FOURTH BOOK

DISCIPLINE AND BREEDING.

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I.

THE ORDER OF RANK.

1. The Doctrine of the Order of Rank.

854.

In this age of universal suffrage, in which everybody is allowed to sit in judgment upon everything and everybody, I feel compelled to re-establish the order of rank.

855.

Quanta of power alone determine rank and distinguish rank: nothing else does.

856.

The will to power.—How must those men be constituted who would undertake this transvaluation? The order of rank as the order of power: war and danger are the prerequisites which allow of a rank maintaining its conditions. The prodigious example: man in Nature—the weakest and shrewdest creature making himself master, and putting a yoke upon all less intelligent forces.

857.

I distinguish between the type which represents ascending life and that which represents decay, decomposition and weakness. Ought one to suppose that the question of rank between these two types can be at all doubtful?

858.

The modicum of power which you represent decides your rank; all the rest is cowardice.

859.

The advantages of standing detached from one's age.—Detached from the two movements, that of individualism and that of collectivist morality; for even the first does not recognise the order of rank, and would give one individual the same freedom as another. My thoughts are not concerned with the degree of freedom which should be granted to the one or to the other or to all, but with the degree of power which the one or the other should exercise over his neighbour or over all; and more especially with the question to what extent a sacrifice of freedom, or even enslavement, may afford the basis for the cultivation, of a superior type. In plain words: how could one sacrifice the development of mankind in order to assist a higher species than man to come into being.

860.

Concerning rank.—The terrible consequences of "equality"—in the end everybody thinks he has the right to every problem. All order of rank has vanished.

861.

It is necessary for higher men to declare war upon the masses! In all directions mediocre people are joining hands in order to make themselves masters. Everything that pampers, that softens, and that brings the "people" or "woman" to the front, operates in favour of universal suffrage,—that is to say, the dominion of inferior men. But we must make reprisals, and draw the whole state of affairs (which commenced in Europe with Christianity) to the light of day and to judgment.

862.

A teaching is needed which is strong enough to work in a disciplinary manner; it should operate in such a way as to strengthen the strong and to paralyse and smash up the world-weary.

The annihilation of declining races. The decay of Europe. The annihilation of slave-tainted valuations. The dominion of the world as a means to the rearing of a higher type. The annihilation of the humbug which is called morality (Christianity as a hysterical kind of honesty in this regard: Augustine, Bunyan.) The annihilation of universal suffrage—that is to say, that system by means of which the lowest natures prescribe themselves as a law for higher natures. The annihilation of mediocrity and its prevalence. (The one-sided, the individuals—peoples; constitutional plenitude should be aimed at by means of the coupling of opposites; to this end race-combinations should be tried.) The new kind of courage—no a priori truths (those who were accustomed to believe in something sought such truths!), but free submission to a ruling thought, which has its time; for instance, time conceived as the quality of space, etc.

2. The Strong and the Weak.

863.

The notion, "strong and weak man" resolves itself into this, that in the first place much strength is inherited—the man is a total sum; in the other, not yet enough (inadequate inheritance, subdivision of the inherited qualities). Weakness may be a starting phenomenon: not yet enough; or a final phenomenon: "no more."

The determining point is there where great strength is present, or where a great amount of strength can be discharged. The mass, as the sum-total of the weak, reacts slowly; it defends itself against much for which it is too weak,—against that for which it has no use; it never creates, it never takes a step forward. This is opposed to the theory which denies the strong individual and would maintain that the "masses do everything." The difference is similar to that which obtains between separated generations: four or even five generations may lie between the masses and him who is the moving spirit—it is a chronological difference.

The values of the weak are in the van, because the strong have adopted them in order to lead with them.

864.

Why the weak triumph.—On the whole, the sick and the weak have more sympathy and are more "humane"; the sick and the weak have more intellect, and are more changeable more variegated, more entertaining—more malicious; the sick alone invented malice. (A morbid precocity is often to be observed among rickety, scrofulitic, and tuberculous people.) Esprit: the property of older races; Jews, Frenchmen, Chinese. (The anti-Semites do not forgive the Jews for having both intellect—and money. Anti-Semites—another name for "bungled and botched.")

The sick and the weak have always had fascination on their side; they are more interesting than the healthy: the fool and the saint—the two most interesting kinds of men.... Closely related thereto is the "genius." The "great adventurers and criminals" and all great men, the most healthy in particular, have always been sick at certain periods of their lives—great disturbances of the emotions, the passion for power, love, revenge, are all accompanied by very profound perturbations. And, as for decadence, every man who does not die prematurely manifests it in almost every respect—he therefore knows from experience the instincts which belong to it: for half his life nearly every man is decadent.

And finally, woman! One-half of mankind is weak, chronically sick, changeable, shifty woman requires strength in order to cleave to it; she also requires a religion of the weak which glorifies weakness, love, and modesty as divine: or, better still, she makes the strong weak—she rules when she succeeds in overcoming the strong. Woman has always conspired with decadent types,—the priests, for instance, against the mighty, against the "strong," against men. Women avail themselves of children for the cult of piety, pity, and love:—the mother stands as the symbol of convincing altruism.

Finally, the increase of civilisation with its necessary correlatives, the increase of morbid elements, of the neurotic and psychiatric and of the criminal. A sort of intermediary species arises, the artist. He is distinct from those who are criminals as the result of weak wills and of the fear of society, although they may not yet be ripe for the asylum; but he has antennas which grope inquisitively into both spheres, this specific plant of culture, the modern artist, painter, musician, and, above all, novelist, who designates his particular kind of attitude with the very indefinite word "naturalism."... Lunatics, criminals, and realists[1] are on the increase: this is the sign of a growing culture plunging forward at headlong speed—that is to say, its excrement, its refuse, the rubbish that is shot from it every day, is beginning to acquire more importance, the retrogressive movement keeps pace with the advance.

Finally, the social mishmash, which is the result of revolution, of the establishment of equal rights, and of the superstition, the "equality of men." Thus the possessors of the instincts of decline (of resentment, of discontent, of the lust of destruction, of anarchy and Nihilism), as also the instincts of slavery, of cowardice, of craftiness, and of rascality, which are inherent among those classes of society which have long been suppressed, are beginning to get infused into the blood of all ranks. Two or three generations later, the race can no longer be recognised—everything has become mob. And thus there results a collective instinct against selection, against every kind of privilege, and this instinct operates with such power, certainty, hardness, and cruelty that, as a matter of fact, in the end, even the privileged classes have to submit: all those who still wish to hold on to power flatter the mob, work with the mob, and must have the mob on their side—the "geniuses" above all. The latter become the heralds of those feelings with which the mob can be inspired,—the expression of pity, of honour, even for all that suffers, all that is low and despised, and has lived under persecution, becomes predominant (types: Victor Hugo, Richard Wagner).—The rise of the mob signifies once more the rise of old values.

In the case of such an extreme movement, both in tempo and in means, as characterises our civilisation, man's ballast is shifted. Those men whose worth is greatest, and whose mission, as it were, is to compensate for the very great danger of such a morbid movement,—such men become dawdlers par excellence; they are slow to accept anything, and are tenacious; they are creatures that are relatively lasting in the midst of this vast mingling and changing of elements. In such circumstances power is necessarily relegated to the mediocre: mediocrity, as the trustee and bearer of the future, consolidates itself against the rule of the mob and of eccentricities (both of which are, in most cases, united). In this way a new antagonist is evolved for exceptional men—or in certain cases a new temptation. Provided that they do not adapt themselves to the mob, and stand up for what satisfies the instincts of the disinherited, they will find it necessary to be "mediocre" and sound. They know: mediocritas is also aurea,—it alone has command of money and gold (of all that glitters ...).... And, once more, old virtue and the whole superannuated world of ideals in general secures a gifted host of special-pleaders.... Result: mediocrity acquires intellect, wit, and genius, it becomes entertaining, and even seductive.

***

Result.—A high culture can only stand upon a broad basis, upon a strongly and soundly consolidated mediocrity. In its service and assisted by it, science and even art do their work. Science could not wish for a better state of affairs: in its essence it belongs to a middle-class type of man,—among exceptions it is out of place,—there is not anything aristocratic and still less anything anarchic in its instincts.—The power of the middle classes is then upheld by means of commerce, but, above all, by means of money-dealing: the instinct of great financiers is opposed to everything extreme—on this account the Jews are, for the present, the most conservative power in the threatening and insecure conditions of modern Europe. They can have no use either for revolutions, for socialism, or for militarism: if they would have power, and if they should need it, even over the revolutionary party, this is only the result of what I have already said, and it in no way contradicts it. Against other extreme movements they may occasionally require to excite terror by showing how much power is in their hands. But their instinct itself is inveterately conservative and "mediocre, ... Wherever power exists, they know how to become mighty; but the application of their power always takes the same direction. The polite term for mediocre, as is well known, is the word "Liberal."

Reflection.—It is all nonsense to suppose that this general conquest of values is anti-biological. In order to explain it, we ought to try and show that it is the result of a certain interest of life to maintain the type "man," even by means of this method which leads to the prevalence of the weak and the physiologically botched—if things were otherwise, might man not cease to exist? Problem ...

The enhancement of the type may prove fatal to the maintenance of the species. Why?—The experience of history shows that strong races decimate each other mutually, by means of war, lust for power, and venturousness; the strong emotions; wastefulness (strength is no longer capitalised, disturbed mental systems arise from excessive tension); their existence is a costly affair in short, they persistently give rise to friction between themselves; periods of profound slackness and torpidity intervene: all great ages have to be paid for.... The strong are, after all, weaker, less wilful, and more absurd than the average weak ones.

They are squandering races. "Permanence," in itself, can have no value: that which ought to be preferred thereto would be a shorter life for the species, but a life richer in creations. It would remain to be proved that, even as things are, a richer sum of creations is attained than in the case of the shorter existence; i.e. that man, as a storehouse of power, attains to a much higher degree of dominion over things under the conditions which have existed hitherto.... We are here face to face with a problem of economics.

865.

The state of mind which calls itself "idealism," and which will neither allow mediocrity to be mediocre nor woman to be woman! Do not make everything uniform! We should have a clear idea of how dearly we have to pay for the establishment of a virtue; and that virtue is nothing generally desirable, but a noble piece of madness, a beautiful exception, which gives us the privilege of feeling elated....

866.

It is necessary to show that a counter-movement is inevitably associated with any increasingly economical consumption of men and mankind, and with an ever more closely involved "machinery" of interests and services. I call this counter-movement the separation of the luxurious surplus of mankind: by means of it a stronger kind, a higher type, must come to light, which has other conditions for its origin and for its maintenance than the average man. My concept, my metaphor for this type is, as you know, the word "Superman." Along the first road, which can now be completely surveyed, arose adaptation, stultification, higher Chinese culture, modesty in the Instincts, and satisfaction at the sight of the belittlement of man—a kind of stationary level of mankind. If ever we get that inevitable and imminent, general control of the economy of the earth, then mankind can be used as machinery and find its best purpose in the service of this economy—as an enormous piece of clock-work consisting of ever smaller and ever more subtly adapted wheels; then all the dominating and commanding elements will become ever more superfluous; and the whole gains enormous energy, while the individual factors which compose it represent but small modicums of strength and of value. To oppose this dwarfing and adaptation of man to a specialised kind of utility, a reverse movement is needed -the procreation of the synthetic man who embodies everything and justifies it; that man for whom the turning of mankind into a machine is a first condition of existence, for whom the rest of mankind is but soil on which he can devise his higher mode of existence.

He is in need of the opposition of the masses, of those who are "levelled down"; he requires that feeling of distance from them; he stands upon them, he lives on them. This higher form of aristocracy is the form of the future. From the moral point of view, the collective machinery above described, that solidarity of all wheels, represents the most extreme example in the exploitation of mankind: but it presupposes the existence of those for whom such an exploitation would have some meaning.[2] Otherwise it would signify, as a matter of fact, merely the general depreciation of the type man,—a retrograde phenomenon on a grand scale.

Readers are beginning to see what I am combating—namely, economic optimism: as if the genera] welfare of everybody must necessarily increase with the growing self-sacrifice of everybody. The very reverse seems to me to be the case, the self-sacrifice of everybody amounts to a collective loss; man becomes inferior—so that nobody knows what end this monstrous purpose has served. A wherefore? a new wherefore?—this is what mankind requires.

867.

The recognition of the increase of collective power: we should calculate to what extent the ruin of individuals, of castes, of ages, and of peoples, is included in this general increase.

The transposition of the ballast of a culture. The cost of every vast growth: who bears it? Why must it be enormous at the present time?

868.

General aspect of the future European: the latter regarded as the most intelligent servile animal, very industrious, at bottom very modest, inquisitive to excess, multifarious, pampered, weak of will,—a chaos of cosmopolitan passions and intelligences. How would it be possible for a stronger race to be bred from him?—Such a race as would have a classical taste? The classical taste: this is the will to simplicity, to accentuation, and to happiness made visible, the will to the terrible, and the courage for psychological nakedness (simplification is the outcome of the will to accentuate; allowing happiness as well as nakedness to become visible is a consequence of the will to the terrible ...). In order to fight one's way out of that chaos, and up to this form, a certain disciplinary constraint is necessary: a man should have to choose between either going to the dogs or prevailing. A ruling race can only arise amid terrible and violent conditions. Problem: where are the barbarians of the twentieth century? Obviously they will only show themselves and consolidate themselves after enormous socialistic crises. They will consist of those elements which are capable of the greatest hardness towards themselves, and which can guarantee the most enduring will-power.

869.

The mightiest and most dangerous passions of man, by means of which he most easily goes to rack and ruin, have been so fundamentally banned that mighty men themselves have either become impossible or else must regard themselves as evil, "harmful and prohibited." The losses are heavy, but up to the present they have been necessary. Now, however, that a whole host of counter-forces has been reared, by means of the temporary suppression of these passions (the passion for dominion, the love of change and deception), their liberation has once more become possible: they will no longer possess their old savagery. We can now allow ourselves this tame sort of barbarism: look at our artists and our statesmen!

870.

The root of all evil: that the slave morality of modesty, chastity, selflessness, and absolute obedience should have triumphed. Dominating natures were thus condemned (1) to hypocrisy, (2) to qualms of conscience,—creative natures regarded themselves as rebels against God, uncertain and hemmed in by eternal values.

The barbarians showed that the ability of keeping within the bounds of moderation was not in the scope of their powers: they feared and slandered the passions and instincts of nature—likewise the aspect of the ruling Cæsars and castes. On the other hand, there arose the suspicion that all restraint is a form of weakness or of incipient old age and fatigue (thus La Rochefoucauld suspects that "virtue" is only a euphemism in the mouths of those to whom vice no longer affords any pleasure). The capacity for restraint was represented as a matter of hardness, self-control, asceticism, as a fight with the devil, etc. etc. The natural delight of æsthetic natures, in measure; the pleasure derived from the beauty of measure, was overlooked and denied, because that which was desired was an anti-eudæmonistic morality. The belief in the pleasure which comes of restraint has been lacking hitherto—this pleasure of a rider on a fiery steed! The moderation of weak natures was confounded with the restraint of the strong!

In short, the best things have been blasphemed because weak or immoderate swine have thrown a bad light upon them—the best men have remained concealed—and have often misunderstood themselves.

871.

Vicious and unbridled people: their depressing influence upon the value of the pussions. It was the appalling barbarity of morality which was principally responsible in the Middle Ages for the compulsory recourse to a veritable "league of virtue"—and this was coupled with an equally appalling exaggeration of all that which constitutes the value of man. Militant "civilisation" (taming) is in need of all kinds of irons and tortures in order to maintain itself against terrible and beast-of-prey natures.

In this case, contusion, although it may have the most nefarious influences, is quite natural: that which men of power and will are able to demand of themselves gives them the standard for what they may also allow themselves. Such natures are the very opposite of the vicious and the unbridled; although under certain circumstances they may perpetrate deeds for which an inferior man would be convicted of vice and intemperance.

In this respect the concept, "all men are equal before God" does an extraordinary amount of harm; actions and attitudes of mind were forbidden which belonged to the prerogative of the strong alone, just as if they were in themselves unworthy of man. All the tendencies of strong men were brought into disrepute by the fact that the defensive weapons of the most weak (even of those who were weakest towards themselves) were established as a standard of valuation.

The confusion went so far that precisely the great virtuosos of life (whose self-control presents the sharpest contrast to the vicious and the unbridled) were branded with the most opprobrious names. Even to this day people feel themselves compelled to disparage a Cæsar Borgia: it is simply ludicrous. The Church has anathematised German Kaisers owing to their vices: as if a monk or a priest had the right to say a word as to what a Frederick II. should allow himself. Don Juan is sent to hell: this is very naïf. Has anybody ever noticed that all interesting men are lacking in heaven? ... This is only a hint to the girls, as to where they may best find salvation. If one think at all logically, and also have a profound insight into that which makes a great man, there, can be no doubt at all that the Church has dispatched all "great men" to Hades—its fight is against all "greatness in man."

872.

The rights which a man arrogates to himself are relative to the duties which he sets himself, and to the tasks which he feels capable of performing. The great majority of men have no right to life, and are only a misfortune to their higher fellows.

873.

The misunderstanding of egoism: on the part of ignoble natures who know nothing of the lust of conquest and the insatiability of great love, and who likewise know nothing of the overflowing feelings of power which make a man wish to overcome things, to force them over to himself, and to lay them on his heart, the power which impels an artist to his material. It often happens also that the active spirit looks for a field for its activity. In ordinary "egoism" it is precisely the ... "non-ego," the profoundly mediocre creature, the member of the herd, who wishes to maintain himself—and when this is perceived by the rarer, more subtle, and less mediocre natures, it revolts them. For the judgment of the latter is this: "We are the noble! It is much more important to maintain us than that cattle!"

874.

The degeneration of the ruler and of the ruling classes has been the cause of all the great disorders in history! Without the Roman Cæsars and Roman society, Christianity would never have prevailed.

When it occurs to inferior men to doubt whether higher men exist, then the danger is great I It is then that men finally discover that there are virtues even among inferior, suppressed, and poor-spirited men, and that everybody is equal before God: which is the non plus ultra of all confounded nonsense that has ever appeared on earth! For in the end higher men begin to measure themselves according to the standard of virtues upheld by the slaves—and discover that they are "proud," etc., and that all their higher qualities should be condemned.

When Nero and Caracalla stood at the helm, it was then that the paradox arose: "The lowest man is of more value than that one on the throne!" And thus the path was prepared for an image of God which was as remote as possible from the image of the mightiest,—God on the Cross!

875.

Higher man and gregarious man.—When great men are wanting, the great of the past are converted into demigods or whole gods: the rise of religions proves that mankind no longer has any pleasure in man ("nor in woman neither," as in Hamlet's case). Or a host of men are brought together in a heap, and it is hoped that as a Parliament they will operate just as tyrannically.

Tyrannising is the distinctive quality of great men; they make inferior men stupid.

876.

Buckle affords the best example of the extent to which a plebeian agitator of the mob is incapable of arriving at a clear idea of the concept, "higher nature." The opinion which he combats so passionately—that "great men," individuals, princes, statesmen, geniuses, warriors, are the levers and causes of all great movements, is instinctively misunderstood by him, as if it meant that all that was essential and valuable in such a "higher man," was the fact that he was capable of setting masses in motion; in short, that his sole merit was the effect he produced.... But the "higher nature" of the great man resides precisely in being different, in being unable to communicate with others, in the loftiness of his rank—not in any sort of effect he may produce even though this be the shattering of both hemispheres.

877.

The Revolution made Napoleon possible: that is its justification. We ought to desire the anarchical collapse of the whole of our civilisation if such a reward were to be its result. Napoleon made nationalism possible: that is the latter's excuse.

The value of a man (apart, of course, from morality and immorality: because with these concepts a man's worth is not even skimmed) does not lie in his utility; because he would continue to exist even if there were nobody to whom he could be useful. And why could not that man be the very pinnacle of manhood who was the source of the worst possible effects for his race: so high and so superior, that in his presence everything would go to rack and ruin from envy?

878.

To appraise the value of a man according to his utility to mankind, or according to what he costs it, or the damage he is able to inflict upon it, is just as good and just as bad as to appraise the value of a work of art according to its effects. But in this way the value of one man compared with another is not even touched upon. The "moral valuation," in so far as it is social measures men altogether according to their effects. But what about the man who has his own taste on his tongue, who is surrounded and concealed by his isolation, uncommunicative and not to be communicated with; a man whom no one has fathomed yet—that is to say, a creature of a higher, and, at any rate, different species, how would ye appraise his worth, seeing that ye cannot know him and can compare him with nothing?

Moral valuation was the cause of the most enormous obtuseness of judgment: the value of a man in himself is underrated, well-nigh overlooked, practically denied. This is the remains of simple-minded teleology: the value of man can only be measured with regard to other men.

879.

To be obsessed by moral considerations presupposes a very low grade of intellect: it shows that the instinct for special rights, for standing apart, the feeling of freedom in creative natures, in "children of God" (or of the devil), is lacking. And irrespective of whether he preaches a ruling morality or criticises the prevailing ethical code from the point of view of his own ideal: by doing these things a man shows that he belongs to the herd—even though he may be what it is most in need of—that is to say, a "shepherd."

880.

We should substitute morality by the will to our own ends, and consequently to the means to them.

881.

Concerning the order of rank.—What is it that constitutes the mediocrity of the typical man? That he does not understand that things necessarily have their other side; that he combats evil conditions as if they could be dispensed with, that he will not take the one with the other; that he would fain obliterate and erase the specific character of a thing, of a circumstance, of an age, and of a person, by calling only a portion of their qualities good, and suppressing the remainder. The "desirability" of the mediocre is that which we others combat: their ideal is something which shall no longer contain anything harmful, evil, dangerous, questionable, and destructive. We recognise the reverse of this: that with every growth of man his other side must grow as well; that the highest man, if such a concept be allowed, would be that man who would represent the antagonistic character of existence most strikingly, and would be its glory and its only justification.... Ordinary men may only represent a small corner and nook of this natural character; they perish the moment the multifariousness of the elements composing them, and the tension between their antagonistic traits, increases: but this is the prerequisite for greatness in man. That man should become better and at the same time more evil, is my formula for this inevitable fact.

The majority of people are only piecemeal and fragmentary examples of man: only when all these creatures are jumbled together does one whole man arise Whole ages and whole peoples in this sense, have a fragmentary character about them; it may perhaps be part of the economy of human development that man should develop himself only piecemeal. But, for this reason, one should not forget that the only important consideration is the rise of the synthetic man; that inferior men, and by far the great majority of people, are but rehearsals and exercises out of which here and there a whole man may arise; a man who is a human milestone, and who indicates how far mankind has advanced up to a certain point. Mankind does not advance in a straight line,—often a type is attained which is again lost (for instance, with all the efforts of three hundred years, we have not reached the men of the Renaissance again, and in addition to this we must not forget that the man of the Renaissance was already behind his brother of classical antiquity).

882.

The superiority of the Greek and the man of the Renaissance is recognised, but people would like to produce them without the conditions and causes of which they were the result.

883.

"Purification of taste" can only be the result of the strengthening of the type. Our society to-day represents only the cultivating systems, the cultivated man is lacking. The great synthetic man, in whom the various forces for attaining a purpose are correctly harnessed together, is altogether wanting. The specimen we possess is the multifarious man, the most interesting form of chaos that has ever existed: but not the chaos preceding the creation of the world, but that following it: Goethe as the most beautiful expression of the type (completely and utterly un-Olympian!)[3]

884.

Handel, Leibniz, Goethe, and Bismarck, are characteristic of the strong German type. They lived with equanimity, surrounded by contrasts. They were full of that agile kind of strength which cautiously avoids convictions and doctrines, by using the one as a weapon against the other, and reserving absolute freedom for themselves.

885.

Of this I am convinced, that if the rise of great and rare men had been made dependent upon the voices of the multitude (taking for granted, of course, that the latter knew the qualities which belong to greatness, and also the price that all greatness pays for its self-development), then there would never have been any such thing as a great man!

The fact that things pursue their course independently of the voice of the many, is the reason why, a few astonishing things have taken place on earth.

886.

The Order of Rank in Human Values.

(a) A man should not be valued according to isolated acts. Epidermal actions. Nothing is more rare than a personal act. Class, rank, race, environment, accident—all these things are much more likely to be expressed in an action or deed than the "personality" of the doer.

(b) We should on no account jump to the conclusion that there are many people who are personalities. Some men are but conglomerations of personalities, whilst the majority are not even one. In all cases in which those average qualities preponderate, which ensure the maintenance of the species, to be a personality would involve unnecessary expense, it would be a luxury in fact, it would be foolish to demand of anybody that he should be a personality. In such circumstances everybody is a channel or a transmitting vessel.

(c) A "personality" is a relatively isolated phenomenon; in view of the superior importance of the continuation of the race at an average level, a personality might even be regarded as something hostile to nature. For a personality to be possible, timely isolation and the necessity for an existence of offence and defence, are prerequisites; something in the nature of a walled enclosure, a capacity for shutting out the world; but above all, a much lower degree of sensitiveness than the average man has, who is too easily infected with the views of others.

The first question concerning the order of rank: how far is a man disposed to be solitary or gregarious? (in the latter case, his value consists in those qualities which secure the survival of his tribe or his type; in the former case, his qualities are those which distinguish him from others, which isolate and defend him, and make his solitude possible).

Consequence: the solitary type should not be valued from the standpoint of the gregarious type, or vice versâ.

Viewed from above, both types are necessary; as is likewise their antagonism,—and nothing is more thoroughly reprehensible than the "desire" which would develop a third thing out of the two ("virtue" as hermaphroditism). This is as little worthy of desire as the equalisation and reconciliation of the sexes. The distinguishing qualities must be developed ever more and more, the gulf must be made ever wider....

The concept of degeneration in both cases: the approximation of the qualities of the herd to those of solitary creatures: and vice versâ—in short, when they begin to resemble each other. This concept of degeneration is beyond the sphere of moral judgments.

887.

Where the strongest natures are to be sought. The ruin and degeneration of the solitary species is much greater and more terrible: they have the instincts of the herd, and the tradition of values, against them; their weapons of defence, their instincts of self-preservation, are from the beginning insufficiently strong and reliable—fortune must be peculiarly favourable to them if they are to prosper (they prosper best in the lowest ranks and dregs of society; if ye are seeking personalities it is there that ye will find them with much greater certainty than in the middle classes!)

When the dispute between ranks and classes, which aims at equality of rights, is almost settled, the fight will begin against the solitary person. (In a certain sense the latter can maintain and develop himself most easily in a democratic society: there where the coarser means of defence are no longer necessary, and a certain habit of order, honesty, justice, trust, is already a general condition.) The strongest must be most tightly bound, most strictly watched, laid in chains and supervised: this is the instinct of the herd. To them belongs a régime of self-mastery, of ascetic detachment, of "duties" consisting in exhausting work, in which one can no longer call one's soul one's own.

888.

I am attempting an economic justification of virtue. The object is to make man as useful as possible, and to make him approximate as nearly as one can to an infallible machine: to this end he must be equipped with machine-like virtues (he must learn to value those states in which he works in a most mechanically useful way, as the highest of all: to this end it is necessary to make him as disgusted as possible with the other states, and to represent them as very dangerous and despicable).

Here is the first stumbling-block: the tediousness and monotony which all mechanical activity brings with it. To learn to endure this—and not only to endure it, but to see tedium enveloped in a ray of exceeding charm: this hitherto has been the task of all higher schools. To learn something which you don't care a fig about, and to find precisely your "duty" in this "objective" activity; to learn to value happiness and duty as things apart; this is the invaluable task and performance of higher schools. It is on this account that the philologist has, hitherto, been the educator per se: because his activity, in itself, affords the best pattern of magnificent monotony in action; under his banner youths learn to "swat": first prerequisite for the thorough fulfilment of mechanical duties in the future (as State officials, husbands, slaves of the desk, newspaper readers, and soldiers). Such an existence may perhaps require a philosophical glorification and justification more than any other: pleasurable feelings must be valued by some sort of infallible tribunal, as altogether of inferior rank; "duty per se" perhaps even the pathos of reverence in regard to everything unpleasant,—must be demanded imperatively as that which is above all useful, delightful, and practical things.... A mechanical form of existence regarded as the highest and most respectable form of existence, worshipping itself (type: Kant as the fanatic of the formal concept "Thou shalt").

889.

The economic valuation of all the ideals that have existed hitherto—that is to say, the selection and rearing of definite passions and states at the cost of other passions and states. The lawgiver (or the instinct of the community) selects a number of states and passions the existence of which guarantees the performance of regular actions (mechanical actions would thus be the result of the regular requirements of those passions and states).

In the event of these states and passions containing ingredients which were painful, a means would have to be found for overcoming this painfulness by means of a valuation; pain would have to be interpreted as something valuable, as something pleasurable in a higher sense. Conceived in a formula: "How does something unpleasant become pleasant?" For instance, when our obedience and our submission to the law become honoured, thanks to the energy, power, and self-control they entail. The same holds good of our public spirit, of our neighbourliness, of our patriotism, our "humanisation," our "altruism," and our "heroism." The object of all idealism should, be to induce people to do unpleasant things cheerfully.

890.

The belittlement of man must be held as the chief aim for a long while: because what is needed in the first place is a broad basis from which a stronger species of man may arise (to what extent hitherto has every stronger species of man arisen from a substratum of inferior people?).

891.

The absurd and contemptible form of idealism which would not have mediocrity mediocre, and which instead of feeling triumphant at being exceptional, becomes indignant at cowardice, falseness, pettiness, and wretchedness. We should not wish things to be any different, we should make the gulfs even wider!—The higher types among men should be compelled to distinguish themselves by means of the sacrifices which they make to their own existence.

Principal point of view; distances must be established, but no contrasts must be created. The middle classes must be dissolved, and their influence decreased: this is the principal means of maintaining distances.

892.

Who would dare to disgust the mediocre of their mediocrity! As you observe, I do precisely the reverse: every step away from mediocrity—thus do I teach—leads to immorality.

893.

To hate mediocrity is unworthy of a philosopher: it is almost a note of interrogation to his "right to philosophy." It is precisely because he is the exception that he must protect the rule and ingratiate all mediocre people.

894.

What I combat: that an exceptional form should make war upon the rule—instead of understanding that the continued existence of the rule is the first condition of the value of the exception. For instance, there are women who, instead of considering their abnormal thirst for knowledge as a distinction, would fain dislocate the whole status of womanhood.

895.

The increase of strength despite the temporary ruin of the individual:—

A new level must be established;

We must have a method of storing up forces for the maintenance of small performances, in opposition to economic waste;

Destructive nature must for once be reduced to an instrument of this economy of the future;

The weak must be maintained, because there is an enormous mass of finicking work to be done;

The weak and the suffering must be upheld in their belief that existence is still possible;

Solidarity must be implanted as an instinct opposed to the instinct of fear and servility;

War must be made upon accident, even upon the accident of "the great man."

896.

War upon great men justified on economic grounds. Great men are dangerous; they are accidents, exceptions, tempests, which are strong enough to question things which it has taken time to build and establish. Explosive material must not only be discharged harmlessly, but, if possible, its discharge must be prevented altogether, this is the fundamental instinct of all civilised society.

897.

He who thinks over the question of how the type man may be elevated to its highest glory and power, will realise from the start that he must place himself beyond morality; for morality was directed in its essentials at the opposite goal—that is to say, its aim was to arrest and to annihilate that glorious development wherever it was in process of accomplishment. For, as a matter of fact, development of that sort implies that such an enormous number of men must be subservient to it, that a counter-movement is only too natural: the weaker, more delicate, more mediocre existences, find it necessary to take up sides against that glory of life and power; and for that purpose they must get a new valuation of themselves by means of which they are able to condemn, and if possible to destroy, life in this high degree of plenitude. Morality is therefore essentially the expression of hostility to life, in so far as it would overcome vital types.

898.

The strong of the future.—To what extent necessity on the one hand and accident on the other have attained to conditions from which a stronger species may be reared: this we are now able to understand and to bring about consciously; we can now create those conditions under which such an elevation is possible.

Hitherto education has always aimed at the utility of society: not the greatest possible utility for the future, but the utility of the society actually extant. What people required were "instruments" for this purpose. Provided the wealth of forces were greater, it would be possible to think of a draft being made upon them, the aim of which would not be the utility of society, but some future utility.

The more people grasped to what extent the present form of society was in such a state of transition as sooner or later to be no longer able to exist for its own sake, but only as a means in the hands of a stronger race, the more this task would have to be brought forward.

The increasing belittlement of man is precisely the impelling power which leads one to think of the cultivation of a stronger race: a race which would have a surplus precisely there where the dwarfed species was weak and growing weaker (will, responsibility, self-reliance, the ability to postulate aims for one's self).

The means would be those which history teaches: isolation by means of preservative interests which would be the reverse of those generally accepted; exercise in transvalued valuations; distance as pathos; a clean conscience in what to-day is most despised and most prohibited.

The levelling of the mankind of Europe is the great process which should not be arrested; it should even be accelerated. The necessity of cleaving gulfs, of distance, of the order of rank, is therefore imperative; but not the necessity of retarding the process above mentioned.

This levelled-down species requires justification as soon as it is attained: its justification is that it exists for the service of a higher and sovereign race which stands upon it and can only be elevated upon its shoulders to the task which it is destined to perform. Not only a ruling race whose task would be consummated in ruling alone: but a race with vital spheres of its own, with an overflow of energy for beauty, bravery, culture, and manners, even for the most abstract thought; a yea-saying race which would be able to allow itself every kind of great luxury—strong enough to be able to dispense with the tyranny of the imperatives of virtue, rich enough to be in no need of economy or pedantry; beyond good and evil; a forcing-house for rare and exceptional plants.

899.

Our psychologists, whose glance dwells involuntarily upon the symptoms of decadence, lead us to mistrust intellect ever more and more. People persist in seeing only the weakening, pampering, and sickening effects of intellect, but there are now going to appear:—

900.

I point to something new: certainly for such a democratic community there is a danger of barbarians; but these are sought only down below. There is also another kind of barbarians who come from the heights: a kind of conquering and ruling natures, which are in search of material that they can mould. Prometheus was a barbarian of this stamp.

901.

Principal standpoint: one should not suppose the mission of a higher species to be the leading of inferior men (as Comte does, for instance); but the inferior should be regarded as the foundation upon which a higher species may live their higher life—upon which alone they can stand. The conditions under which a strong, noble species maintains itself (in the matter of intellectual discipline) are precisely the reverse of those under which the industrial masses—the tea-grocers à la Spencer—subsist. Those qualities which are within the grasp only of the strongest and most terrible natures, and which make their existence possible leisure, adventure, disbelief, and even dissipation—would necessarily ruin mediocre natures —and does do so—when they possess them. In the case of the latter industry, regularity, moderation, and strong "conviction" are in their proper place—in short, all "gregarious virtues": under their influence these mediocre men become perfect.

902.

Concerning the ruling types. The shepherd as opposed to the "lord" (the former is only a means to the maintenance of the herd; the latter, the purpose for which the herd exists).

903.

The temporary preponderance of social valuations is both comprehensible and useful; it is a matter of building a foundation upon which a stronger species will ultimately be made possible. The standard of strength: to be able to live under the transvalued valuations, and to desire them for all eternity. State and society regarded as a sub-structure: economic point of view, education conceived as breeding.

904.

A consideration which "free spirits" lack: that the same discipline which makes a strong nature still stronger, and enables it to go in for big undertakings, breaks up and withers the mediocre: doubt —la largeur de cœur—experiment—independence.

905.

The hammer. How should men who must value in the opposite way be constituted?—Men who possess all the qualities of the modern soul, but are strong enough to convert them into real health? The means to their task.

906.

The strong man, who is mighty in the instincts of a strong and healthy organisation, digests his deeds just as well as he digests his meals; he even gets over the effects of heavy fare: in the main, however, he is led by an inviolable and severe instinct which prevents his doing anything which goes against his grain, just as he never does anything against his taste.

907.

Can we foresee the favourable circumstances under which creatures of the highest value might arise? It is a thousand times too complicated, and the probabilities of failure are very great: on that account we cannot be inspired by the thought of striving after them! Scepticism.—To oppose this we can enhance courage, insight, hardness, independence, and the feeling of responsibility; we can also subtilise and learn to forestall the delicacy of the scales, so that favourable accidents may be enlisted on our side.

908.

Before we can even think of acting, an enormous amount of work requires to be done. In the main, however, a cautious exploitation of the present conditions would be our best and most advisable course of action. The actual creation of conditions such as those which occur by accident, presupposes the existence of iron men such as have not yet lived. Our first task must be to make the personal ideal prevail and become realised! He who has understood the nature of man and the origin of mankind's greatest specimens, shudders before man and takes flight from all action: this is the result of inherited valuations!!

My consolation is, that the nature of man is evil, and this guarantees his strength!

909.

The typical forms of self-development, or the eight principal questions:—

1. Do we want to be more multifarious or more simple than we are?

2. Do we want to be happier than we are, or more indifferent to both happiness and unhappiness?

3. Do we want to be more satisfied with ourselves, or more exacting and more inexorable?

4. Do we want to be softer, more yielding, and more human than we are, or more inhuman?

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

6. Do we want to attain a goal, or do we want to avoid all goals (like the philosopher, for instance, who scents a boundary, a cul-de-sac, a prison, a piece of foolishness in every goal)?

7. Do we want to become more respected, or more feared, or more despised?

8. Do we want to become tyrants, and seducers, or do we want to become shepherds and gregarious animals?

910.

The type of my disciples.—To such men as concern vie in any way I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities of all kinds. I wish them to be acquainted with profound self-contempt, with the martyrdom of self-distrust, with the misery of the defeated: I have no pity for them; because I wish them to have the only thing which to-day proves whether a man has any value or not, namely, the capacity of sticking to his guns.

911.

The happiness and self-contentedness of the lazzaroni, or the blessedness of "beautiful souls," or the consumptive love of Puritan pietists, proves nothing in regard to the order of rank among men. As a great educator one ought inexorably to thrash a race of such blissful creatures into unhappiness. The danger of belittlement and of a slackening of powers follows immediately I am opposed to happiness à la Spinoza or à la Epicurus, and to all the relaxation of contemplative states. But when virtue is the means to such happiness, well then, one must master even virtue.

912.

I cannot see how any one can make up for having missed going to a good school at the proper time. Such a person does not know himself; he walks through life without ever having learned to walk. His soft muscles betray themselves at every step. Occasionally life itself is merciful enough to make a man recover this lost and severe schooling: by means of periods of sickness, perhaps, which exact the utmost will-power and self-control; or by means of a sudden state of poverty, which threatens his wife and child, and which may force a man to such activity as will restore energy to his slackened tendons, and a tough spirit to his will to life. The most desirable thing of all, however, is, under all circumstances to have severe discipline at the right time, i.e. at that age when it makes us proud that people should expect great things from us. For this is what distinguishes hard schooling, as good schooling, from every other schooling, namely, that a good deal is demanded, that a good deal is severely exacted; that goodness, nay even excellence itself, is required as if it were normal; that praise is scanty, that leniency is non-existent; that blame is sharp, practical, and without reprieve, and has no regard to talent and antecedents. We are in every way in need of such a school: and this holds good of corporeal as well as of spiritual things; it would be fatal to draw distinctions here! The same discipline makes the soldier and the scholar efficient; and, looked at more closely, there is no true scholar who has not the instincts of a true soldier in his veins. To be able to command and to be able to obey in a proud fashion; to keep one's place in rank and file, and yet to be ready at any moment to lead; to prefer danger to comfort; not to weigh what is permitted and what is forbidden in a tradesman's balance; to be more hostile to pettiness, slyness, and parasitism than to wickedness. What is it that one learns in a hard school?—to obey and to command.

913.

We should repudiate merit—and do only that which stands above all praise and above all understanding.

914.

The new forms of morality:—

Faithful vows concerning that which one wishes to do or to leave undone; complete and definite abstention from many things. Tests as to whether one is ripe for such discipline.

915.

It is my desire to naturalise asceticism: I would substitute the old intention of asceticism, "self-denial," by my own intention, self-strengthening: a gymnastic of the will; a period of abstinence and occasional fasting of every kind, even in things intellectual; a casuistry in deeds, in regard to the opinions which we derive from our powers; we should try our hand at adventure and at deliberate dangers. (Dîners chez Magny: all intellectual gourmets with spoilt stomachs.) Tests ought also to be devised for discovering a man's power in keeping his word.

916.

The things which have become spoilt through having been abused by the Church:—

(1) Asceticism.—People have scarcely got the courage yet to bring to light the natural utility and necessity of asceticism for the purpose of the education of the will. Our ridiculous world of education, before whose eyes the useful State official hovers as an ideal to be striven for, believes that it has completed its duty when it has instructed or trained the brain; it never even suspects that something else is first of all necessary —the education of will-power; tests are devised for everything except for the most important thing of all: whether a man can will, whether he can promise; the young man completes his education without a question or an inquiry having been made concerning the problem of the highest value of his nature.

(2) Fasting:—In every sense—even as a means of maintaining the capacity for taking pleasure in all good things (for instance, to give up reading for a while, to hear no music for a while, to cease from being amiable for a while: one ought also to have fast days for one's virtues).

(3) The monastery.—Temporary isolation with severe seclusion from all letters, for instance; a kind of profound introspection and self-recovery, which does not go out of the way of "temptations," but out of the way of "duties"; a stepping out of the daily round of one's environment; a detachment from the tyranny of stimuli and external influences, which condemns us to expend our power only in reactions, and does not allow it to gather volume until it bursts into spontaneous activity (let anybody examine our scholars closely: they only think reflexively, i.e. they must first read before they can think).

(4) Feasts.—A man must be very coarse in order not to feel the presence of Christians and Christian values as oppressive, so oppressive as to send all festive moods to the devil. By feasts we understand: pride, high-spirits, exuberance; scorn of all kinds of seriousness and Philistinism; a divine saying of Yea to one's self, as the result of physical plenitude and perfection—all states to which the Christian cannot honestly say Yea. A feast is a pagan thing par excellence.

(5) The courage of ones own nature: dressing-up in morality,—To be able to call one's passions good without the help of a moral formula: this is the standard which measures the extent to which a man is able to say Yea to his own nature, namely, how much or how little he has to have recourse to morality.

(6) Death.—The foolish physiological fact must be converted into a moral necessity. One should live in such a way that one may have the will to die at the right time!

917.

To feel ones self stronger or, expressed otherwise: happiness always presupposes a comparison (not necessarily with others, but with one's self, in the midst of a state of growth, and without being conscious that one is comparing).

Artificial accentuation: whether by means of exciting chemicals or exciting errors ("hallucinations.")

Take, for instance, the Christian's feeling of security; he feels himself strong in his confidence, in his patience, and his resignation: this artificial accentuation he owes to the fancy that he is protected by a God. Take the feeling of superiority, for instance: as when the Caliph of Morocco sees only globes on which his three united kingdoms cover four-fifths of the space. Take the feeling of uniqueness, for instance: as when the European imagines that culture belongs to Europe alone, and when he regards himself as a sort of abridged cosmic process; or, as when the Christian makes all existence revolve round the "Salvation of man."

The question is, where does one begin to feel the pressure of constraint: it is thus that different degrees are ascertained. A philosopher for instance, in the midst of the coolest and most transmontane feats of abstraction feels like a fish that enters its element: while colours and tones oppress him; not to speak of those dumb desires—of that which others call "the ideal."

918.

A healthy and vigorous little boy will look up sarcastically if he be asked: "Wilt thou become virtuous?"—but he immediately becomes eager if he be asked: "Wilt thou become stronger than thy comrades?"

***

How does one become stronger?—By deciding slowly; and by holding firmly to the decision once it is made. Everything else follows of itself. Spontaneous and changeable natures: both species of the weak. We must not confound ourselves with them; we must feel distance—betimes!

Beware of good-natured people!. Dealings with them make one torpid. All environment is good which makes one exercise those defensive and; aggressive powers which are instinctive in man. All one's inventiveness should apply itself to putting one's power of will to the test.... Here the determining factor must be recognised as something which is not knowledge, astuteness, or wit.

One must learn to command betimes,—likewise to obey. A man must learn modesty and tact in modesty: he must learn to distinguish and to honour where modesty is displayed; he must likewise distinguish and honour wherever he bestows his confidence.

What does one repent most? One's modesty; the fact that one has not lent an ear to one's most individual needs; the fact that one has mistaken one's self; the fact that one has esteemed one's self low; the fact that one has lost all delicacy of hearing in regard to one's instincts.—This want of reverence in regard to one's self is avenged by all sorts of losses: in health, friendship, well-being, pride, cheerfulness, freedom, determination, courage. A man never forgives himself, later on, for this want of genuine egoism: he regards it as an objection and as a cause of doubt concerning his real ego.

919.

I should like man to begin by respecting himself: everything else follows of itself. Naturally a man ceases from being anything to others in this way: for this is precisely what they are least likely to forgive. "What? a man who respects himself?"[4] This is something quite different from the blind instinct to love one's self. Nothing is more common in the love of the sexes or in that duality which is called ego, than a certain contempt for that which is loved the fatalism of love.

920.

"I will have this or that"; "I would that this or that were so"; "I know that this or that is so the degrees of power: the man of will, the man of desire, the man of fate.

921.

The means by which a strong species maintains itself:—

It grants itself the right of exceptional actions, as a test of the power of self-control and of freedom.

It abandons itself to states in which a man is not allowed to be anything else than a barbarian.

It tries to acquire strength of will by every kind of asceticism.

It is not expansive, it practises silence; it is cautious in regard to all charms.

It learns to obey in such a way that obedience provides a test of self-maintenance. Casuistry is carried to its highest pitch in regard to points of honour.

It never argues, "What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,"—but conversely! it regards reward, and the ability to repay, as a privilege, as a distinction.

It does not covet other people's virtues.

922.

The way in which one has to treat raw savages and the impossibility of dispensing with barbarous methods, becomes obvious, in practice, when one is transplanted, with all one's European pampering, to a spot such as the Congo, or anywhere else where it is necessary to maintain one's mastery over barbarians.

923.

Warlike and peaceful people.—Art thou a man who has the instincts of a warrior in thy blood? If this be so, another question must be put. Do thy instincts impel thee to attack or to defend? The rest of mankind, all those whose instincts are not warlike, desire peace, concord, freedom, "equal rights": these things are but names and steps for one and the same thing. Such men only wish to go where it is not necessary for them to defend themselves,—such men become discontented with themselves when they are obliged to offer resistance: they would fain create circumstances in which war is no longer necessary. If the worst came to the worst, they would resign themselves, obey, and submit: all these things are better than waging war—thus does the Christian's instinct, for instance, whisper to him. In the born warrior's character there is something of armour, likewise in the choice of his circumstances and in the development of every one of his qualities, weapons are best evolved by the latter type, shields are best devised by the former.

What expedients and what virtues do the unarmed and the undefended require in order to survive—and even to conquer?

924.

What will become of a man who no longer has any reasons for either defence or attack? What will remain of his passions when he has lost those which form his defence and his weapons?

925.

A marginal note to a niaiserie anglaise: "Do not to others that which you would not that they should do unto you." This stands for wisdom; this stands for prudence; this stands as the very basis of morality as "a golden maxim." John Stuart Mill believes in it (and what Englishman does not?).... But the maxim does not bear investigation. The argument, Do not as you would not be done by, forbids action which produce harmful results; the thought behind always is that an action is invariably requited. What if some one came forward with the "Principe" in his hands, and said: "We must do those actions alone which enable us to steal a march on others,—and which deprive others of the power of doing the same to us"?—On the other hand, let us remember the Corsican who pledges his honour to vendetta. He too does not desire to have a bullet through him; but the prospect of one, the probability of getting one, does not deter him from vindicating his honour.... And in all really decent actions are we not intentionally indifferent as to what result they will bring? To avoid an action which might have harmful results,—that would be tantamount to forbidding all decent actions in general.

Apart from this, the above maxim is valuable because it betrays a certain type of man: it is the instinct of the herd which formulates itself through him,—we are equal, we regard each other as equal: as I am to thee so art thou to me.—In this community equivalence of actions is really believed in—an equivalence which never under any circumstances manifests itself in real conditions. It is impossible to requite every action: among real individuals equal actions do not exist, consequently there can be no such thing as "requital." ... When I do anything, I am very far from thinking that any man is able to do anything at all like it: the action belongs to me.... Nobody can pay me back for anything I do; the most that can be done is to make me the victim of another action.

926.

Against John Stuart Mill.—I abhor the man's vulgarity when he says: "What is right for one man is right for another"; "Do not to others that which you would not that they should do unto you. Such principles would fain establish the whole of human traffic upon mutual services, so that every action would appear to be a cash payment for something done to us. The hypothesis here is ignoble to the last degree: it is taken for granted that there is some sort of equivalence in value between my actions and thine; the most personal value Of an action is simply cancelled in this manner (that part of an action which has no equivalent and which cannot be remunerated). "Reciprocity" is a piece of egregious vulgarity; the mere fact that what I do cannot and may not be done by another, that there is no such thing as equivalence (except in those very select circles where one actually has one's equal, inter pares), that in a really profound sense a man never requites because he is something unique in himself and can only do unique things,—this fundamental conviction contains the cause of aristocratic aloofness from the mob, because the latter believes in equality, and consequently in the feasibility of equivalence and "reciprocity."

927.

The suburban Philistinism of moral valuations and of its concepts "useful" and "harmful" is well founded; it is the necessary point of view of a community which is only able to see and survey immediate and proximate consequences. The State and the political man are already in need of a more super-moral attitude of mind: because they have to calculate concerning a much more complicated tissue of consequences. An economic policy for the whole world should be possible which could look at things in such broad perspective that all its isolated demands would seem for the moment not only unjust, but arbitrary.

928.

"Should one follow one's feelings?"—To set one's life at stake on the impulse of the moment, and actuated by a generous feeling, has little worth, and does not even distinguish one. Everybody is alike in being capable of this—and in behaving in this way with determination, the criminal, the bandit, and the Corsican certainly outstrip the honest man.

A higher degree of excellence would be to overcome this impulse, and to refrain from performing an heroic deed at its bidding—and to remain cold, raisonnable, free from the tempestuous surging of concomitant sensations of delight.... The same holds good of pity: it must first be sifted through reason; without this it becomes just as dangerous as any other passion.

The blind yielding to a passion, whether it be generosity, pity, or hostility, is the cause of the greatest evil. Greatness of character does not consist in not possessing these passions—on the contrary, a man should possess them to a terrible degree: but he should lead them by the bridle.. and even this he should not do out of love of control, but merely because....

929.

"To give up one's life for a cause"—very effective. But there are many things for which one gives up one's life: the passions, one and all, will be gratified. Whether one's life be pledged to pity, to anger, or to revenge—it matters not from the point of view of value. How many have not sacrificed their lives for pretty girls—and even what is worse, their health! When one has temperament, one instinctively chooses the most dangerous things: if one is a philosopher, for instance, one chooses the adventures of speculation; if one is virtuous, one chooses immorality. One kind of man will risk nothing, another kind will risk everything. Are we despisers of life? On the contrary, what we seek is life raised to a higher power, life in danger.... But, let me repeat, we do not, on that account, wish to be more virtuous than others, Pascal, for instance, wished to risk nothing, and remained a Christian. That perhaps was virtuous.——A man always sacrifices something.

930.

How many advantages does not a man sacrifice! To how small an extent does he seek his own profit! All his emotions and passions wish to assert their rights, and how remote a passion is From that cautious utility which consists in personal profit!

A man does not strive after "happiness"; one must be an Englishman to be able to believe that a man is always seeking his own advantage. Our desires long to violate things with passion—their overflowing strength seeks obstacles.

931.

All passions are generally useful, some directly, others indirectly; in regard to utility it is absolutely impossible to fix upon any gradation of values,—however certainly the forces of nature in general may be regarded as good (i.e. useful), from an economic point of view, they are still the sources of much that is terrible and much that is fatally irrevocable. The most one might say would be, that the mightiest passions are the most valuable: seeing that no stronger sources of power exist.

932.

All well-meaning, helpful, good-natured attitudes of mind have not come to be honoured on account of their usefulness: but because they are the conditions peculiar to rich souls who are able to bestow and whose value consists in their vital exuberance. Look into the eyes of the benevolent man! In them you will see the exact reverse of self-denial, of hatred of self, of Pascalism.

933.

In short, what we require is to dominate the passions and not to weaken or to extirpate them!—The greater the dominating power of the will, the greater the freedom that may be given to the passions.

The "great man" is so, owing to the free scope which he gives to his desires, and to the still greater power which knows how to enlist these magnificent monsters into its service.

The "good man" in every stage of civilisation is at one and the same time the least dangerous and the most useful: a sort of medium; the idea formed of such a man by the common mind is that he is some one whom one has no reason to fear, but whom one must not therefore despise.

Education: essentially a means of ruining exceptions in favour of the rule. Culture: essentially the means of directing taste against the exceptions in favour of the mediocre.

Only when a culture can dispose of an overflow of force, is it capable of being a hothouse for the luxurious culture of the exception, of the experiment, of the danger, of the nuance: this is the tendency of every aristocratic culture.

934.

All questions of strength: to what extent ought one to try and prevail against the preservative measures of society and the latter's prejudices?—to what extent ought one to unfetter one's terrible qualities, through which so many go to the dogs?—to what extent ought one to run counter to truth, and take up sides with its most questionable aspects?—to what extent ought one to oppose suffering, self-contempt, pity, disease, vice, when it is always open to question whether one can ever master them (what does not kill us makes us stronger....)?—and, finally, to what extent ought one to acknowledge the rights of the rule, of the common-place, of the petty, of the good, of the upright, in fact of the average man, without thereby allowing one's self to become vulgar? ... The strongest test of character is to resist being ruined by the seductiveness of goodness. Goodness must be regarded as a luxury, as a refinement, as a vice.

3. The Noble Man.

935.

Type. real goodness, nobility, greatness of soul, as the result of vital wealth: which does not give in order to receive—and which has no desire to elevate itself by being good, squandering is typical of genuine goodness, vital personal wealth is its prerequisite.

936.

Aristocracy.—Gregarious ideals at present culminating in the highest standard of value for society. It has been attempted to give them a cosmic, yea, and even a metaphysical, value.—I defend aristocracy against them.

Any society which would of itself preserve a feeling of respect and délicatesse in regard to freedom, must consider itself as an exception, and have a force against it from which it distinguishes itself, and upon which it looks down with hostility.

The more rights I surrender and the more I level myself down to others, the more deeply do I sink into the average and ultimately into the greatest number. The first condition which an aristocratic society must have in order to maintain a high degree of freedom among its members, is that extreme tension which arises from the presence of the most antagonistic instincts in all its units: from their will to dominate....

If ye would fain do away with strong contrasts and differences of rank, ye will also abolish, strong love, lofty attitudes of mind, and the feeling of individuality.

***

Concerning the actual psychology of societies based upon freedom and equality.—What is it that tends to diminish in such a society?

The will to be responsible for ones self (the loss of this is a sign of the decline of autonomy); the ability to defend and to attack, even in spiritual matters; the power of command; the sense of reverence, of subservience, the ability to be silent, great passion, great achievements, tragedy and cheerfulness.

937.

In 1814 Augustin Thierry read what Montlosier had said in his work, De la Monarchie française: he answered with a cry of indignation, and set himself to his task. That emigrant had said:

"Race d'affranchis, race d'esclaves arrachés de nos mains, peuple tributaire, peuple nouveau, licence vous fut octroyée d'être libres, et non pas à nous d'être nobles; pour nous tout est de droit, pour vous tout est de grâce, nous ne sommes point de votre communauté; nous sommes un tout par nous mêmes."

938.

How constantly the aristocratic world shears and weakens itself ever more and more! By means of its noble instincts it abandons its privileges, and owing to its refined and excessive culture, it takes an interest in the people, the weak, the poor, and the poetry of the lowly, etc.

939.

There is such a thing as a noble and dangerous form of carelessness, which allows of profound conclusions and insight: the carelessness of the self-reliant and over-rich soul, which has never troubled itself about friends, but which knows only hospitality and knows how to practise it; whose heart and house are open to all who will enter—beggar, cripple, or king. This is genuine sociability: he who is capable of it has hundreds of "friends," but probably not one friend.

940.

The teaching μηδὲν ἄγαν applies to men with overflowing strength,—not to the mediocre, ἐγκράτεια and ἄσκησις are only steps to higher things. Above them stands "golden Nature."

"Thou shalt"—unconditional obedience in Stoics, in Christian and Arabian Orders, in Kant's philosophy (it is immaterial whether this obedience is shown to a superior or to a concept).

Higher than "Thou shalt" stands "I will" (the heroes); higher than "I will" stands "I am" (the gods of the Greeks).

Barbarian gods express nothing of the pleasure of restraint,—they are neither simple, nor light-hearted, nor moderate.

941.

The essence of our gardens and palaces (and to the same extent the essence of all yearning after riches) is the desire to rid the eye of disorder and vulgarity, and to build a home for our soul's nobility.

The majority of people certainly believe that they will develop higher natures when those beautiful and peaceful things have operated upon them: hence the exodus to Italy, hence all travelling, etc., and all reading and visits to theatres. People want to be formed—that is the kernel of their labours for culture! But the strong, the mighty, would themselves have a hand in the forming, and would fain have nothing strange about them!

It is for this reason, too, that men go to open Nature, not to find themselves, but to lose themselves and to forget themselves. The desire "to get away from one's self" is proper to all weaklings, and to all those who are discontented with themselves.

942.

The only nobility is that of birth and blood. (I do not refer here to the prefix "Lord" and L'almanac de Gotha: this is a parenthesis for donkeys.) Wherever people speak of the "aristocracy of intellect," reasons are generally not lacking for concealing something, it is known to be a password among ambitious Jews. Intellect alone does not ennoble; on the contrary, something is always needed to ennoble intellect.—What then is needed?—Blood.

943.

What is noble?

—External punctiliousness; because this punctiliousness hedges a man about, keeps him at a distance, saves him from being confounded with somebody else.

A frivolous appearance in word, clothing, and bearing, with which stoical hardness and self-control protect themselves from all prying inquisitiveness or curiosity.

—A slow step and a slow glance. There are not too many valuable things on earth: and these come and wish to come of themselves to him who has value. We are not quick to admire.

—We know how to bear poverty, want, and even illness.

—We avoid small honours owing to our mistrust of all who are over-ready to praise: for the man who praises believes he understands what he praises: but to understand—Balzac, that typical man of ambition, betrayed the fact comprendre c'est égaler.

—Our doubt concerning the communicativeness of our hearts goes very deep; to us, loneliness is not a matter of choice, it is imposed upon us.

—We are convinced that we only have duties to our equals, to others we do as we think best: we know that justice is only to be expected among equals (alas! this will not be realised for some time to come),

—We are ironical towards the "gifted"; we hold the belief that no morality is possible without good birth.

—We always feel as if we were those who had to dispense honours: while he is not found too frequently who would be worthy of honouring us.

—We are always disguised: the higher a man's nature the more is he in need of remaining incognito. If there be a God, then out of sheer decency He ought only to show Himself on earth in the form of a man.

—We are capable of otium, of the unconditional conviction that although a handicraft does not shame one in any sense, it certainly reduces one's rank. However much we may respect "industry," and know how to give it its due, we do not appreciate it in a bourgeois sense, or after the manner of those insatiable and cackling artists who, like hens, cackle and lay eggs, and cackle again.

—We protect artists and poets and any one who happens to be a master in something; but as creatures of a higher order than those, who only know how to do something, who are only "productive men," we do not confound ourselves with them.

—We find joy in all forms and ceremonies; we would fain foster everything formal, and we are convinced that courtesy is one of the greatest virtues; we feel suspicious of every kind of laisser aller, including the freedom of the press and of thought; because, under such conditions, the intellect grows easy-going and coarse, and stretches its limbs.

—We take pleasure in women as in a perhaps daintier, more delicate, and more ethereal kind of creature. What a treat it is to meet creatures who have only dancing and nonsense and finery in their minds! They have always been the delight of every tense and profound male soul, whose life is burdened with heavy responsibilities.

—We take pleasure in princes and in priests, because in big things, as in small, they actually uphold the belief in the difference of human values, even in the estimation of the past, and at least symbolically.

—We are able to keep silence i but we do not breathe a word of this in the presence of listeners.

—We are able to endure long enmities: we lack the power of easy reconciliations.

—We have a loathing of demagogism, of enlightenment, of amiability, and plebeian familiarity.

—We collect precious things, the needs of higher and fastidious souls; we wish to possess nothing in common. We want to have our own books, our own landscapes.

—We protest against evil and fine experiences, and take care not to generalise too quickly. The individual case: how ironically we regard it when it has the bad taste to put on the airs of a rule!

—We love that which is naïf, and naïf people, but as spectators and higher creatures; we think Faust is just as simple as his Margaret.

—We have a low estimation of good people, because they are gregarious animals: we know how often an invaluable golden drop of goodness lies concealed beneath the most evil, the most malicious, and the hardest exterior, and that this single grain outweighs all the mere goody-goodiness of milk-and-watery souls.

—We don't regard a man of our kind as refuted by his vices, nor by his tomfooleries. We are well aware that we are not recognised with ease, and that we have every reason to make our foreground very prominent.

944.

What is noble?—The fact that one is constantly forced to be playing a part. That one is constantly searching for situations in which one is forced to put on airs. That one leaves happiness to the greatest number: the happiness which consists of inner peacefulness, of virtue, of comfort, and of Anglo-angelic-back-parlour-smugness, à la Spencer. That one instinctively seeks for heavy responsibilities. That one knows how to create enemies everywhere, at a pinch even in one's self. That one contradicts the greatest number, not in words at all, but by continually behaving differently from them.

945.

Virtue (for instance, truthfulness) is our most noble and most dangerous luxury. We must not decline the disadvantages which it brings in its train.

946.

We refuse to be praised: we do what serves our purpose, what gives us pleasure, or what we are obliged to do.

947.

What is chastity in a man? It means that his taste in sex has remained noble; that in eroticis he likes neither the brutal, the morbid, nor the clever.

948.

The concept of honour is founded upon the belief in select society, in knightly excellences, in the obligation of having continually to play a part. In essentials it means that one does not take one's life too seriously, that one adheres unconditionally to the most dignified manners in one's dealings with everybody (at least in so far as they do not belong to "us"); that one is neither familiar, nor good-natured, nor hearty, nor modest, except inter pares; that one is always playing a part.

949.

The fact that one sets one's life, one's health, and one's honour at stake, is the result of high spirits and of an overflowing and spendthrift will: it is not the result of philanthropy, but of the fact that every danger kindles our curiosity concerning the measure of our strength, and provokes our courage.

950.

Eagles swoop down straight nobility of soul is best revealed by the magnificent and proud foolishness with which it makes its attacks.

951.

War should be made against all namby-pamby ideas of nobility!—A certain modicum of brutality cannot be dispensed with: no more than we can do without a certain approximation to criminality. "Self-satisfaction" must not be allowed; a man should look upon himself with an adventurous spirit; he should experiment with himself and run risks with himself—no beautiful soul-quackery should be tolerated. I want to give a more robust ideal a chance of prevailing.

952.

"Paradise is under the shadow of a swordsman"—this is also a symbol and a test-word by which souls with noble and warrior-like origin betray and discover themselves.

953.

The two paths.—There comes a period when man has a surplus amount of power at his disposal. Science aims at establishing the slavery of nature.

Then man acquires the leisure in which to develop himself into something new and more lofty. A new aristocracy. It is then that a large number of virtues which are now conditions of existence are superseded.—Qualities which are no longer needed are on that account lost. We no longer need virtues: consequently we are losing them (likewise the morality of "one thing is needful," of the salvation of the soul, and of immortality: these were means wherewith to make man capable of enormous self-tyranny, through the emotion of great fear!!!).

The different kinds of needs by means of whose discipline man is formed: need teaches work, thought, and self-control.

***

Physiological purification and strengthening. The new aristocracy is in need of an opposing body which it may combat: it must be driven to extremities in order to maintain itself.

The two futures of mankind: (1) the consequence of a levelling-down to mediocrity, (2) conscious aloofness and self-development.

A doctrine which would cleave a gulf: it maintains the highest and the lowest species (it destroys the intermediate).

The aristocracies, both spiritual and temporal, which have existed hitherto prove nothing against the necessity of a new aristocracy.

4. The Lords of the Earth.

954.

A certain question constantly recurs to us; it is perhaps a seductive and evil question; may it be whispered into the ears of those who have a right to such doubtful problems—those strong souls of to-day whose dominion over themselves is unswerving: is it not high time, now that the type "gregarious animal" is developing ever more and more in Europe, to set about rearing, thoroughly, artificially, and consciously, an opposite type, and to attempt to establish the latter's virtues? And would not the democratic movement itself find for the first time a sort of goal, salvation, and justification, if some one appeared who availed himself of it—so that at last, beside its new and sublime product, slavery (for this must be the end of European democracy), that higher species of ruling and Cæsarian spirits might also be produced, which would stand upon it, hold to it, and would elevate themselves through it? This new race would climb aloft to new and hitherto impossible things, to a broader vision, and to its task on earth.

955.

The aspect of the European of to-day makes me very hopeful. A daring and ruling race is here building itself up upon the foundation of an extremely intelligent, gregarious mass. It is obvious that the educational movements for the latter are not alone prominent nowadays.

956.

The same conditions which go to develop the gregarious animal also force the development of the leaders.

957.

The question, and at the same time the task, is approaching with hesitation, terrible as Fate, but nevertheless inevitable: how shall the earth as a whole be ruled? And to what end shall man as a whole—no longer as a people or as a race—be reared and trained?

Legislative moralities are the principal means by which one can form mankind, according to the fancy of a creative and profound will: provided, of course, that such an artistic will of the first order gets the power into its own hands, and can make its creative will prevail over long periods in the form of legislation, religions, and morals. At present, and probably for some time to come, one will seek such colossally creative men, such really great men, as I understand them, in vain: they will be lacking, until, after many disappointments, we are forced to begin to understand why it is they are lacking, and that nothing bars with greater hostility their rise and development, at present and for some time to come, than that which is now called the morality in Europe. Just as if there were no other kind of morality, and could be no other kind, than the one we have already characterised as herd-morality. It is this morality which is now striving with all its power to attain to that green-meadow happiness on earth, which consists in security, absence of danger, ease, facilities for livelihood, and, last but not least, "if all goes well," even hopes to dispense with all kinds of shepherds and bell-wethers. The two doctrines which it preaches most universally are "equality of rights" and "pity for all sufferers"—and it even regards suffering itself as something which must be got rid of absolutely. That such ideas may be modern leads one to think very poorly of modernity. He, however, who has reflected deeply concerning the question, how and where the plant man has hitherto grown most vigorously, is forced to believe that this has always taken place under the opposite conditions; that to this end the danger of the situation has to increase enormously, his inventive faculty and dissembling powers have to fight their way up under long oppression and compulsion, and his will to life has to be increased to the unconditioned will to power, to over-power: he believes that danger, severity, violence, peril in the street and in the heart, inequality of rights, secrecy, stoicism, seductive art, and devilry of every kind—in short, the opposite of all gregarious desiderata—are necessary for the elevation of man. Such a morality with opposite designs, which would rear man upwards instead of to comfort and mediocrity; such a morality, with the intention of producing a ruling caste—the future lords of the earth—must, in order to be taught at all, introduce itself as if it were in some way correlated to the prevailing moral law, and must come forward under the cover of the latter's words and forms. But seeing that, to this end, a host of transitionary and deceptive measures must be discovered, and that the life of a single individual stands for almost nothing in view of the accomplishment of such lengthy tasks and aims, the first thing that must be done is to rear a new kind of man in whom the duration of the necessary will and the necessary instincts is guaranteed for many generations. This must be a new kind of ruling species and caste—this ought to be quite as clear as the somewhat lengthy and not easily expressed consequences of this thought. The aim should be to prepare a transvaluation of values for a particularly strong kind of man, most highly gifted in intellect and will, and, to this end, slowly and cautiously to liberate in him a whole host of slandered instincts hitherto held in check: whoever meditates about this problem belongs to us, the free spirits—certainly not to that kind of "free spirit" which has existed hitherto: for these desired practically the reverse. To this order, it seems to me, belong, above all, the pessimists of Europe, the poets and thinkers of a revolted idealism, in so far as their discontent with existence in general must consistently at least have led them to be dissatisfied with the man of the present; the same applies to certain insatiably ambitious artists who courageously and unconditionally fight against the gregarious animal for the special rights of higher men, and subdue all herd-instincts and precautions of more exceptional minds by their seductive art. Thirdly and lastly, we should include in this group all those critics and historians by whom the discovery of the Old World, which has begun so happily—this was the work of the new Columbus, of German intellect—will be courageously continued (for we still stand in the very first stages of this conquest). For in the Old World, as a matter of fact, a different and more lordly morality ruled than that of to-day; and the man of antiquity, under the educational ban of his morality, was a stronger and deeper man than the man of to-day—up to the present he has been the only well-constituted man. The temptation, however, which from antiquity to the present day has always exercised its power on such lucky strokes of Nature, i.e. on strong and enterprising souls, is, even at the present day, the most subtle and most effective of anti-democratic and anti-Christian powers, just as it was in the time of the Renaissance.

958.

I am writing for a race of men which does not yet exist: for "the lords of the earth."

In Plato's Theages the following passage will be found: "Every one of us would like if possible to be master of mankind; if possible, a God!" This attitude of mind must be reinstated in our midst.

Englishmen, Americans, and Russians.

959.

That primeval forest-plant Man always appears where the struggle for power has been waged longest. Great men.

Primeval forest creatures, the Romans.

960.

From now henceforward there will be such favourable first conditions for greater ruling powers as have never yet been found on earth. And this is by no means the most important point. The establishment has been made possible of international race unions which will set themselves the task of rearing a ruling race, the future "lords of the earth"—a new, vast aristocracy based upon the most severe self-discipline, in which the will of philosophical men of power and artist-tyrants will be stamped upon thousands of years: a higher species of men which, thanks to their preponderance of will, knowledge, riches, and influence, will avail themselves of democratic Europe as the most suitable and supple instrument they can have for taking the fate of the earth into their own hands, and working as artists upon man himself. Enough! The time is coming for us to transform all our views on politics.

5. The Great Man.

961.

I will endeavour to see at which periods in history great men arise. The significance of despotic moralities that have lasted a long time: they strain the bow, provided they do not break it.

962.

A great man,—a man whom Nature has built up and invented in a grand style,—What is such a man? First, in his general course of action his consistency is so broad that owing to its very breadth it can be surveyed only with difficulty, and consequently misleads; he possesses the capacity of extending his will over great stretches of his life, and of despising and rejecting all small things, whatever most beautiful and "divine" things of the world there may be among them. Secondly, he is colder, harder, less cautious and more free from the fear of "public opinion"; he does not possess the virtues which are compatible with respectability and with being respected, nor any of those things which are counted among the "virtues of the herd." If he is unable to lead, he walks alone; he may then perchance grunt at many things which he meets on his way. Thirdly, he asks for no "compassionate" heart, but servants, instruments; in his dealings with men his one aim is to make something out of them. He knows that he cannot reveal himself to anybody: he thinks it bad taste to become familiar; and as a rule he is not familiar when people think he is. When he is not talking to his soul, he wears a mask. He would rather lie than tell the truth, because lying requires more spirit and will. There is a loneliness within his heart which neither praise nor blame can reach, because he is his own judge from whom is no appeal.

963.

The great man is necessarily a sceptic (I do not mean to say by this that he must appear to be one), provided that greatness consists in this: to will something great, together with the means thereto. Freedom from any kind of conviction is a factor in his strength of will. And thus it is in keeping with that "enlightened form of despotism" which every great passion exercises. Such a passion enlists intellect in its service; it even has the courage for unholy means; it creates without hesitation; it allows itself convictions, it even uses them, but it never submits to them. The need of faith and of anything unconditionally negative or affirmative is a proof of weakness; all weakness is weakness of will. The man of faith, the believer, is necessarily an inferior species of man. From this it follows that "all freedom of spirit," i.e. instinctive scepticism, is the prerequisite of greatness.

964.

The great man is conscious of his power over a people, and of the fact that he coincides temporarily with a people or with a century—this magnifying of his self-consciousness as causa and voluntas is misunderstood as "altruism": he feels driven to means of communication: all great men are inventive in such means. They want to form great communities in their own image; they would fain give multiformity and disorder definite shape; it stimulates them to behold chaos.

The misunderstanding of love. There is a slavish love which subordinates itself and gives itself away—which idealises and deceives itself; there is a divine species of love which despises and loves at the same time, and which remodels and elevates the thing it loves.

The object is to attain that enormous energy of greatness which can model the man of the future by means of discipline and also by means of the annihilation of millions of the bungled and botched, and which can yet avoid going to ruin at the sight of the suffering created thereby, the like of which has never been seen before.

965.

The revolution, confusion, and distress of whole peoples is in my opinion of less importance than the misfortunes which attend great individuals in their development. We must not allow ourselves to be deceived: the many misfortunes of all these small folk do not together constitute a sum-total, except in the feelings of mighty men.—To think of one's self in moments of great danger, and to draw ones own advantage from the calamities of thousands in the case of the man who differs very much from the common ruck—may be a sign of a great character which is able to master its feeling of pity and justice.

966.

In contradistinction to the animal, man has developed such a host of antagonistic instincts and impulses in himself, that he has become master of the earth by means of this synthesis.—Moralities are only the expression of local and limited orders of rank in this multifarious world of instincts which prevent man from perishing through their antagonism. Thus a masterful instinct so weakens and subtilises the instinct which opposes it that it becomes an impulse which provides the stimulus for the activity of the principal instinct.

The highest man would have the greatest multifariousness in his instincts, and he would possess these in the relatively strongest degree in which he is able to endure them. As a matter of fact, wherever the plant, man, is found strong, mighty instincts are to be found opposing each other (e.g. Shakespeare), but they are subdued.

967.

Would one not be justified in reckoning all great men among the wicked? This is not so easy to demonstrate in the case of individuals. They are so frequently capable of masterly dissimulation that they very often assume the airs and forms of great virtues. Often, too, they seriously reverence virtues, and in such a way as to be passionately hard towards themselves; but as the result of cruelty. Seen from a distance such things are liable to deceive. Many, on the other hand, misunderstand themselves; not infrequently, too, a great mission will call forth great qualities, e.g. justice. The essential fact is: the greatest men may also perhaps have great virtues, but then they also have the opposites of these virtues. I believe that it is precisely out of the presence of these opposites and of the feelings they suscitate, that the great man arises,—for the great man is the broad arch which spans two banks lying far apart.

968.

In great men we find the specific qualities of life in their highest manifestation: injustice, falsehood, exploitation. But inasmuch as their effect has always been overwhelming, their essential nature has been most thoroughly misunderstood, and interpreted as goodness. The type of such an interpreter would be Carlyle.[5]

969.

Generally speaking, everything is worth no more and no less than one has paid for it. This of course does not hold good in the case of an isolated individual; the great capacities of the individual have no relation whatsoever to that which he has done, sacrificed, and suffered for them. But if one should examine the previous history of his race one would be sure to find the record of an extraordinary storing up and capitalising of power by means of all kinds of abstinence, struggle, industry, and determination. It is because the great man has cost so much, and not because he stands there as a miracle, as a gift from heaven, or as an accident, that he became great: "Heredity" is a false notion. A man's ancestors have always paid the price of what he is.

970.

The danger of modesty. To adapt ourselves too early to duties, societies, and daily schemes of work in which accident may have placed us, at a time when neither our powers nor our aim in life has stepped peremptorily into our consciousness; the premature certainty of conscience and feeling of relief and of sociability which is acquired by this precocious, modest attitude, and which appears to our minds as a deliverance from those inner and outer disturbances of our feelings—all this pampers and keeps a man down in the most dangerous fashion imaginable. To learn to respect things which people about us respect, as if we had no standard or right of our own to determine values; the strain of appraising things as others appraise them, counter to the whisperings of our inner taste, which also has a conscience of its own, becomes a terribly subtle kind of constraint: and if in the end no explosion takes place which bursts all the bonds of love and morality at once, then such a spirit becomes withered, dwarfed, feminine, and objective. The reverse of this is bad enough, but still it is better than the foregoing: to suffer from one's environment, from its praise just as much as from its blame; to be wounded by it and to fester inwardly without betraying the fact; to defend one's self involuntarily and suspiciously against its love; to learn to be silent, and perchance to conceal this by talking; to create nooks and safe, lonely hiding-places where one can go and take breath for a moment, or shed tears of sublime comfort—until at last one has grown strong enough to say: "What on earth have I to do with you?" and to go one's way alone.

971.

Those men who are in themselves destinies, and whose advent is the advent of fate, the whole race of heroic bearers of burdens: oh! how heartily and gladly would they have respite from themselves for once in a while!—how they crave after stout hearts and shoulders, that they might free themselves, were it but for an hour or two, from that which oppresses them! And how fruitlessly they crave! ... They wait; they observe all that passes before their eyes: no man even cometh nigh to them with a thousandth part of their suffering and passion, no man guesseth to what end they have waited.... At last, at last, they learn the first lesson of their life: to wait no longer; and forthwith they learn their second lesson: to be affable, to be modest; and from that time onwards to endure everybody and every kind of thing—in short, to endure still a little more than they had endured theretofore.

6. The Highest Man as Lawgiver of the Future.

972.

The lawgivers of the future.—After having tried for a long time in vain to attach a particular meaning to the word "philosopher,"—for I found many antagonistic traits, I recognised that we can distinguish between two kinds of philosophers:—

(1) Those who desire to establish any large system of values (logical or moral);

(2) Those who are the lawgivers of such valuations.

The former try to seize upon the world of the present or the past, by embodying or abbreviating the multifarious phenomena by means of signs: their object is to make it possible for us to survey, to reflect upon, to comprehend, and to utilise everything that has happened hitherto—they serve the purpose of man by using all past things to the benefit of his future.

The second class, however, are commanders; they say: "Thus shall it be!" They alone determine the "whither" and the "wherefore," and that which will be useful and beneficial to man; they have command over the previous work of scientific men, and all knowledge is to them only a means to their creations. This second kind of philosopher seldom appears; and as a matter of fact their situation and their danger is appalling. How often have they not intentionally blindfolded their eyes in order to shut out the sight of the small strip of ground which separates them from the abyss and from utter destruction. Plato, for instance, when he persuaded himself that "the good," as he wanted it, was not Plato's good, but "the good in itself," the eternal treasure which a certain man of the name of Plato had chanced to find on his way! This same will to blindness prevails in a much coarser form in the case of the founders of religion; their "Thou shalt" must on no account sound to their ears like "I will,"—they only dare to pursue their task as if under the command of God; their legislation of values can only be a burden they can bear if they regard it as "revelation," in this way their conscience is not crushed by the responsibility.

As soon as those two comforting expedients—that of Plato and that of Muhammed—have been overthrown, and no thinker can any longer relieve his conscience with the hypothesis "God" or "eternal values," the claim of the lawgiver to determine new values rises to an awfulness which has not yet been experienced. Now those elect, on whom the faint light of such a duty is beginning to dawn, try and see whether they cannot escape it—as their greatest danger—by means of a timely side-spring: for instance, they try to persuade themselves that their task is already accomplished, or that it defies accomplishment, or that their shoulders are not broad enough for such burdens, or that they are already taken up with burdens closer to hand, or even that this new and remote duty is a temptation and a seduction, drawing them away from all other duties; a disease, a kind of madness. Many, as a matter of fact, do succeed in evading the path appointed to them: throughout the whole of history we can see the traces of such deserters and their guilty consciences. In most cases,, however, there comes to such men of destiny that hour of delivery, that autumnal season of maturity, in which they are forced to do that which they did not even "wish to do": and that deed before which in the past they have trembled most, falls easily and unsought from the tree, as an involuntary deed, almost as a present.

973.

The human horizon.—Philosophers may be conceived as men who make the greatest efforts to discover to what extent man can elevate himself—this holds good more particularly of Plato: how far man's power can extend. But they do this as individuals; perhaps the instinct of Cæsars and of all founders of states, etc., was greater, for it preoccupied itself with the question how far man could be urged forward in development under "favourable circumstances." What they did not sufficiently understand, however, was the nature of favourable circumstances. The great question: "Where has the plant 'man' grown most magnificently heretofore? In order to answer this, a comparative study of history is necessary.

974.

Every fact and every work exercises a fresh persuasion over every age and every new species of man. History always enunciates new truths.

975.

To remain objective, severe, firm, and hard while making a thought prevail is perhaps the best forte of artists; but if for this purpose any one have to work upon human material (as teachers, statesmen, have to do, etc.), then the repose, the coldness, and the hardness soon vanish. In natures like Cæsar and Napoleon we are able to divine something of the nature of "disinterestedness" in their work on their marble, whatever be the number of men that are sacrificed in the process. In this direction the future of higher men lies: to bear the greatest responsibilities and not to go to rack and ruin through them.—Hitherto the deceptions of inspiration have almost always been necessary for a man not to lose faith in his own hand, and in his right to his task.

976.

The reason why philosophers are mostly failures. Because among the conditions which determine them there are qualities which generally ruin other men:—

(1) A philosopher must have an enormous multiplicity of qualities; he must be a sort of abbreviation of man and have all man's high and base desires: the danger of the contrast within him, and of the possibility of his loathing himself;

(2) He must be inquisitive in an extraordinary number of ways: the danger of versatility;

(3) He must be just and honest in the highest sense, but profound both in love and hate (and in injustice);

(4) He must not only be a spectator but a lawgiver: a judge and defendant (in so far as he is an abbreviation of the world);

(5) He must be extremely multiform and yet firm and hard. He must be supple.

977.

The really regal calling of the philosopher (according to the expression of Alcuin the Anglo-Saxon): "Prava corrigere, et recta corroborare, et sancta sublimare."

978.

The new philosopher can only arise in conjunction with a ruling class, as the highest spiritualisation of the latter. Great politics, the rule of the earth, as a proximate contingency, the total lack of principles necessary thereto.

979.

Fundamental concept: the new values must first be created—this remains our duty! The philosopher must be our lawgiver. New species. (How the greatest species hitherto [for instance, the Greeks] were reared: this kind of accident must now be consciously striven for.)

980.

Supposing one thinks of the philosopher as an educator who, looking down from his lonely elevation, is powerful enough to draw long chains of generations up to him: then he must be granted the most terrible privileges of a great educator. An educator never says what he himself thinks; but only that which he thinks it is good for those whom he is educating to hear upon any subject. This dissimulation on his part must not be found out; it is part of his masterliness that people should believe in his honesty, he must be capable of all the means of discipline and education: there are some natures which he will only be able to raise by means of lashing them with his scorn; others who are lazy, irresolute, cowardly, and vain, he will be able to affect only with exaggerated praise. Such a teacher stands beyond good and evil, but nobody must know that he does.

981.

We must not make men "better," we must not talk to them about morality in any form as if "morality in itself," or an ideal kind of man in general, could be taken for granted; but we must create circumstances in which stronger men are necessary, such as for their part will require a morality (or, better still: a bodily and spiritual discipline) which makes men strong, and upon which they will consequently insist! As they will need one so badly, they will have it.

We must not let ourselves be seduced by blue eyes and heaving breasts: greatness of soul has absolutely nothing romantic about it. And unfortunately nothing whatever amiable either.

982.

From warriors we must learn: (1) to associate death with those interests for which we are fighting—that makes us venerable; (2) we must learn to sacrifice numbers, and to take our cause sufficiently seriously not to spare men; (3) we must practise inexorable discipline, and allow ourselves violence and cunning in war.

983.

The education which rears those ruling virtues that allow a man to become master of his benevolence and his pity: the great disciplinary virtues ("Forgive thine enemies" is mere child's play beside them), and the passions of the creator, must be elevated to the heights—we must cease from carving marble! The exceptional and powerful position of those creatures (compared with that of all princes hitherto): the Roman Cæsar with Christ's soul.

984.

We must not separate greatness of soul from intellectual greatness. For the former involves independence; but without intellectual greatness independence should not be allowed; all it does is to create disasters even in its lust of well-doing and of practising "justice." Inferior spirits must obey, consequently they cannot be possessed of greatness.

985.

The more lofty philosophical man who is surrounded by loneliness, not because he wishes to be alone, but because he is what he is, and cannot find his equal: what a number of dangers and torments are reserved for him, precisely at the present time, when we have lost our belief in the order of rank, and consequently no longer know how to understand or honour this isolation! Formerly the sage almost sanctified himself in the consciences of the mob by going aside in this way; to-day the anchorite sees himself as though enveloped in a cloud of gloomy doubt and suspicions. And not alone by the envious and the wretched: in every well-meant act that he experiences he is bound to discover misunderstanding, neglect, and superficiality. He knows the crafty tricks of foolish pity which makes these people feel so good and holy when they attempt to save him from his own destiny, by giving him more comfortable situations and more decent and reliable society. Yes, he will even get to admire the unconscious lust of destruction with which all mediocre spirits stand up and oppose him, believing all the while that they have a holy right to do so! For men of such incomprehensible loneliness it is necessary to put a good stretch of country between them and the officiousness of their fellows: this is part of their prudence. For such a man to maintain himself uppermost to-day amid the dangerous maelstroms of the age which threaten to draw him under, even cunning and disguise will be necessary. Every attempt he makes to order his life in the present and with the present, every time he draws near to these men and their modern desires, he will have to expiate as if it were an actual sin: and withal he may look with wonder at the concealed wisdom of his nature, which after every one of these attempts immediately leads him back to himself by means of illnesses and painful accidents.

986.

"Maledetto colui
che contrista, un spirto immortal!"
MANZONI (Conte di Carmagnola, Act II.)

987.

The most difficult and the highest form which man can attain is the most seldom successful: thus the history of philosophy reveals a superabundance of bungled and unhappy cases of manhood, and its march is an extremely slow one; whole centuries intervene and suppress what has been achieved: and in this way the connecting-link is always made to fail. It is an appalling history, this history of the highest men, of the sages.—What is most often damaged is precisely the recollection of great men, for the semi-successful and botched cases of mankind misunderstand them and overcome them by their "successes." Whenever an "effect" is noticeable, the masses gather in a crowd round it; to hear the inferior and the poor in spirit having their say is a terrible ear-splitting torment for him who knows and trembles at the thought, that the fate of man depends upon the success of its highest types. From the days of my childhood I have reflected upon the sage's conditions of existence, and I will not conceal my happy conviction that in Europe he has once more become possible—perhaps only for a short time.

988.

These new philosophers begin with a description of a systematic order of rank and difference of value among men,—what they desire is, alas precisely the reverse of an assimilation and equalisation of man: they teach estrangement in every sense, they cleave gulfs such as have never yet existed, and they would fain have man become more evil than he ever was. For the present they live concealed and estranged even from each other. For many reasons they will find it necessary to be anchorites and to wear masks—they will therefore be of little use in the matter of seeking for their equals. They will live alone, and probably know the torments of all the loneliest forms of loneliness. Should they, however, thanks to any accident, meet each other on the road, I wager that they would not know each other, or that they would deceive each other in a number of ways.

989.

"Les philosophes ne sont pas faits pour s'aimer. Les aigles ne volent point en compagnie. Il faut laisser cela aux perdrix, aux étourneaux ... Planer au-dessus et avoir des griffes, voila le lot des grands génies."—GALIANI.

990.

I forgot to say that such philosophers are cheerful, and that they like to sit in the abyss of a perfectly clear sky: they are in need of different means for enduring life than other men; for they suffer in a different way (that is to say, just as much from the depth of their contempt of man as from their love of man).—The animal which suffered most on earth discovered for itself —laughter.

991.

Concerning the misunderstanding of "cheerfulness." —It is a temporary relief from long tension; it is the wantonness, the Saturnalia of a spirit, which is consecrating and preparing itself for long and terrible resolutions. The "fool" in the form of "science."

992.

The new order of rank among spirits; tragic natures no longer in the van.

993.

It is a comfort to me to know that over the smoke and filth of human baseness there is a higher and brighter mankind, which, judging from their number, must be a small race (for everything that is in any way distinguished is ipso facto rare). A man does not belong to this race because he happens to be more gifted, more virtuous, more heroic, or more loving than the men below, but because he is colder, brighter, more far-sighted, and more lonely; because he endures, prefers, and even insists upon, loneliness as the joy, the privilege, yea, even the condition of existence; because he lives amid clouds and lightnings as among his equals, and likewise among sunrays, dewdrops, snowflakes, and all that which must needs come from the heights, and which in its course moves ever from heaven to earth. The desire to look aloft is not our desire.—Heroes, martyrs, geniuses, and enthusiasts of all kinds, are not quiet, patient, subtle, cold, or slow enough for us.

994.

The absolute conviction that valuations above and below are different; that innumerable experiences are wanting to the latter: that when looking upwards from below misunderstandings are necessary.

995.

How do men attain to great power and to great tasks? All the virtues and proficiences of the body and the soul are little by little laboriously acquired, through great industry, self-control, and keeping one's self within narrow bounds, through a frequent, energetic, and genuine repetition of the same work and of the same hardships; but there are men who are the heirs and masters of this slowly acquired and manifold treasure of virtues and proficiences because, owing to happy and reasonable marriages and also to lucky accidents, the acquired and accumulated forces of many generations, instead of being squandered and subdivided, have been assembled together by means of steadfast struggling and willing. And thus, in the end, a man appears who is such a monster of strength, that he craves for a monstrous task. For it is our power which has command of us: and the wretched intellectual play of aims and intentions and motivations lies only in the foreground—however much weak eyes may recognise the principal factors in these things.

990.

The sublime man has the highest value, even when he is most delicate and fragile, because an abundance of very difficult and rare things have been reared through many generations and united in him.

997.

I teach that there are higher and lower men, and that a single individual may under certain circumstances justify whole millenniums of existence —that is to say, a wealthier, more gifted, greater, and more complete man, as compared with innumerable imperfect and fragmentary men.

998.

Away from rulers and rid of all bonds, live the highest men: and in the rulers they have their instruments.

999.

The order of rank: he who determines values and leads the will of millenniums, and does this by leading the highest natures—he is the highest man.

1000.

I fancy I have divined some of the things that lie hidden in the soul of the highest man; perhaps every man who has divined so much must go to ruin: but he who has seen the highest man must do all he can to make him possible. Fundamental thought: we must make the future the standard of all our valuations—and not seek the laws for our conduct behind us.

1001.

Not "mankind," but Superman is the goal!

1002.

"Come l'uom s'eterna...."—Inf. xv. 85.