Those young creatures dancing

over there are obviously beyond all reality : they

are dancing only with a host of tangible ideals :

what is more, they even see ideals sitting around

them, their mothers ! . . . An opportunity for

quoting Faust. They look incomparably fairer,

do tt^ese pretty creatures, when they have lost

their head a little ; and how well they know it

too, they are even more delightful because they

know it ! Lastly, it is their finery which inspires

them : their finery is their third little intoxication.

They believe in their dressmaker as in their God :

and who would destroy this faith in them? Blessed

is this faith ! And self-admiration is healthy !

Self-admiration can protect one even from cold !

Has a beautiful woman, who knew she was well-

dressed, ever caught cold ? Never yet on this

earth ! I even suppose a case in which she has

scarcely a rag on her.

808.

If one should require the most astonishing

/ proof of how far the power of transfiguring, which

I comes of intoxication, goes, this proof is at hand

V in the phenonTeTTon of love ; or what is called love

in all the languages and silences of the world.

Intoxication works to such a degree upon reality

in this passion that in the consciousness of the

lover the cause of his love is quite suppressed, and

something else seems to take its place, a vibra

tion and a glitter of all the charm-mirrors of

/ Circe. ... In this respect to be man or an

THE WILL TO POWER IN ART. 251

animal makes no difference : and still less does

spirit, goodness, or honesty. If one is astute,

one is befooled astutely ; if one is thick-headed,

one is befooled in a thick-headed way. But love,

even the love of God, saintly love, " the love that

saves the soul," are at bottom all one; they are

nothing but a fever which has reasons to trans

figure itself a state of intoxication which does

well to lie about i self. . . . And, at any rate,

when a man loves, he is a good liar about himself

and to himself: he seems to himself transfigured,

stronger, richer, more perfect ; he is more per

fect. . . . -4r/Jiere acts as an organic function :

we find it present in the most angelic instinct

" love " ; we find it as the greatest stimulus of

life thus art is sublimely utilitarian, even in the

fact that it lies. . . . But we should be wrong

In hall at its power to lie: it does more than

merely imagine; it actually transposes values. J,

And it not only transposes the feeling for values :

the lover actually has a greater value ; he is

stronger. In animals this condition gives rise to

new weapons, colours, pigments, and forms, and

above all to new movements, new rhythms, new

love-calls and seductions. In man it is just the

same. His whole economy is richer, mightier,

and more complete when he is in love than when

he is not. The lover becomes a spendthrift ; he

is rich enough for it. He now dares ; he becomes

an adventurer, and even a donkey in magnanimity

and innocence ; his belief in God and in virtue

revives, because he believes in love. Moreover,

such idiots of happiness acquire wings and new

252 THE WILL TO POWER.

capacities, and even the door to art is opened to

them.

If we cancel the suggestion of this intestinal

fever from the lyric of tones and words, what is

left to poetry and music ? . . . L art pour I art

perhaps ; the professional cant of frogs shivering

outside in the cold, and dying of despair in their

swamp. . . . Everything else was created by

love.

809.

All art works like a suggestion on the muscles

and the senses which were originally active in the

ingenuous artistic man ; its voice is only heard

by artists it speaks to this kind of man, whose

constitution is attuned to such subtlety in sensi

tiveness. The concept " layman " is a misnomer.

The deaf man is not a subdivision of the class ^

whose ears are sound. All art works as a tonic \

it increases strength, it kindles desire (i.e. the

feeling of strength), it excites all the more subtle

recollections of intoxication ; there is actually a

special kind of memory which underlies such

states a distant flitful world of sensations here

returns to being.

Ugliness is the contradiction of art. It is that

which art excludes, the negation of art : wherever

decline, impoverishment of life, impotence, de

composition, dissolution, are felt, however remotely,

the aesthetic man reacts with his No. Ugliness

depresses : it is the sign of depression. It robs

strength, it impoverishes, it weighs down, . . .

Ugliness suggests repulsive things. From one s

THE WILL TO POWER IN ART. 253

states of health one can test how an indisposition

may increase one s power of fancying ugly things.

One s selection of things, interests, and questions

becomes different. Logic provides a state which

is next of kin to ugliness : heaviness, bluntness.

In the presence of ugliness equilibrium is lacking

in a mechanical sense : ugliness limps and

stumbles the direct opposite of the godly agility

of the dancer.

The aesthetic state represents an overflow of

means of communication as well as a condition of

extreme sensibility to stimuli and signs. It is

the zenith of communion and transmission

between living creatures ; it is the source of

languages. In it, languages, whether of signs,

sounds, or glances, have their birthplace. The

richer phenomenon is always the beginning : our

abilities are subtilised forms of richer abilities.

But even to-day we still listen with our muscles,

we even read with our muscles.

Every mature art possesses a host of conventions

as a basis : in so far as it is a language. Con

vention is a condition of great art, not an obstacle

to it. ... Every elevation of life likewise elevates

the power of communication, as also the under

standing of man. The power of living in other

people s souls originally had nothing to do with

morality, but with a physiological irritability of

suggestion : " sympathy," or what is called

"altruism," is merely a product of that psycho-

motor relationship which is reckoned as spirituality

(psycho-motor induction, says Charles Fere).

People never communicate a thought to one

254 THE WILL TO POWER.

another: they communicate a movement, an

imitative sign which is then interpreted as a

thought.

810.

Compared with music, communication by means

of words is a shameless mode of procedure ; words

reduce and stultify ; words make impersonal ;

words make common that which is uncommon.

811.

It is exceptional states that determine the

artist such states as are all intimately related

and entwined with morbid symptoms, so that it

would seem almost impossible to be an artist

without being ill.

The physiological conditions which in the artist

become moulded into a " personality," and which,

to a certain degree, may attach themselves to any

man :

1 i ) Intoxication, the feeling of enhanced power ;

the inner compulsion to make things a mirror of

one s own fulness and perfection.

(2) The extreme sharpness of certain senses,

so that they are capable of understanding a totally

different language of signs and to create such a

language (this is a condition which manifests itself

in some nervous diseases) ; extreme susceptibility

out of which great powers of communion are

developed ; the desire to speak on the part of

everything that is capable of making -signs ; a need

of being rid of one s self by means of gestures

THE WILL TO POWER IN ART. 255

and attitudes ; the ability of speaking about one s

self in a hundred different languages in fact, a

state of explosion.

One must first imagine this condition as one in

which there is a pressing and compulsory desire of

ridding one s self of the ecstasy of a state of tension, ,

by all kinds of muscular work and movement ;

also as an involuntary co-ordination of these move

ments with inner processes (images, thoughts,

desires) as a kind of automatism of the whole

muscular system under the compulsion of strong

stimuli acting from within ; the inability to

resist reaction ; the apparatus of resistance is

also suspended. Every inner movement (feeling,

thought, emotion) is accompanied by vascular

changes, and consequently by changes in^colour;

temperature, and secretion. The suggestive power

of music, its " suggestion mentale"

(3) The compulsion to imitate-, extreme irritabil

ity, by means of which a certain example becomes

contagious a condition is guessed and represented

merely by means of a few signs. ... A complete

picture is visualised by one s inner consciousness,

and its effect soon shows itself in the movement

of the limbs, in a ceVtain suspension of the will

(Schopenhauer ! ! ! !). A sort of blindness and

deafness towards the external world, the realm

of admitted stimuli is sharply defined.

This differentiates the artist from the layman

(from the spectator of art) : the latter reaches the

height of his excitement in the mere act of appre

hending: the former in giving and in such a way

that the antagonism between these two gifts is not

2 5 6

THE WILL TO POWER.

only natural but even desirable. Each of these states

has an opposite standpoint to demand of the

artist that he should have the point of view of the

spectator (of the critic) is equivalent to asking

him to impoverish his creative power. ... In this

respect the same difference holds good as that which

exists between the sexes : one should not ask the

artist who gives to become a woman to "receive"

Our aesthetics have hitherto been women s

aesthetics, inasmuch as they have only formulated

the experiences of what is beautiful, from the point

of view of the receivers in art. In the whole of

philosophy hitherto the artist has been lacking . . .

i.e. as we have already suggested, a necessary

fault : for the artist who would begin to under

stand himself would therewith begin to mistake

himself he must not look backwards, he must

not look at all ; he must give. It is an honour

for an artist to have no critical faculty ; if he can

criticise he is mediocre, he is modern.

812.

Here I lay down a series of psychological states

as signs of flourishing and complete life, which

to-day we are in the habit of regarding as morbid.

But, by this time, we have broken ourselves of

the habit of speaking of healthy and morbid as

opposites : the question is one of degree, what

I maintain on this point is that what people call

healthy nowadays represents a lower level of that

which under favourable circumstances actually

would be healthy that we are relatively sick. . . .

THE WILL TO POWER IN ART. 257

The artist belongs to a much stronger race. That V

which in us would be harmful and sickly, is natural

in him. But people object to this that it is pre

cisely the impoverishment of the machine which

renders this extraordinary power of comprehending

every kind of suggestion possible : e.g. our hysteri

cal females.

An overflow of spunk and energy may quite as

well lead to symptoms of partial constraint, sense

hallucinations, peripheral sensitiveness, as a poor

vitality does the stimuli are differently deter

mined, the effect is the same. . . . What is not

the same is above all the ultimate result ; the

extreme torpidity of all morbid natlllg, after their

nervous eccentricities, has nothing in common with

the states of the artist, who need in no wise

repent his best moments. . . . He is rich enough

for it all : he can squander without becoming

poor.

Just as we now feel justified in judging genius j

as a form of neurosis, we may perhaps think the

same of artistic suggestive power, and our

artists are, as a matter of fact, only too closely

related to hysterical females \ \ \ This, however,

is only an argument against the present day, and

not against artists in general.

The inartistic states are: objectivity, reflection

suspension of the will . . . (Schopenhauer s scandal- ]

ous misunderstanding consisted in regarding art as <

a mere bridge to the denial of life) . . . The in

artistic states are : those which impoverish, which

subtract, which bleach, under which life suffers

the Christian.

VOL. II. R

258 THE WILL TO POWER.

8I 3 .

The modern artist who, in his physiology, is

next of kin to the hysteric, may also be classified

as a character belonging to this state of morbid

ness. The hysteric is false, he lies from the

love of lying, he is admirable in all the arts of

dissimulation, unless his morbid vanity hood

wink him. This vanity is like a perpetual fever

which is in need of stupefying drugs, and which

recoils from no self-deception and no farce that

promises it the most fleeting satisfaction. (The

incapacity for pride and the need of continual

revenge for his deep-rooted self-contempt, this is

almost the definition of this man s vanity.)

The absurd irritability of his system, which

makes a crisis out of every one of his experiences,

and sees dramatic elements in the most insignifi

cant occurrences of life, deprives him of all calm

reflection : he ceases from being a personality, at

most he is a rendezvous of personalities of which

first one and then the other asserts itself with

barefaced assurance. Precisely on this account he

is great as an actor : all these poor will-less people,

whom doctors study so profoundly, astound one

through their virtuosity in mimicking, in trans

figuration, in their assumption of almost any

character required.

814.

Artists are not men of great passion, despite all

their assertions to the contrary both to themselves

and to others. And for the following two reasons :

THE WILL TO POWER IN ART. 259

they lack all shyness towards themselves (they

watch themselves live, they spy upon themselves,

they are much too inquisitive), and they also lack

shyness in the presence of passion (as artists they

exploit it). Secondly, however, that vampire,

their talent, generally forbids them such an ex

penditure of energy as passion demands. A man

who has a talent is sacrificed to that talent ; he

lives under the vampirism of his talent.

A man does not get rid of his passion by re

producing it, but rather he is rid of it if he is able

to reproduce it. (Goethe teaches the reverse, but

it seems as though he deliberately misunderstood

himself here from a sense of delicacy.)

815.

Concerning a reasonable mode of life. -.Relative

chastity, a fundamental and shrewd caution in

regard to erotica, even in thought, may be a reason

able mode of life even in richly equipped and

perfect natures. But this principle applies more

particularly to artists ; it belongs to the best

wisdom of their lives. Wholly trustworthy voices

have already been raised in favour of this view,

e.g. Stendhal, Th. Gautier, and Flaubert. The artist

is perhaps in his way necessarily a sensual man,

generally susceptible, accessible to everything, and

capable of responding to the remotest stimulus or

suggestion of a stimulus. Nevertheless, as a rule

he is in the power of his work, of his will to

mastership, really a sober and often even a chaste

man. His dominating instinct will have him so :

260 THE WILL TO POWER.

it does not allow him to spend himself haphazardly.

It is one and the same form of strength which is

spent in artistic conception and in the sexual

act : there is only one form of strength. The

artist who yields in this respect, and who spends

himself, is betrayed : by so doing he reveals his

lack of instinct, his lack of will in general. It

may be a sign of decadence, in any case it re

duces the value of his art to an incalculable

degree.

816.

Compared with the artist, the scientific man,

regarded as a phenomenon, is indeed a sign of a

certain storing-up and levelling-down of life (but

also of an increase of strength, severity, hardness,

and will-power). To what extent can falsity and

indifference towards truth and utility be a sign of

youth, of childishness, in the artist? . . . Their

habitual manner, their unreasonableness, their

ignorance of themselves, their indifference to

" eternal values/ their seriousness in play, their

lack of dignity ; clowns and gods in one ; the

saint and the rabble. . . . Imitation as an imperi

ous instinct. t)o not artists of ascending life and

artists of degeneration belong to all phases ? . . .

Yes!

817.

Would any link be missing in the whole chain

of science and art, if woman, if woman s work, were

excluded from it ? Let us acknowledge the

THE WILL TO POWER IN ART. 26l

exception it proves the rule that woman is

capable of perfection in everything which does not

constitute a work : in letters, in memoirs, in the

most intricate handiwork in short, in everything

which is not a craft ; and just precisely because in

the things mentioned woman perfects herself, be

cause in them she obeys the only artistic impulse

in her nature, which is to captivate. . . . But

what has woman to do with the passionate indiffer

ence of the genuine artist who sees more importance

in a breath, in a sound, in the merest trifle, than in

himself? who with all his five fingers gropes for

his most secret and hidden treasures ? who attri

butes no value to anything unless it knows how to

take shape (unless it surrenders itself, unless it

visualises itself in some way). Art as it is

practised by artists do you not understand what

it is ? is it not an outrage on all our pudeurs ? . . .

Only in this century has woman dared to try her

hand at literature ( " Vers la canaille plumiere fariv-

assiere" to speak with old Mirabeau) : woman now

writes, she now paints, she is losing her instincts.

And to what purpose, if one may put such a

question ?

818

A man is an artist to the extent to which he

regards everything that inartistic people call

" form " as the actual substance, as the " prin

cipal " thing. With such ideas a man certainly

belongs to a world upside down : for hencefor

ward substance seems to him something merely

formal, his own life included.

262 THE WILL TO POWER.

819.

, A sense for, and a delight in, nuances (which is

characteristic of modernity), in that which is not

general, runs counter to the instinct which finds

its joy and its strength in grasping what is typical :

like Greek taste in its best period. In this there

is an overcoming of the plenitude of life ; restraint

dominates, the peace of the strong soul which is

slow to move and which feels a certain repug

nance towards excessive activity is defeated. The

general rule, the law, is honoured and made

prominent : conversely, the exception is laid aside,

and shades are suppressed. All that which is firm,

mighty, solid, life resting on a broad and powerful

basis, concealing its strength this " pleases " : i.e.

it corresponds with what we think of ourselves.

820.

In the main I am much more in favour of

artists than any philosopher that has appeared

hitherto : artists, at least, did not lose sight of the

great course which life pursues ; they loved the

things " of this world," they loved their senses.

v To strive after " spirituality," in cases where this

is not pure hypocrisy or self-deception, seems to

me to be either a misunderstanding, a disease, or a

cure. I wish myself, and all those who live with

out the troubles of a puritanical conscience, and

who are able to live in this way, an ever greater

spiritualisation and multiplication of the senses.

Indeed, we would fain be grateful to the senses for

\^x

THE WILL TO POWER IN ART. 263

their subtlety, power, and plenitude, and on that

account offer them the best we have in the way of

spirit. What do we care about priestly and meta

physical anathemas upon the senses? We no

longer require to treat them in this way : it is

a sign of well-constitutedness when a man like

Goethe clings with ever greater joy and heartiness

to the " things of this world " in this way he

holds firmly to the grand concept of mankind,

which is that man becomes the glorifying power j

of existence when he learns to glorify himself. J

821.

Pessimism in art? The artist gradually learns

to like for their own sake, those means which

bring about the condition of aesthetic elation ;

extreme delicacy and glory of colour, definite

delineation, quality of tone; distinctness where in

normal conditions distinctness is absent. All

distinct things, all nuances, in so far as they recall

extreme degrees of power which give rise to

intoxication, kindle this feeling of intoxication by

association ; the effect of works of art is the

excitation of the state which creates art, of aesthetic

intoxication.

The essential feature in art is its power of

perfecting existence, its production of perfection

and plenitude ; art is essentially the affirmation,

the blessing, and the deification of existence. . . .

What does a pessimistic art signify ? Is it not a

contradictio ? Yes. Schopenhauer is in error

when he makes certain works of art serve the

264 THE WILL TO POWER.

purpose of pessimism. Tragedy does not teach

" resignation." ... To represent terrible and

questionable things is, in itself, the sign of an

instinct of power and magnificence in the artist ;

1 he doesn t fear them. . . . There is no such thing

j as a pessimistic art. . . . Art affirms. Job

j ^frirms. But Zola ? and the Goncourts ? the

things they show us are ugly ; their reason, however,

for showing them to us is their love of ugliness. . .

I don t care what you say ! You simply deceive

yourselves if you think otherwise. What a relief

Dostoievsky is !

822.

If I have sufficiently initiated my readers into

the doctrine that even " goodness," in the whole

comedy of existence, represents a form of exhaus

tion, they will now credit Christianity with con

sistency for having conceived the good to be the

ugly. In this respect Christianity was right.

It is absolutely unworthy of a philosopher to

\ say that " the good and the beautiful are one " ; if

he should add " and also the true," he deserves to

; be thrashed. Truth is ugly.

Art is with us in order that we may not perish

through truth.

823.

Moralising tendencies may be combated with

art. Art is freedom from moral bigotry and

philosophy a la Little Jack Homer : or it may be

the mockery of these things. The flight to Nature,

THE WILL TO POWER IN ART. 265

where beauty and terribleness are coupled. The

concept of the great man.

Fragile, useless souls-de-luxe, which are dis

concerted by a mere breath of wind, " beautiful

souls."

Ancient ideals, in their inexorablehardnessand

brutality, ought to be awakened, as the mightiest

of monsters that they are.

We should feel a boisterous delight in the

psychological perception of how all moralised

artists become worms and actors without know

ing it.

The falsity of art, its immorality, must be

brought into the light of day.

The " fundamental idealising powers " (sensu

ality, intoxication, excessive animality) should be

brought to light.

824.

Modern counterfeit practices in the arts : regarded

as necessary that is to say, as fully in keeping

with the needs most proper to the modern soul.

The gaps in the gifts, and still more in the

education, antecedents, and schooling of modern

artists, are now filled up in this way :

First: A less artistic public is sought which is

capable of unlimited love (and is capable of

falling on its knees before a personality). The

superstition of our century, the belief in " genius,"

assists this process.

Secondly ; Artists harangue the dark instincts of

the dissatisfied, the ambitious, and the self-deceivers

of a democratic age : the importance of poses.

266 THE WILL TO POWER.

Thirdly : The procedures of one art are trans

ferred to the realm of another ; the object of art is

confounded with that of science, with that of the

Church, or with that of the interests of the race

(nationalism), or with that of philosophy a man

rings all bells at once, and awakens the vague

suspicion that he is a god.

Fourthly : Artists flatter women, sufferers, and

indignant folk. Narcotics and opiates are made to-

preponderate in art. The fancy of cultured people,

and of the readers of poetry and ancient history,

is tickled.

825.

We must distinguish between the " public " and

the " select " ; to satisfy the public a man must be

a charlatan to-day, to satisfy the select he will be

a virtuoso and nothing else. The geniuses peculiar

to our century overcame this distinction, they

, were great for both ; the great charlatanry of

Victor Hugo and Richard Wagner was coupled

with such genuine virtuosity that it even satisfied

I the most refined artistic connoisseurs. This is

! why greatness is lacking : these geniuses had a

\ double outlook ; first, they catered for the coarsest

needs, and then for the most refined.

826.

False "accentuation": (i) In romanticism;

this unremitting " exp-ressivo " is not a sign of

strength, but of a feeling of deficiency ;

(2) Picturesque music, the so-called dramatic

THE WILL TO POWER IN ART. 267

kind, is above all easier (as is also the brutal

scandalmongering and the juxtaposition of facts

and traits in realistic novels) ;

(3) "Passion" as amatter of nerves and exhausted

souls ; likewise the delight in high mountains, deserts,

storms, orgies, and disgusting details, in bulkiness

and massiveness (historians, forinstance) ; as amatter

of fact, there is actually a cult of exaggerated feel

ings (how is it that in stronger ages art desired

just the opposite a restraint of passion ?) ;

(4) The preference for exciting materials (Erotica

or Socialistic* or Pathologicd) : all these things are

the signs of the style of public that is being

catered for to-day that is to say, for overworked,

absentminded, or enfeebled people.

Such people must be tyrannised over in order

to be affected.

827.

Modern art is the art of tyrannising. A coarse

and salient definiteness in delineation ; the motive

simplified into a formula; formulae tyrannise.

Wild arabesques within the lines ; overwhelming

masses, before which the senses are confused ;

brutality in coloration, in subject-matter, in the

desires. Examples : Zola, Wagner, and, in a

more spiritualised degree, Taine. Hence logic,

massiveness, and brutality.

828.

In regard to the painter : Tous ces modernes sont

des poetes qui ont voulu etre peintres. Lun a

268 THE WILL TO POWER.

chercJit des drames dans l histoire t I autre des scenes

de moeurs, celui ci traduit des religions, celui la une

philosophie. One imitates Raphael, another the

early Italian masters. The landscapists employ

trees and clouds in order to make odes and

elegies. Not one is simply a painter ; they are

ajl archaeologists, psychologists, and impresarios

of one or another kind of event or theory. They

enjoy our erudition and our philosophy. Like us,

they are full, and too full, of general ideas. They

like a form, not because it is what it is, but

because of what it expresses. They are the scions

of a learned, tormented, and reflecting generation,

a thousand miles away from the Old Masters who

never read, and only concerned themselves with

feasting their eyes.

829.

At bottom, even Wagner s music, in so far as it

stands for the whole of French romanticism, is

literature : the charm of exoticism (strange times,

customs, passions), exercised upon sensitive cosy-

corner people. The delight of entering into ex

tremely distant and prehistoric lands to which

books lead one, and by which means the whole

horizon is painted with new colours and new

possibilities. . . . Dreams of still more distant

and unexploited worlds ; disdain of the boulevards.

. . . For Nationalism, let us not deceive ourselves,

is also only a form of exoticism. . . . Romantic

musicians merely relate what exotic books have

made of them : people would fain experience

exotic sensations and passions according to

THE WILL TO POWER IN ART. 269

Florentine and Venetian taste ; finally they are

satisfied to look for them in an image. . . . The

essential factor is the kind of novel desire, the

desire to imitate, the desire to live as people have

lived once before in the past, and the disguise and

dissimulation of the soul. . . . Romantic art is

only an emergency exit from defective " reality."

The attempt to perform new things : revolution, \

Napoleon. Napoleon represents the passion of

new spiritual possibilities, of an extension of the I

soul s domain.

The greater the debility of the will, the greater

the extravagances in the desire to feel, to repre

sent, and to dream new things. The result of j

the excesses which have been indulged in : an

insatiable thirst for unrestrained feelings. . . .

Foreign literatures afford the strongest spices.

830.

Winckelmann s and Goethe s Greeks, Victor 1

Hugo s Orientals, Wagner s Edda characters,

Walter Scott s Englishmen of the thirteenth

century some day the whole comedy will be

exposed ! All of it was disproportionately

historical and false, but modern.

Concerning the characteristics of national

genius in regard to the strange and to the

borrowed

English genius vulgarises and makes realistic

everything it sees ;

2/0 THE WILL TO POWER.

The French whittles down, simplifies, rational

ises, embellishes ;

The German muddles, compromises, involves,

and infects everything with morality ;

The Italian has made by far the freest and

most subtle use of borrowed material, and has

enriched it with a hundred times more beauty

than it ever drew out of it : it is the richest

genius, it had the most to bestow.

832.

The Jews, with Heinrich Heine and Offenbach,

approached genius in the sphere of art. The

latter was the most intellectual and most high-

spirited satyr, who as a musician abided by great

tradition, and who, for him who has something

more than ears, is a real relief after the senti

mental and, at bottom, degenerate musicians of

German romanticism.

833.

Offenbach: French music imbued with Voltaire s

intellect, free, wanton, with a slight sardonic grin,

but clear and intellectual almost to the point of

banality (Offenbach never titivates), and free

from the mignardise of morbid or blond-Viennese

sensuality.

834.

If by artistic genius we understand the most

consummate freedom within the law, divine

,ease, and facility in overcoming the greatest

THE WILL TO POWER IN ART. 271

difficulties, then Offenbach has even more right to

the title genius than Wagner has. Wagner is

heavy and clumsy : nothing is more foreign to

him than the moments of wanton perfection

which this clown Offenbach achieves as many as

five times, six times, in nearly every one of his

buffooneries. But by genius we ought perhaps

to understand something else.

835.

Concerning " music French, German, and

Italian music. (Our most debased periods in a

political sense are our most productive. The

Slavs ?) The ballet, which is the outcome of

excessive study of the history of strange civilisa

tions, has become master of opera. Stage music

and musicians music. It is an error to suppose

that what Wagner composed was a form : it was

rather formlessness. The possibilities of dramatic

construction have yet to be discovered. Rhythm.

" Expression " at all costs. Harlotry in instru

mentation. All honour to Heinrich Schiitz ; all

honour to Mendelssohn : in them we find an

element of Goethe, but nowhere else ! (We also

find another element of Goethe coming to blossom

in Rahel ; a third element in Heinrich Heine.)

836.

Descriptive music leaves reality to work its

effects alone. ... All these kinds of art are

easier, and more easy to imitate ; poorly gifted

272 THE WILL TO POWER.

people have recourse to them. The appeal to

the instincts ; suggestive art.

837.

Concerning our modern music. The decay of

melody, like the decay of " ideas," and of the

freedom of intellectual activity, is a piece of

clumsiness and obtuseness, which is developing

itself into new feats of daring and even into

principles ; in the end man has only the prin

ciples of his gifts, or of his lack of gifts.

" Dramatic music " nonsense ! It is simply

bad music. ..." Feeling " and " passion " are

merely substitutes when lofty intellectuality and

the joy of it (e.g. Voltaire s) can no longer be

attained. Expressed technically, " feeling " and

" passion " are easier ; they presuppose a much

poorer kind of artist. The recourse to drama be

trays that an artist is much more a master in tricky

means than in genuine ones. To-day we have

both dramatic painting and dramatic poetry, etc.

838.

What we lack in music is an aesthetic which

would impose laws upon musicians and give them

a conscience ; and as a result of this we lack a

real contest concerning " principles." For as

musicians we laugh at Herbart s velleities in this

department just as heartily as we laugh at

Schopenhauer s. As a matter of fact, tremendous

difficulties present themselves here. We no

THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.

longer know on what basis to found our concepts

of what is " exemplary," " masterly," " perfect."

With the instincts of old loves and old admiration

we grope about in a realm of values, and we almost

believe, " that is good which pleases us." ... I

am always suspicious when I hear people every

where speak innocently of Beethoven as a "classic ":

what I would maintain, and with some severity, is

that, in other arts, a classic is the very reverse of

Beethoven. But when the complete and glaring

dissolution of style, Wagner s so-called dramatic

style, is taught and honoured as exemplary, as

masterly, as progressive, then my impatience

exceeds all bounds. Dramatic style in music, as

Wagner understood it, is simply renunciation

of all style whatever ; it is the assumption that

something else, namely, drama, is a hundred times

more important than music. Wagner can paint ;

he does not use music for the sake of music, with"

it he accentuates attitudes ; he is a poet. Finally

he made an appeal to beautiful feelings and

heaving breasts, just as all other theatrical artists

have done, and with it all he converted women

and even those whose souls thirst for culture to

him. But what do women and the uncultured

care about music ? All these people have no

conscience for art : none of them suffer when the

first and fundamental virtues of an art are scorned

and trodden upon in favour of that which is merely

secondary (as ancilla dramaturgicd}. What good

can come of all extension in the means of expression,

when that which is expressed, art itself, has lost all

its law and order? The picturesque pomp and power

VOL. II. S

274 THE WILL TO POWER.

of tones, the symbolism of sound, rhythm, the colour

effects of harmony and discord, the suggestive

significance of music, the whole sensuality of this

art which Wagner made prevail- it is all this that

Wagner derived, developed, and drew out of music.

Victor Hugo did something very similar for

language : but already people in France are

asking themselves, in regard to the case of Victor

Hugo, whether language was not corrupted by

him ; whether reason, intellectuality, and thorough

conformity to law in language are not suppressed

when the sensuality of expression is elevated to

a high place ? Is it not a sign of decadence that

the poets in Fraace have become plastic artists,

and that the musicians of Germany have become

actors and culturemongers ?

839.

To-day there exists a sort of musical pes

simism even among people who are not musi

cians. Who has not met and cursed the

confounded youthlet who torments his piano

until it shrieks with despair, and who single-

handed heaves the slime of the most lugubrious

and drabby harmonies before him ? By so

doing a man betrays himself as a pessimist. . . .

It is open to question, though, whether he also

proves himself a musician by this means. I

for my part could never be made to believe it.

A Wagnerite pur sang is unmusical; he submits

to the elementary forces of music very much

as a woman submits to the will of the man

who hypnotises her and in order to be able to

THE WILL TO POWER IN ART. 275

do this he must not be made suspicious in rebus

musicis et musicantibus by a too severe or too

delicate conscience. I said " very much as "

but in this respect I spoke perhaps more than

a parable. Let any one consider the means

which Wagner uses by preference, when he wishes

to make an effect (means which for the greater

part he first had to invent) ; they are appallingly

similar to the means by which a hypnotist

exercises his power (the choice of his movements,

the general colour of his orchestration ; the

excruciating evasion of consistency, and fairness

and squareness, in rhythm ; the creepiness, the

soothing touch, the mystery, the hysteria of his

" unending melody "). And is the condition to

which the overture to Lohengrin, for instance,

reduces the men, and still more the women, in

the audience, so essentially different from the

somnambulistic trance? On one occasion after

the overture in question had been played, I heard

an Italian lady say, with her eyes half closed,

in a way in which female Wagnerites are adepts :

" Come si dorme con questa musica ! " *

840.

Religion in music. What a large amount of

satisfaction all religious needs get out of Wag-

nerian music, though this is never acknowledged

or even understood ! How much prayer, virtue,

unction, " virginity," " salvation," speaks through

this music ! ... Oh what capital this cunning

* " How the music makes one sleep ! " TR.

THE WILL TO POWER.

saint, who leads and seduces us back to every

thing that was once believed in, makes out of

the fact that he may dispense with words and

concepts ! . . . Our intellectual conscience has no

need to feel ashamed it stands apart if any old

instinct puts its trembling lips to the rim of forbid

den philtres. . . . This is shrewd and healthy, and,

in so far as it betrays a certain shame in regard to

the satisfaction of the religious instinct, it is even

a good sign. . . . Cunning Christianity : the type

of the music which came from the " last Wagner."

841.

I distinguish between courage before persons,

courage before things, and courage on paper.

The latter was the courage of David Strauss,

for instance. I distinguish again between the

courage before witnesses and the courage without

witnesses: the courage of a Christian, or of be

lievers in God in general, can never be the cour

age without witnesses but on this score alone

Christian courage stands condemned. Finally, I

distinguish between the courage which is tempera

mental and the courage which is the fear of fear ; a

single instance of the latter kind is moral courage.

To this list the courage of despair should be added.

This is the courage which Wagner possessed.

His attitude in regard to music was at bottom a

desperate one. He lacked two things which go

to make up a good musician : nature and nurture,

the predisposition for music and the discipline and

schooling which music requires. He had courage :

out of this deficiency he established a principle ;

THE WILL TO POWER IN ART. 277

he invented a kind of music for himself. The

dramatic music which he invented was the music

which he was able to compose, its limitations are

Wagner s limitations.

And he was misunderstood ! Was he really

misunderstood ? . . . Such is the case with five-

sixths of the artists of to-day. Wagner is their

Saviour : five-sixths, moreover, is the " lowest pro

portion." In any case where Nature has shown

herself without reserve, and wherever culture is an

accident, a mere attempt, a piece of dilettantism,

the artist turns instinctively what do I say ?

I mean enthusiastically, to Wagner ; as the poet

says : " Half drew he him, and half sank he." *

842.

" Music " and the grand style. The greatness

of an artist is not to be measured by the beautiful

feelings which he evokes : let this belief be left to

the girls. It should be measured according to

the extent to which he approaches the grand style,

according to the extent to which he is capable of

the grand style. This style and great passion

have this in common that they scorn to please ;

that they forget to persuade ; that they command :

that they will. . . . To become master of the

chaos which is in one ; to compel one s inner chaos

to assume form ; to become consistent, simple, un

equivocal, mathematical, law this is the great

ambition here. By means of it one repels ; nothing

*This is an adapted quotation from Goethe s poem, "The

Fisherman." The translation is E. A. Bowring s. TR.

2/8 THE WILL TO POWER.

so much endears people to such powerful men as

this, a desert seems to lie around them, they

impose silence upon all, and awe every one with

the greatness of their sacrilege. . . . All arts

know this kind of aspirant to the grand style :

why are they absent in music ? Never yet has a

musician built as that architect did who erected the

Palazzo Pitti. . . . This is a problem. Does music

perhaps belong to that culture in which the reign

of powerful men of various types is already at an

end ? Is the concept " grand style " in fact a con

tradiction of the soul of music, of " the woman "

in our music ? . . .

With this I touch upon the cardinal question :

how should all our music be classified ? The age

of classical taste knows nothing that can be com

pared with it : it bloomed when the world of the

Renaissance reached its evening, when " freedom "

had already bidden farewell to both men and

their customs is it characteristic of music to be

Counter- Renaissance ? Is music, perchance, the

sister of the baroque style, seeing that in any case

they were contemporaries ? Is not music, modern

music, already decadence? . . .

I have put my finger before on this question :

whether music is not an example of Counter-

Renaissance art? whether it is not the next of

kin to the baroque style? whether it has not

grown in opposition to all classic taste, so that any

aspiration to classicism is forbidden by the very

nature of music ?

The answer to this most important of all

questions of values would not be a very doubtful

THE WILL TO POWER IN ART. 279

one, if people thoroughly understood the fact that

music attains to its highest maturity and plenitude

as romanticism likewise as a reactionary move

ment against classicism.

Mozart, a delicate and lovable soul, but quite

eighteenth century, even in his serious lapses . . .

Beethoven, the first great romanticist according to

the French conception of romanticism, just as

Wagner is the last great romanticist . . . both

of them are instinctive opponents of classical

taste, of severe style not to speak of " grand "

in this regard.

843-

Romanticism : an ambiguous question, like all

modern questions.

The aesthetic conditions are twofold :

The abundant and generous, as opposed to the

seeking and the desiring.

844-

A romanticist is an artist whose great dis-

\ satisfaction with himself makes him productive /-

who looks away from himself and his fellows, and i

sometimes, therefore, looks backwards.

845-

Is art the result of dissatisfaction with reality ? "L

or is it the expression of gratitude for happiness

experienced ? In the first case, it is romanticism ;

in the second, it is glorification and dithyramb (in

short, apotheosis art) : even Raphael belongs to

this, except for the fact that he was guilty of the

280 THE WILL TO POWER.

duplicity of having defied the appearance of the

Christian view of the world. He was thankful for

life precisely where it was not exactly Christian.

With a moral interpretation the world is in

sufferable ; Christianity was the attempt to over

come the world with morality : t.e. to deny it. In

praxi such a mad experiment an imbecile eleva

tion of man above the world could only end in

the beglooming, the dwarfing, and the impoverish

ment of mankind : the only kind of man who

gained anything by it, who was promoted by it,

was the most mediocre, the most harmless and

gregarious type.

Homer as an apotheosis artist ; Rubens also.

Music has not yet had such an artist.

The idealisation of the great criminal (the

feeling for his greatness) is Greek ; the deprecia

tion, the slander, the contempt of the sinner, is

Judaeo-Christian.

846.

Romanticism and its opposite. In regard to

all aesthetic values I now avail myself of this

fundamental distinction : in every individual case

I ask myself has hunger or has superabundance

been creative here? At first another distinction

might perhaps seem preferable, it is far more

obvious, e.g. the distinction which decides whether

a desire for stability, for eternity, for Being, or

whether a desire for destruction, for change, for

Becoming, has been the cause of creation. But

both kinds of desire, when examined more closely,

prove to be ambiguous, and really susceptible of

THE WILL TO POWER IN ART. 281

interpretation only according to that scheme already

mentioned and which I think is rightly preferred.

The desire for destruction, for change, for Be

coming, may be the expression of an overflowing

power pregnant with promises for the future (my

term for this, as is well known, is Dionysian) ;

it may, however, also be the hate of the ill-con

stituted, of the needy and of the physiologically

botched, that destroys, and must destroy, because

such creatures are indignant at, and annoyed by

everything lasting and stable.

The act of immortalising can, on the other hand,

be the outcome of gratitude and love : an art

which has this origin is always an apotheosis art ;

dithyrambic, as perhaps with Rubens ; happy, as

perhaps with Hafiz ; bright and gracious, and shed

ding a ray of glory over all things, as in Goethe.

But it may also, however, be the outcome of the

tyrannical will of the great sufferer who would

make the most personal, individual, and narrow trait

about him, the actual idiosyncrasy of his pain in

fact, into a binding law and imposition, and who

thus wreaks his revenge upon all things by stamp

ing, branding, and violating them with the image of

his torment. The latter case is romantic pessim

ism in its highest form, whether this be Schopen-

hauerian voluntarism or Wagnerian music.

847-

It is a question whether the antithesis, classic and

romantic, does not conceal that other antithesis, the

active and the reactive.

282 THE WILL TO POWER.

848.

In order to be a classic, one must be possessed

of all the strong and apparently contradictory gifts

and passions : but in such a way that they run in

harness together, and culminate simultaneously in

elevating a certain species of literature or art or

politics to its height and zenith (they must not do

this after that elevation has taken place . . .). They

must reflect the complete state (either of a people

or of a culture), and express its most profound and

most secret nature, at a time when it is still stable

and not yet discoloured by the imitation of foreign

things (or when it is still dependent . . .) ; not

a reactive but a deliberate and progressive spirit,

saying Yea in all circumstances, even in its

hate.

" And does not the highest personal value belong

thereto ? "... It is worth considering whether

moral prejudices do not perhaps exercise their in

fluence here, and whether great moral loftiness is

not perhaps a contradiction of the classical ? . . .

Whether the moral monsters must not necessarily

I be romantic in word and deed? Any such pre

ponderance of one virtue over others (as in the

case of the moral monster) is precisely what with

most hostility counteracts the classical power in

equilibrium ; supposing a people manifested this

moral loftiness and were classical notwithstanding,

we should have to conclude boldly that they were

also on the same high level in immorality ! this

was perhaps the case with Shakespeare (provided

that he was really Lord Bacon).

THE WILL TO POWER IN ART. 28j

849-

Concerning the future. Against the romanticism

of great passion. We must understand how a

certain modicum of coldness, lucidity, and hard

ness "is inseparable from all classical taste : above

all consistency, happy intellectuality, " the three

unities," concentration, hatred of all feeling, of all

sentimentality, of all esprit, hatred of all multi

formity, of all uncertainty, evasiveness, and of all

nebulosity, as also of all brevity, finicking, pretti-

ness and good nature. Artistic formulae must not

be played with: life must be remodelled so that

it should be forced to formulate itself accordingly.

It is really an exhilarating spectacle which we

have only learned to laugh at quite recently, be

cause we have only seen through it quite recently :

this spectacle of Herder s, Winckelmann s, Goethe s, /

and Hegel s contemporaries claiming that they had I

rediscovered the classical ideal . . . and at the same

time, Shakespeare ! And this same crew of men

had scurvily repudiated all relationship with the

classical school of France ! As if the essential

principle could not have been learnt as well here

as elsewhere ! . . . But what people wanted was

" nature," and " naturalness " : Oh, the stupidity of

it ! It was thought that classicism was a kind of

naturalness !

Without either prejudice or indulgence we should

try and investigate upon what soil a classical taste

can be evolved. The hardening, the simplification,

the strengthening, and the bedevilling of man are

inseparable from classical taste. Logical and

284 THE WILL TO POWER.

psychological simplification. A contempt of de

tail, of complexity, of obscurity.

The romanticists of Germany do not protest

against classicism, but against reason, against

illumination, against taste, against the eighteenth

century.

The essence of romantico-Wagnerian music is

the opposite of the classical spirit.

The will to unity (because unity tyrannises : e.g.

the listener and the spectator), but the artist s in

ability to tyrannise over himself where it is most

needed that is to say, in regard to the work it

self (in regard to knowing what to leave out, what

to shorten, what to clarify, what to simplify). The

overwhelming by means of masses (Wagner, Victor

Hugo, Zola, Taine).

850.

The Nihilism of artists. Nature is cruel in

her cheerfulness ; cynical in her sunrises. We are

hostile to emotions. We flee thither where Nature

moves our senses and our imagination, where we

have nothing to love, where we are not reminded

of the moral semblances and delicacies of this

northern nature ; and the same applies to the arts.

We prefer that which no longer reminds us of

good and evil. Our moral sensibility and tender

ness seem to be relieved in the heart of terrible

and happy Nature, in the fatalism of the senses and

forces. Life without goodness.

Great well-being arises from contemplating

Nature s indifference to good and evil.

No justice in history, no goodness in Nature.

THE WILL TO POWER IN ART. 285

That is why the pessimist when he is an artist

prefers those historical subjects where the absence

of justice reveals itself with magnificent simplicity,

where perfection actually comes to expression

and likewise he prefers that in Nature, where her

callous evil character is not hypocritically concealed,

where that character is seen in perfection. . . .

The Nihilistic artist betrays himself in willing and

preferring cynical history and cynical Nature.

8 5 i.

What is tragic? Again and again I have

pointed to the great misunderstanding of Aristotle

in maintaining that the tragic emotions were the

two depressing emotions fear and pity. Had he

been right, tragedy would be an art unfriendly to

life : it would have been necessary to caution people

against it as against something generally harmful

and suspicious. Art, otherwise the great stimulus

of life, the great intoxicant of life, the great will

to life, here became a tool of decadence, the hand

maiden of pessimism and ill-health (for to sup

pose, as Aristotle supposed, that by exciting these

emotions we thereby purged people of them, is

simply an error). Something which habitually

excites fear or pity, disorganises, weakens, and dis

courages : and supposing Schopenhauer were

right in thinking that tragedy taught resignation

(i.e. a meek renunciation of happiness, hope, and

of the will to live), this would presuppose an art

in which art itself was denied. Tragedy would

then constitute a process of dissolution ; the in

stinct of life would destroy itself in the instinct of

286 THE WILL TO POWER.

art. Christianity, Nihilism, tragic art, physiological

decadence ; these things would then be linked,

they would then preponderate together and assist

each other onwards downwards. . . . Tragedy

would thus be a symptom of decline.

This theory may be refuted in the most cold

blooded way, namely, by measuring the effect of

a tragic emotion by means of a dynamometer

The result would be a fact which only the bottom

less falsity of a doctrinaire could misunderstand :

that tragedy is a tonic. If Schopenhauer refuses

to see the truth here, if he regards general depres

sion as a tragic condition, if he would have informed

the Greeks (who to his disgust were not " re

signed ") that they did not firmly possess the

highest principles of life : it is only owing to

his parti pris, to the need of consistency in his

system, to the dishonesty of the doctrinaire that

dreadful dishonesty which step for step corrupted

the whole psychology of Schopenhauer (he who

had arbitrarily and almost violently misunderstood

genius, art itself, morality, pagan religion, beauty,

knowledge, and almost everything).

852.

The tragic artist. Whether, and in regard to

what, the judgment^ beautiful " is established is a

question of an individual s or of a people s strength

The feeling of plenitude, of overflowing strength

(which gaily and courageously meets many an

obstacle before which the weakling shudders) the

feeling of power utters the judgment " beautiful "

concerning things and conditions which the in

stinct of impotence can only value as hateful and

THE WILL TO POWER IN ART. 287

ugly. The flair which enables us to decide whether

the objects we encounter are dangerous, problem

atic, or alluring, likewise determines our aesthetic

Yea. (" This is beautiful," is an affirmation).

From this we see that, generally speaking, a

preference for questionable and terrible things is a

symptom of strength ; whereas the taste for pretty

and charming trifles is characteristic of the weak

and the delicate. The love of tragedy is typical

of strong ages and characters : its non plus ultra

is perhaps the Divina Commedia. It is the heroic

spirits which in tragic cruelty say Yea unto them

selves : they are hard enough to feel pain as a

pleasure.

On the other hand, supposing weaklings desire

to get pleasure from an art which was not designed

for them, what interpretation must we suppose they

would like to give tragedy in order to make it suit

their taste ? They would interpret their own feel

ings of value into it : e.g. the " triumph of -the

moral order of things," or the teaching of the

" uselessness of existence," or the incitement to

" resignation " (or also half-medicinal and half-

moral outpourings, a la Aristotle). Finally, the

art of terrible natures, in so far as it may excite

the nerves, may be regarded by the weak and ex

hausted as a stimulus : this is now taking place,

for instance, in the case of the admiration meted

out to Wagner s art. A test of man s well-being

and consciousness of power is the extent to which

he can acknowledge the terrible and questionable

character of things, and whether he is in any need

of a faith at the end.

288 THE WILL TO POWER.

This kind of artistic pessimism is precisely the

reverse of that religio-moral pessimism which

suffers from the corruption of man and the

enigmatic character of existence : the latter in

sists upon deliverance, or at least upon the hope

of deliverance. Those who suffer, doubt, and dis

trust themselves, the sick, in other words, have

in all ages required the transporting influence of

visions in order to be able to exist at all (the

notion " blessedness " arose in this way). A

similar case would be that of the artists of

decadence, who at bottom maintain a Nihilistic

attitude to life, and take refuge in the beauty of

form, in those select cases in which Nature is

perfect, in which she is indifferently great and in

differently beautiful. (The " love of the beautiful "

may thus be something very different from the

ability to see or create the beautiful : it may be

the expressionof impotence in this respect.VfThe

most convincing artists are those who make

harmony ring out of every discord, and who

benefit all things by the gift ol their power and

inner harmony : in every work ol art the)*- merely

reveal the symbol of their inmost experiences

their creation Is gratiti^e for thqjy life. \

The depth of the tragic artist consists in the

fact that his aesthetic instinct surveys the more

remote results, that he does not halt shortsightedly

at the thing that is nearest, that he says Yea to

the whole cosmic economy, which justifies the

terrible, the evil, and the questionable ; which

more than justifies it.

THE WILL TO POWER IN ART. 289

853-

Art in the "Birth of Tragedy?

The conception of the work which lies

right in the background of this book, is extra

ordinarily gloomy and unpleasant : among all the

types of pessimism which have ever been known

hitherto, none seems to have attained to this degree

of malice. The contrast of a true and of an ap

parent world is entirely absent here : there is but

one world, and it is false, cruel, contradictory,

seductive, and without sense. ... A world thus

constituted is the true world. We are in need of

lies in order to rise superior to this reality, to this

truth that is to say, in order to live. . . . That

lies should be necessary to life is part and parcel of

the terrible and questionable character of existence.

Metaphysics, morality, religion, science, in this

book, all these things are regarded merely as

different forms of falsehood : by means of them we

are led to believe in life. " Life must inspire con

fidence " : the task which this imposes upon us is

enormous. In order to .solve this problem -msM,.

must already be a liar in his heart, but he must

above all else be an artist. And he is that.

Metaphysics, religion, morality, science, all these

things are but the offshoot of his will to art, to

falsehood, to a flight from " truth," to a denial of

" truth." This ability, this artistic capacity par

excellence of man thanks to which he overcomes

reality with lies, is a quality which he has in

VOL. II. T

2pO THE WILL TO POWER.

common with all other forms of existence. He

himself is indeed a piece of reality, of truth, of

nature : how could he help being also a piece

of genius in prevarication !

The fact that the character of existence is

misunderstood, is the profoundest and the highest

secret motive behind everything relating to virtue,

science, piety, and art. To be blind to many

things, to see many things falsely, to fancy

many things : Oh, how clever man has been

in those circumstances in which he believed

/ he was anything but clever ! Love, enthusiasm,

" God " are but subtle forms of ultimate

gelf-deception ; they are but seductions to life

r and to the belief in Jife ! In those moments

when man was deceived, when he had befooled

himself and when he believed in life : Oh, how

his spirit swelled within him ! Oh, what ecstasies

he had ! What power he felt ! And what artistic

triumphs in the feeling of power ! . . . Man had

once more become master of " matter," master of

truth ! . . . And whenever man rejoices it is always

in the same way : he rejoices as an artist, his power

is his joy, he enjoys falsehood as his power. . . .

II.

> Art and nothing else ! Art is the great means

of making life possible, the great seducer to life,

the great stimulus of life.

Art is the only superior counteragent to all will

to the denial oTTHeT "It "is "Jar excellence the anti-

Christian, the anti-Buddhistic, the anti-Nihilistic

force.

THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.

Art is the alleviation of the seeker after know

ledge, of him who recognises the terrible and

questionable character of existence, and who will

recognise it, of the tragic seeker after know-

ledge.

Art is the alleviation of the man of action, of

him who not only sees the terrible and questionable

character of existence, but also lives it, will live it,

of the tragic and warlike man, the hero.

Art is the alleviation of the sufferer, as the

way to states in which pain is willed, is trans

figured, is deified, where suffering is a form of

great ecstasy.

III.

It is clear that in this book pessimism, or,

better still, Nihilism, stands for " truth." But truth

is not postulated as the highest measure of value,

and still less as the highest power. The will to .

appearance, to illusion, to deception, to becoming,

and to change r (lo objective" deception), is here re

garded as more profound, as more primeval, as"

more metaphysical than the will to truth, to reality,

to appearance : the latter is merely a form of the

will to illusion. Happiness is likewise conceived

as more primeval than pain : and pain is considered

as conditioned, as a consequence of the will to

happiness (of the will to Becoming, to growth, to

forming, i.e. to creating; in creating, however, de- (/

struction is included). The highest state of Yea-

saying to existence is conceived as one from which

the greatest pain may not be excluded : the tragico-

Dionysian state.

292 THE WILL TO POWER.

IV.

In this way this book is even anti-pessimistic,

namely, in the sense that it teaches something which

is stronger than pessimism and which is more

" divine " than truth : Art. Nobody, it would seem,

would be more ready seriously to utter a radical

denial of life, an actual denial of action even more

than a denial of life, than the author of this book.

Except that he knows for he has experienced it,

and perhaps experienced little else ! that art is of

\/ more value than truth.

Even in the preface, in which Richard Wagner

is, as it were, invited to join with him in conversa

tion, the author expresses this article of faith, this

gospel for artists : " Art is the only task of life, art

is the metaphysical activity of life. . . ,"~

FOURTH BOOK.

DISCIPLINE AND BREEDING.

THE ORDER OF RANK,

i. THE DOCTRINE OF THE ORDER OF RANK.

854.

IN this age of universal suffrage, in which every

body is allowed to sit in judgment upon everything

and everybody, I feel compelled to re-establish the

order of rank.

855-

Quanta of power alone determine rank and dis

tinguish rank : nothing else does.

856.

The will to power. How must those men be

constituted who would undertake this transvalua-

tion ? The order of rank as the order of power :

war and danger are the prerequisites which allow

of a rank maintaining its conditions. The pro

digious example : man in Nature the weakest

and shrewdest creature making himself master, and

putting a yoke upon all less intelligent forces.

295

296 THE WILL TO POWER.

857-

I distinguish between the type which represents

ascending life and that which represents decay,

decomposition and weakness. Ought one to

suppose that the question of rank between these

two types can be at all doubtful ? . .

858.

The modicum of power which you represent

decides your rank ; all the rest is cowardice.

859.

The advantages of standing detached from one s

age. Detached from the two movements, that of

individualism and that of collectivist morality ; for

even the first does not recognise the order of rank,

and would give one individual the same freedom

as another. My thoughts are not concerned with

the degree of freedom which should be granted to

the one or to the other or to all, but with the

degree of power which the one or the other should

exercise over his neighbour or over all ; and more

especially with the question to what extent a

sacrifice of freedom, or even enslavement, may

afford the basis for the cultivation of a superior

type. In plain words : how could one sacrifice the

development of mankind in order to assist a higher

species than man to come into being.

THE ORDER OF RANK. 297

860.

Concerning rank. The terrible consequences

of " equality " in the end everybody thinks he has

the right to every problem. All order of rank

has vanished.

861.

It is necessary for higher men to declare war |

upon the masses ! In all directions mediocre

people are joining hands in order to make them

selves masters. Everything that pampers, that

softens, and that brings the " people " or " woman "

to the front, operates in favour of universal suffrage

that is to say, the dominion of inferior men.

But we must make reprisals, and draw the

whole state of affairs (which commenced in

Europe with Christianity) to the light of day

and to judgment.

862.

A teaching is needed which is strong enough

to work in a disciplinary manner ; it should

operate in such a way as to strengthen the strong

and to paralyse and smash up the world-weary.

The annihilation of declining races. The

decay of Europe. The annihilation of slave-

tainted valuations. The dominion of the world

as a means to the rearing of a higher type. The

annihilation of the humbug which is called

morality (Christianity as a hysterical kind of

honesty in this regard : Augustine, Bunyan)

298 THE WILL TO POWER.

) The annihilation of universal suffrage that is

to say, that system by means of which the

lowest natures prescribe themselves as a law for

, higher natures. The annihilation of mediocrity

\ and its prevalence. (The one-sided, the indivi

duals peoples ; constitutional plenitude should

be aimed at by means of the coupling of opposites ;

to this end race-combinations should be tried.)

The new kind of courage no a priori truths

(those who were accustomed to believe in some

thing sought such truths !), but free submission to

a ruling thought, which has its time ; for instance,

time conceived as the quality of space, etc.

2. THE STRONG AND THE WEAK.

863.

The notion, " strong and weak man" resolves itself

into this, that in the first place much strength is

inherited the man is a total sum : in the other,

not yet enough (inadequate inheritance, subdivision

of the inherited qualities). Weakness may be a

starting phenomenon : not yet enough ; or a final

phenomenon : " no more."

The determining point is there where great

strength is present, or where a great amount of

i strength can be discharged. The mass, as the

j sum-total of the weak, reacts slowly ; it defends

. itself against much for which it is too weak,

against that for which it has no use ; it never

creates, it never takes a step forward. This is

THE ORDER OF RANK. 299

opposed to the theory which denies the strong

individual and would maintain that the " masses

do everything." The difference is similar to that

which obtains between separated generations :

four or even five generations may lie between the

masses and him who is the moving spirit it is a

chronological difference.

The values of the weak are in the van, because

the strong have adopted them in order to lead

with them.

864.

Why the weak triumph. On the whole, the sick

and the weak have more sympathy and are more

"humane"; the sick and the weak have more

intellect, and are more changeable, more variegated,

more entertaining more malicious ; the sick alone

invented malice. *\A morbid precocity is often to be

observed among rickety, scrofulitic, and tuberculous

people.) Esprit : the property of older races ;

Jews, Frenchmen, Chinese. (The anti-Semites

do not forgive the Jews for having both intellect

and money. Anti-Semites another name for

" bungled and botched.")

The sick and the weak have always had fascina

tion on their side ; they are more interesting than

the healthy : the fool and the saint the two most

interesting kinds of men. . . . Closely related

thereto is the " genius." The " great adventurers

and criminals " and all great men, the most healthy

in particular, have always been sick at certain

periods of their lives great disturbances of the

3OO THE WILL TO POWER.

emotions, the passion for power, love, revenge, are

all accompanied by very profound perturbations.

And, as for decadence, every man who does not

die prematurely manifests it in almost every

respect he therefore knows from experience the

instincts which belong to it : for half his life

nearly every man is decadent.

And finally, woman ! One-half of mankind is

weak, chronically sick, changeable, shifty woman

requires strength in order to cleave to it ; she also

requires a religion of the weak which glorifies

weakness, love, and modesty as divine : or, better

still, she makes the strong weak she rules when

she succeeds in overcoming the strong. xV Woman

has always conspired with decadent types, the

priests, for instance, against the " mighty," against

! the " strong," against men. Women avail them

selves of children for the cult of piety, pity, and

love : the mother stands as the symbol of con-

1 vincing altruism. l

Finally, the increase of civilisation with its

necessary correlatives, the increase of morbid

elements, v of the neurotic and psychiatric and of

the criminal. f A sort of intermediary species arises,

the artist. He is distinct from those who are

.criminals as the result of weak wills and of the

fear of society, although they may not yet be ripe

for the asylum ; but he has antennae which grope

inquisitively into both spheres : this specific plant

of culture, the modern artist, painter, musician, and,

above all, novelist, who designates his particular

kind of attitude with the very indefinite word

" naturalism." . . . Lunatics, criminals, and

THE ORDER OF RANK. 3OI

realists * are on the increase : this is the sign of

a growing culture plunging forward at headlong

speed that is to say, its excrement, its refuse, the

rubbish that is shot from it every day, is beginning

to acquire more importance, the retrogressive

movement keeps pace with the advance.

Finally! the social mishmash, which is the result

of revolution, of the establishment of equal rights,

and of the superstition, the " equality of men."

Thus the possessors of the instincts of decline (of

resentment, of discontent, of the lust of destruction,

of anarchy and Nihilism), as also the instincts of

slavery, of cowardice, of craftiness, and of rascality,

which are inherent among those classes of society

which have long been suppressed, are beginning to

get infused into the blood of all ranks. Two or

three generations later, the race can no longer be

recognised everything has become mob. And

thus there results a collective instinct against

selection, against every kind of privilege ; and

this instinct operates with such power, certainty,

hardness, and cruelty that, as a matter of fact, in

the end, even the privileged classes have to

submit : all those who still wish to hold on to

power flatter the mob, work with the mob, and

must have the mob on their side the " geniuses "

above all The latter become the heralds of those

feelings with which the mob can be inspired, the

expression of pity, of honour, even for all that

suffers, all that is low and despised, and has lived

* The German word is " Naturalist," and really means

" realist " in a bad sense. TR.

302 THE WILL TO POWER.

under persecution, becomes predominant (types :

Victor Hugo, Richard Wagner). The rise of the

mob signifies once more the rise of old values.

In the case of such an extreme movement, both

in tempo and in means, as characterises our civil

isation, man s ballast is shifted. Those men whose

worth is greatest, and whose mission, as it were, is

to compensate for the very great danger of such

a morbid movement, such men become dawdlers

par excellence ; they are slow to accept anything,

and are tenacious ; they are creatures that are

relatively lasting in the midst of this vast mingling

and changing of elements. In such circumstances

power is necessarily relegated to the mediocre-,

mediocrity , as the trustee and bearer of the future,

consolidates itself against the rule of the mob and

of eccentricities (both of which are, in most cases,

united). In this way a new antagonist is evolved

for exceptional men or in certain cases a new

temptation. Provided that they do not adapt

themselves to the mob, and stand up for what

satisfies the instincts of the disinherited, they will

find it necessary to be " mediocre " and sound.

They know : mediocritas is also aurea, it alone

has command of money and gold (of all that

glitters ...).... And, once more, old virtue and

the whole superannuated world of ideals in general

secures a gifted host of special-pleaders. . . . Result :

mediocrity acquires intellect, wit, and genius, it

becomes entertaining, and even seductive.

\ *

Result. -A high culture can only stand upon a

broad basis, upon a strongly and soundly consoli-

THE ORDER OF RANK. 303

dated mediocrity. In its service and assisted by

it, science and even art do their work. Science

could not wish for a better state of affairs : in its

essence it belongs to a middle-class type of man,

among exceptions it is out of place, there is not

anything aristocratic and still less anything

anarchic in its instincts. The power of the middle

classes is then upheld by means of commerce, but,

above all, by means of money-dealing : the instinct

of great financiers is opposed to everything extreme

on this account the Jews are, for the present,

the most conservative power in the threatening

and insecure conditions of modern Europe. They

can have no use either for revolutions, for social

ism, or for militarism : if they would have power,

and if they should need it, even over the revolu

tionary party, this is only the result of what I

have already said, and it in no way contradicts

it. Against other extreme movements they may

occasionally require to excite terror by showing

how much power is in their hands. But their

instinct itself is inveterately conservative and

" mediocre." . . . Wherever power exists, they

know how to become mighty ; but the application

of their power always takes the same direction.

The polite term for mediocre, as is well known,

is the word" ^Liberal" \

Reflection. It is all nonsense to suppose that

this general conquest of values is anti- biological.

In order to explain it, we ought to try and show

that it is the result of a certain interest of life to

maintain the type " man," even by means of this

304 THE WILL TO POWER.

method which leads to the prevalence of the weak

and the physiologically botched if things were

otherwise, might man not cease to exist ? Problem. . .

The enhancement of the type may prove fatal

to the maintenance of the species. Why ? The

experience of history shows that strong races

decimate each other mutually, by means of war,

lust for power, and venturousness ; the strong

emotions ; wastefulness (strength is no longer

capitalised, disturbed mental systems arise from

excessive tension) ; their existence is a costly

affair in short, they persistently give rise to

friction between themselves ; periods of profound

slackness and torpidity intervene : all great ages

have to be paid for. . . . The strong are, after all,

weaker, less wilful, and more absurd than the

average weak ones.

They are squandering races. " Permanence?

in itself, can have no value : that which ought to

be preferred thereto would be a shorter life for

the species, but a life richer in creations. It would

remain to be proved that, even as things are, a

richer sum of creations is attained than in the

case of the shorter existence ; i.e. that man, as a

storehouse of power, attains to a much higher

degree of dominion over things under the con

ditions which have existed hitherto. . . . We are

here face to face with a problem of economics.

865.

The state of mind which calls itself " idealism,"

and which will neither allow mediocrity to be

THE ORDER OF RANK. 305

mediocre nor woman to be woman ! Do not

make everything uniform ! We should have a

clear idea of how dearly we have to pay for the

establishment of a virtue ; and that virtue is

nothing generally desirable, but a noble piece of

madness^ a beautiful exception, which gives us the

privilege of feeling elated. . . .

866.

It is necessary to show that a counter-movement

is inevitably associated with any increasingly

economical consumption of men and mankind, and

with an ever more closely involved " machinery "

of interests and services. I call this counter-

movement the separation of the luxurious surplus

of mankind-, by means of it a stronger kind, a

higher type, must come to light, which has other

conditions for its origin and for its maintenance than

the average man. My concept, my metaphor for

this type is, as you know, the word " Superman."

Along the first road, which can now be completely

surveyed, arose adaptation, stultification, higher

Chinese culture, modesty in^lKe^^nstincts, and

satisfaction at the sight of the belittlement of

man a kind of stationary level of mankind. If J

ever we get that inevitable and imminent, general

control of the economy of the earth, then man

kind can be used as machinery and find its best

purpose in the service of this economy as an

enormous piece of clock-work consisting of ever

smaller and ever more subtly adapted wheels ;

then all the dominating and commanding elements

VOL. II. U

306 THE WILL TO POWER.

will become ever more superfluous ; and the

whole gains enormous energy, while the individual

factors which compose it represent but small

modicums of strength and of value. To oppose

this dwarfing and adaptation of man to a special

ised kind of utility, a reverse movement is needed

(_ ,;,i the procreation of the synthetic man who em-

J bodies everything and justifies it ; that man for

whom the turning of mankind into a machine is

a first condition of existence, for whom the rest of

mankind is but soil on which he can devise his

higher mode of existence.

He is in need of the opposition of the masses,

of those who are " levelled down " ; he requires

that feeling of distance from them ; he stands

upon them, he lives on them. This higher form

of aristocracy is the form of the future. From

the moral point of view, the collective machinery

above described, that solidarity of all wheels,

represents the most extreme example in the

exploitation of mankind: but it presupposes the

\ existence of those for whom such an exploitation

^ would have some meaning* Otherwise it would

signify, as a matter of fact, merely the general

depreciation of the type man, a. retrograde

phenomenon on a grand scale.

\ Readers are beginning to see what I am

\combating namely, economic optimism: as if

* This sentence for ever distinguishes Nietzsche s aristoc

racy from our present plutocratic and industrial one, for

which, at the present moment at any rate, it would be

difficult to discover some meaning. TR.

THE ORDER OF RANK. 307

the general welfare of everybody must necessarily

increase with the growing self-sacrifice of every

body. The very reverse seems to me to be the

case, the self-sacrifice of everybody amounts to a

collective loss ; man becomes inferior so that

nobody knows what end this monstrous purpose

has served. A wherefore ? a new wherefore ?

this is what mankind requires.

867

The recognition of the increase of collective

power-, we should calculate to what extent the

ruin of individuals, of castes, of ages, and of

peoples, is included in this general increase.

The transposition of the ballast of a culture.

The cost of every vast growth : who bears it ?

Why must it be enormous at the present time f

868.

General aspect of the future European : the

latter regarded as the most intelligent servile

animal, very industrious, at bottom very modest,

inquisitive to excess, multifarious, pampered,

weak of will, a chaos of cosmopolitan pas

sions and intelligences.// How would it be

possible for a stronger race to be bred from

him ? Such a race as would have a classical

taste ? The classical taste : this is the will to

simplicity, to accentuation, and to happiness made

visible, the will to the terrible, and the courage

for psychological nakedness (simplification is the

308 THE WILL TO POWER.

outcome of the will to accentuate ; allowing

happiness as well as nakedness to become visible

is a consequence of the will to the terrible . . .).

In order to fight one s way out of that chaos, and

up to this form, a certain disciplinary constraint is

necessary : a man should have to choose between

either going to the dogs <yc prevailing. A ruling

race can only arise amid terrible and violent

conditions. Problem : where are the barbarians

of the twentieth century? Obviously they will

only show themselves and consolidate themselves

after enormous socialistic crises. They will con

sist of those elements which are capable of the

greatest hardness towards themselves, and which

can guarantee the most enduring will-power.

869.

The mightiest and most dangerous passions of

man, by means of which he most easily goes to

rack and ruin, have been so fundamentally banned

that mighty men themselves have either become

impossible or else must regard themselves as evil,

" harmful and prohibited." The losses are heavy,

but up to the present they have been necessary.

Now, however, that a whole host of counter-forces

has been reared, by means of the temporary

suppression of these passions (the passion for

dominion, the love of change and deception), their

liberation has once more become possible : they

will no longer possess their old savagery. We

can now allow ourselves this tame sort of bar

barism : look at our artists and our statesmen !

THE ORDER OF RANK. 309

870.

The root of all evil : that the slave morality

of modesty, chastity, selflessness, and absolute

obedience should have triumphed. Dominating

natures were thu* condemned (i) to hypocrisy,

(2) to qualms of conscience, creative natures

regarded themselves as rebels against frod, un

certain and hemmed in by eternal values.

The barbarians showed that the ability of

keeping within the bounds of moderation was not

in the scope of their powers : they feared and

slandered the passions and instincts of nature

likewise the aspect of the ruling Caesars and

castes. On the other hand, there arose the sus

picion that all restraint is a form of weakness or

of incipient old age and fatigue (thus La Rochefou

cauld suspects that " virtue " is only a euphemism

in the mouths of those to whom vice no longer

affords any pleasure). The capacity for restraint

was represented as a matter of hardness, self-

control, asceticism, as a fight with the devil, etc.

etc. The natural delight of aesthetic natures, in

measure ; the pleasure derived from the beauty of

measure, was overlooked and denied, because that

which was desired was an anti-eudaemonistic

morality. The belief in Jhe pleasure which comes

of restraint has been lacking hitherto this

pleasure of a rider on a fiery steed ! The modera- /

tion of weak natures was confounded with the 1

restraint of the strong ! J\

In short, the best things have been blasphemed

because weak or immoderate swine have thrown a

310 THE WILL TO POWER.

I bad light upon them the best men have remained

concealed and have often misunderstood them

selves.

871.

Vicious and unbridled people : their depressing

influence upon the value of the passions. It was

the appalling barbarity of morality which was

principally responsible in the Middle Ages for

the compulsory recourse to a veritable " league

of virtue " and this was coupled with an equally

appalling exaggeration of all that which consti

tutes the value of man. Militant " civilisation "

(taming) is in need of all kinds of irons and

tortures in order to maintain itself against terrible

and beast-of-prey natures.

In this case, confusion, although it may have

the most nefarious influences, is quite natural :

that which ^men of power and will are able to

demand of themselves gives them the standard for

what they may also allow themselves. Such natures

are the very opposite of the vicious and the un

bridled , although under certain circumstances they

may perpetrate deeds for which an inferior man

would be convicted of vice and intemperance.

In this respect the concept, " all men are equal

before God! does an extraordinary amount of

harm ; actions and attitudes of mind were for

bidden which belonged to the prerogative of the

strong alone, just as if they were in themselves

unworthy of man. All the tendencies of strong

men were brought into disrepute by the fact that

the defensive weapons of the most weak (even of

THE ORDER OF RANK.

those who were weakest towards themselves) were

established as a standard of valuation.

The confusion went so far that precisely the

great virtuosos of life (whose self-control presents

the sharpest contrast to the vicious and the un

bridled) were branded with the most opprobrious^

names. Even to this day people feel themselves 1

compelled to disarage a Caesar Borgia : it is i

simply ludicrous. The "Church has anathematised J

German Kaisers owing to their vices : as if a monk

or a priest had the right to say a word as to what

a Frederick II. should allow himself. Don Juan

is sent to hell : this is very naif. Has anybody

ever noticed that all interesting men are lacking

in heaven ? . . . This is only a hint to the girls,

as to where they may best find salvation. If one ,

think at all logically, and also have a profound

insight into that which makes a great man, there

can be no doubt at all that the Church has dis- J

patched all " great men " to Hades its fight is J

against all " greatness in man."

872.

The rights which a man arrogates to himself

are relative to the duties which he sets himself,

and to the tasks which he feels capable of per

forming. The great majority of men have no

right to life, and are only a misfortune to their

higher fellows.

873-

The misunderstanding of egoism: on the part

of ignoble natures who know nothing of the lust of

12 THE WILL TO POWER.

conquest and the insatiability of great love, and who

likewise know nothing of the overflowing feelings

of power which make a man wish to overcome things,

to force them over to himself, and to lay them on

his heart, the power which impels an artist to

his material. It often happens also that the

active spirit looks for a field for its activity. In

ordinary " egoism " it is precisely the " non-ego,"

the profoundly mediocre ^ creature^ the member _pf

the herd^ who wishes to maintain himself and

when this is perceived by the rarer, more subtle,

and less mediocre natures, it revolts them. For

the judgment of the latter is this : " We are the

noble \ It is much more important to maintain us

than that cattle ! "

874.

The degeneration of the ruler and of the ruling

classes has been the cause of all the great dis

orders in history ! Without the Roman Caesars

and Roman society, Christianity would never have

prevailed.

When it occurs to inferior men to doubt

whether higher men exist, then the danger is

great ! It is then that men finally discover that

there are virtues even among inferior, suppressed,

and poor-spirited men, and that everybody is

equal before God : which is the non plus ultra of

all confounded nonsense that has ever appeared

on earth ! For in the end higher men begin to

measure themselves according to the standard of

virtues upheld by the slaves and discover that

THE ORDER OF RANK.

they are " proud," etc., and that all their higher

qualities should be condemned.

When Nero and Caracalla stood at the helm,

it was then that the paradox arose : " The lowest

man is of more value than that one on the throne ! "

And thus the path was prepared for an image of

God which was as remote as possible from the

image of the mightiest, God on the Cross !

875-

Higher man and gregarious man. When great

! men are ivanting, the great of the past are con

verted into demigods or whole gods : the rise of

religions proves that mankind no longer has any

pleasure in man (" nor in woman neither," as in

Hamlet s case). Or a host of men are brought

together in a heap, and it is hoped that as a

Parliament they will operate just as tyrannically.

Tyrannising is the distinctive quality of great

meq : they make inferior men stupid.

876.

Buckle affords the best example of the extent

to which a plebeian agitator of the mob is in

capable of arriving at a clear idea of the concept,

" higher nature." The opinion which he combats

so passionately that " great men," individuals,

princes, statesmen, geniuses, warriors, are the

levers and causes of all great movements, is in

stinctively misunderstood by him, as if it meant

that all that was essential and valuable in such

314 THE WILL TO POWER.

a " higher man," was the fact that he was capable

of setting masses in motion ; in short, that his

sole merit was the effect he produced. . . . But

the " higher nature " of the great man resides

precisely in being different, in being unable to

communicate with others, in the loftiness of his

rank not in any sort of effect he may produce

even though this be the shattering of both hemi

spheres.

8/7.

The Revolution made Napoleon possible : that

is its justification. We ought to desire the

anarchical collapse of the whole of our civilisation

if such a reward were to be its result. Napoleon

made nationalism possible : that is the latter s

excuse.

The value of a man (apart, of course, from

morality and immorality : because with these

concepts a man s worth is not even skimmed)

does not lie in his utility ; because he would

continue to exist even if there were nobody to

whom he could be useful. And why could not

that man be the very pinnacle of manhood who

was the source of the worst possible effects for

his race : so high and so superior, that in his

presence everything would go to rack and ruin

from envy ?

878.

To appraise the value of a man according to

his utility to mankind, or according to what he

costs it, or the damage he is able to inflict upon it,

THE ORDER OF RANK. 315

is just as good and just as bad as to appraise the

value of a work of art according to its effects.

But in this way the value of one man compared

with another is not even touched upon. The

" moral valuation," in so far as it is social, measures

men altogether according to their effects. But

what about the man who has his own taste on

his tongue, who is surrounded and concealed

by his isolation, uncommunicative and not to be

communicated with ; a man whom no one has

fathomed yet that is to say, a creature of a

higher, and, at any rate, different species : how

would ye appraise his worth, seeing that ye

cannot know him and can compare him with

nothing?

Moral valuation was the cause of the most

enormous obtuseness of judgment: the value of

a man in himself is underrated , well-nigh over

looked, practically denied. This is the remains

of simple-minded teleology : the value of man

can only be measured with regard to other men.

879.

To be obsessed by moral considerations pre

supposes a very low grade of intellect : it shows

that the instinct for special rights, for standing

apart, the feeling of freedom in creative natures,

in " children of God " (or of the devil), is lacking.

And irrespective of whether he preaches a ruling

morality or criticises the prevailing ethical code

from the point of view of his own ideal : by

doing these things a man shows that he belongs

316 THE WILL TO POWER.

to the herd even though he may be what it is

most in need of that is to say, a " shepherd."

880.

We should substitute, morality by the will to our

own ends, and consequently to the means to them.

881.

Concerning tlie order of rank. What is it that

constitutes the mediocrity of the typical man ?

That he does not understand that things neces

sarily have their other side ; that he combats evil

conditions as if they could be dispensed with ;

that he will not take the one with the other ; that

he would fain obliterate and erase the specific

character of a thing, of a circumstance, of an age,

and of a person, by calling only a portion of their

qualities good, and suppressing the remainder.

The " desirability " of the mediocre is that which

we others combat : their ideal is something which

shall no longer contain anything harmful, evil,

dangerous, questionable, and destructive. We

recognise the reverse of this : that with every

growth of man his other side must grow as well ;

that the highest man, if such a concept be allowed,

would be that man who would represent the antag

onistic character of existence most strikingly, and

would be its glory and its only justification. . . .

Ordinary men may only represent a small corner

and nook of this natural character ; they perish

the moment the multifariousness of the elements

composing them, and the tension between their

THE ORDER OF RANK. 317

antagonistic traits, increases : but this is the pre

requisite for greatness in man. That man should \

become better and at the same time more evil, is |

my formula for this inevitable fact.

The majority of people are only piecemeal and

fragmentary examples of man : only when all

these creatures are jumbled together does one

whole man arise. Whole ages and whole peoples

in this sense, have a fragmentary character about

them ; it may perhaps be part of the economy of

human development that man should develop

himself only piecemeal. But, for this reason, one

should not forget that the only important con

sideration is the rise of the synthetic man ; that

inferior men, and by far the great majority of

people, are but rehearsals and exercises out of v

which here and there a whole man may arise ; a

man who is a human milestone, and who indicates

how far mankind has advanced up to a certain

point. Mankind does not advance in a straight

line ; often a type is attained which is again lost

(for instance, with all the efforts of three hundred

years, we have not reached the men of the Renais

sance again, and in addition to this we must not

forget that the man of the Renaissance was already

behind his brother of classical antiquity).

882.

The superiority of the Greek and the man of

the Renaissance is recognised, but people would

like to produce them without the conditions and

causes of which they were the result.

3l8 THE WILL TO POWER.

883.

" Purification of taste " can only be the result

of the strengthening of the type. Our society

to-day represents only the cultivating systems ;

the cultivated man is lacking. The great synthetic

man, in whom the various forces for attaining a-

purpose are correctly harnessed together, is alto

gether wanting. The specimen we possess is the

multifarious man, the most interesting form of

chaos that has ever existed : but not the chaos

preceding the creation of the world, but that fol

lowing it : Goethe as the most beautiful expression

of the type (completely and utterly un- Olympian !)*

884.

Handel, Leibniz, Goethe, and Bismarck, are

characteristic of the strong German type. They

lived with equanimity, surrounded by contrasts.

They were full of that agile kind of strength

which cautiously avoids convictions and doctrines,

by using the one as a weapon against the other,

and reserving absolute freedom for themselves.

885.

Of this I am convinced, that if the rise of great

and rare men had been made dependent upon the

voices of the multitude (taking for granted, of

*Tbe Germans always call Goethe the Olympian. TR.

THE ORDER OF RANK. 319

course, that the latter knew the qualities which

belong to greatness, and also the price that all

greatness pays for its self-development), then there

would never have been any such thing as a great

man !

The fact that things pursue their course inde-

pendently of the voice of the many, is the reason why

a few astonishing things have taken place on earth.

886.

The Order of Rank in Human Values.

(a] A man should not be valued according to

isolated acts. Epidermal actions. Nothing is more

rare than a personal act. Class, rank, race, environ

ment, accident all these things are much more

likely to be expressed in an action or deed than

the " personality " of the doer.

(b] We should on no account jump to the con

clusion that there are many people who are per

sonalities. Some men are but conglomerations of

personalities, whilst the majority are not even one.

In all cases in which those average qualities pre

ponderate, which ensure the maintenance of the

species, to be a personality would involve un

necessary expense, it would be a luxury in fact,

it would be foolish to demand of anybody that he

should be a personality. In such circumstances

everybody is a channel or a transmitting vessel.

(c] A " personality " is a relatively isolated phen

omenon ; in view of the superior importance of- 7

the continuation of the race at an average level, a

320 THE WILL TO POWER.

personality might even be regarded as something

hostile to nature. For a personality to be possible,

timely isolation and the necessity for an existence

of offence and defence, are prerequisites ; something

in the nature of a walled enclosure, a capacity for

, shutting out the world ; but above all, a much lower

\ degree of sensitiveness than the average man has,

who is too easily infected with the views of others.

The first question concerning the order of rank :

how far is a man disposed to be solitary or gre-

garioust (in the latter case, his valueconsists in those

qualities which secure the survival of his tribe or

his type ; in the former case, his qualities are those

which distinguish him from others, which isolate

and defend him, and make his solitude possible).

Consequence : the solitary type should not be

valued from the standpoint of the gregarious type,

or vice versa.

Viewed from above, both types are necessary ;

as is likewise their antagonism, and nothing is

more thoroughly reprehensible than the " desire "

which would develop a third thing out of the two

(" virtue " as hermaphroditism). This is as little

worthy of desire as the equalisation and reconcilia

tion of the sexes. The distinguishing qualities must

be developed ever more and more, the gulf must be

made ever wider. . . .

The concept of degeneration in both cases : the

approximation of the qualities of the herd to those

of solitary creatures: and vice versa in short, when

they begin to resemble each other. This concept

of degeneration is beyond the sphere of moral

judgments.

THE ORDER OF RANK. 321

887.

Where the strongest natures are to be sought.

The ruin and degeneration of the solitary species is

much greater and more terrible : they have the in

stincts of the herd, and the tradition of values,

against them ; their weapons of defence, their in

stincts of self-preservation, are from the beginning

insufficiently strong and reliable fortune must be

peculiarly favourable to them if they are to prosper

(they prosper best in the lowest ranks and dregs

of society ; if ye are seeking personalities it is there

that ye will find them with much greater certainty

than in the middle classes !)

When the dispute between ranks and classes,

which aims at equality of rights, is almost settled,

the fight will begin against the solitary person. (In

a certain sense the latter can maintain and develop

himself most easily in a democratic society \ there

where the coarser means of defence are no longer

necessary, and a certain habit of order, honesty,

justice, trust, is already a general condition.) t The

strongest must be most tightly bound, most strictly

watched, laid in chains and supervised : this is the

instinct of the herd. To them belongs a regime of

self-mastery, of ascetic detachment, of " duties "

consisting in exhausting work, in which one can no

longer call one s soul one s own.

888.

I am attempting an economic justification of

virtue. The object is to make man as useful as

VOL. II. X

322 THE WILL TO POWER,

possible, and to make him approximate as nearly

as one can to an infallible machine : to this end he

must be equipped with machine- like virtues (he

must learn to value those states in which he works

in a most mechanically useful way, as the highest

of all : to this end it is necessary to make him as

disgusted as possible with the other states, and to

represent them as very dangerous and despicable).

Here is the first stumbling-block : the tedious-

ness and monotony which all mechanical activity

brings with it. To learn to endure this and not

only to endure it, but to see tedium enveloped in

a ray of exceeding charm : this hitherto has been

the task of all higher schools. To learn something

which you don t care a fig about, and to find pre

cisely your " duty " in this " objective " activity ;

to learn to value happiness and duty as things

apart ; this is the invaluable task and performance

of higher schools. It is on this account that the

philologist has, hitherto, been the educator per se :

because his activity, in itself, affords the best

pattern of magnificent monotony in action ; under

his banner youths learn to " swat " : first pre

requisite for the thorough fulfilment of mechanical

duties in the future (as State officials, husbands,

slaves of the desk, newspaper readers, and soldiers).

Such an existence may perhaps require a philosoph

ical glorification and justification more than any

other : pleasurable feelings must be valued by some

sort of infallible tribunal, as altogether of inferior

rank ; " duty per se" perhaps even the pathos of re

verence in regard to everything unpleasant, must

be demanded imperatively as that which is above all

THE ORDER OF RANK. 323

useful, delightful, and practical things. ... A

mechanical form of existence regarded as the

highest and most respectable form of existence,

worshipping itself (type : Kant as the fanatic of the

formal concept " Thou shalt ").

889.

The economic valuation of all the ideals that

have existed hitherto that is to say, the selection

and rearing of definite passions and states at the

cost of other passions and states. The law-giver

(or the instinct of the community) selects a number

of states and passions the existence of which

guarantees the performance of regular actions

(mechanical actions would thus be the result of

the regular requirements of those passions and

states).

In the event of these states and passions con

taining ingredients which were painful, a means

would have to be found for overcoming this pain-

fulness by means of a valuation ; pain would have

to be interpreted as something valuable, as some

thing pleasurable in a higher sense. Conceived in

a formula : " How does something unpleasant become

pleasant ? " For instance, when our obedience and

our submission to the law become honoured, thanks

to the energy, power, and self-control they entail.

The same holds good of our public spirit, of our

neighbourliness, of our patriotism, our " humanisa-

tion," our " altruism," and our " heroism." The

object of all idealism should be to induce people To

do unpleasant things cheerfully.

324 THE WILL TO POWER.

890.

The belittlement of man must be held as the

chief aim for a long while : because what is needed

in the first place is a broad basis from which a

stronger species of man may arise (to what extent

hitherto has every stronger species of man arisen

from a substratum of inferior people ?).

891.

The absurd and contemptible form of idealism

which would not have mediocrity mediocre, and

which instead of feeling triumphant at being ex

ceptional, becomes indignant at cowardice, false

ness, pettiness, and wretchedness. We should not

wish things to be any different, we should make the

gulfs even wider \ The higher types among men

should be compelled to distinguish themselves by

means ot the sacrifices which they make to their

own existence.

Principal point of view : distances must be es

tablished, but no contrasts must be created. The

middle classes must be dissolved, and their influence

decreased : this is the principal means of main

taining distances.

892.

Who would dare to disgust the mediocre of their

mediocrity ! As you observe, I do precisely the

reverse : every step away from mediocrity thus

do I teach leads to immorality.

THE ORDER OF RANK. 325

893.

To hate mediocrity is unworthy of a philo

sopher : it is almost a note of interrogation to his

" right to philosophy." It is precisely because he is

the exception that he must protect the rule and

ingratiate all mediocre people.

894-

What I combat : that an exceptional form should

make war upon the rule instead of understanding

that the continued existence of the rule is the first

condition of the value of the exception. For in

stance, there are women who, instead of consider

ing their abnormal thirst for knowledge as a dis

tinction, would fain dislocate the whole status of

womanhood.

895-

The increase of strength despite the temporary

ruin of the individual :

A new level must be established ;

We must have a method of storing up forces

for the maintenance of small performances,

in opposition to economic waste ;

Destructive nature must for once be reduced

to an instrument of this economy of the

future ;

The weak must be maintained, because there

is an enormous mass of finicking work to

be done ;

326 THE WILL TO POWER.

The weak and the suffering must be upheld

in their belief that existence is still possible ;

Solidarity must be implanted as an instinct

opposed to the instinct of fear and servility ;

War must be made upon accident, even upon

the accident of " the great man."

896.

War upon great men justified on economic

grounds. Great men are dangerous ; they are

accidents, exceptions, tempests, which are strong

enough to question things which it has taken time

to build and establish. Explosive material must

not only be discharged harmlessly, but, if possible,

its discharge must be prevented altogether ; this is

the fundamental instinct of all civilised society.

897-

I He who thinks over the question of how the type

/man may be elevated to its highest glory and

, /power, will realise from the start that he must

/place himself beyond morality; for morality was

/ directed in its essentials at the opposite goal that

/ is to say, its aim was to arrest and to annihilate

i that glorious development wherever it was in pro-

* cess of accomplishment. For, as a matter of fact,

development of that sort implies that such an

enormous number of men must be subservient to it,

that a counter-movement is only too natural : the

weaker, more delicate, more mediocre existences,

find it necessary to take up sides against that glory

THE ORDER OF RANK. 327

of life and power ; and for that purpose they must

get a new valuation of themselves by means of

which they are able to condemn, and if possible to

destroy, life in this high degree of plenitude.

Morality is therefore essentially the expression of (

hostility to life, in so far as it would overcome

vital types.

898.

The strong of the future. To what extent neces

sity on the one hand and accident on the other

have attained to conditions from which a stronger

species may be reared : this we are now able to

understand and to bring about consciously ; we

can now create those conditions under which such

an elevation is possible.

Hitherto education has always aimed at the

utility of society : not the greatest possible utility

for the future, but the utility of the society actually

extant. What people required were " instruments"

for this purpose. Provided the wealth of forces

were greater^ it would be possible to think of a

draft being made upon them, the aim of which

would not be the utility of society, but some future

utility.

The more people grasped to what extent the

present form of society was in such a state of tran

sition as sooner or later to be no longer able to exist

for its own sake, but only as a means in the hands

of a stronger race, the more this task would have to

be brought forward.

The increasing belittlement of man is precisely

the impelling power which leads one to think of

328 THE WILL TO POWER.

the cultivation of a stronger race-, a race which

would have a surplus precisely there where the

dwarfed species was weak and growing weaker

(will, responsibility, self-reliance, the ability to

postulate aims for one s self).

The means would be those which history teaches:

isolation by means of preservative interests which

would be the reverse of those generally accepted ;

exercise in transvalued valuations ; distance as

pathos ; a clean conscience in what to-day is most

despised and most prohibited.

The levelling of the mankind of Europe is the

great process which should not be arrested ; it

should even be accelerated. The necessity of

cleaving gulfs, of distance, of the order of rank, is

therefore imperative ; but not the necessity of re

tarding the process above mentioned.

This levelled- down species requires justification

as soon as it is attained : its justification is that

it exists for the service of a higher and sovereign

race which stands upon it and can only be elevated

upon its shoulders to the task which it is destined

to perform. Not only a ruling race whose task

would be consummated in ruling alone : but a race

with vital spheres of its own, with an overflow of

energy for beauty, bravery, culture, and manners,

even for the most abstract thought ; a yea-saying

race which would be able to allow itself every kind

of great luxury strong enough to be able to dis

pense with the tyranny of the imperatives of virtue,

rich enough to be in no need of economy or

pedantry ; beyond good and evil ; a forcing-house

for rare and exceptional plants.

THE ORDER OF RANK.

899-

329

Our psychologists, whose glance dwells in

voluntarily upon the symptoms of decadence, lead

us to mistrust intellect ever more and more.

People persist in seeing only the weakening, pam

pering, and sickening effects of intellect, but there

are now going to appear :

The union of

Cynics

intellectual

New

Experi ment-

superiority

barbarians

alists

with well-be

Conquerors

ing and an

overflow of

strength.

900.

I point to something new : certainly for such a

democratic community there is a danger of bar

barians ; but these are sought only down below.

There is also another kind of barbarians who come

from the heights : a kind of conquering and ruling

natures, which are in search of material that they

can mould. Prometheus was a barbarian of this

stamp.

901.

Principal standpoint: one should not suppose

the mission of a higher species to be the leading

of inferior men (as Comte does, for instance) ; but

the inferior should be regarded as the foundation

upon which a higher species may live their higher

life upon which alone they can stand.

330 THE WILL TO POWER.

The conditions under which a strong, noble

species maintains itself (in the matter of intellectual

discipline) are precisely the reverse of those under

which the industrial masses the tea-grocers a la

Spencer subsist. Those qualities which are

within the grasp only of the strongest and most

terrible natures, and which make their existence

possible leisure, adventure, disbelief, and even4isb.

station would necessarily ruin mediocre natures

and does do so when they possess them. In

the case of the latter industry, regularity, modera

tion, and strong " conviction " are in their proper

place in short, all " gregarious virtues " : under

their influence these mediocre men become perfect.

902.

Concerning the ruling types. The shepherd as

opposed to the " lord " (the former is only a means

to the maintenance of the herd ; the latter, the

purpose for which the herd exists).

903.

The temporary preponderance of social valua

tions is both comprehensible and useful ; it is a

matter of building a foundation upon which a

stronger species will ultimately be made possible.

The standard of strength : to be able to live under

the transvalued valuations, and to desire them for

\ all eternity. State and society regarded as a sub

structure : economic point of view, education con-

ceived as breeding.

THE ORDER OF RANK. 33!

904.

A consideration which " free spirits lack : that

the same discipline which makes a strong nature

still stronger, and enables it to go in for big under

takings, breaks up and withers the mediocre : doubt

la largeur de cceur experiment independence.

905.

The hammer. How should men who must value

in the opposite way be constituted ? Men who

possess all the qualities of the modern soul, but are

strong enough to convert them into real health ?

The means to their task.

906.

The strong man, who is mighty in the instincts

of a strong and healthy organisation, digests his

deeds just as well as he digests his meals ; he even

gets over the effects of heavy fare : in the main, iB|

however, he is led by an inviolable and severe

instinct which prevents his doing anything which

goes against his grain, just as he never does any

thing against his taste.

907.

Can we foresee the favourable circumstances

under which creatures of the highest value might

arise ? It is a thousand times too complicated, and

the probabilities of failure are very great : on that

account we cannot be inspired by the thought of

332 THE WILL TO POWER.

striving after them ! Scepticism. To oppose this

we can enhance courage, insight, hardness, inde

pendence, and the feeling of responsibility ; we can

also subtilise and learn to forestall the delicacy of

the scales, so that favourable accidents may be

enlisted on our side.

908.

Before we can even think of acting, an enormous

amount of work requires to be done. In the main,

however, a cautious exploitation of the present con

ditions would be our best and most advisable

course of action. The actual creation of conditions

such as those which occur by accident, presupposes

the existence of iron men such as have not yet

lived. Our first task must be to make the personal

ideal prevail and become realised \ He who has

understood the nature of man and the origin of

mankind s greatest specimens, shudders before man

and takes flight from all action \ this is the result

of inherited valuations ! !

My consolation is, that the nature of man is evil,

and this guarantees his strength \

909.

The typical forms of self-development, or the

eight principal questions :

1. Do we want to be more multifarious or more

simple than we are ?

2. Do we want to be happier than we are, or

more indifferent to both happiness and un-

happiness ?

THE ORDER OF RANK. 333

3. Do we want to be more satisfied with our-

selves,ormoreexactingand more inexorable?

4. Do we want to be softer, more yielding, and

more human than we are, or more in

human ?

5. Do we want to be more prudent than we are,

or more daring?

6. Do we want to attain a goal, or do we want /

to avoid all goals (like the philosopher, for t

instance, who scents a boundary, a cul-de-

sac, a prison, a piece of foolishness in every

goal) ?

7. Do we want to become more respected, or

more feared, or more despised ?

8. Do we want to become tyrants, and seducers,

or do we want to become shepherds and

gregarious animals ?

910.

The type of my disciples. To such men as con

cern me in any way I wish suffering, desolation,

sickness, ill-treatment, indignities of all kinds. I

wish them to be acquainted with profound self-

contempt, with the martyrdom of self-distrust, with

the misery of the defeated : I have no pity for

them ; because I wish them to have the only thing

which to-day proves whether a man has any value

or not, namely, the capacity of sticking to his guns.

911.

The happiness and self-contentedness of the

lazzaroni, or the blessedness of " beautiful souls,"

334 THE WILL TO POWER.

or the consumptive love of Puritan pietists,

proves nothing in regard to the order of rank

I among men. As a great educator one ought in-

i exorably to thrash a race of such blissful creatures

into unhappiness. The danger of belittlement and

of a slackening of powers follows immediately

I am opposed to happiness a la Spinoza or a la

Epicurus, and to all the relaxation of contemplative

states. But when virtue is the means to such

happiness, well then, one must master even virtue.

912.

\ I cannot see how any one can make up for

having missed going to a good school at the proper

( time. Such a person does not know himself; he

walks through life without ever having learned to

walk. His soft muscles betray themselves at every

step. Occasionally life itself is merciful enough to

make a man recover this lost and severe schooling :

by means of periods of sickness, perhaps, which

exact the utmost will-power and self-control ; or

j by means of a sudden state of poverty, which

threatens his wife and child, and which may force

a man to such activity as will restore energy to his

slackened tendons, and a tough spirit to his will to

life. The most desirable thing of all, however, is,

under all circumstances to have severe discipline at

the right time, i.e. at that age when it makes us

proud that people should expect great things from

us. For this is what distinguishes hard schooling,

as good schooling, from every other schooling,

namely, that a good deal is demanded, that a good

THE ORDER OF RANK. 335

deal is severely exacted ; that goodness, nay even

excellence itself, is required as if it were normal ;

that praise is scanty, that leniency is non-existent ;

that blame is sharp, practical, and without reprieve,

and has no regard to talent and antecedents. We

are in every way in need of such a school : and

this holds good of corporeal as well as of spiritual

things ; it would be fatal to draw distinctions here ! *

The same discipline makes the soldier and the

scholar efficient ; and, looked at more closely, there

is no true scholar who has not the instincts of a

true soldier in his veins. To be able to command

and to be able to obey in a proud fashion ; to keep

one s place in rank and file, and yet to be ready

at any moment to lead ; to prefer danger to

comfort ; not to weigh what is permitted and

what is forbidden in a tradesman s balance ; to be

more hostile to pettiness, slyness, and parasitism

than to wickedness. What is it that one learns in /

a hard school ? to obey and to command.

9I3-

We should repudiate merit and do only that

which stands above all praise and above all under-;

standing.

914-

The new forms of morality :

Faithful vows concerning that which one

wishes to do or to leave undone ; complete and

definite abstention from many things. Tests as

to whether one is ripe for such discipline.

336 THE WILL TO POWER.

915.

It is my desire to naturalise asceticism : I would

substitute the old intention of asceticism, " self-

denial," by my own intention, " self -strengthening " :

a gymnastic of the will ; a period of abstinence

and occasional fasting of every kind, even in things

intellectual ; a casuistry in deeds, in regard to the

opinions which we derive from our powers ; we

should try our hand at adventure and at deliberate

dangers. (Diners chez Magny : all intellectual

gourmets with spoilt stomachs.) Tests ought also

to be devised for discovering a man s power in

keeping his word.

916.

The things which have become spoilt through

having been abused by the Church :

(i) Asceticism. People have scarcely got the

courage yet to bring to light the natural utility

and necessity of asceticism for the purpose of the

. education of the will. Our ridiculous world of

education, before whose eyes the useful State

official hovers as an ideal to be striven for, believes

that it has completed its duty when it has in

structed or trained the brain ; it never even

suspects that something else is first of all necessary

i the education of will-power ; tests are devised for

everything except for the most important thing

of all : whether a man can will, whether he can

promise , the young man completes his education

without a question or an inquiry having been

THE ORDER OF RANK. 337

made concerning the problem of the highest value

of his nature.

(2) Fasting. In every sense even as a means

of maintaining the capacity for taking pleasure in

all good things (for instance, to give up reading

for a while, to hear no music for a while, to cease

from being amiable for a while : one ought also

to have fast days for one s virtues).

(3) The monastery. Temporary isolation with

severe seclusion from all letters, for instance ; a

kind of profound introspection and self-recovery,

which does not go out of the way of " temptations,"

but out of the way of " duties " ; a stepping out

of the daily round of one s environment ; a detach

ment from the tyranny of stimuli and external

influences, which condemns us to expend our

power only in reactions, and does not allow it to

gather volume until it bursts into spontaneous

activity (let anybody examine our scholars closely :

they only think reflexively, i.e. they must first

read before they can think).

(4) Feasts. A man must be very coarse in order

not to feel the presence of Christians and Christian

values as oppressive, so oppressive as to send all

festive moods to the devil. By feasts we under

stand : pride, high-spirits, exuberance ; scorn of

all kinds of seriousness and Philistinism ; a divine

saying of Yea to one s self, as the result of physical

plenitude and perfection all states to which the

Christian cannot honestly say Yea. A feast is a\

pagan thing par excellence.

(5) The courage of one s own nature : dressing-

up in morality. To be able to call one s passions

VOL. II. Y

338 THE WILL TO POWER.

good without the help of a moral formula : this is

the standard which measures the extent to which

a man is able to say Yea to his own nature,

namely, how much or how little he has to have

recourse to morality.

(6) Death. The foolish physiological fact must

be converted into a moral necessity. One should

\> , live in such a way that one may have the will to

die at the right time \

917.

To feel one s self stronger or, expressed other

wise : happiness always presupposes a comparison

(not necessarily with others, but with one s self, in

the midst of a state of growth, and without being

conscious that one is comparing).

Artificial accentuation : whether by means of

exciting chemicals or exciting errors (" halluci

nations.")

Take, for instance, the Christian s feeling of

security ; he feels himself strong in his confidence,

in his patience, and his resignation : this artificial

accentuation he owes to the fancy that he is pro

tected by a God. Take the feeling of superiority,

for instance : as when the Caliph of Morocco sees

only globes on which his three united kingdoms

cover four-fifths of the space. Take the feeling

of uniqueness, for instance : as when the European

imagines that culture belongs to Europe alone,

and when he regards himself as a sort of abridged

cosmic process ; or, as when the Christian makes

all existence revolve round the " Salvation of man."

The question is, where does one begin to feel the

THE ORDER OF RANK. 339

pressure of constraint : it is thus that different

degrees are ascertained. A philosopher, for instance,

in the midst of the coolest and most transmontane

feats of abstraction feels like a fish that enters its

element : while colours and tones oppress him ;

not to speak of those dumb desires of that which

others call " the ideal."

918.

A healthy and vigorous little boy will look up

sarcastically if he be asked : " Wilt thou become

virtuous? "-but he immediately becomes eager if

he be asked : " Wilt thou become stronger than

thy comrades ? "

How does one become stronger? By deciding

slowly ; and by holding firmly to the decision

once it is made. Everything else follows of itself.

Spontaneous and changeable natures : both species

of the weak. We must not confound ourselves

with them ; we must feel distance betimes !

Beware of good-natured people ! Dealings with

them make one torpid. All environment is good

which makes one~~exercise those defensive and

aggressive powers which are instinctive in man.

All one s inventiveness should apply itself to

putting one s power of will to the test. . . . Here

the determining factor must be recognised as

something which is not knowledge, astuteness, or

wit.

One must learn to command betimes, likewise

to obey. A man must learn modesty and tact in

340 THE WILL TO POWER.

modesty : he must learn to distinguish and to

honour where modesty is displayed ; he must like

wise distinguish and honour wherever he bestows

his confidence.

What does one repent most ? One s modesty ;

the fact that one has not lent an ear to one s most

individual needs ; the fact that one has mistaken

one s self; the fact that one has esteemed one s self

low ; the fact that one has lost all delicacy of

hearing in regard to one s instincts. This want of

reverence in regard to one s self is avenged by all

sorts of losses : in health, friendship, well-being,

pride, cheerfulness, freedom, determination, cour

age. A man never forgives himself, later on, for

this want of genuine egoism : he regards it as an

objection and as a cause of doubt concerning his

real ego.

919.

/ I should like man to begin by respecting himself : \

everything else follows of itself. Naturally a man

ceases from being anything to others in this way :

for this is precisely what they are least likely to

forgive. " What ? a man who respects himself? " *

This is something quite different from the blind

instinct to love one s self. Nothing is more common

in the love of the sexes or in that duality which is

* Cf. Disraeli in Tancred : " Self-respect, too, is a super

stition of past ages. ... It is not suited to these times ; it is

much too arrogant, too self-conceited, too egoistical. No

one is important enough to have self-respect nowadays "

(book iii. chap. v.). TR.

THE ORDER OF RANK. 341

called ego, than_.a. certain contempt for that which

is loved : the fatalism of love.

920.

" I will have this or that " ; u I would that this

or that were so " ; "I know that this or that is

so" the degrees of power: the man of will, the

man of desire, the man of fate.

921.

The means by which a strong species maintains

itself :

It grants itself the right of exceptional actions,

as a test of the power of self-control and

of freedom.

It abandons itself to states in which a man is

not allowed to be anything else than a

barbarian.

It tries to acquire strength of will by every

\J kind of asceticism.

It is not expansive ; it practises silence ; it

is cautious in regard to all charms.

It learns to obey in such a way that obedi

ence provides a test of self-maintenance.

Casujstry^is carried to its highest pitch in

regard to points of honour.

It never argues, " What is sauce for the goose

is sauce for the gander," but conversely !

it regards reward, and the ability to repay,

as a privilege, as a distinction.

It does not covet other people s virtues.

34 2 THE WILL TO POWER

922.

The way in which one has to treat raw savages

and the impossibility of dispensing with barbarous

methods, becomes obvious, in practice, when one

is transplanted, with all one s European pampering,

to a spot such as the Congo, or anywhere else

where it is necessary to maintain one s mastery

over barbarians.

923-

Warlike and peaceful people. Art thou a man

who has the instincts of a warrior in thy blood ?

If this be so, another question must be put. Do

thy instincts impel thee to attack or to defend ?

The rest of mankind, all those whose instincts are

not warlike, desire peace, concord, " freedom,"

" equal rights " : these things are but names and

steps for one and the same thing. Such men only

wish to go where it is not necessary for them to

defend themselves, such men become discon

tented with themselves when they are obliged to

offer resistance : they would fain create circum

stances in which war is no longer necessary. If

the worst came to the worst, they would resign

themselves, obey, and submit : all these things are

better than waging war thus does the Christian s

instinct, for instance, whisper to him. In the born

warrior s character there is something of armour,

likewise in the choice of his circumstances and in

the development of every one of his qualities :

weapons are best evolved by the latter type, shields

are best devised by the former.

THE ORDER OF RANK. 343

What expedients and what virtues do the un

armed and the undefended require in order to

survive and even to conquer?

924.

What will become of a man who no longer has

any reasons for either defence or attack ? What

will remain of his passions when he has lost those

which form his defence and his weapons ?

925.

A marginal note to a niaiserie anglaise : " Do V

not to others that which you would not that they

should do unto you." This stands for wisdom ;

this stands for prudence ; this stands as the very

basis of morality as " a golden maxim." John

Stuart Mill believes in it (and what Englishman

does not?). . . . But the maxim does not bear

investigation. The argument, " Do not as you

would not be done by," forbids action which pro

duce harmful results ; the thought behind always

is that an action is invariably requited. What if

some one came forward with the " Principe " in his

hands, and said : " We must do those actions alone

which enable us to steal a march on others,

and which deprive others of the power of doing

the same to us " ? On the other hand, let us re

member the Corsican who pledges his honour to

vendetta. He too does not desire to have a bullet

through him ; but the prospect of one, the proba

bility of getting one, does not deter him from

344 TIIE WILL TO POWER,

vindicating his honour. . . . And in all really de

cent actions are we not intentionally indifferent as

to what result they will bring ? To avoid an action

which might have harmful results, that would be

tantamount to forbidding all decent actions in

general.

Apart from this, the above maxim is valuable

because it betrays a certain type of man : it is the

instinct of the herd which formulates itself through

him, we are equal, we regard each other as equal :

as I am to thee so art thou to me. In this com

munity equivalence of actions is really believed in

an equivalence which never under any circum

stances manifests itself in real conditions. It is

impossible to requite every action : among real

individuals equal actions do not exist, consequently

there can be no such thing as " requital." . . .

When I do anything^ I am very far from thinking

that any" man is able to do anything at all tike

it: the action belongs to me . . . . Nobody can

pay me back for anything I do ; the most that can

be done is to make me the victim of another

action.

926.

Against John Stuart Mill. I abhor the man s

vulgarity when he says : " What is right for one

man is right for another " ; " Do not to others that

which you would not that they should do unto

you." Such principles would fain establish the

whole of human traffic upon mutual services^ so

that every action would appear to be a cash pay

ment for something done to us. The hypothesis

THE ORDER OF RANK. 345

here is ignoble to the last degree: it_is_ taken- for

granted. that there is some sort of cqttivalence in

value ^between my actions and thine ; the most per

sonal value of an action is simply cancelled in this

manner (that part of an action which has no

equivalent and which cannot be remunerated).

" Reciprocity " is a piece of egregious vulgarity ;

the mere fact that what I do cannot and may not

be done by another, that there is no such thing as

equivalence (except in those very select circles

where one actually has one s equal, inter pares],

that in a really profound sense a man never re

quites because he is something unique in himself

and can only do unique things, this fundamental /

conviction contains the cause of aristocratic aloof

ness from the mob, because the latter believes in

equality,and consequently in the feasibility of equiva

lence and " reciprocity."

927.

The suburban Philistinism of moral valuations

and of its concepts " useful " and " harmful " is well

founded ; it is the necessary point of view of a

community which is only able to see and survey

immediate and proximate consequences.

The State and the political man are already in

need of a more super-moral attitude of mind :

because they have to calculate concerning a much *

/ more complicated tissue of consequences. An eco- ^

/ nomic policy for the whole world should be possible

/ which could look at things in such broad perspec-

l tive that all its isolated demands would seem for

\J:he moment not only unjust, but arbitrary.

346 THE WILL TO POWER.

928.

" Should one follow one s feelings ? " To set

one s life at stake on the impulse of the moment,

and actuated by a generous feeling, has little worth,

and does not even distinguish one. Everybody is

alike in being capable of this and in behaving in

this way with determination, the criminal, the

bandit, and the Corsican certainly outstrip thej

honest man.

A higher degree of excellence would be to over

come this impulse, and to refrain from performing

an heroic deed at its bidding, and to remain cold,

raisonnable, free from the tempestuous surging of

concomitant sensations of delight. . . . The same

-. holds good of pity : it must first be sifted through

I reason ; without this it becomes just as dangerous

1 as any other passion.

i The blind yielding to a passion, whether it be

j generosity, pity, or hostility, is the cause of the

I greatest evil. Greatness of character does not

consist in not possessing these passions on the

contrary, a man should possess them to a terrible

degree : but he should lead them by the bridle . . .

and even this he should not do out of love of con

trol, but merely because. . . .

929.

" To give up one s life for a cause " very effec

tive. But there are many things for which one

gives up one s life : the passions, one and all, will

be gratified. Whether one s life be pledged to

pity, to anger, or to revenge it matters not from

THE ORDER OF RANK. 347

the point of view of value. How many have not

sacrificed their lives for pretty girls and even

what is worse, their health ! When one has

temperament, one instinctively chooses the most

dangerous things : if one is a philosopher, for in

stance, one chooses the adventures of speculation ; /

if one is virtuous, one chooses immorality. One \/

kind of man will risk nothing, another kind will

risk everything. Are we despisers of life? On

the contrary, what we seek is life raised to a

higher power, life in danger. . . . But, let me re- \

peat, we do not, on that account, wish to be more

virtuous than others. Pascal, for instance, wished

to risk nothing, and remained a Christian. That

perhaps was virtuous. A man always sacrifices

something.

930-

How many advantages does not a man sacrifice !

To how small an extent does he seek his own

profit ! All his emotions and passions wish to

assert their rights, and how remote a passion is

irom that cautious utility which consists in ^^^

personal profit !

A man does not strive after " happiness " ; one \ /

must be an Englishman to be able to believe that

a man is always seeking his own advantage.

Our desires long to violate things with passion

their overflowing strength seeks obstacles.

931-

All passions are generally useful, some directly,

others indirectly ; in regard to utility it is abso-

348 THE WILL TO POWER.

lutely impossible to fix upon any gradation of

values, however certainly the forces of nature in

general may be regarded as good (i.e. useful),

from an economic point of view, they are still

the sources of much that is terrible and much

that is fatally irrevocable. The most one might

say would be, that the mightiest passions are the

most valuable : seeing that no stronger sources

of power exist.

932.

All well-meaning, helpful, good-natured attitudes

of mind have not come to be honoured on account

, of their usefulness : but because they are the

conditions peculiar to rich souls who are able to

4 bestow and whose value consists in their vital

exuberance. Look into the eyes of the benevolent

man ! In them you will see the exact reverse

of self-denial, of hatred of self, of " Pascalism."

933-

In short) what we require is to dominate the

passions and not to weaken or to extirpate

them ! The greater the dominating power of the

^M will, the greater the freedom that may be given to

t the passions.

The " great man " is so, owing to the free scope

which he gives to his desires, and to the still

greater power which knows how to enlist these

\ magnificent monsters into its service.

The " good man " in every stage of civilisation

is at one and the same time the least dangerous

THE ORDER OF RANK 349

and the most useful: a sort of medium ; the idea

formed of such a man by the common mind is

that he is some one whom one has no reason to fear >

but whom one must not therefore despise.

Education : essentially a means of ruining ex

ceptions in favour of the rule. Culture : essenti- I

ally the means of directing taste against the

exceptions in favour of the mediocre.

Only when a culture can dispose of an overflow

of force, is it capable of being a hothouse for the

luxurious culture of the exception, of the experi

ment, of the danger, of the nuance : this is the

tendency of every aristocratic culture.

934-

All questions of strength : to what extent ought

one to try and prevail against the preservative

measures of society and the latter s prejudices ?

to what extent ought one to unfetter one s terrible

qualities^ through which so many go to the dogs ?

to what extent ought one to run counter to truth^

and take up sides with its most questionable

aspects ? to what extent ought one to oppose

suffering, self-contempt, pity, disease, vice, when

it is always open to question whether one can

ever master them (what does not kill us makes

us stronger . . .) ? and, finally, to what extent

ought one to acknowledge the rights of the rule,

of the common-place, of the petty, of the good, of

the upright, in fact of the average man, without

thereby allowing one s self to become vulgar ? . . .

The strongest test of character is to resist being

35O THE WILL TO POWER.

ruined by the seductiveness of goodness. Good

ness must be regarded as a luxury, as a refine

ment, as a vice.

3. THE NOBLE MAN.

935-

Type : real goodness, nobility, greatness of soul,

as the result of vital wealth : which does not give

in order to receive and which has no desire to

elevate itself by being good ; squandering is

typical of genuine goodness ; vital personal wealth

is its prerequisite.

93"-

Aristocracy. Gregarious ideals at present

culminating in the highest standard of value for

society. It has been attempted to give them a

cosmic, yea, and even a metaphysical, value. I

defend aristocracy against them.

Any society which would of itself preserve a

feeling of respect and dtticatesse in regard to

freedom, must consider itself as an exception, and

have a force against it from which it distinguishes

itself, and upon which it looks down with hostility.

The more rights I surrender and the more I

level myself down to others, the more deeply do

I sink into the average and ultimately into the

greatest number. The first condition which an

aristocratic society must have in order to maintain

a high degree of freedom among its members, is

that extreme tension which arises from the pres-

THE ORDER OF RANK. 351

ence of the most antagonistic instincts in all its

units : from their will to dominate. . . .

If ye would fain do away with strong contrasts

and differences of rank, ye will also abolish

strong love, lofty attitudes of mind, and the feeling

of individuality. \

Concerning the actual psychology of societies

based upon freedom and equality. What is it that

tends to diminish in such a society?

The will to be responsible for one s self (the loss

of this is a sign of the decline of autonomy) ; the

ability to defend and to attack, even in spiritual

matters ; the power of command ; the sense of

reverence, of subservience, the ability to be silent ;

great passion, great achievements, tragedy and

cheerfulness.

937-

In 1814 Augustin Thierry read what Mont-

losier had said in his work, De la Monarchic fran-

$aise : he answered with a cry of indignation, and

set himself to his task. That emigrant had said :

" Race d affranchis, race d esclaves arrache s de nos

mains, peuple tributaire, peuple nouveau, licence vous

fut octroyce d etre libres, et non pas a nous d etre

nobles ; pour nous tout est de droit, pour vous tout

est de grace, nous ne sommes point de votre com-

munautt ; nous sommes un tout par nous memes"

938.

How constantly the aristocratic world shears

and weakens itself ever more and more ! By

352 THE WILL TO POWER.

means of its noble instincts it abandons its

privileges, and owing to its refined and excessive

culture, it takes an interest in the people, the

weak, the poor, and the poetry of the lowly, etc.

939-

There is such a thing as a noble and dangerous

form of carelessness, which allows of profound

conclusions and insight : the carelessness of the

self-reliant and over-rich soul, which has never

troubled itself about friends, but which knows only

hospitality and knows how to practise it ; whose

heart and house are open to all who will enter

beggar, cripple, or king. This is genuine sociability :

he who is capable of it has hundreds of " friends,"

but probably not one friend.

940.

The teaching fjuySev ayav applies to men with

^overflowing strength, not to the mediocre. 67-

Kpdreia and do-fcyo-is are only steps to higher

things. Above them stands " golden Nature."

" Thou shalt" unconditional obedience in

\ Stoics, in Christian and Arabian Orders, in Kant s

philosophy (it is immaterial whether this obedience

is shown to a superior or to a concept).

Higher than " Thou shalt " stands " I will "

(the heroes) ; higher than " I will " stands " I am "

(the gods of the Greeks).

Barbarian gods express nothing of the pleasure

of restraint, they are neither simple, nor light-

hearted, nor moderate.

THE ORDER OF RANK. 353

941.

The essence of our gardens and palaces (and to

the same extent the essence of all yearning after

riches) is the desire to rid the eye of disorder ana

vulgarity, and to build a home for our soul s nobility.

The majority of people certainly believe that

they will develop higher natures when those

beautiful and peaceful things have operated upon

them : hence the exodus to Italy, hence all travel- .

ling, etc., and all reading and visits to theatres. ^5

People want to be formed that is the kernel of

their labours for culture ! But the strong, the

mighty, would themselves have a hand in the form

ing, and would fain have nothing strange about them \

It is for this reason, too, that men go to open

Nature, not to find themselves, but to lose them- \

selves and to forget themselves. The desire " to get

away from one s self " is proper to all weaklings, and I

to all those who are discontented with themselves. /

942.

The only nobility is that of birth and blood.

(I do not refer here to the prefix " Lord " and

L almanac de Gotha : this is a parenthesis for

donkeys.) Wherever people speak of the " aristo

cracy of intellect," reasons are generally not

lacking for concealing something ; it is known to

be a password among ambitious Jews. Intellect

alone does not ennoble ; on the contrary, some

thing is always needed to ennoble intellect. What

then is needed ? Blood.

VOL. II. Z

354 THE WILL TO TOWER.

943-

" T1 iat is noble ?

External punctiliousness ; because this punc

tiliousness hedges a man about, keeps him at a

distance, saves him from being confounded with

somebody else.

A frivolous appearance in word, clothing, and

bearing, with which stoical hardness and self-

control protect themselves from all prying inquisi-

tiveness or curiosity.

A slow step and a slow glance. There are

not too many valuable things on earth : and these

come and wish to come of themselves to him who

has value. We are not quick to admire.

We know how to bear poverty, want, and

even illness.

We avoid small honours owing to our mis

trust of all who are over-ready to praise : for the

man who praises believes he understands what he

praises : but to understand Balzac, that typical

man of ambition, betrayed the fact comprendre

Jest /galer.

Our doubt concerning the communicativeness

of our hearts goes very deep ; to us, loneliness is

not a matter of choice, it is imposed upon us.

We are convinced that we only have duties to

our equals, to others we do as we think best : we

know that justice is only to be expected among

equals (alas ! this will not be realised for some

time to come).

We are ironical towards the " gifted " ; we

hold the belief that no morality is possible with

out good birth.

THE ORDER OF RANK. 355

We always feel as if we were those who had

to dispense honours : while he is not found too

frequently who would be worthy of honouring us.

We are always disguised : the higher a man s

nature the more is he in need of remaining incog

nito. If there be a God, then out of sheer decency

He ought only to show Himself on earth in the

form of a man.

We are capable of otium, of the uncondi

tional conviction that although a handicraft does

not shame one in any sense, it certainly reduces

one s rank. However much we may respect " in

dustry," and know how to give it its due, we do

not appreciate it in a bourgeois sense, or after the

manner of those insatiable and cackling artists who,

like hens, cackle and lay eggs, and cackle again.

We protect artists and poets and any one

who happens to be a master in something ; but as

creatures of a higher order than those, who only

know how to do something, who are only " pro

ductive men," we do not confound ourselves with

them.

We find joy in all forms and ceremonies ;

we would fain foster everything formal, and we

are convinced that courtesy is one of the greatest

virtues ; we feel suspicious of every kind of laisser

alter, including the freedom of the press and of

thought ; because, under such conditions, the intel

lect grows easy-going and coarse, and stretches

its limbs.

We take pleasure in women as in a perhaps

daintier, more delicate, and more ethereal kind of

creature. What a treat it is to meet creatures

356 THE WILL TO POWER.

who have only dancing and nonsense and finery

in their minds ! They have always been the de

light of every tense and profound male soul, whose

life is burdened with heavy responsibilities.

We take pleasure in princes and in priests,

because in big things, as in small, they actually up

hold the belief in the difference of human values,

even in the estimation of the past, and at least

symbolically.

We are able to keep silence : but we do not

breathe a word of this in the presence of listeners.

We are able to endure long enmities : we

lack the power of easy reconciliations.

We have a loathing of demagogism, of en

lightenment, of amiability, and plebeian familiarity.

We collect precious things, the needs of

higher and fastidious souls ; we wish to possess

nothing in common. We want to have our own

books, our own landscapes.

We protest against evil and fine experiences,

and take care not to generalise too quickly. The

individual case : how ironically we regard it when

it has the bad taste to put on the airs of a rule !

We love that which is natf, and naif people,

but as spectators and higher creatures ; we think

Faust is just as simple as his Margaret.

We have a low estimation of good people,

^ because they are gregarious animals : we know

how often an invaluable golden drop of goodness

lies concealed beneath the most evil, the most

malicious, and the hardest exterior, and that this

single grain outweighs all the mere goody-goodi-

ness of milk-and-watery souls.

THE ORDER OF RANK. 357

We don t regard a man of our kind as refuted

by his vices, nor by his tomfooleries. We are well

aware that we are not recognised with ease, and

that we have every reason to make our foreground

very prominent.

944.

What is noble ? The fact that one is constantly

forced to be playing a part. That one is constantly

searching for situations in which one is forced

to put on airs. That one leaves happiness to the

greatest number : the happiness which consists of

inner peacefulness, of virtue, of comfort, and of

Anglo-angelic-back-parlour-smugness,tf la Spencer.

That one instinctively seeks for heavy responsi

bilities. That one knows how to create enemies

everywhere, at a pinch even in one s self. That one

contradicts the greatest number^ not in words at

all, but by continually behaving differently from

them.

945-

Virtue (for instance, truthfulness) is our most

noble and most dangerous luxury. We must not

decline the disadvantages which it brings in its

train.

946.

We refuse to be praised : we do what serves our

purpose, what gives us pleasure, or what we are

obliged to do.

947-

What is chastity in a man ? It means that his

taste in sex has remained noble ; that in erotlcis

358 THE WILL TO POWER

he likes neither the brutal, the morbid, nor the

clever.

948.

The concept of honour is founded upon the

belief in select society, in knightly excellences, in

the obligation of having continually to play a part.

In essentials it means that one does not take one s

life too seriously, that one adheres unconditionally

to the most dignified manners in one s dealings

with everybody (at least in so far as they do not

belong to " us ") ; that one is neither familiar, nor

good-natured, nor hearty, nor modest, except inter

pares ; that one is always playing a part.

949.

The fact that one sets one s life, one s health,

and one s honour at stake, is the result of high

spirits and of an overflowing and spendthrift will :

it is not the result of philanthropy, but of the fact

that every danger kindles our curiosity concern

ing the measure of our strength, and provokes our

courage.

950.

" Eagles swoop down straight " nobility of

soul is best revealed by the magnificent and proud

foolishness with which it makes its attacks.

951-

War should be made against all namby-pamby

ideas of nobility \ A certain modicum of brutality

THE ORDER OF RANK. 359

cannot be dispensed with : no more than we can do

without a certain approximation to criminality.

" Self-satisfaction " must not be allowed ; a man

should look upon himself with an adventurous

spirit ; he should experiment with himself and

run risks with himself no beautiful soul-quackery

should be tolerated. I want to give a more robust

ideal a chance of prevailing.

952.

" Paradise is under the shadow of a swordsman "

this is also a symbol and a test-word by which

souls with noble and warrior-like origin betray and

discover themselves.

953-

The two paths. There comes a period when

man has a surplus amount of power at his dis

posal. Science aims at establishing the slavery of

nature.

Then man acquires the leisure in which to

develop himself into something new and more

lofty. A new aristocracy. It is then that a large

number of virtues which are now conditions of

existence are superseded. Qualities which are no

longer needed are on that account lost. We no

longer need virtues : consequently we are losing

them (likewise the morality of "one thing is

needful," of the salvation of the soul, and of im

mortality : these were means wherewith to make

man capable of enormous self-tyranny, through the

emotion of great fear ! ! !).

The different kinds of needs by means of whose

360 THE WILL TO POWER.

discipline man is formed : need teaches work,

thought, and self-control.

Physiological purification and strengthening. The

new aristocracy is in need of an opposing body

which it may combat : it must be driven to ex

tremities in order to maintain itself.

The two futures of mankind: (i) the conse

quence of a levelling-down to mediocrity ; (2)

conscious aloofness and self-development.

A doctrine which would cleave &gulf: it main

tains the highest and the lowest species (it destroys

the intermediate).

The aristocracies, both spiritual and temporal,

which have existed hitherto prove nothing against

the necessity of a new aristocracy.

4. THE LORDS OF THE EARTH.

954-

A certain question constantly recurs to us ; it is

perhaps a seductive and evil question ; may it be

whispered into the ears of those who have a right

to such doubtful problems those strong souls of

to-day whose dominion over themselves is un

swerving : is it not high time, now that the type

" gregarious animal " is developing ever more and

more in Europe, to set about rearing, thoroughly,

artificially, and consciously, an opposite type, and

to attempt to establish the latter s virtues ? And

would not the democratic movement itself find for

THE ORDER OF RANK. 361

the first time a sort of goal, salvation, and justifi

cation, if some one appeared who availed himself

of it so that at last, beside its new and sublime

product, slavery (for this must be the end of

European democracy), that higher species of ruling

and Caesarian spirits might also be produced,

which would stand upon it, hold to it, and would

elevate themselves through it ? This new race

would climb aloft to new and hitherto impossible

things, to a broader vision, and to its task on

earth.

955-

The aspect of the European of to-day makes

me very hopeful. A daring and ruling race is

here building itself up upon the foundation of an

extremely intelligent, gregarious mass. It is

obvious that the educational movements for the

latter are not alone prominent nowadays.

956.

The same conditions which go to develop the

gregarious animal also force the development of

the leaders.

957-

The question, and at the same time the task, is

approaching with hesitation, terrible as Fate, but

nevertheless inevitable : how shall the earth as a

whole be ruled ? And to what end shall man as

a whole no longer as a people or as a race be

reared and trained ?

Legislative moralities are the principal means

362 THE WILL TO POWER.

by which one can form mankind, according to the

fancy oi a creative and profound will : provided,

of course, that such an artistic will of the first

order gets the power into its own hands, and can

make its creative will prevail over long periods in

the form of legislation, religions, and morals. At

present, and probably for some time to come, one

will seek such colossally creative men, such really

great men, as I understand them, in vain : they

will be lacking, until, after many disappointments,

we are forced to begin to understand why it is

they are lacking, and that nothing bars with

greater hostility their rise and development, at

present and for some time to come, than that

which is now called the morality in Europe. Just

as if there were no other kind of morality, and

could be no other kind, than the one we have

already characterised as herd-morality. It is this

morality which is now striving with all its power

, to attain to that green-meadow happiness on earth,

which consists in security, absence of danger, ease,

I facilities for livelihood, and, last but not least, " if

! all goes well," even hopes to dispense with all

; kinds of shepherds and bell-wethers. The two

doctrines which it preaches most universally are

~" equality of rights " and " pity for all sufferers "

and it even regards suffering itself as something

which must be got rid of absolutely. That such

ideas may be modern leads one to think very

poorly of modernity. He, however, who has re

flected deeply concerning the question, how and

where the plant man has hitherto grown most

vigorously, is forced to believe that this has

THE ORDER OF RANK. 363

always taken place under the opposite conditions ;

that to this end the danger of the situation has to

increase enormously, his inventive faculty and

dissembling powers have to fight their way up

under long oppression and compulsion, and his

will to life has to be increased to the uncon

ditioned will to power, to over-power : he believes

that danger, severity, violence, peril in the street

and in the heart, inequality of rights, secrecy,

stoicism, seductive art, and devilry of every kind

in short, the opposite of all gregarious desiderata

are necessary for the elevation of man. Such a

morality with opposite designs, which would rear

man upwards instead of to comfort and mediocrity ;

such a morality, with the intention of producing a

ruling caste the future lords of the earth must,

in order to be taught at all, introduce itself as if

it were in some way correlated to the prevailing

moral law, and must come forward under the

cover of the latter s words and forms. But seeing

that, to this end, a host of transitionary and de

ceptive measures must be discovered, and that the

life of a single individual stands for almost nothing

in view of the accomplishment of such lengthy

tasks and aims, the first thing that must be done

is- to rear a new kind of man in whom the duration

of the necessary will and the necessary instincts

is guaranteed for many generations. This must

be a new kind of ruling species and caste this

ought to be quite as clear as the somewhat lengthy

and not easily expressed consequences of this

thought. The aim should be to prepare a trans-

valuation of values for a particularly strong kind of

364 THE WILL TO POWER.

man, most highly gifted in intellect and will, and,

to this end, slowly and cautiously to liberate in

him a whole host of slandered instincts hitherto

held in check : whoever meditates about this

problem belongs to us, the free spirits certainly

not to that kind of " free spirit " which has existed

hitherto : for these desired practically the reverse.

To this order, it seems to me, belong, above all,

the pessimists of Europe, the poets and thinkers

of a revolted idealism, in so far as their discontent

with existence in general must consistently at least

have led them to be dissatisfied with the man of

the present ; the same applies to certain insati

ably ambitious artists who courageously and un

conditionally fight against the gregarious animal

for the special rights of higher men, and subdue

all herd-instincts and precautions of more ex

ceptional minds by their seductive art. Thirdly

and lastly, we should include in this group all

those critics and historians by whom the dis

covery of the Old World, which has begun so

happily this was the work of the new Columbus,

of German intellect will be courageously con

tinued (for we still stand in the very first stages

of this conquest). For in the Old World, as a

matter of fact, a different and more lordly morality

ruled than that of to-day ; and the man of antiquity,

under the educational ban of his morality, was

a stronger and deeper man than the man of

to-day up to the present he has been the ,

only well - constituted man. The temptation,

however, which from antiquity to the present

day has always exercised its power on such lucky

THE ORDER OF RANK. 365

strokes of Nature, i.e. on strong and enterprising

souls, is, even at the present day, the most subtle

and most effective of anti-democratic and anti-

Christian powers, just as it was in the time of the

Renaissance.

958.

I am writing for a race of men which does not

yet exist : for " the lords of the earth."

In Plato s Theages the following passage will

be found : " Every one of us would like if possible

to be master of mankind ; if possible, a God." This

attitude of mind must be reinstated in our midst.

Englishmen, Americans, and Russians.

959-

That primeval forest-plant " Man " always

appears where the struggle for power has been

waged longest. Great men.

Primeval forest creatures, the Romans.

960.

From now henceforward there will be such

favourable first conditions for greater ruling powers

as have never yet been found on earth. And

this is by no means the most important point.

The establishment has been made possible of in

ternational race unions which will set themselves

the task of rearing a ruling race, the future " lords

of the earth " a new, vast aristocracy based upon

the most severe self-discipline, in which the will of

philosophical men of power and artist-tyrants will

366 THE WILL TO POWER.

be stamped upon thousands of years : a higher

species of men which, thanks to their preponder

ance of will, knowledge, riches, and influence, will

avail themselves of democratic Europe as the

most suitable and supple instrument they can

have for taking the fate of the earth into their

own hands, and working as artists upon man him

self. Enough! The- time is coming for us to

transform all our views on politics. f

5. THE GREAT MAN.

961.

I will endeavour to see at which periods in

history great men arise. The significance of

despotic moralities that have lasted a long time :

they strain the bow, provided they do not break it.

962.

A great man, a man whom Nature has built up

an 5 inverTtetTin a grand style, What is sii^h a

man ? First t in his general course of action his

consistency is so broad that owinLJtCL_its very

breadtn it can be surveyed only with difficulty,

and consequently misleads ; ? he possesses the

^capacity of extending his will over great stretches

of his life, and of despising and rejecting all small

things, whatever most beautiful and " divine "

things of the world there may be among them.

, he is colder, harder, less cautious and more

reejrom the fear of " public opinioft " ; he does n t

econ

/ \freej

THE ORDER OF RANK. 367

possess the VI H-IMHI whuph ^TC ^nrnpaHKIf* with

nnr nny

of those things whidy. .are rr>linf f^

" virtues ot" the hurJ.",. If he is unable to /tw7, he

walks alone; (he

he asks for no ^compassionate" heart, but servants/

instruments ; in his dealings with men his one

aim is to make something out of them. He knows

that he cannot reveal himself to anybody : he

thinks it bad taste to become familiar ; and as a

rule he is not familiar when people think he is.

When he is not talking to his soul, he wears a

mask. He would rather lie than tell the truth,

because lying requires morejpirit and will. Jbere

is1a_ loneliness, wifhin his heart i which neither \\

praise nor blame can reach, because he js his own

ju dge from whomjs no appeal.

963-

The great man is necessarily a sceptic (I do

not mean to say by this that he must appear to

be one), provided that greatness consists in this :

to will something great, together with the means

thereto. Freedom from any kind of conviction is j

a factor in his strength of will. And thus it is

in keeping with that " enlightened form of des

potism " which every great passion exercises.

Such a passion enlists intellect in its service ;

it even has the courage for unholy means ; it

creates without hesitation ; it allows itself con

victions, it even uses them, but it never submits

368 THE WILL TO POWER.

to them. The need of faith and of anything un

conditionally negative or affirmative is a proof of

weakness ; all weakness is weakness of will. The

man of faith, the believer, is necessarily an inferior

species of man. From this it follows that " all

freedom of spirit," i.e. instinctive scepticism, is the

prerequisite of greatness.

964.

The great man is conscious of his power over a

people, and of the fact that he coincides temporarily

with a people or with a century this magnifying

of his self-consciousness as causa and voluntas is

misunderstood as " altruism " : he feels driven to

means of communication : all great men are in

ventive in such means. They want to form great

communities in their own image ; they would fain

give multiformity and disorder definite shape ; it

stimulates them to behold chaos.

The misunderstanding of love. There is a

slavish love which subordinates itself and gives itself

away which idealises and deceives itself; there

is a divine species of love which despises and loves

at the same time, and which remodels and elevates

the thing it loves.

\ The object is to attain that enormous energy of

\greatness which can model the man of the future

by means of discipline and also by means of the

annihilation of millions of the bungled and botched,

and which can yet avoid going to ruin at the sight

of the suffering created thereby, the like of which

has never been seen before.

THE ORDER OF RANK. 369

965.

The revolution, confusion, and distress of whole

peoples is in my opinion of less importance than

the misfortunes which attend great individuals in

their development. We must not allow ourselves

to be deceived : the many misfortunes of all these

small folk do not together constitute a sum-total,

except in the feelings of mighty men. To think of

one s self in moments of great danger, and to draw

one s own advantage from the calamities of thou

sands in the case of the man who differs very much

from the common ruck may be a sign of a great

character which is able to master its feelings of

pity and justice.

966.

In contradistinction to the animal, man has

developed such a host of antagonistic instincts and

impulses in himself, that he has become master of

the earth by means of this synthesis. Moralities

are only the expression of local and limited orders

of rank in this multifarious world of instincts which

prevent man from perishing through their antag

onism. Thus a masterful instinct so weakens

and subtilises the instinct which opposes it that it

becomes an impulse which provides the stimulus

for the activity of the principal instinct.

The highest man would have the greatest

multifariousness in his instincts, and he would

possess these in the relatively strongest degree in

which he is able to endure them. As a matter of

fact, wherever the plant, man, is found strong,

VOL. II. 2 A

370 THE WILL TO POWER.

mighty instincts are to be found opposing each

other (e.g. Shakespeare), but they are subdued.

967.

Would one not be justified in reckoning all

i great men among the wickedl This is not so

easy to demonstrate in the case of individuals.

They are so frequently capable of masterly dis

simulation that they very often assume the airs and

forms of great virtues. Often, too, they seriously

reverence virtues, and in such a way as to be

passionately hard towards themselves ; but as the

result of cruelty. Seen from a distance such things

are liable to deceive. Many, on the other hand,

misunderstand themselves ; not infrequently, too,

a great mission will call forth great qualities, eg.

justice. The essential fact is : the greatest men

may also perhaps have great virtues, but then

they also have the opposites of these virtues. I

believe that it is precisely out of the presence

of these opposites and of the feelings they suscitate,

that the great man arises, for the great man is the

broad arch which spans two banks lying far apart.

968.

In great men we find the specific qualities ol

life in their highest manifestation : injustice, false

hood, exploitation. But inasmuch as their effect

has always been overwhelming, their essential

nature has been most thoroughly misunderstood,

THE ORDER OF RANK. 371

and interpreted as goodness. The type of such

an interpreter would be Carlyle.*

969.

Generally speaking, everything is worth no more

and no less than one has paid for it. This of

course does not hold good in the case of an isolated

individual ; the great capacities of the individual

have no relation whatsoever to that which he has

done, sacrificed, and suffered for them. But if

one should examine the previous history of his

race one would be sure to find the record of an

extraordinary storing up and capitalising of power

by means of all kinds of abstinence, struggle, in

dustry, and determination. It is because the great

man has cost so much, and not because he stands

there as a miracle, as a gift from heaven, or as

an accident, that he became great : " Heredity "

is a false notion. A man s ancestors have always

paid the price of what he is.

970.

The danger of modesty. To adapt ourselves

too early to duties, societies, and daily schemes of

work in which accident may have placed us, at a

time when neither our powers nor our aim in life

has stepped peremptorily into our consciousness ;

* This not only refers to Heroes and Hero- Worship, but

doubtless to Carlyle s prodigious misunderstanding of Goethe

a misunderstanding which still requires to be put right by

a critic untainted by Puritanism. TR.

372 THE WILL TO POWER.

the premature certainty of conscience and feeling

of relief and of sociability which is acquired by

this precocious, modest attitude, and which appears

to our minds as a deliverance from those inner and

outer disturbances of our feelings all this pampers

and keeps a man down in the most dangerous

fashion imaginable, To learn to respect things

which people about us respect, as if we had no

standard or right of our own to determine values ;

the strain of appraising things as others appraise

them, counter to the whisperings of our inner taste,

which also has a conscience of its own, becomes

a terribly subtle kind of constraint : and if in the

end no explosion takes place which bursts all the

bonds of love and morality at once, then such a

spirit becomes withered, dwarfed, feminine, and

objective. The reverse of this is bad enough, but

still it is better than the foregoing : to suffer from

one s environment, from its praise just as much as

from its blame ; to be wounded by it and to fester

inwardly without betraying the fact; to defend

one s self involuntarily and suspiciously against its

love ; to learn to be silent, and perchance to conceal

this by talking ; to create nooks and safe, lonely

hiding-places where one can go and take breath

for a moment, or shed tears of sublime comfort

until at last one has grown strong enough to say :

" What on earth have I to do with you ? " and to

go one s way alone.

971-

Those men who are in themselves destinies, and

whose advent is the advent of fate, the whole race of

THE ORDER OF RANK. 373

heroic bearers of burdens : oh ! how heartily and

gladly would they have respite from themselves for

once in a while ! how they crave after stout hearts

and shoulders, that they might free themselves, were

it bwt for an hour or two, from that which oppresses

them ! And how fruitlessly they crave ! . .

They wait i_they.. observe all that passes before

their eyes: no man even cometh nigh to them with a

trjJusancItfh part of their suffering and passion ; no"

manguesseth to wnat end they have waited. . . .""

ATTa^t,"^Ta^t7THey"^arn the first lesson oTlheir

life : to wait no longer ; and forthwith they learn

their second lesson : to be affable, to be modest ;

and from that time onwards to endure everybody

and every kind of thing in short, to endure still

a little more than they had endured theretofore.

6. THE HIGHEST MAN AS LAWGIVER OF

THE FUTURE.

972.

The lawgivers of the future. After having tried

for a long time in vain to attach a particular

meaning to the word " philosopher," for I found

many antagonistic traits, I recognised that we can

distinguish between two kinds of philosophers :

(1) Those who desire to establish any large

system of values (logical or moral) ;

(2) Those who are the lawgivers of such valua

tions.

The former try to seize upon the world of the

present or the past, by embodying or abbreviating

374 THE WILL TO POWER.

the multifarious phenomena by means of signs :

their object is to make it possible for us to survey,

to reflect upon, to comprehend, and to utilise

everything that has happened hitherto they serve

the purpose of man by using all past things to

the benefit of his future.

The second class, however, are commanders ; they

say : " Thus shall it be ! " They alone determine

\ the " whither " and the " wherefore," and that

which will be useful and beneficial to man ; they

have command over the previous work of scientific

men, and all knowledge is to them only a means

to their creations. This second kind of philosopher

seldom appears ; and as a matter of fact their

situation and their danger is appalling. How often

have they not intentionally blindfolded their eyes

in order to shut out the sight of the small strip of

ground which separates them from the abyss and

from utter destruction. Plato, for instance, when

he persuaded himself that " the good," as he wanted

it, was not Plato s good, but " the good in itself,"

the eternal treasure which a certain man of the

name of Plato had chanced to find on his way !

This same will to blindness prevails in a much

coarser form in the case of the founders of religion ;

their " Thou shalt " must on no account sound to

their ears like " I will," they only dare to pursue

their task as if under the command of God ; their

legislation of values can only be a burden they can

bear if they regard it as " revelation," in this way

their conscience is not crushed by the responsi

bility.

As soon as those two comforting expedients

THE ORDER OF RANK. 375

that of Plato and that of Muhammed have been

overthrown, and no thinker can any longer relieve

his conscience with the hypothesis " God " or

" eternal values," the claim of the lawgiver to de

termine new values rises to an awfulness which has j

not yet been experienced. Now those elect, on J

whom the faint light of such a duty is beginning

to dawn, try and see whether they cannot escape

it as their greatest danger by means of a

timely side-spring : for instance, they try to persuade

themselves that their task is already accomplished,

or that it defies accomplishment, or that their

shoulders are not broad enough for such burdens,

or that they are already taken up with burdens

closer to hand, or even that this new and remote

duty is a temptation and a seduction, drawing

them away from all other duties ; a disease, a kind of

madness. Many, as a matter of fact, do succeed in

evading the path appointed to them: throughout the

whole of history we can see the traces of such de

serters and their guilty consciences. In most cases,

however, there comes to such men of destiny that

hour of delivery, that autumnal season of maturity,!

in which they are forced to do that which they didj

not even "wish to do": and that deed before \

which in the past they have trembled most, falls

easily and unsought from the tree, as an involun-j

tary deed, almost as a present.

973-

The human horizon. Philosophers may be con

ceived as men who make the greatest efforts to

376 THE WILL TO POWER.

discover to what extent man can elevate himself

this holds good more particularly of Plato : how

far man s poiver can extend. But they do this as

individuals ; perhaps the instinct of Caesars and

of all founders of states, etc., was greater, for it pre

occupied itself with the question how far man could

be urged forward in development under " favourable

circumstances." What they did not sufficiently

understand, however, was the nature of favourable

circumstances. The great question : "Where has the

plant man grown most magnificently heretofore?"

In order to answer this, a comparative study of

history is necessary.

974-

Every fact and every work exercises a fresh

persuasion over every age and every new species

of man. History always enunciates new truths.

975-

To remain objective, severe, firm, and hard

while making a thought prevail is perhaps the best

forte of artists ; but if for this purpose any one have

to work upon human material (as teachers, states

men, have to do, etc.), then the repose, the coldness,

and the hardness soon vanish. In natures like Caesar

and Napoleon we are able to divine something of

the nature of " disinterestedness " in their work on

their marble, whatever be the number of men that

are sacrificed in the process. In this direction the

future of higher men lies : to bear the greatest re

sponsibilities and not to go to rack and ruin

THE ORDER OF RANK. 377

through them. Hitherto the deceptions of inspira

tion have almost always been necessary for a man

not to lose faith in his own hand, and in his right

to his task.

976.

The reason why philosophers are mostly failures.

Because among the conditions which determine

them there are qualities which generally ruin other

men :

(1) A philosopher must have an enormous

multiplicity of qualities ; he must be a sort of ab

breviation of man and have all man s high and

base desires : the danger of the contrast within

him, and of the possibility of his loathing him

self;

(2) He must be inquisitive in an extraordinary

number of ways : the danger of versatility ;

(3) He must be just and honest in the highest

sense, but profound both in love and hate (and in

injustice) ;

(4) He must not only be a spectator but a law

giver : a judge and defendant (in so far as he is an

abbreviation of the world) ;

(5) He must be extremely multiform and yet

firm and hard. He must be supple.

977-

The really regal calling of the philosopher

(according to the expression of Alcuin the Anglo-

Saxon) : " Prava corrigere, et recta corroborare^ et

sancta sublimare"

THE WILL TO POWER.

978.

The new philosopher can only arise in conjunc

tion with a ruling class, as the highest spiritualisa-

tion of the latter. Great politics, the rule of the

, earth, as a proximate contingency ; the total lack of

I principles necessary thereto.

979-

Fundamental concept : the new values must first

be created this remains our duty\ The philoso

pher must be our lawgiver. New species. (How

the greatest species hitherto [for instance, the

Greeks] were reared : this kind of accident must

now be consciously striven for.)

980.

Nj Supposing one thinks of the philosopher as an

educator who, looking down from his lonely eleva

tion, is powerful enough to draw long chains of

generations up to him : then he must be granted

the most terrible privileges of a great educator.

An educator never says what he himself thinks ;

\but only that which he thinks it is good for those

(whom he is educating to hear upon any subject.

This dissimulation on his part must not be found

out ; it is part of his masterliness that people should

believe in his honesty, he must be capable of all

the means of discipline and education : there are

some natures which he will only be able to raise

by means of lashing them with his scorn ; others

who are lazy, irresolute, cowardly, and vain, he will

THE ORDER OF RANK. 379

be able to affect only with exaggerated praise.

Such a teacher stands beyond good and evil, but

nobody must know that he does.

981.

We must not make men " better," we must not

talk to them about morality in any form as if

" morality in itself," or an ideal kind of man in

general, could be taken for granted ; but we must

create circumstances in which stronger men are

necessary, such as for their part will require a

morality (or, better still : a bodily and spiritual

discipline) which makes men strong, and upon

which they will consequently insist ! As they will f

need one so badly, they will have it.

We must not let ourselves be seduced by blue V

eyes and heaving breasts : greatness of soul has

absolutely nothing romantic about it. And unfortu- I

nately nothing ivhatever amiable either.

982.

From warriors we must learn: (i) to associate

death with those interests for which we are fighting

that makes us venerable; (2) we must learn to

sacrifice numbers, and to take our cause sufficiently

seriously not to spare men ; (3) we must practise

inexorable discipline, and allow ourselves violence

and cunning in war.

983-

The education which rears those ruling virtues

that allow a man to become master of his benevo-

soul.

380 THE WILL TO POWER.

lence and his pity : the great disciplinary virtues

("Forgive thine enemies " is mere child s play beside

them), and the passions of the creator, must be ele

vated to the heights we must cease from carving

marble ! The exceptional and powerful position

of those creatures (compared with that of all

princes hitherto) : the Roman Caesar with Christ s

984.

We must not separate greatness of soul from

intellectual greatness. For the former involves

independence-, but without intellectual greatness

independence should not be allowed ; all it does is

to create disasters even in its lust of well-doing

and of practising "justice." Inferior spirits must

obey, consequently they cannot be possessed of

greatness.

985.

The more lofty philosophical man who is sur

rounded by loneliness, not because he wishes to be

alone, but because he is what he is, and cannot find

his equal : what a number of dangers and torments

are reserved for him, precisely at the present time,

when we have lost our belief in the order of rank,

and consequently no longer know how to under

stand or honour this isolation ! Formerly the sage

almost sanctified himself in the consciences of the

mob by going aside in this way ; to-day the anchor

ite sees himself as though enveloped in a cloud of

gloomy doubt and suspicions. And not alone by the

THE ORDER OF RANK. 381

envious and the wretched : in every well-meant act

that he experiences he is bound to discover mis

understanding, neglect, and superficiality. He

knows the crafty tricks of foolish pity which makes

these people feel so good and holy when they

attempt to save him from his own destiny, by

giving him more comfortable situations and more

decent and reliable society. Yes, he will even get

to admire the unconscious lust of destruction with

which all mediocre spirits stand up and oppose him,

believing all the while that they have a holy right

to do so ! For men of such incomprehensible

loneliness it is necessary to put a good stretch ol

country between them and the officiousness of their

fellows : this is part of their prudence. For such

a man to maintain himself uppermost to-day amid

the dangerous maelstroms of the age which threaten

to draw him under, even cunning and disguise will

be necessary. Every attempt he makes to order

his life in the present and with the present every

time he draws near to these men and their modern

desires, he will have to expiate as if it were an

actual sin : and withal he may look with wonder

at the concealed wisdom of his nature, which after

every one of these attempts immediately leads him

back to himself by means of illnesses and painful

accidents.

986.

" Maledetto colui

che contrista un spirto immortal ! "

MANZONI (Conte di Carmagnola, Act II.)

382 THE WILL TO POWER.

987

The most difficult and the highest form which

man can attain is the most seldom successful :

thus the history of philosophy reveals a super

abundance of bungled and unhappy cases of man

hood, and its march is an extremely slow one ;

whole centuries intervene and suppress what has

been achieved : and in this way the connecting-

link is always made to fail. It is an appalling

history, this history of the highest men, of the

sages. What is most often damaged is precisely

the recollection of great men, for the semi-successful

and botched cases of mankind misunderstand

them and overcome them by their " successes."

Whenever an " effect " is noticeable, the masses

gather in a crowd round it ; to hear the inferior

and the poor in spirit having their say is a terrible

ear-splitting torment for him who knows and

trembles at the thought, that the fate of man

depends upon the success of its highest types.

From the days of my childhood I have reflected

upon the sage s conditions of existence, and I will

not conceal my happy conviction that in Europe

he has once more become possible perhaps only

for a short time.

988.

These new philosophers begin with a description

of a systematic order of rank and difference of

value among men, what they desire is, alas

precisely the reverse of an assimilation and

equalisation of man : they teach estrangement

THE ORDER OF RANK. 383

in every sense, they cleave gulfs such as have

never yet existed, and they would fain have man

become more evil than he ever was. For the

present they live concealed and estranged even

from each other. For many reasons they will find

it necessary to be anchorites and to wear masks

they will therefore be of little use in the matter of

seeking for their equals. They will live alone, and

probably know the torments of all the loneliest

forms of loneliness. Should they, however, thanks to

any accident, meet each other on the road, I wager

that they would not know each other, or that they

would deceive each other in a number of ways.

989.

" Les philosophies ne sont pas faits pour s aimer. i

Les aigles ne volent point en compagnie. II faut

laisser cela aux perdrix, aux etourneaux. . .

Planer au-dessus et avoir des griffes, voila le lot

des grands ge"nies." GALIANI.

990.

I forgot to say that such philosophers are

cheerful, and that they like to sit in the abyss

of a perfectly clear sky : they are in need of

different means for enduring life than other men ;

for they suffer in a different way (that is to say,

just as much from the depth of their contempt of

man as from their love of man). The animal L

which suffered most on earth discovered for itself \

^-laughter.

384 THE WILL TO POWER.

991.

Concerning the misunderstanding of " cheerful

ness" It is a temporary relief from long tension ;

it is the wantonness, the Saturnalia of a spirit,

which is consecrating and preparing itself for long

and terrible resolutions. The " fool " in the form

of " science."

992.

The new order of rank among spirits ; tragic

natures no longer in the van.

993-

It is a comfort to me to know that over the

smoke and filth of human baseness there is a higher

and brighter mankind, which, judging from their

number, must be a small race (for everything that is

in any way distinguished is ipso facto rare). A man

does not belong to this race because he happens to

be more gifted, more virtuous, more heroic, or more

loving than the men below, but because he is

colder, brighter , more far-sighted, and more lonely ;

because he endures, prefers, and even insists upon,

loneliness as the joy, the privilege, yea, even the

condition of existence ; because he lives amid

clouds and lightnings as among his equals, and

likewise among sunrays, dewdrops, snowflakes, and

all that which must needs come from the heights,

^and which in its course moves ever from heaven to

earth. The desire to look aloft is not our desire.

Heroes, martyrs, geniuses, and enthusiasts of all

THE ORDER OF RANK. 385

kinds, are not quiet, patient, subtle, cold, or

slow enough for us.

994.

The absolute conviction that valuations above

and below are different ; that innumerable ex

periences are wanting to the latter : that when

looking upwards from below misunderstandings

are necessary.

995-

How do men attain to great power and to great

tasks ? All the virtues and proficiences of the

body and the soul are little by little laboriously

acquired, through great industry, self-control, and

keeping one s self within narrow bounds, through a

frequent, energetic, and genuine repetition of the

same work and of the same hardships ; but there

are men who are the heirs and masters of this

slowly acquired and manifold treasure of virtues

and proficiences because, owing to happy and

reasonable marriages and also to lucky accidents,

the acquired and accumulated forces of many

generations, instead of being squandered and

subdivided, have been assembled together by

means of steadfast struggling and willing. And

thus, in the end, a man appears who is such

a monster of strength, that he craves for a

monstrous task. For it is our power which has

command of us : and the wretched intellectual

play of aims and intentions and motivations lies

only in the foreground however much weak eyes

may recognise the principal factors in these things.

VOL. II. 2B

386 THE WILL TO POWER.

996.

The sublime man has the highest value, even

when he is most delicate and fragile, because an

abundance of very difficult and rare things have

been reared through many generations and united

in him.

997-

I teach that there are higher and lower men,

and that a single individual may under certain cir

cumstances justify whole millenniums of existence

that is to say, a wealthier, more gifted, greater,

and more complete man, as compared with in

numerable imperfect and fragmentary men.

1 .

998.

Away from rulers and rid of all bonds, live the

highest men : and in the rulers they have their

instruments.

999.

The order of rank : he who determines values and

leads the will of millenniums, and does this by

-i leading the highest natures he is the highest

man.

1000.

I fancy I have divined some of the things that

lie hidden in the soul of the highest man ; perhaps

every man who has divined so much must go to

ruin : but he who has seen the highest man must

do all he can to make him possible,

THE ORDER OF RANK. 387

Fundamental thought : we must make the future

the standard of all our valuations and not seek

the laws for our conduct behind us.

IOOI.

Not ".mankind," but Superman is the goal !

1002.

" Come 1 uom s eterna. . . ." Inf. xv. 85.

II.

DIONYSUS.

1003.

To him who is one of Nature s lucky strokes, to

him unto whom my heart goes out, to him who

is carved from one integral block, which is hard,

sweet, and fragrant to him from whom even my

nose can derive some pleasure let this book be

dedicated.

He enjoys that which is beneficial to him.

His pleasure in anything ceases when the limits

of what is beneficial to him are overstepped.

He divines the remedies for partial injuries ;

his illnesses are the great stimulants of his

existence.

He understands how to exploit his serious

\ accidents.

He grows stronger under the misfortunes which

threaten to annihilate him.

He instinctively gathers from all he sees, hears,

and experiences, the materials for what concerns

him most, he pursues a selective principle, he

rejects a good deal.

He reacts with that tardiness which long caution

DIONYSUS. 389

and deliberate pride have bred in him, he tests

the stimulus : whence does it come ? whither does

it lead ? He does not submit.

He is always in his own company, whether his

intercourse be with books, with men, or with

Nature.

He honours anything by choosing it, by

conceding to it, by trusting it.

1004.

We should attain to such a height, to such

a lofty eagle s ledge, in our observation, as to

be able to understand that everything happens,

just as it ought to happen : and that all " imperfec

tion," and the pain it brings, belong to all that

which is most eminently desirable.

1005.

Towards 1876 I experienced a fright; for I

saw that everything I had most wished for up to

that time was being compromised. I realised this

when I perceived what Wagner was actually

driving at : and I was bound very fast to nim

by all the bonds of a profound similarity of needs,

by gratitude, by the thought that he could not be

replaced, and by the absolute void which I saw

facing me.

Just about this time I believed myself to be

inextricably entangled in my _P_hilojogy and my

professorship in the accident and last shift of my

life : I did not know how to get out of it, and

was tired, used up, and on my last legs.

390 THE WILL TO POWER.

f At about the same time I realised that what my

instincts most desired to attain was precisely the

reverse of what Schopenhauer s instincts wanted

that is to say, a justification of life, even where

it was most terrible, most equivocal, and most

false : to this end, I had the formula " Dionysian "

in my hand.

Schopenhauer s interpretation of the " absolute "

as will was certainly a step towards that concept

of the " absolute " which supposed it to be

necessarily good, blessed, true, and integral ; but

Schopenhauer did not understand how to deify this

will : he remained suspended in the moral-

Christian ideal. Indeed, he was still so very

much under the dominion of Christian values,

that, once he could no longer regard the absolute

as God, he had to conceive it as evil, foolish,

utterly reprehensible. He did not realise that

there is an infinite number of ways of being

different, and even of being God.

1006. *

Hitherto, moral values have been the highest

values : does anybody doubt this ? ... If we

bring down the values from their pedestal, we

thereby alter all values : the principle of their order

of rank which has prevailed hitherto is thus over

thrown.

1007.

Transvalue values what does this mean ? It

implies that all spontaneous motives, all new,

DIONYSUS. 3QI

future, and stronger motives, are still extant ; but

that they now appear under false names and false

valuations, and have not yet become conscious of

themselves.

We ought to have the courage to become,

conscious, and to affirm all that which has been

attained to get rid of the humdrum character of

old valuations, which makes us unworthy of the

best and strongest things that we have achieved.

1008.

Any doctrine would be superfluous for which

everything is not already prepared in the way of

accumulated forces and explosive material. A

transvaluation of values can only be accomplished

when there is a tension of new needs, and a new

set of needy people who feel all old values as

painful, although they are not conscious of what

is wrong.

1009.

The standpoint from which my values are

determined : is abundance or desire active ? . . .

Is one a mere spectator, or is one s own shoulder at

the wheel is one looking away or is one turning

aside? ... Is one acting spontaneously, as the j

result of accumulated strength, or is one merely

reacting to a goad or to a stimulus ? ... Is one

simply acting as the result of a paucity of elements,

or of such an overwhelming dominion over a host

of elements that this power enlists the latter into

its service if it requires them ? ... Is one a

392 THE WILL TO POWER.

problem one s self or is one a solution already ? . . .

Is one perfect through the smallness of the task, or

imperfect owing to the extraordinary character of

the aim ? ... Is one genuine or only an actor ; is

one genuine as an actor, or only the bad copy of

an actor ? is one a representative or the creature

represented ? Is one a personality or merely a

rendezvous of personalities? ... Is one ill from a

disease or from surplus health ? Does one lead as

a shepherd, or as an " exception " (third alternative :

as a fugitive) ? Is one in need of dignity, or can

one play the clown ? Is one in search of resistance,

or is one evading it ? Is one imperfect owing to

one s precocity or to one s tardiness ? Is it one s

nature to say yea, or no, or is one a peacock s tail

of garish parts ? Is one proud enough not to feel

ashamed even of one s vanity ? Is one still able to

feel a bite of conscience (this species is becoming

rare ; formerly conscience had to bite too often : it

is as if it now no longer had enough teeth to do

so) ? Is one still capable of a " duty " ? (there

are some people who would lose the whole joy of

their lives if they were deprived of their duty this

holds good especially of feminine creatures, who

are born subjects).

1010.

Supposing our common comprehension of the

universe were a misunderstanding, would it be

possible to conceive of a form of perfection, within

the limits of which even such a misunderstanding

as this could be sanctioned ?

The concept of a new form of perfection : that

DIONYSUS. 393

which does not correspond to our logic, to our

" beauty," to our " good," to our " truth," might be

perfect in a higher sense even than our ideal is.

101 1.

Our most important limitation : we must not

deify the unknown ; we are just beginning to know

so little. The false and wasted endeavours.

Our " new world " : we must ascertain to what

extent we are the creators of our valuations we

will thus be able to put " sense " into history.

This belief in truth is reaching its final logical

conclusion in us ye know how it reads : that if

there is anything at all that must be worshipped

it is appearance ; that falsehood and not truth is

divine.

101 2.

He who urges rational thought forward, thereby

also drives its antagonistic power mysticism and

foolery of every kind to new feats of strength.

We should recognise that every movement is

(i) partly the manifestation of fatigue resulting from

a previous movement (satiety after it, the malice of

weakness towards it, and disease) ; and (2) partly a

newly awakened accumulation of long slumbering

forces, and therefore wanton, violent, healthy.

101 3.

Health and morbidness : let us be careful ! The

standard is the bloom of the body, the agility,

courage, and cheerfulness of the mind but also, of

394 THE WILL TO POWER.

course, how much morbidness a man can bear and

overcome, and convert into health. That which

would send more delicate natures to the dogs,

belongs to the stimulating means of great health.

1014.

It is only a question of power : to have all the

morbid traits of the century, but to balance them

;by means of overflowing, plastic, and rejuvenating

power. The strong man.

1015.

Concerning the strength of the nineteenth century.

We are more mediaeval than the eighteenth century ;

not only more inquisitive or more susceptible to the

strange and to the rare. We have revolted against

the Revolution. . . . We have freed ourselves from

the fear of reason, which was the spectre of the

eighteenth century: we once more dare to be

childish, lyrical, absurd, in a word, " we are

musicians." And we are just as little frightened

of the ridiculous as of the absurd. The devil finds

that he is tolerated even by God : * better still, he

has become interesting as one who has been mis

understood and slandered for ages, -we are the

^saviours of the devil s honour.

We no longer separate trieTgreat from the terrible.

We reconcile good things, in all their complexity,

* This is reminiscent of Goethe s Faust. See " Prologue in

Heaven." TR.

DIONYSUS. 395

with the very worst things ; we have overcome the

desideratum of the past (which wanted goodness to

grow without the increase of evil). The cowardice

towards the ideal, peculiar to the Renaissance, has

diminished we even dare to aspire to the latter s

morality. Intolerance towards priests and the

Church has at the same time come to an end ; " It

is immoral to believe in God " but this is pre

cisely what we regard as the best possible justifica

tion of this belief.

On all these things we have conferred the civic

rights of our minds. We do not tremble before

the back side of " good things " (we even look

for it, we are brave and inquisitive enough for that),

of Greek antiquity, of morality, of reason, of good

taste, for instance (we reckon up the losses which

we incur with all this treasure : we almost reduce

ourselves to poverty with such a treasure).

Neither do we conceal the back side of " evil things"

from ourselves.

1016.

That which does us honour. If anything does us

honour, it is this : we have transferred our serious

ness to other things ; all those things which have

been despised and laid aside as base by all ages,

we regard as important on the other hand, we

surrender " fine feelings " at a cheap rate.

Could any aberration be more dangerous than the

contempt of the body? As if all intellectuality

were not thereby condemned to become morbid,

and to take refuge in the vapeurs of " idealism " !

Nothing that has been thought out by Christians

39 6 THE WILL TO POWER.

and idealists holds water : we are more radical.

We have discovered the " smallest world " every

where as the most decisive.

The paving-stones in the streets, good air in our

rooms, food understood according to its worth : we

value all the necessaries of life seriously, and despise

all " beautiful soulfulness " as a form of " levity and

frivolity." That which has been most despised

hitherto, is now pressed into the front rank.

1017

\J In the place of Rousseau s " man of Nature," the

nineteenth century has discovered a much more

genuine image of " Man," it had the courage to

do this. . . . On the whole, the Christian concept

of man has in a way been reinstalled. What we

have not had the courage to do, was to call precisely

this " man par excellence" good, and to see the

future of mankind guaranteed in him. In the

same way, we did not dare to regard the growth

in the terrible side of man s character as an ac

companying feature of every advance in culture ;

in this sense we are still under the influence of the

Christian ideal, and side with it against paganism,

and likewise against the Renaissance concept of

virtu. But the key of culture is not to be

found in this way : and in praxi we still have

the forgeries of history in favour of the " good

man " (as if he alone constituted the progress

of humanity) and the socialistic ideal (i.e. the

residue of Christianity and of Rousseau in the de-

Christianised world).

DIONYSUS. 397

The fight against the eighteenth century : it meets ,

with its greatest conquerors in Goethe and Napoleon. \

Schopenhauer, too, fights against the eighteenth?

century ; but he returns involuntarily to the!;

seventeenth he is a modern Pascal, with Pascalianl

valuations, without Christianity. Schopenhauer was!

not strong enough to invent a new yea.

Napoleon : we see the necessary relationship

between the higher and the terrible man. " Man "

reinstalled, and her due of contempt and fear re

stored to woman. Highest activity and health are

the signs of the great man ; the straight line and

grand style rediscovered in action ; the mightiest

of all instincts, that of life itself, the lust of

dominion, heartily welcomed

1018.

(Revue des deux mondes, I5th February 1887.

Taine concerning Napoleon) " Suddenly the

master faculty reveals itself: the artist, which was

latent in the politician, comes forth from his

scabbard ; he creates dans I ideal et I impossible. He

is once more recognised as that which he is : the

posthumous brother of Dante and of Michelangelo;

and verily, in view of the definite contours of his

vision, the intensity, the coherence, and inner con

sistency of his dream, the depth of his meditations,

the superhuman greatness of his conception, he is

their equal : son ghiie a la meme faille et la meme

structure ; il est un des trois esprits souverains de

la renaissance italienne."

Nota bene. Dante, Michelangelo, Napoleon.

398 THE WILL TO POWER.

IOI9.

Concerning the pessimism of strength. In the

internal economy of fat primitive man s soul, the

fear of evil preponderates. What is evill Three

kinds of things : accident, uncertainty, the unex

pected. How does primitive man combat evil ?

He conceives it as a thing of reason, of power, even

as a person. By this means he is enabled to make

treaties with it, and generally to operate upon it in

advance to forestall it.

Another expedient is to declare its evil and

harmful character to be but apparent : the conse

quences of accidental occurrences, and of uncer

tainty and the unexpected, are interpreted as well-

meant, as reasonable.

A third means is to interpret evil, above all,

as merited : evil is thus justified as a punishment.

In short, man submits to it\ all religious

and moral interpretations are but forms of sub

mission to evil. The belief that a good purpose

lies behind all evil, implies the renunciation of any

desire to combat it.

Now, the history of every culture shows a

diminution of this fear of the accidental, of the

uncertain, and of the unexpected. Culture means

precisely, to learn to reckon, to discover causes, to

acquire the power of forestalling events, to acquire a

belief in necessity. With the growth of culture,

man is able to dispense with that primitive form of

submission to evil (called religion or morality), and

that "justification of evil." Now he wages war

against " evil," he gets rid of it. Yes, a state of

DIONYSUS. 399

security, of belief in law and the possibility of cal

culation, is possible, in which consciousness regards

these things with tedium, in which the joy of the

accidental, of the uncertain, and of the unexpected,

actually becomes a spur.

Let us halt a moment before this symptom of

highest culture, I call it \he pessimism of strength.

Man now no longer requires a "justification of

evil " ; justification is precisely what he abhors :

he enjoys evil, pur, cru ; he regards purposeless

evil as the most interesting kind of evil. If he

had required a God in the past, he now delights in

cosmic disorder without a God, a world of accident,

to the essence of which terror, ambiguity, and

seductiveness belong.

In a state of this sort, it is precisely goodness

which requires to be justified that is to say, it

must either have an evil and a dangerous basis, or

else it must contain a vast amount of stupidity :

in which case it still pleases. Animality no longer

awakens terror now ; a very intellectual and happy

wanton spirit in favour of the animal in man, is, in

such periods, the most triumphant form of spirit

uality. Mart 4s-jiow -strong enough to be able to

feel ashamed of a belief in God: he may now

play the part of the devil s advocate afresh. If in

practice he pretends to uphold virtue, it will be for

those reasons which lead virtue to be associated

with subtlety, cunning, lust of gain, and a form of

the lust of power.

This pessimism of strength also ends in a theo

dicy , i.e. in an absolute saying of yea to the world

but the same arguments will be raised in favour of

4OO THE WILL TO POWER.

life which formerly were raised against it : and in

this way, in a conception of this world as the highest

ideal possible, which has been effectively attained.

1020.

Y The principal kinds of pessimism :

The pessimism of sensitiveness (excessive irrit

ability with a preponderance of the feelings of pain).

The pessimism of the will that is not free (other

wise expressed : the lack of resisting power a-

gainst stimuli).

The pessimism of doubt (shyness in regard to

everything fixed, in regard to all grasping and

touching).

The psychological conditions which belong to

these different kinds of pessimism, may all be ob

served in a lunatic asylum, even though they are

there found in a slightly exaggerated form. The

same applies to " Nihilism " (the penetrating feeling

of " nonentity ").

What, however, is the nature of Pascal s moral

pessimism, and the metaphysical pessimism of the

Vedanta-Philosophy ? What is the nature of the

social pessimism of anarchists (as of Shelley), and of

the pessimism of compassion (like that of Leo

Tolstoy and of Alfred de Vigny) ?

Are all these things not also the phenomena of

decay and sickness? . . . And is not excessive

seriousness in regard to moral values, or in regard

to " other-world " fictions, or social calamities, or

suffering in general, of the same order ? All such

exaggeration of a single and narrow standpoint is

DIONYSUS. 401

in itself a sign of sickness. The same applies to

the preponderance of a negative over an affirma

tive attitude !

In this respect we must not confound with the

above : the joy of saying and doing no, which is

the result of the enormous power and tenseness of

an affirmative attitude peculiar to all rich and

mighty men and ages. It is, as it were, a luxury,

a form of courage too, which opposes the terrible,

which has sympathy with the frightful and the

questionable ; because, among other things, one is

terrible and questionable: the Dionysian in will,

intellect, and taste.

IO2I.

My Five " Noes"

(1) My fight against the feeling of sin and the

introduction of the notion of punishment into the

physical and metaphysical world, likewise into

psychology and the interpretation of history. The

recognition of the fact that all philosophies and val

uations hitherto have been saturated with morality.

(2) My identification and my discovery of the

traditional ideal, of the Christian ideal, even

where the dogmatic form of Christianity has been

wrecked. The danger of the Christian ideal resides

in its valuations, in that which can dispense with

concrete expression : my struggle against latent

Christianity (for instance, in music, in Socialism).

(3) My struggle against the eighteenth century

of Rousseau, against his" Nature," against his "good

VOL. II. 2C

402 THE WILL TO POWER.

man," his belief in the dominion of feeling against

the pampering, weakening, and moralising of rn_an :

an ideal born of the hatred of aristocratic culture,

which in practice is the dominion of unbridled

feelings of resentment, and invented as a standard

for the purpose of war (the Christian morality of

the feeling of sin, as well as the morality of resent

ment, is an attitude of the mob).

(4) My fight against Romanticism, in which the

ideals of Christianity and of Rousseau converge,

but which possesses at the same time a yearning

for that antiquity which knew of sacerdotal and

aristocratic culture, a yearning for virtu, and for

the " strong man " something extremely hybrid ;

a false and imitated kind of stronger humanity,

which appreciates extreme conditions in general

and sees the symptom of strength in them (" the

cult of passion"; an imitation of the most expressive

forms, furore espressivo, originating not out of pleni

tude, but out otwanf). (In the nineteenth century

there are some things which are born out of re

lative plenitude i.e. out of well-being , cheerful

music, etc. among poets, for instance, Stifter and

Gottfried Keller give signs of more strength and

inner well-being than . The great strides of en

gineering, of inventions, of the natural sciences and

of history (?) are relative products of the strength

and self-reliance of the nineteenth century.)

(5) My struggle against the predominance of

gregarious instincts, now science makes common

cause with them ; against the profound hate with

which every kind of order of rank and of aloofness

is treated.

DIONYSUS. 403

1022.

From the pressure of plenitude, from the tension

of forces that are continually increasing within us

and which cannot yet discharge themselves, a con

dition is produced which is very similar to that

which precedes a storm : we like Nature s sky-

become overcast. That, too, is " pessimism." . .

A teaching which puts an end to such a condition

by the fact that it commands something : a trans-

valuation of values by means of which the accumu

lated forces are given a channel, a direction, so

that they explode into deeds and flashes of light

ning does not in the least require to be a

hedonistic teaching : in so far as it releases strength

which was compressed to an agonising degree, it

brings happiness.

1023.

Pleasure appears with the feeling of power.

Happiness means that the consciousness of

power and triumph has begun to prevail.

Progress is the strengthening of the type, the

ability to exercise great will-power : everything

else is a misunderstanding and a danger.

1024.

There comes a time when the old masquerade

and moral togging-up of the passions provokes

repugnance : naked Nature ; when the quanta of

power are recognised as decidedly simple (as deter

mining rank) ; when grand style appears again as

the result of great passion.

404 THE WILL TO POWER.

1025.

The purpose of culture would have us enlist every

thing terrible, step by step and experimentally, into

its service ; but before it is strong enough for this it

must combat, moderate, mask, and even curse every

thing terrible.

Wherever a culture points to anything as evil, it

betrays its fear and therefore weakness.

Thesis : everything good is the evil of yore

which has been rendered serviceable. Standard :

the more terrible and the greater the passions may

be which an age, a people, and an individual are at

liberty to possess, because they are able to use

them as a means, the higher is their culture-, the

more mediocre, weak, submissive, and cowardly a

man may be, the more things he will regard as evil:

according to him the kingdom of evil is the largest.

The lowest man will see the kingdom of evil (i.e.

that which is forbidden him and which is hostile

to him) everywhere.

1026.

/ It is not a fact that "happiness follows virtue

but it is the mighty man who first declares his

happy state to be virtue.

f Evil actions belong to the mighty and the

virtuous : bad and base actions belong to the

. subjected.

The mightiest man, the creator, would have to

be the most evil, inasmuch as he makes his ideal

prevail over all men in opposition to their ideals,

and remoulds them according to his own image.

DIONYSUS. 405

Evil, in this respect, means hard, painful, .en

forced.

Such men as Napoleon must always return and

always settle our belief in the self-glory of the in

dividual afresh : he himself, however, was corrupted

by the means he had to stoop to, and had lost

noblesse of character. If he had had to prevail

among another kind of men, he could have availed

himself of other means ; and thus it would not

seem necessary that a Caesar must become bad.

1027

Man is a combination of the beast and the super- ,

beast \ higher man a combination of the monster/

and the superman : * these opposites belong to|

each other. With every degree of a man s growth j

towards greatness and loftiness,he also grows down-i

wards into the depths and into the terrible: we

should not desire the one without the other ; or,$.

better still: the more fundamentally we desire thej

one, the more completely we shall achieve the ;

other.

1028.

Terribleness belongs to greatness : let us not

deceive ourselves.

1029.

I have taught the knowledge of such terrible

things, that all " Epicurean contentment " is im-

* The play on the German words: "Unthier" and

" Uberthier," " Unmensch " and " Ubermensch," is unfortu

nately not translatable. TR.

406 THE WILL TO POWER.

possible concerning them. Dionysian pleasure is

the only adequate kind here : / was the first to dis

cover the tragic. Thanks to their superficiality in

ethics, the Greeks misunderstood it. Resignation

is not the lesson of tragedy, but only the mis

understanding of it ! The yearning for nonentity

-is the denial of tragic wisdom, its opposite !

1030.

A rich and powerful soul not only gets over

painful and even terrible losses, deprivations, rob

beries, and insults : it actually leaves such dark

infernos in possession of still greater plenitude and

power ; and, what is most important of all, in pos

session of an increased blissfulness in love. I

believe that he who has divined something of the

most fundamental conditions of love, will under

stand Dante for having written over the door of

his Inferno : " I also am the creation of eternal

love."

1031.

To have travelled over the whole circumference

of the modern soul, and to have sat in all its corners

my ambition, my torment, and my happiness.

Veritably to have overcome pessimism, and, as

I the result thereof, to have acquired the eyes of a

|\ Goethe full of love and goodwill.

1032.

The first question is by no means whether we

are satisfied with ourselves : but whether we are

DIONYSUS. 407

satisfied with anything at all. Granting that we

should say yea to any single moment, we have then

affirmed not only ourselves, but the whole of ex

istence. For nothing stands by itself, either in us

or in other things : and if our soul has vibrated anc

rung with happiness, like a chord, once only anc

only once, then all eternity was necessary in order

to bring about that one event, and all eternity, ii

this single moment of our affirmation, was callec

good, was saved, justified, and blessed.

1033-

The passions which say yea. Pride, happiness,

health, the love of the sexes, hostility and war,

reverence, beautiful attitudes, manners, strong will,

the discipline of lofty spirituality, the will to power,

and gratitude to the Earth and to Life : all that

is rich, that would fain bestow, and that refreshes,

gilds, immortalises, and deifies Life the whole

power of the virtues that glorify all declaring

things good, saying yea, and doing yea.

1034.

We, many or few, who once more dare to live in

a world purged of morality, we pagans in faith, we

are probably also the first who understand what a

pagan faith is : to be obliged to imagine higher

creatures than man, but to imagine them beyond

good and evil ; to be compelled to value all higher

existence as immoral existence. We believe in

Olympus, and not in the " man on the cross."

408 THE WILL TO POWER.

1035-

The more modern man has exercised his ideal

ising power in regard to a God mostly by moralis

ing the latter ever more and more what does that

mean ? nothing good, a diminution in man s

strength.

As a matter of fact, the reverse would be possible:

and indications of this are not wanting. God im

agined as emancipation from morality, comprising

the whole of the abundant assembly of Life s con

trasts, and saving and justifying them in a divine

agony. God as the beyond, the superior elevation,

to the wretched cul-de-sac morality of " Good and

Evil."

1036.

A humanitarian God cannot be demonstrated

from the world that is known to us : so much are

ye driven and forced to conclude to-day. But

what conclusion do ye draw from this ? " He can

not be demonstrated to us " : the scepticism of

knowledge. You all fear the conclusion : " From

the world that is known to us quite a different

God would be demonstrable, such a one as would

certainly not be humanitarian " and, in a word,

you cling fast to your God, and invent a world for

Him which is unknown to us.

1037.

Let us banish the highest good from our con

cept of God : it is unworthy of a God. Let us

DIONYSUS. 409

likewise banish the highest wisdom : it is the

vanity of philosophers who have perpetrated the

absurdity of a God who is a monster of wisdom :!.j

the idea was to make Him as like them as possible, "t

No ! God as the highest power that is sufficient ! I

- Everything follows from that, even " the

world " !

1038

And how many new Gods are not still pos

sible ! I, myself, in whom the religious that is

to say, the god-creating instinct occasionally be

comes active at the most inappropriate moments :

how very differently the divine has revealed itself

every time to me ! ... So many strange things

have passed before me in those timeless moments,

which fall into a man s life as if they came from

the moon, and in which he absolutely no longer

knows how old he is or how young he still may

be ! ... I would not doubt that there are several

kinds of gods. . . . Some are not wanting which

one could not possibly imagine without a certain

halcyonic calm and levity. . . . Light feet perhaps

belong to the concept " God." Is it necessary to

explain that a God knows how to hold Himself

preferably outside all Philistine and rationalist

circles ? also (between ourselves) beyond good and

evil? His outlook is a free one as Goethe

would say. And to invoke the authority of Zara-

thustra, which cannot be too highly appreciated in

this regard : Zarathustra goes as far as to confess,

" I would only believe in a God who knew how to

dance. , ."

4IO THE WILL TO POWER.

Again I say : how many new Gods are not still

possible! Certainly Zarathustrahimself is merely an

old atheist: he believes neither inoldnorinnewgods.

Zarathustra says, " he would"- but Zarathustra

will not. . . . Take care to understand him well.

The type God conceived according to the type

of creative spirits, of " great men."

1039.

And how many new ideals are not, at bottom,

still possible ? Here is a little ideal that I seize

upon every five weeks, while upon a wild and lonely

walk, in the azure moment of a blasphemous joy.

To spend one s life amid delicate and absurd things;

a stranger to reality ; half-artist, half-bird, half-

metaphysician ; without a yea or a nay for reality,

save that from time to time one acknowledges it,

after the manner of a good dancer, with the tips of

one s toes ; always tickled by some happy ray of

sunlight ; relieved and encouraged even by sorrow

for sorrow preserves the happy man ; fixing a

little tail of jokes even to the most holy thing :

this, as is clear, is the ideal of a heavy spirit, a ton

in weight of the spirit of gravity.

1040.

From the military -school of the soul. (Dedicated

to the brave, the good-humoured, and the abstinent.)

I should not like to undervalue the amiable vir

tues ; but greatness of soul is not compatible with

DIONYSUS. 411

them. Even in the arts, grand style excludes all

merely pleasing qualities.

In times of painful tension and vulnerability,

choose war. War hardens and develops muscle.

Those who have been deeply wounded have the

Olympian laughter ; a man only has what he needs.

It has now already lasted ten years : no sound

any longer reaches me a land without rain. A

man must have a vast amount of humanity at his

disposal in order not to pine away in such drought.*

1041.

My new road to an affirmative attitude. Philo

sophy, as I have understood it and lived it up to the

present, is the voluntary quest of the repulsive and

atrocious aspects of existence. From the long ex

perience derived from such wandering over ice and

desert, I learnt to regard quite differently everything

that had been philosophised hitherto : the con

cealed history of philosophy, the psychology of its

great names came into the light for me. " How

much truth can a spirit endure ; for how much truth

is it daring enough ? " this for me was the real

* For the benefit of those readers who are not acquainted

with the circumstances of Nietzsche s life, it would be as well

to point out that this is a purely personal plaint, comprehen

sible enough in the mouth of one who, like Nietzsche, was

for years a lonely anchorite. TR.

412 THE WILL TO POWER.

measure of value. Error is a piece of cowardice

. . . every victory on the part of knowledge,is the re

sults! courage,of hardness towards one s self, of clean

liness towards one s self. . . . ^\&\?i\T\& si experimental

philosophy which I am living, even anticipates the

possibility of the most fundamental Nihilism, on

principle : but by this I do not mean that it re

mains standing at a negation, at a no, or at a will

to negation. It would rather attain to the very

reverse to a Dionysian affirmation of the world, as

it is, without subtraction, exception, or choice

it would have eternal circular motion : the same

things, the same reasoning, and the same illogical

concatenation. The highest state to which a philo

sopher can attain : to maintain a Dionysian attitude

to Life my formula for this is amor fati.

To this end we must not only consider those

aspects of life which have been denied hitherto, as

necessary, but as desirable, and not only desirable

to those aspects which have been affirmed hitherto

(as complements or first prerequisites, so to speak),

but for their own sake, as the more powerful, more

terrible, and more veritable aspects of life, in which

the latter s will expresses itself most clearly.

To this end, we must also value that aspect of

existence which alone has been affirmed until now ;

we must understand whence this valuation arises,

and to how slight an extent it has to do with a

Dionysian valuation of Life : I selected and under

stood that which in this respect says " yea " (on the

one hand, the instinct of the sufferer ; on the other,

the gregarious instinct ; and thirdly, the instinct of

the greater number against the exceptions).

DIONYSUS. 413

Thus I divined to what extent a stronger kind

of man must necessarily imagine the elevation and

enhancement of man in another direction : higher

creatures , beyond good and evil, beyond those values

which bear the stamp of their origin in the sphere

of suffering, of the herd, and of the greater number

I searched for the data of this topsy-turvy forma

tion of ideals in history (the concepts " pagan,"

" classical," " noble," have been discovered afresh

and brought forward).

1042.

We should demonstrate to what extent the

religion of the Greeks was higher than Judaeo-

Christianity. The latter triumphed because the

Greek religion was degenerate (and decadent).

1043.

It is not surprising that a couple 01 centuries

have been necessary in order to link up again a

couple of centuries are very little indeed.

1044.

There must be some people who sanctify func

tions, not only eating and drinking: and not only

in memory of them, or in harmony with them ; but

this world must be for ever glorified anew, and in

a novel fashion.

1045.

The most intellectual men feel the ecstasy and

charm of sensual things in a way which other men

414 THE WILL TO POWER.

those with " fleshy hearts " cannot possibly

imagine, and ought not to be able to imagine :

they are sensualists with the best possible faith,

because they grant the senses a more fundamental

value than that fine sieve, that thinning and mincing

machine, or whatever it is called, which in the

language of the people is termed " spirit . The

strength and power of the senses this is the most

essential thing in a sound man who is one of

Nature s lucky strokes : the splendid beast must

first be there otherwise what is the value of all

" humanisation " ?

1046.

(1) We want to hold fast to our senses, and to

the belief in them and accept their logical con

clusions ! The hostility to the senses in the philo

sophy that has been written up to the present, has

been man s greatest feat of nonsense.

(2) The world now extant, on which all earthly

and living things have so built themselves, that it

now appears as it does (enduring and proceeding

slowly), we would fain continue building not

criticise it away as false !

(3) Our valuations help in the process of build

ing ; they emphasise and accentuate. What does

it mean when whole religions say : " Everything is

bad and false and evil " ? This condemnation of

the whole process can only be the judgment of the

failures !

(4) True, the failures might be the greatest

sufferers and therefore the most subtle ! The con

tented might be worth little !

DIONYSUS. 415

(5) We must understand the fundamental artistic

phenomenon which is called "Life," the formative

spirit, which constructs under the most unfavourable

circumstances : and in the slowest manner pos

sible The proof of all its combinations must

first be given afresh : it maintains itself.

1047.

Sexuality, lust of dominion, the pleasure derived

from appearance and deception, great and joyful

gratitude to Life and its typical conditions these

things are essential to all paganism, and it has a

good conscience on its side. That which is hostile

to Nature (already in Greek antiquity) combats

paganism in the form of morality and dialectics.

1048.

An anti- metaphysical view of the world yes,

but an artistic one.

1049.

Apollo s misapprehension : the eternity of beauti-1

ful forms, the aristocratic prescription, " Thus sJiall\

it ever be ! " I

Dionysus : Sensuality and cruelty. The perish- ;

able nature of existence might be interpreted as j

the joy of procreative and destructive force, as un- \

remitting creation.

1050.

The word " Dionysian " expresses : a constraint

to unity, a soaring above personality, the common-

41 6 THE WILL TO POWER.

place, society, reality, and above the abyss of the

ephemeral ; the passionately painful sensation of

superabundance, in darker, fuller, and more fluctu

ating conditions ; an ecstatic saying of yea to the

collective character of existence, as that which

remains the same, and equally mighty and blissful

throughout all change ; the great pantheistic

sympathy with pleasure and pain, which declares

even the most terrible and most questionable qualities

of existence good, and sanctifies them ; the eternal

will to procreation, to fruitfulness, and to recurrence ;

the feeling of unity in regard to the necessity of

creating and annihilating.

The word <{ Apollonian " expresses : the con

straint to be absolutely isolated, to the typical " in

dividual," to everything that simplifies, distinguishes,

and makes strong, salient, definite, and typical : to

freedom within the law.

The further development of art is just as neces

sarily bound up with the antagonism of these two

natural art-forces, as the further development of

mankind is bound up with the antagonism of the

sexes. The plenitude of power and restraint, the

highest form of self-affirmation in a cool, noble, and

reserved kind of beauty : the Apollonianism of the

Hellenic will.

This antagonism of the Dionysian and of the

Apollonian in the Greek soul, is one of the great

riddles which made me feel drawn to the essence

of Hellenism. At bottom, I troubled about nothing

save the solution of the question, why precisely

Greek Apollonianism should have been forced to

grow out of a Dionysian soil : the Dionysian Greek

DIONYSUS. 417

had need of being Apollonian ; that is to say,in

order to break his will to the titanic, to the com

plex, to the uncertain, to the horrible by a will

to measure, to simplicity, and to submission to

rule and concept. Extravagance, wildness, and

Asiatic tendencies lie at the root of the Greeks.

Their courage consists in their struggle with their

Asiatic nature : they were not given beauty, any

more than they were given Logic and moral

naturalness: in them these things are victories,

they are willed and fought forthey constitute

the triumph of the Greeks.

105 i

It is clear that only the rarest and most lucky

cases of humanity can attain to the highest and

most sublime human joys in which Life celebrates

its own glorification ; and this only happens when

these rare creatures themselves and their forbears

have lived a long preparatory life leading to this

goal, without, however, having done so consciously.

It is then that an overflowing wealth of multi

farious forces and the most agile power of " free

will " and lordly command exist together in per

fect concord in one man ; then the intellect is just

as much at ease, or at home, in the senses as the

senses are at ease or at home in it ; and everything

that takes place in the latter must give rise to ex

traordinarily subtle joys in the former. And vice

versd : just think of this vice versd for a moment

in a man like Hafiz ; even Goethe, though to a

lesser degree, gives some idea of this process. It

VOL. II. 2D

41 8 THE WILL TO POWER.

is probable that, in such perfect and well-constituted

men, the most sensual functions are finally trans

figured by a symbolic elatedness of the highest

intellectuality ; in themselves they feel a kind of

deification of the body and are most remote from the

ascetic philosophy of the principle "God is a Spirit":

from this principle it is clear that the ascetic is the

" botched man " who declares only that to be good

and " God " which is absolute, and which judges and

condemns.

From that height of joy in which man feels him

self completely and utterly a deified form and self-

justification of nature, down to the joy of healthy

peasants and healthy semi-human beasts, the whole

of this long and enormous gradation of the light

and colour of happiness was called by the Greek

not without that grateful quivering of one who is

initiated into secret, not without much caution and

pious silence by the godlike name : Dionysus.

What then do all modern men the children of a

crumbling, multifarious, sick and strange age

know of the compass of Greek happiness, how could

they know anything about it ! Whence would the

slaves of " modern ideas " derive their right to

Dionysian feasts !

When the Greek body and soul were in full

" bloom," and not, as it were, in states of morbid

exaltation and madness, there arose the secret

symbol of the loftiest affirmation and transfigura

tion of life and the world that has ever existed.

There we have a standard beside which everything

that has grown since must seem too short, too

poor, too narrow : if we but pronounce the word

DIONYSUS. 419

" Dionysus " in the presence of the best of more

recent names and things, in the presence of Goethe,

for instance, or Beethoven, or Shakespeare, or

Raphael, in a trice we realise that our best things

and moments are condemned. Dionysus is a judge \

Am I understood ? There can be no doubt that

the Greeks sought to interpret, by means of their

Dionysian experiences, the final mysteries of the

" destiny of the soul " and everything they knew

concerning the education and the purification of

man, and above all concerning the absolute hier

archy and inequality of value between man and man.

There is the deepest experience of all Greeks, which

they conceal beneath great silence, we do not

know the Greeks so long as this hidden and sub

terranean access to them remains obstructed. The

indiscreet eyes of scholars will never perceive any

thing in these things, however much learned energy

may still have to be expended in the service of this

excavation ; even the noble zeal of such friends

of antiquity as Goethe and Winckelmann, seems to

savour somewhat of bad form and of arrogance,

precisely in this respect. To wait and to prepare

oneself; to await the appearance of new sources of

knowledge ; to prepare oneself in solitude for the

sight of new faces and the sound of new voices ; to

cleanse one s soul ever more and more of the dust

and noise, as of a country fair, which is peculiar to

this age ; to overcome everything Christian by some

thing super-Christian, and not only to rid oneself

of it, for the Christian doctrine is the counter-

doctrine to the Dionysian ; to rediscover the South

in oneself, and to stretch a clear, glittering, and

42O THE WILL TO POWER.

mysterious southern sky above one ; to reconquer

the southern healthiness and concealed power of the

soul, once more for oneself; to increase the com

pass of one s soul step by step, and to become more

supernational, more European, more super-

European, more Oriental, and finally more Hellenic

for Hellenism was, as a matter of fact, the first

great union and synthesis of everything Oriental,

and precisely on that account, the beginning of the

European soul, the discovery of our " new world " :

he who lives under such imperatives, who knows

what he may not encounter some day ? Possibly

a new dawn \

1052.

The two types : Dionysus and Christ on the Cross.

We should ascertain whether the typically religious

man is a decadent phenomenon (the great inno

vators are one and all morbid and epileptic) ; but

do not let us forget to include that type of the

religious man who is pagan. Is the pagan cult

not a form of gratitude for, and affirmation of, Life ?

Ought not its most representative type to be an

apology and deification of Life ? The type of a

well-constituted and ecstatically overflowing spirit !

The type of a spirit which absorbs the contradic

tions and problems of existence, and which solves

them!

At this point I set up the Dionysus of the Greeks :

the religious affirmation of Life, of the whole of

Life, not of denied and partial Life (it is typical

that in this cult the sexual act awakens ideas of

depth, mystery, and reverence).

DIONYSUS. 421

I Dionysus versus " Christ " ; here you have the

contrast. It is not a difference in regard to the

martyrdom, but the latter has a different mean-

ing. Life itself Life s eternal fruitful ness and re-

currence caused anguish, destruction, and the will

to annihilation. In the other case, the suffering of

the " Christ as the Innocent One " stands as an ob

jection against Life, it is the formula of Life s

condemnation. Readers will guess that the prob

lem concerns the meaning of suffering ; whether

a Christian or a tragic meaning be given to it. In

the first case it is the road to a holy mode of

existence ; in the second case existence itself

is regarded as sufficiently holy to justify an

enormous amount of suffering. The tragic man

says yea even to the most excruciating suffering:

he is sufficiently strong, rich, and capable of deify

ing, to be able to do this ; the Christian denies

even the happy lots on earth : he is weak, poor,

and disinherited enough to suffer from life in any

form. God on the Cross is a curse upon Life, a

signpost directing people to deliver themselves from

it ; Dionysus cut into pieces is a promise of Life :

it will be for ever born anew, and rise afresh from

destruction.

III.

ETERNAL RECURRENCE.

1053-

\ MY philosophy reveals the triumphant thought

j through which all other systems of thought must

1 ultimately perish. It is the great disciplinary

(thought : those races that cannot bear it are

doomed ; those which regard it as the greatest

blessing are destined to rule.

1054.

The greatest of all fights : for this purpose a

new weapon is required.

A hammer : a terrible alternative must be

created. Europe must be brought face to face

with the logic of facts, and confronted with the

question whether its will for ruin is really earnest.

General levelling down to mediocrity must be

avoided. Rather than this it would be preferable

to perish.

1055.

A pessimistic attitude of mind and a pessi

mistic doctrine and ecstatic Nihilism, may in

ETERNAL RECURRENCE. 423

certain circumstances even prove indispensable tp^

the philosopher that is to say, as a mighty j

form of pressure, or hammer, with which he can

smash up degenerate, perishing races and put

them out of existence ; with which he can beat a

track to a new order of life, or instil a longing for

nonentity in those who are degenerate and who.

desire to perish.

1056.

I wish to teach the thought which gives unto "A

many the right to cancel their existences the J>

great disciplinary thought.

1057.

Eternal Recurrence. A prophecy.

1. The exposition of the doctrine and its theo

retical first principles and results.

2. The proof of the doctrine.

3. Probable results which will follow from its

being believed. (It makes everything break open.)

(a) The means of enduring it.

(8) The means of ignoring it.

4. Its place in history is a means.

The period ot greatest danger.

The foundation of an oligarchy above peoples

and their interests : education directed at

establishing a political policy for humanity

in general.

A counterpart of Jesuitism.

424 THE WILL TO POWER.

1058.

The two greatest philosophical points of view

(both discovered by Germans).

(a) That of becoming and that of evolution.

(b) That based upon the values of existence

(but the wretched form of German

pessimism must first be overcome !)

Both points of view reconciled by me in a

decisive manner.

Everything becomes and returns for ever,

escape is impossible \

Granted that we could appraise the value of

existence, what would be the result of it? The

thought of recurrence is a principle of selection in

the service of power (and barbarity !).

The ripeness of man for this thought.

1059.

I. The thought of eternal recurrence: its first U

principles^hich must necessarily be true if it were jj\

true. Wha its result is.

. 2. It is the most oppressive thought : its prob

able results, provided it be not prevented, that is

. to say, provided all values be not transvalued.

3. The means of enduring it: the transvalua-

| tion of all values. Pleasure no longer to be found

in certainty, but in uncertainty ; no longer " cause

and effect," but continual creativeness ; no longer

\ the will to self-preservation, but to power; no

longer the modest expression " it is all only sub

jective," but " it is all our work ! let us be

proud of it,"

ETERNAL RECURRENCE. 425

I06o.

In order to endure the thought of recurrence,

freedom from morality is necessary ; new means

against the fact fain (pain regarded as the instru

ment, as the father of pleasure ; there is no accre

tive consciousness of pain) ; pleasure derived from

all kinds of uncertainty and tentativeness, as a

counterpoise to extreme fatalism ; suppression of

the concept "necessity" ; suppression of the " will " ;

suppression of " absolute knowledge."

Greatest elevation of man s consciousness of

strength, as that which creates superman.

1061.

The two extremes of thought the materialistic

and the platonic are reconciled in eternal recur

rence: both are regarded as ideals.

1062.

If the universe had a goal, that goal would

have~ Been reached by now.___ ij^ajny, jsort : o un

foreseen final state existed, that state also would

haveHBeen reached. I? it were capable of any

Halting or stability of any " being," it would only

have possessed this capability of becoming stable

for one instant in its development ; and again

becoming would have been at an end for ages,

and with it all thinking and all " spirit." The

fact of " intellects " being in a state of development

proves that tjhe, .universe can have no goal, no

426 THE WILL TO POWER.

final state, and is incapable of being. But the old

habit of thinking of some purpose in regard to all

phenomena, and of thinking of a directing and

creating deity in regard to the universe, is so

powerful, that the thinker has to go to great pains

in order to avoid thinking of the very aimlessness

of the world as intended. The idea that the

universe intentionally evades a goal, and even

knows artificial means wherewith it prevents itself

from falling into a circular movement, must occur

to all those who would fain attribute to the uni

verse the capacity of eternally regenerating itself

that is to say, they would fain impose upon a

finite, definite force which is invariable in quantity,

like the universe, the miraculous gift of renewing

its forms and its conditions for all eternity.

Although the universe is no longer a God, it must

still be capable of the divine power of creating

and transforming; it must forbid itself to

relapse into any one of its previous forms ; it

must not only have the intention, but also the

means, of avoiding any sort of repetition ; every

second of its existence, even, it must control every

single one of its movements, with the view of

avoiding goals, final states, and repetitions and

all the other results of such an unpardonable and

insane method of thought and desire. All this is

nothing more than the old religious mode of

thought and desire, which, in spite of all, longs to

believe that in some way or other the universe

resembles the old, beloved, infinite, and infinitely-

creative God that in some way or other " the

old God still lives" that longing of Spinoza s

ETERNAL RECURRENCE. 427

which is expressed in the words " deus sive natura "

(what he really felt was " natura sive deus ").

Which, then, is the proposition and belief in which

the decisive change, the present preponderance of

the scientific spirit over the religious and god-

fancying spirit, is best formulated ? Ought it not

to be : the universe, as force, must not be thought

of as unlimited, because it cannot be thought of

in this way, we forbid ourselves the concept in

finite force, because it is incompatible with the idea

of force? Whence it follows that the universe

lacks the power of eternal renewal.

1063. , 1

The principle of the conservation of energy

inevitably involves eternal recurrence.

1064.

That a state of equilibrium has never been

reached, proves that it is impossible. But in

infinite space it must have been reached. Like

wise in spherical space. Inform of space must

be the cause of the eternal movement, and ulti

mately of all " imperfection."

That "energy" and "stability" and "immut

ability " are contradictory. The measure of energy

(dimensionally) is fixed,though it is essentially fluid.

" That which is timeless " must be refuted. At

any given moment of energy, the absolute condi

tions for a new distribution of all forces are present ;

it cannot remain stationary. Change is part of

428 THE WILL TO POWER.

its essence, therefore time is as well : by this

means, however, the necessity of change has only

been established once more in theory.

1065.

A certain emperor always bore the fleeting

nature of all things in his mind, in order not to

value them too seriously, and to be able to live

quietly in their midst. Conversely, everything

seems to me much too important for it to be so

fleeting ; I seek an eternity for everything : ought

one to pour the most precious salves and wines

into the sea ? My consolation is that everything

that has been is eternal : the sea will wash it up

again.

1066.

The neiv concept of the universe. The universe

exists ; it is nothing that grows into existence and

that passes out of existence. Or, better still, it

develops, it passes away, but it never began to

develop, and has never ceased from passing away ;

it maintains itself in both states. ... It lives on

itself, its excrements are its nourishment.

We need not concern ourselves for one instant

with the hypothesis of a created world. The con

cept "create" is to-day utterly indefinable and

unrealisable ; it is but a word which hails from

superstitious ages ; nothing can be explained with

a word. The last attempt that was made to con

ceive of a world that began occurred quite recently,

ETERNAL RECURRENCE. 429

in many cases with the help of logical reasoning,

generally, too, as you will guess, with an

ulterior theological motive.

Several attempts have been made lately to show

that the concept that " the universe has an infinite

past " (regressus in infinituvi) is contradictory :

it was even demonstrated, it is true, at the price

of confounding the head with the tail. Nothing

can prevent me from calculating backwards from

this moment of time, and of saying : " I shall

never reach the end " ; just as I can calculate

without end in a forward direction, from the same

moment. It is only when I wish to commit the

error I shall be careful to avoid it of reconcil

ing this correct concept of a regressus in infinitum

with the absolutely unrealisable concept of a finite

progressus up to the present ; only when I con

sider the direction (forwards or backwards) as

logically indifferent, that I take hold of the head ;

this very moment and think I hold the tail : 1

this pleasure I leave to you, Mr. Diihring ! . . . j

I have come across this thought in other

thinkers before me, and every time I found that

it was determined by other ulterior motives

(chiefly theological, in favour of a creator spiritus).

If the universe were in any way able to congeal,

to dry up, to perish ; or if it were capable of

attaining to a state of equilibrium ; or if it had

any kind of goal at all which a long lapse

of time, immutability, and finality reserved for it

(in short, to speak metaphysically, if becoming

could resolve itself into being or into nonentity),

this state ought already to have been reached.

43O THE WILL TO POWER.

But it has not been reached : it therefore

follows. . . . This is the only certainty we can

grasp, which can serve as a corrective to a host

of cosmic hypotheses possible in themselves. If,

for instance, materialism cannot consistently escape

the conclusion of a finite state, which William

Thomson has traced out for it, then materialism

is thereby refuted.

If the universe may be conceived as a definite

quantity of energy, as a definite number of centres

of energy, and every other concept remains

indefinite and therefore useless, it follows there

from that the universe must go through a calcul

able number of combinations in the great game of

chance which constitutes its existence. In infinity^

at some moment or other, every possible combina- i

tion must once have been realised ; not only this, ,

but it mustjiave been realised an infinite number j

of times. And inasmuch as between every onef

of these combinations and its next recurrence

every other possible combination would neces

sarily have been undergone^ and since every one

of these combinations would determine the whole

series in the same order, a circular movement of

absolutely identical series is thus demonstrated :

the universe is thus shown to be a circular

movement which has already repeated itself an

infinite number of times, and which plays its

game for all eternity. This conception is not

simply materialistic ;Tor if it were this, it would

not involve an infinite recurrence of identical cases,

but a finite state. Owing to the fact that the uni

verse has not reached this finite state, materialism

ETERl iAL KECUHREfcCE 431

shows itself to be but an imperfect and pro

visional hyoothesis.

1067.

And do ye know what "the universe" is to my

mind? Shall i show it to you in my mirror?

This universe is a monster of energy, without

beginning or end; a fixed and brazen quantity oj

energy which grows neither bigger nor smaller,

which does not consume itself, but only alters

its face; as a whole its bulk is immutable, it

is a household without either losses or gains,

but likewise without increase and without

sources of revenue, surrounded by nonentity as

by a frontier, it is nothing vague or waste

ful, it does not stretch into infinity; but it

is a definite quantum of energy located in

lirdted space, and not in space which would be

anyv here empty. It is rather energy every

where, the play of forces and force -waves, at

the same time one and many, agglomerating here

and diminishing there, a sea of forces storm

ing and raging in itself, for ever changing,

for ever rolling back over incalculable ages

to recurrence, with an ebb and flow of its

forms, producing the most complicated things

out of the most simple structures; producing

the most ardent, most savage, and nost contra

dictory things out of the quietest, nost rigid,

and most frozen material, and then returning

from multifariousness to uniformity, from the

play of contradictions back into the delight

of consonance, saying yea unto itself, even

this homogeneity of its courses and ages; for

ever blessing itseir as so:-.:et;.ing which reci

for all eternity,- a becoming which knows no

satiety, or disgust, or weariness:- ^is, my

Dionysien world of eternal self -creation, of

432 THE WILL TO PCTEP.

eternal self-destruction, this mysterious

world of twofold voluptuousness; this, my

"Beyond Good and Evil" without aim, , unless

there. is an aim in the bliss of the circle,

without will, unless a ring must by nature

keep good?;ill to itself,- would you have a

name for my world? A solution of all your

riddles? Do ye also want a light, ye most

concealed, strongest and raost undaunted men

of the blackest midnight?- This world is

the Will to Pov/er- and nothing else! And

even ye yourselves are this will to power -

and nothing besides!

ikonex

Saturday, September 19, 2020

GIACINTO PLESCIA: LA MORTE NON È NIENTE romanzo 1989 - con video

Thursday, September 17, 2020

ontofonè di Giacinto Plescia on lulu.com

L' epistemica, il nulla e l'arte - Plescia Giacinto - Montedit - Libro

Wednesday, September 16, 2020

GIACINTO PLESCIA Museggia

Frank e Nancy Sinatra ~ Something Stupid (1967)

HEIDEGGER

wydeags La salvezza trova l‘epigenesi nel mito ontoteologico della bellezza di GIACINTO PLESCIA

GIACINTO PLESCIA Ontologia dell’ontykona

GIACINTO PLESCIA Ontologia dell’opera d’arte

margr essere per l'arte di Giacinto Plescia

wydeags La salvezza trova l‘epigenesi nel mito ontoteologico della bellezza simmetrica di GIACINTO PLESCIA

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