7

IV On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense1

1 Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe

which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of"world history," but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die. 1 -One might invent such a fable, and yet he still would not have adequately illustrated how miserable, how shadowy and transient, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect looks within nature. There were eternities during which it did not exist. And when it is all over with the human intellect, nothing will have happened. For this intellect has ne__ :dditional mission which

ould lead it be ond an life. Rather, it iSliuf~rn!!,aiid only its pos-sessor an getter takes it so so emn y-as though the world's axis turned within it. But if we could communicate with the gnat, we would learn that he likewise flies through the air with the same solemnity,3 that he feels the flying center of the universe within himself. There is nothing so reprehensible and unimportant in nature that it would not im-mediately swell up like a balloon at the slightest puff of this power of knowing. And just as every porter wants to have an admirer, so even the proudest of men, the philosopher, supposes that he sees on all sides the eyes of the universe telescopically focused upon his action and thought.

It is remarkable that this was brought about by the.intellect, which was certainly allotted to these most unfortunate, delicate, and ephemeral beings merely as a device for detainin~ them a minute within existence.

A more literal, though less English, translation of Ubn- Wahrhtit und Lii.ge im aussermoralischen Sinne might be "On Truth and Lie in the Extramoral Sense." For a discussion of the relation between the relatively polished and finished sections of this essay and other material translated in this volume, see the "Intro-duction" and "Note on the Texts."

2Cf. the very similar passage in the antepenultimate paragraph of PW. 3Pathos.

79

In Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche's Notebooks of the Early 1870s (Humanity Books, 1993 [1873])

8

So Philosophy and Truth

For without this addition they would have every reason to flee this exis-tence as quickly as Lessing's son.4 The pride connected with knowing and sensing lies like a blinding fog over the eyes and senses of men, thus deceiving them concerning the value of existence. For this pride contains within itself the most flattering estimation of the value of knowing. De-ception is the most general effect of such pride, but even its most particu-lar effects contain within themselves something of the same deceitful character.

v As a me(lps for the preserving of the individual, the intellect unfolds ~ its princi\J!8powers in dissimulation, which is the means by which

weaker, less robust individuals preserve themselves-since they have been denied the chance to wage the battle for existence with horns or with the sharp teeth of beasts of prey. This art of dissimulation reaches its peak in man. Deception, flattering, lying, deluding, talking behind the back, putting up a false front, living in borrowed splendor, wearing a mask, hiding behind convention, p,laying a role for others and for oneself-in short, a continuous fluttering around the solitary flame of vanity-is so much the rule and the law among men that there is almost nothing which is less comprehensible than how an honest and pure drive for truth could have arisen among them. They are deeply immersed in illusions and in dream images; their eyes merely glide over the surface of things and see "forms." Their senses nowhere lead to truth; on the contrary, they are content to receive stimuli and, as it were, to engage in a groping game on the backs of things. Moreover, man permits himself to be deceived in his dreams every night of his life. 5 His moral sentiment does not even make an attempt to prevent this, whereas there are sup-posed to be men who have stopped snoring through sheer will power. What does man actually know about himself? Is he, indeed, ever able to perceive himself completely, as if laid out in a lighted display case? Does nature not conceal most things from him--even concerning his own body-in order to confine and lock him within a proud, dece_ptive con-sQ_ousness, aloof from the coils of the bowels, the rapid flow of the blOOd stream, and the intricate quivering of the fibers! She threw away the key. And woe to that fatal curiosity which might one day have the power to peer out and down through a crack in the chamber of consciousness and then suspect that man is sustained in the indifference of his ignorance by that which is pitiless, greedy, insatiable, and murderous-as if hanging in dreams on the back of a tiger.6 Given this situation, where in the world could the drive for truth have come from?

4 A reference to the offspring of Lessing and Eva Konig, who died on the day of his birth.

~cr. P, 10. 8 Cf. the very similar passage in the penultimale paragraph of PW.

ON TRUTH AND LIES IN A NONMORAL SENSE

Insofar as the individual wants to maintain himself against other indi-viduals, he will under natural circumstances employ the intellect mainly for ___ ~i_ssimulation. But at the same time, from boredom and necessity~ man wishes to exist socially and with the herd; therefore, he needs to make peace and strives accordingly to banish from his world at least the most flagrant bellum omni contra omnes. 7 This peace treaty brings in its wake something which appears to be the first step toward acquiring that puzzling truth drive: to wit, that which shall count as "truth" from Offill ~s established. That is to ~;:;Tto-;mly valid andbinding designa-tion is invented for things, and this l~slation of langufl_ge likewise estab-lishes the first laws of truth. For the contrast between truth and lie arises here for the first time. The liar is a person who uses the valid designa-tions, the words, in order to make something which is unreal appear to be real. He says, for example, "I am rich," when the proper designation for his condition would be "poor." He misuses fixed conventions by means of arbitrary substitutions or even reversals of names. If he does this in a selfish and moreover harmful manner, society will cease to trust him and will thereby exclude him. What men avoid by excluding the liar is not so much being defrauded as it is being harmed by means of fraud. Thus, even at this stage, what they Hate IS bastcaffYnot deception itself, but rather the unpleasant, hated consequences of certain sorts of decep-tion. It is in a similarly restricted sense that man now wants nothing but truth: he desires the pleasant, life-preserving consequences of truth.J:k. is indifferent toward ..pure knowledge which has no consequences; to-ward those truths which are possibly harmful and destructive he is even hostilely inclined. And besides, what about these linguistic conventions themselves? Are they perhaps products of knowledge, that is, of the sense of truth? Are designations congruent with things? Is language the ?dequate expression of all realities? -

It is only by means of forgetfuln~ss that man can ever reach the point of fancying himself to possess a "truth" of the grade just indicated. If he will not be satisfied with truth in the form of tautology, 8 that is to say, if he will not be content with empty husks, then he will always exchange truths for illusions. What is a word? It is the copy in sound of a nerve stimulus. But the further inference from the nerve stimulus to a cause outside of us is already the result of a false and unjustifiable application of the principle of sufficient reason.9 If truth alone had been the decid-ing factor in the genesis of language, and if the standpoint of certainty

7"War of each against all."

8See P, 150. 9 Note that Nietzsche is here engaged in an implicit critique of Schopenhauer,

who had been guilty of precisely this misapplication of the principle of sufficient reason in his first book, The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. It is

9

Philosophy and Truth

had been decisive for designations, then how could we still dare to say "the stone is hard," as if "hard" were something otherwise familiar to us, and not merely a totally subjective stimulation! We separate things ac-cording to gender, designating the tree as masculine and the plant as feminine. What arbitrary assignmentsl 10 How far this oversteps the ca-nons of certainty! We speak of a "snake": this designation touches only upon its ability to twist itself and could therefore also fit a worm.'' What arbitrary differentiations! What one-sided preferences, first for this, then for that property of a thing! The various languages placed side by side show that with words it is never a question of truth, never a question of adequate ex ressio_!l_L_9~wise, there would not be so many lan-guages.12 Th "thin in it~which is precise~y w~at the pu~e tru~h, apart from any o 1ts consequences, would be) is hkew1se somethmg qmte incomprehensible to the creator of language and something not in the least worth striving for. This creator only designates the re~_tj()ns _of __ things to men, and for expressing these relations he lays hold of the boldest metaphors. 13 To begin with, a nerve stimulus is transferred into an image: 14 first metaphor. The image, in turn, is imitated in a sound: second metaphor. And each time there is a complete overleaping of one sphere, right into the middle of an entirely new and different one. One can imagine a man who is totally deaf and has never had a sensation of sound and music. Perhaps such a person will gaze with astonishment at Chladni's sound figures; 15 perhaps he will discover their causes in the vibrations of the string and will now swear that he must know what men mean by "sound." It is this way with all of us concerning language: we

quite wrong to think that Nietzsche was ever wholly uncritical of Schopenhauer's philosophy (see, for example, the little essay, Kritik der Schopenhauerischen Philosophie from 1867, in MA, I, pp. 392-401).

10welche willkiirlichen Obertragungen. The specific sense of this passage depends upon the fact that all ordinary nouns in the German language are assigned a gender: the tree is der Baum; the plant is die Pjlanze. This assignment of an original sexual property to all things is the "transference" in question. On the translation of the key term Obertragung, see the "Introduction" and P, n. 83.

''This passage depends upon the etymological relation between the German words Schlange (snake) and schlingen (to wind or twist), both of which are related to the old High German slango.

12 What Nietzsche is rejecting here is the theory that there is a sort of"naturally appropriate" connection between certain words (or sounds) and things. Such a theory is defended by Socrates in Plato's Cratylus. ..

130n the significance of "metaphor" (which is closely related to Ubertragung) for Nietzsche's theories of language and knowledge, see the "Introduction."

14Ein Nervenreiz, zuerst iibertragen in ein Bild. The "image" in this case is the visual image, what we "see." Regarding the term Bild, seeP, n. 2.

"SeeP, n. 55.

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ON TRUTH AND LIES IN A NONMORAL SENSE

believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things-metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities. 16 In the same way that the sound appears as a sand figure, so the mysterious X of the thing in itself first appears as a nerve stimulus, then as an image, and finally as a sound. Thus the genesis of language does not proceed logically in any case, and all the material within and with which the man of truth, the scientist, and the philosopher later work and build, if not derived from never-never land,17 is at least not derived from the essence of things.

In particular, let us further consider the formation of concepts. Every word instantly becomes a concept precisely insofar as it is not supposed to serve as a reminder of the unique and entirely individual original experience to which it owes its origin; but rather, a word becomes a concept insofar as it simultaneously has to fit countless more or less similar cases-which means, purely and simply, cases which are never equal and thus altogether unequal. Every concept arises from the equa-tion of unequal things. Just as it is certain that one leaf is never totally the same as another, so it is certain that the concept "leaf' is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects. This awakens the idea that, in addition to the leaves, there exists in nature the "leaf': the original model according to which all the leaves were perhaps woven, sketched, measured, colored, curled, and painted-but by incompetent hands, so that no specimen has turned out to be a correct, trustworthy, and faithful likeness of the original model. We call a person "honest," and then we ask "why has he behaved so honestly today?" Our usual answer is, "on account of his honesty." Honesty! This in turn means that the leaf is the cause of the leaves. We know nothing whatsoever about an essential quality called "honesty"; but we do know of countless individualized and consequently unequal actions which we equate by omitting the aspects in which they are unequal and which we now designate as "honest" actions. Finally we formulate from them a qunlitas occulta 18 which has the name "honesty." We obtain the concept, as we do the form, by overlooking what is indi-vidual and actual; whereas nature is acquainted with no forms and no concepts, and likewise with no species, but only with an X which remains inaccessible and undefinable for us. For even our contrast between indi-vidual and species is something anthropomorphic and does not originate in the essence of things; although we should not presume to claim that this contrast does not correspond to the essence of things: that would of

16W esenheiten. 11Wolkenkukuksheim: literally, "cloud-cuckoo-land." 18

"0ccult quality."

10

Philosophy and Truth

course be a dogmatic assertion and, as such, would be just as indemon-strable as its opposite. 19

What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomoiE_hisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have

.,.been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embe~lished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canom-cal, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illu-sions; they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.

We still do not yet know where the drive for truth comes from. For so far we have heard only of the duty which society imposes in order to exist: to be truthful means to employ the usual metaphors. Thus, to express it morally, this is the duty to lie according to a fixed convention, to lie with the herd and in a manner binding upon everyone. Now man of course forgets that this is the way things stand for him. Thus he lies in the manner indicated, unconsciously and in accordance with habits which are centuries' old; and precisely by means of this unconsciousness and forgetfulness he arrives at his sense of truth. From the sense that one is obliged to designate one thing as "red," another as "cold," and a thi~~ as "mute," there arises a moral impulse in regard to truth. The venerability, reliability, and l!!i!ity of truth is something which a person demonstrates for himself from the contrast with the liar, whom no one trusts and everyone excludes. As a "rational" being, he now places his behavior under the control of abstractions. He will no longer tolerate being car-ried away by sudden impressions, by intuitions. First he universalizes all these impressions into less colorful, cooler concepts, so that ~e can ~ntrust the guidance of his life and conduct to them. E~eryt~~ng which distinguishes man from the animals depends upon th_s ab1hty t? vol-atilize perceptual metaphors20 in a schema, and thus to d1ssolve an Image into a concept. For something is possible in the realm of t~ese schemata which could never be achieved with the vivid first impressiOns: the con-struction of a pyramidal order according to castes and degrees, the crea-tion of a new world of laws, privileges, subordinations, and clearly marked boundaries-a new world, one which now confronts that other vivid world of first impressions as more solid, more universal, better known, and more human than the immediately perceived world, and thus as the regulative and im rat" wQrld. Whereas each perceptual metaphor 1s m IVI ual and without equals and is therefore able to elude

'9 Nietzsche criticizes Kant on just this score in P, 84.

20die anschaulichen Metaphem. Regarding the translation of Anschauung, seeP, n. 82. The adjective anschaulich has the additional sense of "vivid"-as in the next sentence ("vivid first impressions").

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ON TRUTH AND LIES IN A NONMORAL SENSE

all classification, the great edifice of concepts displays the rigid regularity of a Roman columbariumzt and exhales in logic that strength and cool-ness which is characteristic of mathematics. Anyone who has felt this cool breath (of logic] will hardly believe that even the concept-which is as bony, foursquare, and transposable as a die-is nevertheless merely the residue of a metaphor, and that the illusion which is involved in the artistic transference of a nerve stimulus into images is, if not the mother, then the grandmother of every single concept. 22 But in this conceptual c~ap game "truth" means using every die in the desig~ated manner, c~unt~ng its spots..-accurately, fashioning the right categones, and never v10latmg the order of caste and class rank. Just as the Romans and Etruscans cut up the heavens with rigid mathematical lines and confined a god within each of the spaces thereby delimited, as within a templum, 23 so every people has a similarly mathematically divided conceptual heaven above themselves and henceforth thinks that truth demands that each concep-tual god be sought only within his oum sphere. Here one may ~ert~i_nly admire man as a mighty genius of construction, who succeeds m p1hng up an infinitely complicated dome of concepts upon an unstable founda-tion, and, as it were, on running water. Of course, in order to be sup-ported by such a foundation, his construction must be like_o_n~ structed of ~iders' webs: delicate enough to be carried along br the

-;aves, strong enough not to be blown apart by every wind. As a gem us of construction man raises himself far above the bee in the following way: whereas the bee builds with wax that he gathers from nature, man builds with the far more delicate conceptual material whis.Q_.he first has tQ, mam::.Tactw=efrom himseiL In this he is greatly to be admired, but not on account of his drive for truth or for pure knowledge of things. When someone hides something behind a bush and looks for it again in the same place and finds it there as well, there is not much t? praise _in such seeking and finding. Yet this is how matters stand regardmg seek_n_g and finding "truth" within the realm of reason. If I make up the defimuon of a mammal, and then, after inspecting a camel, declare "look, a mam-mal," I have indeed brought a truth to light in this way, but it is a truth of limited value. That is to say, it is a thoroughly anthropomorphic truth which contains not a single point which would be "true in itself' or really and universally valid apart from man. At bottom, what the investigator of such truths is seeking is only the metamorphosis of the world into

21 A columbarium is a vault with niches for funeral urns containing the ashes of cremated bodies.

22 I.e. concepts are derived from images, which are, in turn, derived from nerve stimuli.

23A delimited space restricted to a particular purpose, especially a religiously sanctified area.

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86 Philosophy and Truth

man. He strives to understand the world as something analogous to man, and at best he achieves by his struggles the feeling of assimilation. Simi-lar to the way in which astrologers considered the stars to be in man's service and connected with his happiness and sorrow, such an inves-tigator considers the entire universe in connection with man: 24 the entire universe as the infinitely fractured echo of one original sound-man; the entire universe as the infinitely multiplied copy of one original picture-man His method is to treat man as the measure of all things, but in doing so he again proceeds from the error of believing that he has these things [which he intends to measure] immediately bt;fore him as mere objects. He forgets that the original perceptual metaphors are metaphors and takes them to be the things thems~

Only by forgetting this primitive world of metaphor can one live with any repose, security, and consistency: only by means of the petrification and coagulation of a mass of images which originally streamed from the primal faculty of human imagination like a fiery liquid, only in the invincible faith that this sun, this window, this table is a truth in itself, in short, only by forgetting that he himself is an artistically creating subject, does man live with any repose, security, and consistency. 25 If but for an instant he could escape from the prison walls of this faith, his "self consciousness" would be immediately destroyed. It is even a difficult thing for him to admit to himself that the insect or the bird perceives an entirely different world from the one that man does, and that the ques-tion of which of these perceptions of the world is the more correct one is quite meaningless. for this would have to have been decided previously in accordance with the criterion of the correct perception, which means, in accordance with a criterion which is not available. But in any case it seems

__!Q_rJ1_e that_"the C~_!Tect_p~_~c~pt_i?_!_l_"-which would me2'1 "the adequate expression of an object in the subject"-is a contradictory impossibility. 26 For between two absolutely different spheres, as between subject and object, there is no causality, no correctness, and no expression; there is, at most, an aesthetic relation: 27 I mean, a suggestive transference, a stammering translation into a completely foreign tongue-for which there is required, in any case, a freely inventive intermediate sphere and mediating force. "Apearance" is a word that contains many temptations, which is why I avoid it as much as possible. _for it is not true that the essence of things "appears" in the empirical world. A painter without na;;-ds who wished to express in song the picture before his mind would,

cr. P, 105 and 15L '"See P, rL 68. 2';em undrnprurhsvollrs Urulin~;. See P, n. 95.

21ein ii\lhrtisrhes Verhaltm. A more literaltranslation of Vnhaltm is "behavior," "auitude," or perhaps "disposition."

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by means of this substitution of spheres, still reveal more about the essence of things than does the empirical world. Even the relationship of a nerve stimulus to the generated image is not a necessary one. But when the same image has been generated millions of times and has been handed down for many generations and finally appears on the same occasion every time for all mankind, then it acquires at last the same meaning for men it would have if it were the sole necessary image and if the relationship of the original nerve stimulus to the generated image were a strictly causal one. In the same manner, an eternally repeated dream would certainly be felt and judged to be reality. But the harden-ing and congealing of a metaphor guarantees absolutely nothing con-cer~ing its necessity and exclusive justification.

Every person who is familiar with such considerations has no doubt felt a deep mistrust of all idealism of this sort: just as often as he has quite clearly convinced himself of the eternal consistency, omnipresence, and infallibility of the laws of nature. He has concluded that so far as we can penetrate here-fro-m-illetdescopic heights to the microscopic depths-everything is secure, complete, infinite, regular, and without any gaps. Science will be able to dig successfully in this shaft forever, and all the things that are discovered will harmonize with and not contradict each other. How little does this resemble a product of the imagination, for if it were such, there should be some place where the illusion and unreality can be divined. Against this, the following must be said: if each of us had a different kind of sense perception-if we could only perceive things now as a bird, now as a worm, now as a plant, or if one of us saw a stimulus as red, another as blue, while a third even heard the same stimulus as a sound-then no one would speak of such a regularity of nature, rather, nature would be grasped only as a creation which is subjec-tive in the highest degree. After all, what is a law of nature as such for us? We are not acquainted with it in itself, but only with its effects, which means in its relation to other laws of nature-which, in turn, are known to us only as sums of relations. Therefore all these relations always refer again to others and are thoroughly incomprehensible to us in their es-sence. All that we actually know about these laws of nature is wh~ _ourselves bring to them-time and space, and therefore relatiOiYS"htps of succession and number. But everything marvelous about the laws of nature, everything that quite astonishes us therein and seems to demand our explanation, everything that might lead us to distrust idealism: all this is completely and solely contained within the mathematical strictness and inviolability of our representations of time and space. But we pro-duce these representations in and from ourselves with the same necessity with which the spider spins. If we are forced to comprehend all things only under these forms, then it ceases to be amazing that in all things we actually comprehend nothing but these forms. For they must all bear

12

Philosophy and Truth

within themselves the laws of number, and it is precisely number which is most astonishing in things. 28 All that conformity to law, which impresses us so much in the movement of the stars and in chemical processes, coincides at bottom with those properties which we bring to things. Thus it is we who impress ourselves in this way. In conjunction with this, it of course follows that the artistic process of metaphor formation with which every sensation begins in us already presupposes these forms and thus occurs within them. The only way in which the ~sjkility of sub- ']_ sequently constructing a new conceptual edifi~e from11 ~etaphors them-selves can be explained is by the firm persistence of these original forms. That is to say, this conceptual edifice is an imitation of temporal, spatial, and numerical relationships in the domain of metaphor. 29

2 We have seen how it is originally language which works on the con-

struction of concepts, a labor taken over in later ages by science. 30 Just as the bee simultaneously constructs cells and fills them with honey, so '!) science works unceasingly on this great columbarium of conce ts the graveyard of perceptions. It is always building new, higher stories and shoring up, cleaning, and renovating the old cells; above all, it takes pains to fill up this monstrously towering framework and to arrange therein the entire empirical world, which is to say, the anthropomorphic world. Whereas the man of action binds his life to reason and its con-cepts so that he will not be swept away and lost, the scientific investigator builds his hut right next to the tower of science so that he will be able to work on it and to find shelter for himself beneath those bulwarks which presently exist. And he requires shelter, for there are frightful powers which continuously break in upon him, powers which oppose ~i

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go Philosophy and Truth

m;llTing that master of deception, the intellect, is free;. it is released from its former slavery and celebrates its Saturnalia. It is never more luxuriant, richer, prouder, more clever and more daring. With creative pleasure it throws metaphors into confusion and displaces the boundary stones of abstractions, so that, for example, it designates the stream as "the moving path which carries man where be would otherwise walk." The intellect bas now thrown the token of bondage from itself. At other times it endeavors, with gloomy officiousness, to show the way and to demonstrate the tools to a poor individual who covets existence; it is like a servant who goes in search of booty and prey for his master. But now it bas become the master and it dares to wipe from its face the expression of indigence. In comparison with its previous conduct, everything that it now does bears the mark of dissimulation,33 just as that previous conduct did of distortion. 34 The free intellect copies human life, but it considers this life to be something good and seems to be quite satisfied with it. That immense framework and planking of concepts to which the needy man clings his whole life long in order to preserve himself is nothing but a scaffolding and toy for the most audacious feats of the liberated intellect. And when it smashes this framework to pieces, throws it into confusion, and puts it back together in an ironic fashion, pairing the most alien things and separating the closest, it is demonstrating that it has no need of these makeshifts of indigence and that it will now be guided by intui-tions rather than by concepts. There is no regular path which leads from these intuitions into the land of ghostly schemata, the land of abstrac-tions. There exists no word for these intuitions; when man sees them he grows dumb, or else he speaks only in forbidden metaphors and in unheard-of combinations of concepts. He does this so that by shattering and mocking the old conceptual barriers he may at least correspond creatively to the impression of the powerful present intuition.

There are ages in which the rational man and the intuitive man stand side by side, the one in fear of intuition, the other with scorn for abstrac-tion. The latter is just as irrational as the former is inartistic. They both A desire to rule over life: the former, by knowing how to meet his princip)1 f/ ~ needs by means of foresight, prudence, and regularity; the latter, by disregarding these needs and, as an "overjoyed hero," counting as real only that life which has been disguised as illusion and beauty. Whenever, as was perhaps the case in ancient Greece, the intuitive man handles his weapons more authoritatively and victoriously than his opponent, then, under favorable circumstances, a culture can take shape and art's mas-tery over life can be established. All the manifestations of such a life will be accompanied by this dissimulation, this disavowal of indigence, this

33V erstellung. 34V erurrung.

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glitter of metaphorical intuitions, and, in general, this immediacy of deception: neither the house, nor the gait, nor the clothes, nor the day jugs give evidence of having been invented because of a pressing need. It seems as if they were all intended to express an exalted happiness, an Olympian cloudlessness, and, as it were, a playing with seriousness. The man who is guided by concepts and abstractions only succeeds by such means in warding off misfortune, without ever gaining any happiness for himself from these abstractions. And while he aims for the greatest possible freedom from pain, the intuitive man, standing in the midst of a culture, already reaps from his intuition a harvest of continually inflow-ing illumination, cheer, and redemption-in addition to obtaining a de-fense against misfortune. To be sure, he suffers more intensely, when he suffers; he even suffers more frequently, since he does not understand how to learn from experience and keeps falling over and over again into the same ditch. He is then just as irrational in sorrow as he is in happi-ness: he cries aloud and will not be consoled. How differently the stoical man who learns from experience and governs himself by concepts is affected by the same misfortunes! This man, who at other times seeks nothing but sincerity, truth, freedom from deception, and protection against ensnaring surprise attacks, now executes a masterpiece of decep-tion: he executes his masterpiece of deception in misfortune, as the other type of man executes his in times of happiness. He wears no quivering and changeable human face, but, as it were, a mask with dig-nified, symmetrical features. He does not cry; he does not even alter his voice. When a real storm cloud thunders above him, he wraps himself in his cloak, and with slow steps he walks from beneath it.

3

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Sketch of Additional Sections 35

Description of the chaotic confusion characteristic of a mythical age. The oriental. Philosophy's beginnings as the director of cults and myths: it organizes the unity of religion.

4 T.he beginnings of an 1romc attitude toward religion. The new

emergence of philosophy.

3" All the following notes were added by Nietzsche himself to von Gersdorffs

fair copy of sections I and 2.

44 GENEALOGY OF MORALS

That lambs dislike great birds of prey does not seem strange: only it gives no ground for reproaching these birds of prey for bear-ing off little Jambs. And if the lambs say among themselves: "these birds of prey are evil; and whoever is least like a bird of prey, but

FIRST ESSAY, SECTION 13 4S

rather its opposite, a lamb-would he not be good?" there is no reason to find fault with this institution of an ideal, except perhaps that the birds of prey might view it a little ironically and say: "we don't dislike them at all, these good little Iambs; we even love them: nothing is more tasty than a tender lamb."

To demand of strength that it should not express itself as strength, that it should not be a desire to overcome, a desire to throw down, a desire to become master, a thirst for enemies and resistances and triumphs, is just as absurd as to demand of weak-ness that it should express itself as strength. A quantum of force is equivalent to a quantum of drive, will, effect-more, it is nothing other than precisely this very driving, willing, effecting, and only owing to the seduction of language (and of the fundamental errors of reason that are petrified in it) which conceives and misconceives all effects as conditioned by something that causes effects, by a "subject," can it appear otherwise. For just as the popular mind separates the lightning from its flash and takes the latter for an action, for the operation of a subject called lightning, so popular morality also separates strength from expressions of strength, as if there were a neutral substratum behind the strong man, which was tree to express strength or not to do so. But there is no such sub-stratum; there is no "being" behind doing, effecting, becoming; "the doer" is merely a fiction added to the deed-the deed is every-thing. The popular mind in fact doubles the deed; when it sees the lightning flash, it is the deed of a deed: it posits the same event first as cause and then a second time as its effect. Scientists do no better when they say "force moves," "force causes," and the like-all its coolness, its freedom from emotion notwithstanding, our en-tire science still lies under the misleading influence of Iangoage and has not disposed of that little changeling, the "subject" (the atom, for example, is such a changeling, as is the Kantian "thing-in-itself'); no wonder if the submerged, darkly glowering emotions of vengefulness and hatred exploit this belief for their own ends and in fact maintain no belief more ardently than the belief that the strong man is free to be weak and the bird of prey to be a Iamb-for thus they gain the right to make the bird of prey accountable for being a bird of prey.

14

Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann (Vintage, 1989 [1887])

46 GENEALOGY OF :MORALS

When the oppressed, downtrodden, outraged exhort one an-other with the vengeful cunning of impotence: "let us be different from the evil, namely good! And be is good who does not outrage, who harms nobody, who does not attack, who does not requite, who leaves revenge to God, who keeps himself hidden as we do, who avoids evil and desires little from life, like us, the patient, bum-ble, and just"-this, listened to calmly and without previous bias, really amounts to no more than: "we weak ones are, after ali, weak; it would be good if we did nothing for which we are not strong enough"; hut this dry matter of fact, this prudence of the lowest order which even insects possess (posing as dead, when in great danger, so as not to do "too much"), bas, thanks to the counterfeit and self-deception of impotence, clad itself in the ostentatious garb of the virtue of quiet, calm resignation, just as if the weakness of the weak-that is to say, their essence, their effects, their sole ineluc-table, irremovable reality-were a voluntary achievement, willed, chosen, a deed, a meritorious act. This type of man needs to be-lieve in a neutral independent "subject," prompted by an instinct for self-preservation and self-affirmation in which every lie is sanc-tified. The subject (or, to use a more popular expression, the soul) has perhaps been believed in hitherto more firmly than anything else on earth because it makes possible to the majority of mortals, the weak and oppressed of every kind, the sublime self-deception that interprets weakness as freedom, and their being thus-and-thus as a merit.

FIRST ESSAY, SECTION 14 47

15

16

ECCE HOMO

How One Becomes What One Is

Preface

1

j: Seeing that before long I must confront humanity with the most dif-ficult demand ever made of it, rt seems indispensable to me to say who I am. Really, one should know it, for I have not left myself ''without testimony." But the disproportion between the greatness of my task and the smallness of my contemporaries has found ex-pression in the fact that one has neither heard nor even seen me. I live on my own credit; it is perhaps a mere prejudice that I live.

' it,_

I only need to speak with one of the "educated" who come to the Upper Engadine' for the summer, and I am convinced that I do not live.

Under these circumstances I have a duty against which my habits, even more the pride of my instincts, revolt at bottom-namely, to say: Hear me! For I am such and such a person. Above all, do not mistake me for someone else.

2

I am, for example, by no means a bogey, or a moralistic mon-ster-! am actually the very opposite of the type of man who so far has been revered as virtuous. Between ourselves, it seems to me that precisely this is part of my pride. I am a disciple of the philos-opher Dionysus; I should prefer to be even a satyr to being a saint. But one should really read this essay. Perhaps I have succeeded; perhaps this essay had no other meaning than to give expression to this contrast in a cheerful and philanthropic manner,

The last thing I should promise would be to "improve" man-kind.2 No new idols are erected by me; let the old ones learn what

1 The Alpine valley in Switzerland where Nietzsche spent almost every sum-mer from 1879 to 1888. !i: Cf. the chapter "The Improvers' of Mankind" in Twilight of the Idols.

.j

,:!

'!

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218 ECCE HOMO

feet of clay mean. Overthrowing idols (my word for "i~eals")that comes closer to being part of my craft. One has depnved real-ity of its value, its meaning, its truthfulness, to precisely the extent to which one has mendaciously invented an ideal world.

The "true world" and the "apparent world"-that means: the mendaciously invented world and reality.

The lie of the ideal has so far been the curse on reality; on account of it, mankind itself has become mendacious and false down to its most fundamental instincts-to the point of worship-ping the opposite values of those which alone would guarantee its health, its future, the lofty right to its future.

3

Those who can breathe the air of my writings know that it is an air of the heights, a strong air. One must be made :or. it. Oth~rwise there is no small danger that one may catch cold m It. The tee is near, the solitude tremendous-but how calmly all things lie in the light! How freely one breathes! How much one feels beneath oneself!

Philosophy, as I have so far understood and lived it, means living voluntarily among ice and high mountains-se~king out everything strange and questionable in existe~ce, everyt?Jng ~o far placed under a ban by morality. Long expenence, acqmred m the course of such wanderings in what is forbidden, taught me to re-gard the causes that so far have prompted morali~ing and idea~izing in a very different light from what may seem deSirable: the hrdden history of the philosophers, the psychology of the great names,

=m~b~ . How much truth does a spirit endure, how much truth does It

dare? More and more that became for me the real measure of value. Error (faith in the ideal) is not blindness, error is cow-ardice.

Every attainment, every step forward in knowledge, _tollo":s from courage, from hardness against oneself, from cleanlmess m relation to oneself.

I do not refute ideals, I merely put on gloves before them

NIETZSCHEs PREFACE 219

Nitimur in vetitum ... in this sigu my philqsophy will triumph one day, for what one has forbidden so far as a matter of principle has always been-truth alone.

4

Among my writings my Zarathustra stands to my mind by it-self. With that I have given mankind the greatest present that has ever been made to it so far. This book, with a voice bridging centu-ries, is not only the highest book there is, the book that is truly characterized by the air of the heights-the whole fact of man lies beneath it at a tremendous distance--it is also the deepest, born out of the innermost wealth of truth, an inexhaustible well to which no pail descends without coming up again filled with gold and goodness. Here no "prophet" is speaking, none of those gruesome hy?r!ds of sickness and will to power whom people call founders of rehgtons. Above all, one must hear aright the tone that comes from this mouth, the halcyon tone, lest one should do wretched injustice to the meaning of its wisdom.

"It is the stillest words that bring on the storm. Thoughts that come on doves' feet guide the world." 4

The figs are falling from the trees; they are good and sweet; and, as they fall, their red skin bursts. I am a north wind to ripe figs.

Thus, like figs, these teachings fall to you, my friends: now consume their juice and their sweet meat. It is fall around us, aud pure sky and afternoon.

It is no fanatic that speaks here; this is npt "preaching"; no faith is demanded here: from an infinite abun~ance of light and depth of happiness falls drop upon drop, word upon word: the tempo of these speeches is a tender adagio. Such things reach only

8 "We strive for the forbidden .. : Ovid, A mores, III, 4, b. Cf. Beyond Good and Evil, section 227. 4 Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Second Part, Jast chapter: T~e Portable Nietzsche tr. Walter Kaufmann (New York, Viking, 1954), p. 258. ' ts Ibid., second chapter.

18

:no ECCE HOMO

the most select. It is a privilege without equal to be a listener here. Nobody is free to have ears for Zarathustra.

Is not Zarathustra in view of all this a seducer?- But what does he himself say, as he returns again for the first time to his solitude? Precisely the opposite of everything that any "sage," .. saint," "world~redeerner," or any other decadent would say in such a case.- Not only does he speak differently, he also is differ-ent.-

Now I go alone, my disciples, You, too, go now, alone. Thus I want it.

Go away from me and resist Zarathustra! And even bet ter: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he deceived you.

The man of knowledge must not only love his enemies, he must also be able to hate his friends.

One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil. And why do you not want to pluck at my wreath?

You revere me; but what if your reverence tumbles one day? Beware lest a statue slay you.

You say that you believe in Zarathustra? But what mat-ters Zarathustra? You are my believers-but what matter all believers?

You had not yet sought yourselves; and you found me. Thus do all believers; therefore all faith amounts to so little.

Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when you have all denied me will I return to you.

Friedrich Nietzsche

6Jbid . First Part, last chapter.

On this perfect day, when everything is ripening and not only the grape turns brown, the eye ofithe sun just fell upon my life: !looked back, I looked forward, and never saw so many and such good things at once. It was not for nothing that I buried my forty-fourth year today; I had the right to bury it; whatever was life in it has been saved, is immortal. The first book of the Revaluation of All Values,' the Songs of Zarathustra,O the Twilight of the idols, my attempt to philosophize with a hammer"-all presents of this year, indeed of its last quarter! How

. could I jail to. be grateful to my whole:life?-and so I tell my life to myself.

1 The Antichrist. Published, after Nietzsche's collapse, under the title Dionysus Dithyrambs. in the same volume with Zarathuslra IV. , 8 This image is explained in the preface of Twilight: " ... idols. which are here touched with a hammer as Wlth a tuning fork."

19

Why 1 Am So Wise

1

The good fortune of my existence, its uniqueness perhaps, lies in its fatality: I am, to express it in the form of a riddle, already d~ad as my father, while as my mother I am still living .and becommg old. This dual descent, as it were, both from the htghest and the lowest rung on the ladder of life, at the same time a decadent and a beginning-this, if anything, explains that neutrality, :hat freedom from all partiality in relation to the total problem of !tfe, that per-haps distinguishes me. I have a subtler sense o~ smell for th~ stgns of ascent and decline than any other human bemg before me, I am the teacher par excellence for this-I know both, I am both.

My father died at the age of thirty-six: he was delicate, kind, and morbid, as a being that is destined merely to pass by-:-mor~ a gracious memory of life than life itself. In the same year .m w?tch

. his life went downward, mine, too, went downward: at thtrty-stx, I reached the lowest point of my vitality-! still lived, but without being able to see three steps ahead. Then-it was 18?9-I retir~d from my professorship at Basel, spent the ?ummer m ~t. Mo':tz like a shadow and the next winter, than whtch not one m my life has been poo;er in sunshine, in Naumburg as a sh~~ow. This w~ my minimum: the Wanderer and His Shadow ongmated at thiS time. Doubtless, I then knew about shadows. .

The following winter, my first one in Genoa, that swee~emng and spiritualization which is almost inseparably connected wtth an extreme poverty of blood and muscle, produced The Dawn. '!~e perfect brightness and cheerfuln~ss, ~ven exuberance of the. spmt, reflected in this work, is compatible m my case not only wtth the most profound physiological weakness, but even with an excess of pain. in the midst of the to~ents that g~ with a?. uninterrupted three-day migraine, accompamed by labonous vomttmg of phlegm, I possessed a dialectician's clarity par excellence and thought

WHY t AM SO WISB 223

through with very cold blood matters for w~ich under healthier circumstances I am not mountain-climber, npt subtle, not cold enough. My readers know perhaps in what way I consider dialectic as a symptom of decadence; for example in the most famous case, the case of Socrates.

All pathological disturbances of the intelject, even that half-numb state that follows fever, have remained entirely foreign to me to this day; and I had to do research to find ou\ about their nature and frequency. My blood moves slowly. Nobody has ever discov-ered any fever in me. A physician who treated me for some time as if my nerves were sick finally said: "It's not your nerves, it is rather I that am nervous." There is altogether no sign !,Of any local degen-eration; no organically conditioned stomach complaint, however profound the weakness of my gastric system Ipay be as a conse-quence of over-all exhaustion. My eye trouble, too, though at times dangerously close to blindness, is only a cons~quence and not a cause: with every increase in vitality my ability to see has also increased again.

A long, all too long, series of years signifies recovery for me; unfortunately it also signifies relapse, decay, the periodicity of a kind of decadence. Need I say after all this that in questions of decadence I am experienced? I have spelled :them forward and backward. Even that filigree art of grasping and comprehending in general, those fingers for nuances, that psycl\ology of "looking around the corner," and whatever else is characteristic of me, was learned only then, is the true present of those days in which every-thing in me became subtler-observation itself as well as all organs of observation. Looking from the perspective of the sick toward healthier concepts and values and, conversely, looking again from the fullness and self-assurance of a rich life down into the secret work of the instinct of decadence-in this I h~ve had the longest training, my truest experience; if in anything, r became master in this. Now I know how, have the know-how, to reverse perspec-tives: the first reason why a "revaluation of values" is perhaps possible for me alone.

20

224 ECCE HOMO

Apart from the fact that I am a decadent, I am also the oppo-site. My proof for this is, among other things, that I have always instinctively chosen the right means against wretched states; while the decadent typically chooses means that are disadvantageous for him. As summa summarum.' I was healthy; as an angle, as a spe-cialty, I was a decadent. The energy to choose absolute solitude and leave the life to which I had become accustomed; the insistence on not allowing myself any longer to be cared for, waited on, and doctored-that betrayed an absolute instinctive certainty about what was needed above all at that time. I took myself in hand, I made myself healthy again: the condition for this-every physiolo-gist would admit that-is that one be healthy at bottom. A ;ypi-cally morbid being cannot become healthy, much less make Itself healthy. For a typically healthy person, conversely, being sick can even become an energetic stimulus for life, for living more. This, in fact, is bow that long period of sickness appears to me now: as it were, I discovered life anew, including myself; I tasted all good and even little things, as others cannot easily taste them-I turned my wilt to health, to life, into a philosophy.

For it should be noted: it was during the years of my lowest vitality that I ceased to be a pessimist; the instinct of self-restora-tion forbade me a philosophy of poverty and discouragement

What is it, fundamentally, that allows us to recognize who has turned out well? That a well-turned-out person pleases our senses, that he is carved from wood that is hard, delicate, and at the same time smells good. He bas a taste only for what is good for him; his pleasure, his delight cease where the measure of what is good fur him is transgressed. He guesses what remedies avail against what is harmful; he exploits bad accidents to his advantage; what does not kill him makes him stronger. Instinctively, he collects from every-thing he sees, bears, lives through, his sum: he is a principle of selection, he discards much. He is always in his own company, t Over~all. ct. Twilight, Chapter I, section 8 (Portable Nietzsche, p. 467).

WHY I AM SO WlSB 2.25

whether he associates with books, human beings, or landscapes: he honors by choosing, by admitting, by trusting.[ He reacts slowly to all kinds of stimuli, with that slowness which long caution and deliberate pride have bred in him: he examines the stimulus that approaches him, he is far from meeting it halfway. He believes neither in "misfortune" nor in "guilt": he comes to terms with him-self, with others; he knows how to forget-be is strong enough; hence everything must turn out for his best.

Well then, I am the opposite of a decadent, for I have just described myself.

3

This dual series of experiences, this acces~ to apparently sepa rate worlds, is repeated in my nature in every respect: I am a Dop-pelglinger, I have a "second" face in addition to the first. And per-haps also a third.

Even by virtue of my descent, I am grantee:! an eye beyond all merely local, merely nationally conditioned perspectives; it is not difficult for me to be a "good European." On the other hand, I am perhaps more German than present-day Germans, mere citizens of the German Reich, could possibly be-l, the last anti-political German. And yet my ancestors were Polish ; noblemen: I have many racial instincts in my body from that sourCe-who knows? In the end perhaps even the liberum veto.t

When I consider how often I am address~d as a Pole when I travel, even by Poles themselves, and bow rarely I am taken for a German, it might seem that I have been merely externally sprinkled with what is German. Yet my mother, Franziska Oehler, is at any r~te something very German; ditto, my grandmother on my father's Side, Erdmuthe Krause. The latter lived all her youth in the middle 1 U~rest!;icted veto-ne of the traditional privileges of the members of the PohshDtet.

. Durin~ the Nazi period, one of Nietzsche's relatives, Max Oehler, a re~ed maJor, ~e~t to great Jen~ths to prove that;' Nietzsche had been ractaUy pure: Ntetzscbes angebltche polnische Herkunft" (N's alleged Polish descent) in Ostdeutsche Monatshefte, 18 0938), 679-82, and Nietzsches Ahnentafe/ (N"s pedigree), Weimar, 1938.

21

226 lBCCB HOMO

of good old Weimar, not without some connection with the circle of Goethe. Her brother, the professor of theology Krause in Konigs-berg, was called to Weimar as general superintendent after Herder's death. It is not impossible that her mother, my great-grandmother, is mentioned in the diary of the young Goethe under the name of "Muthgen." Her second marriage was with the super-intendent Nietzsche in Eilenburg; and in the great war year of 1813, on the day that Napoleon entered Eilenburg with his general staff, on the tenth of October, she gave birth. As a Saxon, she was a great admirer of Napoleon; it could be that I still am, too. My father, born in 1813, died in 1849. Before be accepted the pastor's position in the parish of Roc ken, not far from LUtzen, be liv~d for a few years in the castle of Altenburg and taught the four pnncesses there. His pupils are now the Queen of Hanover, the Grand Duch-ess Constantine, the Grand Duchess of Altenburg, and the Princess Therese of Saxe-Altenburg. He was full of deep reverence for the Prussian king Frederick William IV, from whom he had also re-ceived his pastoral position; the events of 1848 grieved him beyond all measure. I myself, born on the birthday of the above named king, on the fifteenth of October, received, as fitting, the Hohenzol-lern name Friedrich Wilhelm. There was at least one advantage to the choice of this day: my birthday was a holiday throughout my childhood.

I consider it a great privilege to have had such a father: it even seems to me that this explains whatever else I have of privi-leges-not including life, the great Yes to life. Above all, that it requires no resolve on my part, but merely biding my time, to enter quite involuntarily into a world of lofty and delicate things: I am at home there, my inmost passion becomes free only there. That I have almost paid with my life for this privilege is certainly no un-fair trade.

In order to understand anything at all of my Zarathustra one must perhaps be similarly conditioned as I am-with one foot be-yond life.

WHY I AM SO WlSB 227

4

I have never understood the art of predispbsing people against me-this, too, I owe to my incomparable father-even when it seemed highly desirable to me. However un1Christian this may seem, I am not even predisposed against myself. You can turn my life this way and that, you will rarely find traces, and actnally only once, that anybody felt ill will toward me--but perhaps rather too many traces of good will.

Even my experiences with people with whom everybody bas bad experiences bear witness, without exceptiqn, in their favor: I tame every bear, I make even buffoons bebave,themselves. During the seven years that I taught Greek in the senior class in the Piida-gogium in Basel, I never had occasion to punish anyone; the laziest boys worked hard. I am always equal to accidents; I have to be unprepared to be master of myself. Let the instrument be what it may, let it be as out of tnne as only the ins(rument "man" can be--I should have to be sick if I should not succeed in getting out of it something worth bearing. And how often have I been told by the "instruments" themselves that they bad nev~r heard themselves like that.- Most beautifully perhaps by Heinrich von Stein, 1 who died so unpardonably young. Once, after be bad courteously re-quested permission, he appeared for three days in Sils Maria, ex-plaining to everybody that he had not come to see the Engadine. This excellent human being, who had walked into the Wagnerian morass with all the impetuous simplicity of a Prussian Junker (and in addition even into that of Diihring! ), acted during these three days like one transformed by a tempest of freedom, like one who has suddenly been lifted to his own height and acquired wings. I always said to him that this was due to the gm?d air up here, that this happened to everybody, that one was not for nothing six thou-sand feet above Bayreuth 3-but he would not believe me.

1 For Nietzsche's relation to this young man, see my note on the "Aftersong" that concludes Beyond Good and Evil (New York, Vintage Books, 1966). 2 See my note in Genealogy II, section 11. a The capital of the Wagner cult. Stein admired Wagner as well as Nietzsche.

22

228 ECCE HOMO

If, in spite of that, some small and great misdemeanors have been committed against me, "the will" cannot be blamed for this, least of all any ill will: sooner could I complain, as I have already suggested, of the good will that has done no small mischief in my life. My experiences entitle me to be quite generally suspicious of the so-called "selfless" drives, of all "neighbor love" that is ready to give advice and go into action. It always seems a weakness to me, a particular case of being incapable of resisting stimuli: pity is considered a virtue only among decadents. I reproach those who are full of pity for easily losing a sense of shame, of respect, of sensi-tivity for distances; before you know it, pity begins to smell of the mob and becomes scarcely distinguishable from bad manners-and sometimes pitying hands can interfere in a downright destructive manner in a great destiny, in the growing solitude of one wounded, in a privileged right to heavy guilt.

The overcoming of pity I count among the noble virtues: as "Zarathustra's temptation" I invented a situation in which a great cry of distress reaches him, as pity tries to attack him like a final sin that would entice him away from himself. To remain the mas-ter at this point, to keep the eminence of one's task undefiled by the many lower and more myopic impulses that are at work in so-called selfless actions, that is the test, perhaps the ultimate test, which a Zarathustra must pass-his real proof of strength.

s

At another point as well, I am merely my father once more and, as it were, his continued life after an all-too-early death. Like everyone who has never lived among his equals and who finds the concept of "retaliation" as inaccessible as, say, the concept of "equal rights," I forbid myself all countermeasures, all protective measures, and, as is only fair, also any defense, any "justification," in cases when some small or very great folly is perpetrated against me. My kind of retaliation consists in following up the stupidity as fast as possible with some good sense: that way one may actually

ZorathustrtziV, Chapter 2.

WHY I AM SO WISE 229

catch up with it.' Metaphorically speaking, I send a box of confec-tions to get rid of a painful story.

One needs only to do me some wrong, I "repay" it-you may be sure of that: soon I find an opportunity for expressing my grati-tude to the "evil-doer" (at times even for his evil deed)--or to ask him for something, which can be more obliging than giving some-thing.

It also seems to me that the rudest word, the rudest letter are still more benign, more decent than silence. Those who remain si-lent are almost always lacking in delicacy and courtesy of the heart. Silence is an objection; swallowing things leads of necessity to a bad character-it even upsets the stomach. All who remain silent are dyspeptic.

You see, I don't want rudeness to be underestimated: it is by far the most humane form of contradiction and, in the midst of effeminacy, one of our foremost virtues.

If one is rich enough for this, it is even a good fortune to be in the wrong. A god who would come to earth must not do anything except wrong: not to take the punishment upon oneself but the

guilt would be divine;2

6 Freedom from ressentiment, enlightenment about ressenti-

ment-who knows how much I am ultimately indebted, in this re-spect also, to my protracted sickness! This problem is far from simple: one must have experienced it from strength as well as from weakness. If anything at all must be adduced against being sick and being weak, it is that man's really remedial instinct, his fighting 1 Cf. the chapter "On The Adder's Bite" in Zarathustra I: "Jf you have an enemy, do not requite him evil with good, for that would put him to shame. Rather prove that he did you some good. And rather be angry than put to shame . ... " 2 Cf. ibid., "Would that you might invent for me the love that bears not only all punishment but also aU guilt!" This theme is developed in Sartre's Flies. For Nietzsche's immense influence on The Flies, see my article on "Nietzsche Between Homer and Sartre" in Revue internationale de philosophie, 1964.

23

!-.

230 ECCE HOMO

instinct' wears out. One cannot get rid of anything, one cannot get over anything, one cannot repel anything-everything hurts. Men and things obtrude too closely; experiences strike one too deeply; memory becomes a festering wound. Sickness itself is a kind of ressentiment.

Against all this the sick person has only one great remedy [ call it Russian fatalism, that fatalism without revolt which is exem-plified by a Russian soldier who, finding a campaign too strenuous, finally lies down in the snow. No longer to accept anything at all. no longer to take anything, no longer to absorb anything-to cease reacting altogether.

This fatalism is not always merely the courage to die; it can also preserve life under the most perilous conditions by reducing the metabolism, slowing it down, as a kind of will to hibernate. Carrying this logic a few steps further, we arrive at the fakir who sleeps for weeks in a grave.

Because one would use oneself up too quickly if one reacted in any way, one does not react at all any more: this is the logic. Nothing burns one up faster than the affects of ressenfiment. Anger, pathological vulnerability, impotent lust for revenge, thirst for revenge, poison-mixing in any sense--no reaction could be more disadvantageous for the exhausted: such affects involve a rapid consumption of nervous energy, a pathological increase of harmful excretions-for example, of the gall bladder into the stom-ach. Ressentiment is what is forbidden par excellence for the sick -it is their specific evil-unfortunately also their most natural in-clination.

This was comprehended by that profound physiologist, the Buddha. His "religion" should rather be called a kind of hygiene, lest it be confused with such pitiable phenomena as Christianity: its effectiveness was made conditional on the victory over ressenti-ment. To liberate the soul from this is the first step toward recov-ery. "Not by enmity is enmity ended; by friendliness enmity is ended": these words stand at the beginning of the doctrine of the

1 Wehr~ und Waffen~Instinkt (emphasized in the original) alludes to Luther's famous hymn, "A mighty fortress is our God, a good defense and weapons [ein' gute Wehr und Waffen]."

WHY 1 AM SO WISE 231

Buddha? It is not morality that speaks thus; thus speaks physiol-Qgy.

Born of weakness, ressentiment is most harmful for the weak themselves. Conversely, given a rich nature, it is a superfluous feel-ing; mastering this feeling is virtually what proves riches. Whoever knows how seriously my philosophy has pursued the fight against 1engefulness and rancor, even mto the doctrine of "free will" -the fight against Christianity is merely a special case of this-will understand why I am making such a point of my own behavior, my instinctive sureness in practice. During periods of decadence I for-bade myself such feelings as harmful; as soon as my vitality was rich and proud enough again, I forbade myself such feelings as beneath me. I displayed the "Russian fatalism" I mentioned by tenaciously clinging for years to all but intolerable situations, places, apartments, and society, merely because they happened to be given by accident: it was better than changing them, than feeling that they could be changed-than rebelling against them.

Any attempt to disturb me in this fatalism, to awaken me by force, used to annoy me mortally-and it actually was mortally dangerous every time.

Accepting oneself as if fated, not wishing oneself "different" -that is in such cases great reason itself.

7

War' is another matter. I am warlike by nature. Attacking is one of my instincts. Being able to be an enemy, being an enemy-perhaps that presupposes a strong nature; in any case, it belongs to every strong nature. It needs objects of resistance; hence it looks

2 Cf .. The Dhammapada, tr. Max: MUller: "Hatred does not cease by hatred at any time: hatred ceases by love" (Chapter !). Given the original context, Nietzsche's comments are not at all far~fetched. s Cf. Twilight, "The Four Great Errors,'' section 7 (Portable Nietzsche, pp. 499ff.). Nietzsche's attack on Christianity cannot be understood apart from the point made in the sentence above. 1 This section throws a great deal of light on some of Nietzsche's other writ ings-especially the chapter "On War and Warriors" in Zarathustra I. Cf. also below, "Human, All-Too-Human," section 1, and "Dawn,'' section 1.

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232 ECCE HOMO

for what resists: the aggressive pathos belongs just as necessarily to strength as vengefulness and rancor belong to weakness. Woman, for example, is vengeful: that is due to her weakness, as much as is her susceptibility to the distress of others.

The strength of those who attack can be measured in a way by the opposition they require: every growth is indicated by the search for a mighty opponent-or problem; for a warlike philosopher challenges problems, too, to single combat. The task is not simply to master what happens to resist, but what requires us to stake all our strength, suppleness, and fighting skill-opponents that are our equals.

Equality before the enemy: the first presupposition of an hon-est duel. Where one feels contempt, one canMt wage war; where one commands, where one sees something beneath oneself, one has no business waging war.

My practice of war can be summed up in four propositions. First: I only attack causes that are victorious; I may even wait until they become victorious. 2

Second: I only attack causes against which I would not find allies, so that I stand alone-so that I compromise.myself alone.-! have never taken a step publicly that did not compromise me: that is my criterion of doing right.

Third: I never attack persons; I merely avail myself of the person as of a strong magnifying glass that allows one to make visible a general but creeping and elusive calamity. Thus I attacked David Strauss--more precisely, the success of a senile book with the "cultured" people in Germany: I caught this culture in the act.

Thus I attacked Wagner-more precisely, the falseness, the half-couth instincts of our "culture" which mistakes the subtle for the rich, and the late for the great.

Fourth: I only attack things when every personal quarrel is excluded, when any background of bad experiences is lacking. On the contrary, attack is in my case a proof of good will, sometimes

2- Nietzsche's first great polemic was directed against the tremendous success of David Friedrich Strauss' book, The Old Falth and The New, and he broke with Wagner only after Wagner had returned to Germany and lri umphed in Bayreuth.

WHY t AM SO WISE 233

e~en of gratitude. I honor, I distinguish by associating my name wtth that of a cause or a person: pro or con-that makes no differ-ence to me at this point. When I wage war against Christianity I am entitled to this because I have never experienced misfortunes and frustrations from that quarter-the most serious Christians have always been well disposed toward me. I myself, an opponent of Christianity de rigueur,S am far from blaming individuals for the calamity of millennia.

8

May I still venture to sketch one final trait of my nature that causes me no little difficulties in my contacts with other men? My instinct for cleanliness is characterized by a perfectly uncanny sen-sitivity so that the proximity or-what am I saying?-the inmost parts, the "entrails" of every soul are physiologically perceived by me-smelled.

This sensitivity furnishes me with psychological antennae with which I feel and get a hold of every secret: the abundant hidden dirt at the bottom of many a character-perhaps the result of bad blood, but glossed over by education--enters my consciousness al-most at the first contact. If my observation has not deceived me, such characters who offend my sense of cleanliness also sense from their side the reserve of my disgust-and this does not make them smell any better.

As bas always been my wont--extreme cleanliness in relation to me is the presupposition of my existence; I perish under unclean conditions--! constantly swim and bathe and splash, as it were, in water-in some perfectly transparent and resplendent element.

~ence association with people imposes no mean test on my pa-tience: my humanity does not consist in feeling with men how they are, but in enduring that I feel with them.t

My humanity is a constant self-overcoming. But I need solitude-which is to say, recovery, return to my-

self, the breath of a free, light, playful air. s In accordance with good manners. 1 Nietzsches critique of pity should be considered in this light

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2.34 ECCE HOMO

My whole Zarathustra is a dithyramb on solitude or, if I have been understood, on cleanliness.-Fortunately not on pure fool-ishness?- Those who have eyes for colors will compare it to a diamond.- Nausea over man, over the "rabble," was always my greatest danger.- Do you want to hear ihe words in which Zara-thustra speaks of the redemption from nausea?

What was it that happened to me? How did I redeem my-self from nausea? Who rejuvenated my sight? How did I fly to the height where no more rabble sits by the well? Was it my nausea itself that created wings for me and water-divining pow-ers? Verily, I had to fly to the highest spheres that I might find ihe fount of pleasure again.

Oh, I found it, my brothers! Here, in the highest spheres the fount of pleasure wells up for me! And here is a life of which the rabble does not drink.

You flow for me almost too violently, fountain of pleas-ure. And often you empty the cup again by wanting to fill it. And I must still learn to approach you more modestly: all too violently my heart still flows toward you-my heart, upon which my summer burns, short, hot, melancholy, overbliss-ful: how my summer heart craves your coolness!

Gone is the hesitant gloom of my spring! Gone the snow-flakes of my malice in June! Summer have I become en-tirely, and summer noon! A summer in the highest spheres with cold wells and blissful silence: oh, come, my friends, that ihe silence may become still more blissful!

For this is our height and our home: we live here too high and steep for all the unclean and their thirst. Cast your pure eyes into the well of my pleasure, friends! How should that make it muddy? It shall laugh back at you in its own purity.

On the tree, Future, we build our nest; and in our solitude eagles shall bring us nourishment in their beaks. Verily, no nourishment that the unclean might share: they would think

2 Wagner himself had characterized his Parsifal as the pure fool. B This long passage is quoted from the chapter "On The Rabble .. in Zara-thustra II. But in Zarathustra, Nietzsche had .. the malice of my snowflakes in Sunel"

WHY 1 AM SO WISE Z35

ee~l were devouring fire, and they would burn their mouths en y, we k~ep no homes here for the unclean: our leasur~

would be an Ice cave to. their bodies and their spirits. p b ~nd we want t~ hve over them like strong winds, neigh-;rs ': the eagles, ?eighbors of ihe snow, neighbors of the sun:

us hve strong wmds. And like a wind I yet want to blow amf tohn? th~~ one day, and with my spirit take away the breath o eir spmt: thus my future wills it.

':erily, a stron? wind is Zarathustra for all who are low; and this counsel I give to all his enemies and all who spit and spew: Beware of spitting against the wind! . . .