Part 14

The individual is something quite _new,_ and capable of _creating new things._ He is something absolute, and all his actions are quite his own. The individual in the end has to seek the valuation for his actions in himself: because he has to give an individual meaning even to traditional words and notions. His interpretation of a formula is at least personal, even if he does not create the formula itself: at least as an interpreter he is creative.

768.

The "ego" oppresses and kills. It acts like an organic cell. It is predatory and violent. It would fain regenerate itself--pregnancy. It would fain give birth to its God and see all mankind at its feet.

769.

Every living organism gropes around as far as its power permits, and overcomes all that is weaker than itself: by this means it finds pleasure in its own existence. The _increasing "humanity"_ of this tendency consists in the fact that we are beginning to feel ever more subtly how difficult it is really to _absorb_ others: while we could show our power by injuring him, his will _estranges_ him from us, and thus makes him less susceptible of being overcome.

770.

The degree of resistance which has to be continually overcome in order to remain _at the top,_ is the measure of _freedom,_ whether for individuals or for societies: freedom being understood as positive power, as will to power. The highest form of individual freedom, of sovereignty, would, according to this, in all probability be found not five feet away from its opposite--that is to say, where the danger of slavery hangs over life, like a hundred swords of Damocles. Let any one go through the whole of history from this point of view: the ages when the individual reaches perfect maturity, _i.e._ the free ages, when the classical type, _sovereign man,_ is attained to--these were certainly not humane times!

There should be no choice: either one must be uppermost or nethermost--like a worm, despised, annihilated, trodden upon. One must have tyrants against one in order to become a tyrant, _i.e._ in order to be free. It is no small advantage to have a hundred swords of Damocles suspended over one: it is only thus that one learns to dance, it is only thus that one attains to any freedom in one's movements.

771.

Man more than any other animal was originally _altruistic_--hence his slow growth (child) and lofty development. Hence, too, his extraordinary and latest kind of egoism.--Beasts of prey are much more _individualistic._

772.

A criticism of _selfishness._ The involuntary ingenuousness of La Rochefoucauld, who believed that he was saying something bold, liberal, and paradoxical (in his days, of course, truth in psychological matters was something that astonished people) when he said. "_Les grandes âmes ne sont pas celles qui ont moins de passions et plus de vertus que les âmes communes, mais seulement celles qui ont de plus grands desseins._" Certainly, John Stuart Mill (who calls Chamfort the _noble_ and philosophical La Rochefoucauld of the eighteenth century) recognises in him merely an astute and keen-sighted observer of all that which is the result of habitual selfishness in the human breast, and he adds: "A noble spirit is unable to see the necessity of a constant observation of _baseness_ and _contemptibility_, unless it were to show against what corrupting influences a lofty spirit and a noble character were able to triumph."

773.

_The Morphology of the Feelings of Self._

_First standpoint_--To what extent are _sympathy_ or _communal feelings,_ the lower or preparatory states, at a time when personal self-esteem and initiative in valuation, on the part of individuals, are not yet possible?

_Second standpoint._--To what extent is the zenith of collective self-esteem, the pride in the distinction of the clan, the feeling of inequality and a certain abhorrence of mediation, of equal rights and of reconciliation, the school for individual self-esteem? It may be this in so far as it compels the individual to represent the pride of the community --he is obliged to speak and act with tremendous self-respect, because he stands for the community And the same holds good when the individual regards himself as the instrument or speaking-tube of a godhead.

_Third standpoint._--To what extent do these forms of impersonality invest the individual with enormous importance? In so far as higher powers are using him as an intermediary: religious shyness towards one's self is the condition of prophets and poets.

_Fourth standpoint._--To what extent does responsibility for a whole educate the individual in foresight, and give him a severe and terrible hand, a calculating and cold heart, majesty of bearing and of action--things which he would not allow himself if he stood only for his own rights?

In short, collective self-esteem is the great preparatory school for personal sovereignty. The noble caste is that which creates the heritage of this faculty.

774.

The disguised forms of will to power:--

(1) _The desire for freedom,_ for independence for equilibrium, for peace, for _co-ordination._ Also that of the anchorite, the "Free-Spirit." In its lowest form, the will to live at all costs--the instinct of self-preservation.

(2) Subordination, with the view of satisfying the will to power of a whole community; submissiveness, the making of one's self indispensable and useful to him who has the power; love, a secret path to the heart of the powerful, in order to become his master.

(3) The feeling of duty, conscience, the imaginary comfort of belonging to a higher order than those who actually hold the reins of power; the acknowledgment of an order of rank which allows of judging even the more powerful, self-depreciation; the discovery of new _codes of morality_ (of which the Jews are a classical example).

775.

_Praise and gratitude as forms of will to power.--_Praise and gratitude for harvests, for good weather, victories, marriages, and peace--all festivals need a subject on which feeling can be outpoured. The desire is to make all good things that happen to one appear as though they had been done to one: people will have a donor. The same holds good of the work of art: people are not satisfied with it alone, they must praise the artist.--What, then, is praise? It is a sort of compensation for benefits received, a sort of giving back, a manifestation of _our_ power--for the man who praises assents to, blesses, values, _judges_. he arrogates to himself the right to give his consent to a thing, to be able to confer honours. An increased feeling of happiness or of liveliness is also an increased feeling of power, and it is as a result of this feeling that a man _praises_ (it is as the outcome of this feeling that he invents a donor, a "subject"). Gratitude is thus revenge of a lofty kind: it is most severely exercised and demanded where equality and pride both require to be upheld--that is to say, where revenge is practised to its fullest extent.

776.

_Concerning the Machiavellism of Power._

The _will to power_ appears:--

_(a)_ Among the oppressed and slaves of all kinds, in the form of will to "_freedom_": the mere fact of breaking loose from something seems to be an end in itself (in a religio-moral sense: "One is only answerable to one's own conscience"; "evangelical freedom," etc. etc.),

_(b)_ In the case of a stronger species, ascending to power, in the form of the will to overpower. If this fails, then it shrinks to the "will to justice"--that is to say, to the will to the same measure of rights as the ruling caste possesses.

_(c)_ In the case of the strongest, richest, most independent, and most courageous, in the form of "love of humanity," of "love of the people," of the "gospel," of "truth" of "God," of "pity," of self sacrifice," etc. etc.; in the form of overpowering, of deeds of capture, of imposing service on some one, of an instinctive reckoning of one's self as part of a great mass of power to which one attempts to give a direction: the hero, the prophet, the Cæsar, the Saviour, the bell-wether. (The love of the sexes also belongs to this category, it will overpower something, possess it utterly, and it looks like self-abnegation. At bottom it is only the love of one's instrument, of one's "horse"--the conviction that things belong to one because one is in a position to use them.)

_"Freedom," "Justice," "Love"_!!!

777.

_Love._--Behold this love and pity of women--what could be more egoistic? ... And when they do sacrifice themselves and their honour or reputation, to whom do they sacrifice themselves? To the man? Is it not rather to an unbridled desire? These desires are quite as selfish, even though they may be beneficial to others and provoke gratitude. ... To what extent can such a hyperfœtation of one valuation sanctify everything else!!

778.

_"Senses," "Passions."._--When the fear of the senses and of the passions and of the desires becomes so great as to warn us against them, it is already a symptom of _weakness:_ extreme measures always characterise abnormal conditions. That which is lacking here, or more precisely that which is decaying, is the power to resist an impulse: when one feels instinctively that one must yield,--that is to say, that one must react,--then it is an excellent thing to avoid opportunities (temptations).

The stimulation of the senses is only a temptation in so far as those creatures are concerned whose systems are easily swayed and influenced: on the other hand, in the case of remarkable constitutional obtuseness and hardness, strong stimuli are necessary in order to set the functions in motion. Dissipation can only be objected to in the case of one who has no right to it; and almost all passions have fallen into disrepute thanks to those who were not strong enough to convert them to their own advantage.

One should understand that passions are open to the same objections as illnesses: yet we should not be justified in doing without illnesses, and still less without passions. We require the abnormal; we give life a tremendous shock by means of these great illnesses.

In detail the following should be distinguished:--

(1) The _dominating passion,_ which may even bring the supremest form of health with it: in this case the co-ordination of the internal system and its functions to perform one task is best attained,--but this is almost a definition of health.

(2) The antagonism of the passions the double, treble, and multiple soul in one breast:[6] this is very unhealthy; it is a sign of inner ruin and of disintegration, betraying and promoting an internal dualism and anarchy--unless, of course, one passion becomes master. _Return to health._

(3) The juxtaposition of passions without their being either opposed or united with one another. Very often transitory, and then, as soon as order is established, this condition may be a healthy one. A most interesting class of men belong to this order, the chameleons; they are not necessarily at loggerheads with themselves, they are both happy and secure, but they cannot develop--their moods lie side by side, even though they may seem to lie far apart. They change, but they become nothing.

[Footnote 6: This refers to Goethe's _Faust._ In Part I., Act I., Scene 11., we find Faust exclaiming in despair: "Two souls, alas! within my bosom throne!" See Theodore Martin's _Faust,_ translated into English verse.--Tr.]

779.

The quantitative estimate of aims and its influence upon the valuing standpoint, the _great_ and the _small_ criminal. The greatness or smallness of the aims will determine whether the doer feels respect for himself with it all, or whether he feels pusillanimous and miserable.

The degree of intellectuality manifested in the means employed may likewise influence our valuation. How differently the philosophical innovator, experimenter, and man of violence stands out against robbers, barbarians, adventurers!--There is a semblance of disinterestedness in the former.

Finally, noble manners, bearing, courage, self-confidence,--how they alter the value of that which is attained by means of them!

***

Concerning the optics of valuation:--

The influence of the greatness or smallness of the aims.

The influence of the intellectuality of the means. The influence of the behaviour in action. The influence of success or failure. The influence of opposing forces and their value. The influence of that which is permitted and that which is forbidden.

780.

The tricks by means of which actions, measures, and passions are legitimised, which from an individual standpoint are no longer good form or even in good taste.--

Art, which allows us to enter such strange worlds, makes them tasteful to us.

Historians prove its justification and reason; travels, exoticism, psychology, penal codes, the lunatic asylum, the criminal, sociology.

Impersonality (so that as media of a collective whole we allow ourselves these passions and action--the Bar, juries, the bourgeois, the soldier, the minister, the prince, society, "critics") makes us feel that we are _sacrificing something._

781.

Preoccupations concerning one's self and one's eternal salvation are not expressive either of a rich or of a self-confident nature, for the latter lets all questions of eternal bliss go to the devil,--it is not interested in such matters of happiness it is all power, deeds, desires; it imposes itself upon things; it even violates things. The Christian is a romantic hypochondriac who does not stand firmly on his legs.

Whenever hedonistic views come to the front, one can always presuppose the existence of pain and a certain ill-constitutedness.

782.

"The growing autonomy of the individual"--Parisian philosophers like M. Fouillée talk of such things: they would do well to study the _race moutonnière_ for a moment; for they belong to it. For Heaven's sake open your eyes, ye sociologists who deal with the future! The individual grew strong under quite opposite conditions: ye describe the extremest weakening and impoverishment of man; ye actually want this weakness and impoverishment, and ye apply the whole lying machinery of the old ideal in order to achieve your end. Ye are so constituted that ye actually regard your gregarious wants as an ideal! Here we are in the presence of an absolute lack of psychological honesty.

783.

The two traits which characterise the modern European are apparently antagonistic _individualism and the demand for equal rights_: this I am at last beginning to understand. The individual is an extremely vulnerable piece of vanity: this vanity, when it is conscious of its high degree of susceptibility to pain, demands that every one should be made equal; that the individual should only stand _inter pares_. But in this way a social race is depicted in which, as a matter of fact, gifts and powers are on the whole equally distributed. The pride which would have loneliness and but few appreciators is quite beyond comprehension: really "great" successes are only attained through the masses--indeed, we scarcely understand yet that a mob success is in reality only a small success; because _pulchrum est paucorum hominum._

No morality will countenance order of rank among men, and the jurists know nothing of a communal conscience. The principle of individualism rejects _really great_ men, and demands the most delicate vision for, and the speediest discovery of, a talent among people who are almost equal; and inasmuch as every one has some modicum of talent in such late and civilised cultures (and can, therefore, expect to receive his share of honour), there is a more general buttering-up of modest merits to-day than there has ever been. This gives the age the appearance of _unlimited justice._ Its want of justice is to be found not in its unbounded hatred of tyrants and demagogues, even in the arts; but in its detestation of noble natures who scorn the praise of the many. The demand for equal rights (that is to say, the privilege of sitting in judgment on everything and everybody) is anti-aristocratic.

This age knows just as little concerning the absorption of the individual, of his mergence into a great type of men who do not want to be personalities. It was this that formerly constituted the distinction and the zeal of many lofty natures (the greatest poets among them); or of the desire to be a _polis,_ as in Greece; or of Jesuitism, or of the Prussian Staff Corps, and bureaucracy; or of apprenticeship and a continuation of the tradition of great masters: to all of which things, non-social conditions and the absence of _petty vanity_ are necessary.

784.

_Individualism_ is a modest and still unconscious form of will to power; with it a single human unit seems to think it sufficient to free himself from the preponderating power of society (or of the State or Church). He does not set himself up in opposition as a _personality,_ but merely as a unit; he represents the rights of all other individuals as against the whole. That is to say, he instinctively places himself on a level with every other unit: what he combats he does not combat as a person, but as a representative of units against a mass.

Socialism is merely an agitatory measure of individualism: it recognises the fact that in order to attain to something, men must organise themselves into a general movement--into a "power." But what the Socialist requires is not society as the object of the individual, _but society as a means of making many individuals possible_: this is the instinct of Socialists, though they frequently deceive themselves on this point (apart from this, however, in order to make their kind prevail, they are compelled to deceive others to an enormous extent). Altruistic moral preaching thus enters into the service of individual egoism,--one of the most common frauds of the nineteenth century.

_Anarchy_ is also merely an agitatory measure of Socialism; with it the Socialist inspires fear, with fear he begins to fascinate and to terrorise: but what he does above all is to draw all courageous and reckless people to his side, even in the most intellectual spheres.

In spite of all this, individualism is the most modest stage of the will to power.

***

When one has reached a certain degree of independence, one always longs for more: separation in proportion to the degree of force; the individual is no longer content to regard himself as equal to everybody, he actually _seeks for his peer_--he makes himself stand out from others. Individualism is followed by a development in groups and organs; correlative tendencies join up together and become powerfully active: now there arise between these centres of power, friction, war, a reconnoitring of the forces on either side, reciprocity, understandings, and the regulation of mutual services. Finally, there appears an order of rank.

Recapitulation--

1. The individuals emancipate themselves.

2. They make war, and ultimately agree concerning equal rights (justice is made an end in itself).

3. Once this is reached, the actual differences in degrees of power begin to make themselves felt, and to a greater extent than before (the reason being that on the whole peace is established, and innumerable small centres of power begin to create differences which formerly were scarcely noticeable). Now the individuals begin to form groups, these strive after privileges and preponderance, and war starts afresh in a milder form.

People demand freedom only when they have no power. Once power is obtained, a preponderance thereof is the next thing to be coveted; if this is not achieved (owing to the fact that one is still too weak for it), then _"justice" i.e. "equality_ of power" become the objects of desire.

785.

_The rectification of the concept "egoism."_--When one has discovered what an error the "individual" is, and that every single creature represents the whole process of evolution (not alone "inherited," but in "himself"), the individual then acquires _an inordinately great importance._ The voice of instinct is quite right here. When this instinct tends to decline, _i.e._ when the individual begins to seek his worth in his services to others, one may be sure that exhaustion and degeneration have set in. An altruistic attitude of mind, when it is fundamental and free from all hypocrisy, is the instinct of creating a second value for one's self in the service of other egoists. As a rule, however, it is only apparent--a circuitous path to the preservation of one's own feelings of vitality and worth.

786.

_The History of Moralisation and Demoralisation._

_Proposition one._--There are no such things as moral actions: they are purely imaginary. Not only is it impossible to demonstrate their existence (a fact which Kant and Christianity, for instance, both acknowledged) but they are not even possible. Owing to psychological misunderstanding, a man invented an _opposite_ to the instinctive impulses of life, and believed that a new species of instinct was thereby discovered: a _primum mobile_ was postulated which does not exist at all. According to the valuation which gave rise to the antithesis "moral" and "immoral," one should say: _There is nothing else on earth but immoral intentions and actions._

_Proposition two._----The whole differentiation, "moral" and "immoral," arises from the assumption that both moral and immoral actions are the result of a spontaneous will--in short, that such a will exists; or in other words, that moral judgments can only hold good with regard to intuitions and actions _that are free._ But this whole order of actions and intentions is purely imaginary: the only world to which the moral standard could be applied does not exist at all: _there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral action._

The _psychological error_ out of which the antithesis "moral" and "immoral" arose is: "selfless," "unselfish," "self-denying"--all unreal and fantastic.

A false dogmatism also clustered around the concept "ego"; it was regarded as atomic, and falsely opposed to a non-ego; it was also liberated from Becoming, and declared to belong to the sphere of Being. The false materialisation of the ego: this (owing to the belief in individual immortality) was made an article of faith under the pressure of _religio-moral discipline._ According to this artificial liberation of the ego and its transference to the realm of the absolute, people thought that they had arrived at an antithesis in values which seemed quite irrefutable--the single ego and the vast non-ego. It seemed obvious that the value of the individual ego could only exist in conjunction with the vast non-ego, more particularly in the sense of being subject to it and existing only for its sake. Here, of course, the gregarious instinct determined the direction of thought: nothing is more opposed to this instinct than the sovereignty of the individual. Supposing, however, that the ego be absolute, then its value must lie in _self-negation._

Thus: (1) the false emancipation of the "individual" as an atom;

(2) The gregarious self-conceit which abhors the desire to remain an atom, and regards it as hostile.

(3) As a result: the overcoming of the individual by changing his aim.

(4) At this point there appeared to be actions that were self-effacing: around these actions a whole sphere of antitheses was fancied.

(5) It was asked, in what sort of actions does man most strongly assert himself? Around these (sexuality, covetousness, lust for power, cruelty, etc. etc.) hate, contempt, and anathemas were heaped: it was believed that there could be such things as selfless impulses. Everything selfish was condemned, everything unselfish was in demand.