Part 16

_Virtue_ is no longer believed in; its powers of attraction are dead; what is needed is some one who will once more bring it into the market in the form of an outlandish kind of adventure and of dissipation. It exacts too much extravagance and narrow-mindedness from its believers to allow of conscience not being against it to-day. Certainly, for people, without either consciences or scruples, this may constitute its new charm: it is now what it has never been before--a vice.

325.

Virtue is still the most expensive vice: _let_ it remain so!

326.

Virtues are as dangerous as vices, in so far as they are allowed to rule over one as authorities and laws coming from outside, and not as qualities one develops one's self. The latter is the only right way; they should be the most personal means of defence and most individual needs--the determining factors of precisely _our_ existence and growth, which we recognise and acknowledge independently of the question whether others grow with us with the help of the same or of different principles. This view of the danger of the virtue which is understood as impersonal and _objective_ also holds good of modesty: through modesty many of the choicest intellects perish. The morality of modesty is the worst possible softening influence for those souls for which it is pre-eminently necessary that they become _hard_ betimes.

327.

The domain of morality must be reduced and limited step by step; the names of the instincts which are really active in this sphere must be drawn into the light of day and honoured, after they have lain all this time in the concealment of hypocritical names of virtue. Out of respect for one's "honesty," which makes itself heard ever more and more imperiously, one ought to unlearn the shame which makes one deny and "explain away" all natural instincts. The extent to which one can dispense with virtue is the measure of one's strength; and a height may be imagined where the notion "virtue" is understood in such a way as to be reminiscent of _virtù_--the virtue of the Renaissance--free from moralic acid. But for the moment--how remote this ideal seems!

_The reduction of the domain of morality_ is a sign of its progress. Wherever, hitherto, thought has not been guided by causality, thinking has taken a _moral_ turn.

328.

After all, what have I achieved? Let us not close our eyes to this wonderful result: I have lent new _charms_ to virtue--it now affects one in the same way as something _forbidden._ It has our most subtle honesty against it, it is salted in the "_cum grano salis_" of the scientific pang of conscience. It savours of antiquity and of old fashion, and thus it is at last beginning to draw refined people and to make them inquisitive--in short, it affects us like a vice. Only after we have once recognised that everything consists of lies and appearance, shall we have again earned the right to uphold this most beautiful of all fictions--virtue. There will then remain no further reason to deprive ourselves of it: only when we have shown virtue to be a _form of immorality_ do we again _justify it,_--it then becomes classified, and likened, in its fundamental features, to the profound and general immorality of all existence, of which it is then shown to be a part. It appears as a form of luxury of the first order, the most arrogant, the dearest, and rarest form of vice. We have robbed it of its grimaces and divested it of its drapery; we have delivered it from the importunate familiarity of the crowd; we have deprived it of its ridiculous rigidity, its empty expression, its stiff false hair, and its hieratic muscles.

329.

And is it supposed that I have thereby done any harm to virtue?... Just as little as anarchists do to princes. Only since they have been shot at, have they once more sat securely on their thrones.... For thus it has always been and will ever be: one cannot do a thing a better service than to persecute it and to run it to earth.... This--I have done.

5. THE MORAL IDEAL.

A. _A Criticism of Ideals._

330.

It were the thing to begin this criticism in suchwise as to do away with the word "_Ideal_": a criticism of _desiderata._

331.

Only the fewest amongst us are aware of what is involved, from the standpoint of _desirability,_ in every "thus should it be, but it is not," or even "thus it ought to have been": such expressions of opinion involve a condemnation of the whole course of events. For there is nothing quite isolated in the world: the smallest thing bears the largest on its back; on thy small injustice the whole nature of the future depends; the whole is condemned by every criticism which is directed at the smallest part of it. Now granting that the moral norm--even as Kant understood it--is never completely fulfilled, and remains like a sort of Beyond hanging over reality without ever falling down to it; then morality would contain in itself a judgment concerning the whole, which would still, however, allow of the question: _whence does it get the right thereto?_ How does the part come to acquire this judicial position relative to the whole? And if, as some have declared, this moral condemnation of, and dissatisfaction with, reality, is an ineradicable instinct, is it not possible that this instinct may perhaps belong to the ineradicable stupidities and immodesties of our species?--But in saying this, we are doing precisely what we deprecate; the point of view of desirability and of unauthorised fault-finding is part and parcel of the whole character of worldly phenomena just as every injustice and imperfection is--it is our very notion of "perfection" which is never gratified. Every instinct which desires to be indulged gives expression to its dissatisfaction with the present state of things: how? Is the whole perhaps made up of a host of dissatisfied parts, which all have desiderata in their heads? Is the "course of things" perhaps "the road hence? the road leading away from reality "--that is to say, eternal dissatisfaction in itself? Is the conception of desiderata perhaps the essential motive-power of all things? Is it--_deus_?

***

It seems to me of the utmost importance that we should rid ourselves of the notion of _the_ whole, of an entity, and of any kind of power or form of the unconditioned. For we shall never be able to resist the temptation of regarding it as the supreme being, and of christening it "God." The "All" must be subdivided; we must unlearn our respect for it, and reappropriate that which we have lent the unknown and an imaginary entity, for the purposes of our neighbour and ourselves. Whereas, for instance, Kant said: "Two things remain for ever worthy of honour" (at the close of his _Practical Reason_)--to-day we should prefer to say: "Digestion is more worthy of honour." The concept, "the All," will always give rise to the old problems, "How is evil possible?" etc. Therefore, _there is no "All",_ there _is no_ great _sensorium_ or _inventarium_ or power-magazine.

332.

A man as he _ought_ to be: this sounds to me in just as bad taste as: "A tree as it ought to be."

333.

Ethics: or the "philosophy of desirability."--"Things _ought_ to be otherwise," "things _ought_ to become different": dissatisfaction would thus seem the heart of ethics.

One could find a way out of it, first, by selecting only those states in which one is free from emotion; secondly, by grasping the insolence and stupidity of the attitude of mind: for to desire that something should be otherwise than it is, means to desire that _everything_ should be different--it involves a damaging criticism of the whole. _But life itself consists in such desiring!_

To ascertain _what exists, how it exists_ seems an ever so much higher and more serious matter than every "thus should it be," because the latter, as a piece of human criticism and arrogance, appears to be condemned as ludicrous from the start. It expresses a need which would fain have the organisation of the world correspond with our human well-being, and which directs the will as much as possible towards the accomplishment of that relationship.

On the other hand, this desire, "thus it ought to be," has only called forth that other desire, "_what exists?_" The desire of knowing what exists, is already a consequence of the question, "how? is it possible? Why precisely so?" Our wonder at the disagreement between our desires and the course of the world has led to our learning to know the course of the world. Perhaps the matter stands differently: maybe the expression, "thus it ought to be," is merely the utterance of our desire to overcome the world----

334.

To-day when every attempt at determining how man should be--is received with some irony, when we adhere to the notion that in spite of all one only _becomes_ what one _is_(in spite of all--that is to say, education, instruction, environment, accident, and disaster), in the matter of morality we have learnt, in a very peculiar way, how to _reverse_ the relation of cause and effect. Nothing perhaps distinguishes us more than this from the ancient believers in morality. We no longer say, for instance, "Vice is the cause of a man's physical ruin," and we no longer say, "A man prospers with virtue because it brings a long life and happiness." Our minds to-day are much more inclined to the belief that vice and virtue are not causes but only _effects._ A man becomes a respectable member of society because he _was_ a respectable man from the start--that is to say, because he was born in possession of good instincts and prosperous propensities.... Should a man enter the world poor, and the son of parents who are neither economical nor thrifty, he is insusceptible of being improved--that is to say, he is only fit for the prison or the madhouse.... To-day we are no longer able to separate moral from physical degeneration: the former is merely a complicated symptom of the latter; a man is necessarily bad just as he is necessarily ill.... Bad: this word here stands for a certain _lack of capacity_ which is related physiologically with the degenerating type--for instance, a weak will, an uncertain and many-sided personality, the inability to resist reacting to a stimulus and to control one's self, and a certain constraint resulting from every suggestion proceeding from another's will. Vice is not a cause; it is an _effect._ ... Vice is a somewhat arbitrary-epitome of certain effects resulting from physiological degeneracy. A general proposition such as that which Christianity teaches, namely, "Man is evil," would be justified provided one were justified in regarding a given type of degenerate man as normal. But this may be an exaggeration. Of course, wherever Christianity prospers and prevails, the proposition holds good: for then the existence of an unhealthy soil--of a degenerate territory--is demonstrated.

335.

It is difficult to have sufficient respect for man, when one sees how he understands the art of fighting his way, of enduring, of turning circumstances to his own advantage, and of overthrowing opponents; but when he is seen in the light of his _desires,_ he is the most absurd of all animals. It is just as if he required a playground for his cowardice, his laziness, his feebleness, his sweetness, his submissiveness, where he recovers from his strong virile virtues. Just look at man's "_desiderata_" and his "ideals." Man, when he _desires, _ tries to recover from that which is eternally valuable in him, from his deeds; and then he rushes into nonentity, absurdity, valuelessness, childishness. The intellectual indigence and lack of inventive power of this resourceful and inventive animal is simply terrible. The "ideal" is at the same time the penalty man pays for the enormous expenditure which he has to defray in all real and pressing duties.--Should reality cease to prevail, there follow dreams, fatigue, weakness: an "ideal" might even be regarded as a form of dream, fatigue, or weakness. The strongest and the most impotent men become alike when this condition overtakes them: they _deify_ the cessation of work, of war, of passions, of suspense, of contrasts, of "reality "--in short, of the struggle for knowledge and of the _trouble_ of acquiring it.

"Innocence" to them is idealised stultification; "blessedness" is idealised idleness; "love," the ideal state of the gregarious animal that will no longer have an enemy. And thus everything that lowers and belittles man is elevated to an _ideal_.

336.

A desire _magnifies_ the thing desired; and by not being realised it grows--the _greatest ideas_ are those which have been created by the strongest and longest desiring. Things grow _ever more valuable_ in our estimation, the more our desire for them increases: if "moral values" have become the highest values, it simply shows that the moral ideal is the one which has been _realised least_ (and thus it _represented the Beyond to all suffering,_ as a road to _blessedness_). Man, with ever-increasing ardour, has only been embracing _clouds_: and ultimately called his desperation and impotence "God."

337.

Think of the _naïveté_ of all ultimate "desiderata"--when the "wherefore" of man remains unknown.

338.

What is the counterfeit coinage of morality? First of all we should know what "good and evil" mean. That is as good as wishing to know why man is here, and what his goal or his destiny is. And that means that one would fain know that man actually _has_ a goal or a destiny.

The very obscure and arbitrary notion that humanity has a general duty to perform, and that, as a whole, it is striving towards a goal, is still in its infancy. Perhaps we shall once more be rid of it before it becomes a "fixed idea." ... But humanity does not constitute a whole: it is an indissoluble multiplicity of ascending and descending organisms--it knows no such thing as a state of youth followed by _maturity_ and then age. But its strata lie confused and superimposed--and in a few thousand years there may be even younger types of men than we can point out to-day. Decadence, on the other hand, belongs to all periods of human history: everywhere there is refuse and decaying matter, such things are in themselves vital processes; for withering and decaying elements must be eliminated.

Under the empire of Christian prejudice _this question was never put at all_: the purpose of life seemed to lie in the salvation of the individual soul; the question whether humanity might last for a long or a short time was not considered. The best Christians longed for the end to come as soon as possible;--concerning the needs of the individual, _there seemed to be no doubt whatsoever._ ... The duty of every individual for the present was identical with what it would be in any sort of future for the man of the future: the value, the purpose, the limit of values was for ever fixed, unconditioned, eternal, one with God.... What deviated from this eternal type was impious, diabolic, criminal.

The centre of gravity of all values for each soul lay in that soul itself: salvation or damnation! The salvation of the _immortal_ soul! The most extreme form of _personalisation...._ For each soul there was only one kind of perfection; only one ideal, only one road to salvation.... The most extreme form of the principle of _equal rights,_ associated with an optical magnification of individual importance to the point of megalomania.... Nothing but insanely important souls, revolving round their own axes with unspeakable terror....

***

Nobody believes in these assumed airs of importance any longer to-day: and we have sifted our wisdom through the sieve of contempt. Nevertheless the _optical habit_ survives, which would fain measure the value of man by his proximity to a certain _ideal maw._ at bottom the personalisation view is upheld as firmly as that of the _equality of rights as regards the ideal._ In short: people _seem to think that they know_ what _the ultimate desideratum_ is in regard to the ideal man....

But this belief is merely the result of the exceedingly _detrimental influence_ of the Christian ideal, as anybody can discover for himself every time he carefully examines the "ideal type." In the first place, it is believed that the approach to a given "type" is desirable; _secondly,_ that this particular type is known; _thirdly,_ that every deviation from this type is a retrograde movement, a stemming of the spirit of progress, a loss of power and might in man.... To dream of a state of affairs in which this _perfect_ man will be in the majority: our friends the Socialists and even Messrs. the Utilitarians have not reached a higher level than this. In this way an _aim_ seems to have crept into the _evolution_ of man: at any rate the belief in a certain _progress towards an ideal_ is the only shape in which an _aim_ is conceived in the history of mankind to-day. In short: the coming of the "_Kingdom of God_" has been placed in the future, and has been given an earthly, a human meaning--but on the whole the faith in the _old_ ideal is still maintained....

340.

_The more concealed forms of the cult of Christian, moral ideals._--The _insipid and cowardly notion "Nature"_ invented by Nature-enthusiasts (without any knowledge whatsoever of the terrible, the implacable, and the cynical element in even "the most beautiful" aspects), is only a sort of attempt at _reading_ the moral and Christian notion of "humanity" into Nature;--Rousseau's concept of Nature, for instance, which took for granted that "Nature" meant freedom, goodness, innocence, equity, justice, and _Idylls,_ was nothing more at bottom than the cult of Christian morality. We should collect passages from the poets in order to see _what_ they admired, in lofty mountains, for instance. What Goethe had to do with them--why he admired Spinoza. Absolute _ignorance_ concerning the reasons of this _cult...._

The _insipid and cowardly concept "Man"_ à la Comte and Stuart Mill, is at times the subject of a cult.... This is only the Christian moral ideal again under another name.... Refer also to the freethinkers--Guyau for example.

The _insipid and cowardly concept "Art"_ which is held to mean sympathy with all suffering and with everything botched and bungled (the same thing happens to _history,_ cf. Thierry): again it is the cult of the Christian moral ideal.

And now, as to the whole _socialistic ideal_: it is nothing but a blockheaded misunderstanding of the Christian moral ideal.

341.

_The origin of the ideal._ The examination of the soil out of which it grows.

_A._ Starting out from those "æsthetic" mental states during which the world seems rounder, fuller, and _more perfect_: we have the pagan ideal with its dominating spirit of self-affirmation (_people give of their abundance_). The highest type: the _classical_ ideal--regarded as an expression of the successful nature of _all_ the more important instincts. In this classical ideal we find _the grand style_ as the highest style. An expression of the "will to power" itself. The instinct which is most feared _dares to acknowledge itself._

_B._ Starting out from the mental states in which the world seemed emptier, paler, and thinner, when "spiritualisation" and the absence of sensuality assume the rank of perfection, and when all that is brutal, animal, direct, and proximate is avoided (_people calculate and select_): the "sage," "the angel"; priestliness = virginity = ignorance, are the physiological ideals of such idealists: the _anæmic_ ideal. Under certain circumstances this anæmic ideal may be the ideal of such natures as _represent_ paganism (thus Goethe sees his "saint" in Spinoza).

_C._ Starting out from those mental states in which the world seemed more absurd, more evil, poorer, and more deceptive, an ideal cannot even be imagined or desired in it (_people deny and annihilate_); the projection of the ideal into the sphere of the anti-natural, anti-actual, anti-logical; the state of him who judges thus (the "impoverishment" of the world as a result of suffering: _people take, they no longer bestow_): the _anti-natural ideal._

(The _Christian ideal_ is a _transitional form_ between the second and the third, now inclining more towards the former type, and anon inclining towards the latter.)

_The three ideals: A._ Either a _strengthening_ of Life (_paganism,_) or _B._ an _impoverishment_ of Life (_anæmia_), or _C._ a _denial_ of Life (_anti-naturalism_). The state of beatitude in _A._ is the feeling of extreme abundance; in _B._ it is reached by the most fastidious selectiveness; in _C._ it is the contempt and the destruction of Life.

342.

_A._ The _consistent_ type understands that even evil must not be hated, must not be resisted, and that it is not allowable to make war against one's self; that it does not suffice merely to accept the pain which such behaviour brings in its train; that one lives entirely in positive feelings; that one takes the side of one's opponents in word and deed; that by means of a superfœtation of peaceful, kindly, conciliatory, helpful, and loving states, one impoverishes the soil of the other states, ... that one is in need of unremitting _practice._ What is achieved thereby?--The Buddhistic type, or the _perfect_ cow.

This point of view is possible only where no moral fanaticism prevails--that is to say, when evil is not hated on its own account, but because it opens the road to conditions which are painful (unrest, work, care, complications, dependence).

This is the Buddhistic point of view: there is no hatred of sin, the concept "sin," in fact, is entirely lacking.

_B._ The _inconsistent_ type. War is waged against evil--there is a belief that war waged _for Goodness' sake_ does not involve the same moral results or affect character in the same way as war generally does (and owing to which tendencies it is detested as _evil)._ As a matter of fact, a war of this sort carried on against evil is much more profoundly pernicious than any sort of personal hostility; and generally, it is "the person" which reassumes, at least in fancy, the position of opponent (the devil, evil spirits, etc.). The attitude of hostile observation and spying in regard to everything which may be bad in us, or hail from a bad source, culminates in a most tormented and most anxious state of mind: thus "miracles," rewards, ecstasy, and transcendental solutions of the earth-riddle now became _desirable_. ... The Christian type: or the _perfect bigot_.

_C._ The _stoical_ type. Firmness, self-control, imperturbability, peace in the form of the rigidity of a will long active--profound quiet, the defensive state, the fortress, the mistrust of war--firmness of principles; the unity of _knowledge_ and _will_; great self-respect. The type of the anchorite. _The perfect blockhead._

343.

An ideal which is striving to prevail or to assert itself endeavours to further its purpose _(a)_ by laying claim to a _spurious_ origin; _(b)_ by assuming a relationship between itself and the powerful ideals already existing; _(c)_ by means of the thrill produced by mystery, as though an unquestionable power were manifesting itself; _(d)_ by the slander of its opponents' ideals; _(e)_ by a lying teaching of the advantages which follow in its wake, for instance: happiness, spiritual peace, general peace, or even the assistance of a mighty God, etc.--Contributions to the psychology of the idealists: Carlyle, Schiller, Michelet.

Supposing all the means of defence and protection, by means of which an ideal survives, are discovered, is it thereby _refuted_? It has merely availed itself of the means of which everything lives and grows--they are all "immoral."

My view: all the forces and instincts which are the source of life are lying beneath the _ban of morality_: morality is the life-denying instinct. Morality must be annihilated if life is to be emancipated.

344.