■ f . 
 
 
 
 
 
 ..ri 
 
 V,-^''. • V
 
 ON READING NIETZSCHE
 
 NOTABLE WORKS OF 
 EMILE FAGUET 
 
 Le Seizieme siecle 
 
 Le Liberalisme 
 
 Le Socialisme en 1907 
 
 Le Pacifisme 
 
 Pour qu'on use Platon
 
 ON READING 
 NIETZSCHE 
 
 BY 
 
 EMILE FAGUET 
 
 Member of the Academic Fran^aise 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 GEORGE RAFFALOVICH 
 
 FERIOK 
 ASEav 
 ENTE5 l! 
 
 NEW YORK 
 MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 
 
 1918
 
 Copyright, 1918, bt 
 MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 
 
 Published April, 1918
 
 STACK 
 ANiiEX 
 
 P. 
 
 FOREWORD. 
 
 Nietzsche found in Emile Fagiiet one of his most 
 qualified critics. It takes a French critic to dis- 
 play the wares of even the clearest of Teutonic 
 philosophers. Nietzsche was a clear, honest (even 
 in his errors), merciless thinker. Emile Faguet, 
 without Nietzsche's depth of creative and imagin- 
 ative power, was nevertheless as clear and honest 
 a thinker and, to be sure, as merciless. The catholic 
 taste of tlie French, their disregard of shams and 
 that chivalrous instinct which prompts them, while 
 jealously preserving their individuality as a nation, 
 to recognize the good points in those strange, neigh- 
 bouring yet foreign, nations whom they know they 
 cannot appreciate and whom as a rule they do not 
 wish to appreciate, are all eminently shown in this 
 and in the other works of Faguet. 
 
 Would the late " Immortal " rewrite his conclu- 
 sion, one wonders, if he were alive to witness the 
 apogee of the war which he saw, but at its darkest 
 period, for France? From what I knew of him, I 
 doubt it. Emile Faguet was replete with that com- 
 mon-sense which made France the intellectual light 
 of the educated classes all over the world. He 
 would not have accepted the superficial idea which 
 caused many to see in Nietzsche the insi)irer of the 
 German leaders and in his works the Bible of the
 
 FOREWOEiD 
 
 German herds. German thinkers never quite knew 
 what to make out of Nietzsche. Those who charge 
 the author of Zarathustra with causing the war, 
 acknowledge thereby that they have not read or 
 have not understood him. Nietzsche was a symp- 
 tom, not a cause. Moreover, Teutonic romanticism 
 and lack of psychological acumen were his two chief 
 bogeys. Nietzsche, with that Greek ideal ever be- 
 fore his dreamer's eyes, had no patience with Ktil- 
 tur. To card-index alleged scientific facts which 
 lead nowhere but to a thirst for more " facts " — 
 was that a Greek ideal? To clog the brains of a 
 few men with unassimilated knowledge, and then 
 inspire them to force it down the throat of the 
 rest of mankind, that is Kultur — but was it Greek 
 pre-Socratic culture? And where is the art, the 
 beauty and the common-sense in the soul of Ger- 
 man mental expansionists ? 
 
 Nietzsche was and remains beyond the ken of 
 most Germans, even though a hasty glance at his 
 works may have led a few extreme German Kul- 
 turists to fancy they had in him an apologist for 
 their ravings. Through his French critic he may 
 perhaps appear clearer than he was in reality. If 
 the Greeks' saying " fieya (3i(3Xtov [icya KaKov" (a 
 great book is a great evil) applies to Nietzsche, one 
 must admit that Faguet deprives his work of much 
 of the danger thereof, for only the unknown dan- 
 gers find us unarmed. If there be poison in Nie- 
 tzsche's writings, Faguet serves the antidote along 
 with it as it were, in the course of his running, some- 
 times rambling, commentary. Nietzsche's notions 
 are sifted; the essentials are all here and the con-
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 tribution he brought to human thought is duly ac- 
 knowledged. That contribution was real and will 
 remain, long after the last trace of the present war 
 has been eradicated by the work of human patience. 
 
 I have followed the French original as closely as 
 the form of the Latin periods of Faguet allowed. 
 A translator should try to preserve the flavour of the 
 author's work, especially when such flavour is as 
 delicate as that used by Faguet. As to the passages 
 quoted from Nietzsche. I made my own version, ex- 
 ception made for those longer passages from Thus 
 Spake Zaratliustra and Beyond Good and Evil 
 which I took from the translation in Messrs. Boni 
 and Liveright's IModem Library. For those who 
 wish to enjoy the " dangerous pleasure " of reading 
 him and deciding for themselves, I should add that 
 the only complete edition of Nietzsche's works in 
 English which one may recommend is that under- 
 taken by Dr. Oscar Levy, and published in this 
 country by the Macmillan Co. Those in the Mod- 
 em Library are published by arrangement between 
 these two firms. A list of works will be found in 
 an Appendix to this volume. 
 
 G. R. 
 
 North Cohasset, December, 1917.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 chapter page 
 
 Foreword 4 
 
 I Nietzsche Seeks Himself i 
 
 II Preaching His Faitu 2^ 
 
 HI Criticising the Obstacles: First Ob- 
 stacles 33 
 
 IV Criticising the Obstacles: Society . 41 
 
 V Criticising the Obstacles: Religion , 50 
 
 VI Criticising the Obstacles: Science and 
 
 Rationalism 73 
 
 \\\ Criticising the Obstacles: Morality . 87 
 
 VIII The Theory 126 
 
 IX Developing the Theory 165 
 
 X Distant Perspectives of the Doctrine . 206 
 
 XI Digression : Literary Ideas of Nietz- 
 sche 240 
 
 XII Conclusion 267
 
 ON READING 
 NIETZSCHE 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 NIETZSCHE SEEKS HIMSELF. 
 
 Often, if not always, while expressing his ideas, a 
 philosopher merely analyzes his own character. 
 Often, if not always, the philosopher's starting point 
 is his own feelings. Then, gifted with the faculty 
 of putting his feelings into thoughts, because he is a 
 philosopher, he turns his feelings into ideas. Then, 
 gifted with the synthetic faculty, he gathers all his 
 ideas, which are but transformed feelings, into one 
 general idea. Then perhaps, he looks around, per- 
 ceives everything which, in the domain of ideas, 
 thwarts and hampers his own general idea and 
 criticizes it. His criticism is minute because he is a 
 dialectician. It is bitter and bold because his gen- 
 eral idea is at bottom nothing but a personal feeling 
 to which he clings and even a passion which domi- 
 nates him. Then, in the course of his critical oper- 
 ation, he discovers ideas which confirm his general 
 thought and he welcomes them. His general 
 thought becomes a system. Again, because he is 
 honest, ideas come to him which contradict his 
 
 z
 
 2 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 system. He does not dismiss them, because he loves 
 ideas for their own sake but he throws them on the 
 margin of his intellect, or at least he does his best 
 more or less to bring them into his own system. 
 Finally, he reaches the conception — which most of 
 the time, he cannot realize nor even embrace — of 
 a system which would exceed his own and could in- 
 clude in its greater breadth all the ideas that have 
 come to him, those that were hostile and those that 
 were dear to him. He conceives a system beyond 
 his own system, a general idea beyond his own gen- 
 eral idea. This system he sketches. Of this idea 
 he gets a glimpse. As a rule, especially if he dies 
 young, he remains on the threshold of this Promised 
 Land, which he leaves to others. 
 
 Such, it seems to me, was the progress of Fried- 
 rich Nietzsche. At any rate, it shall be mine as I 
 follow his steps and attempt to recognize them. 
 Such is the plan I shall follow in reading Nietzsche 
 with a certain method. It is a good or a bad one. 
 I need a method to read him in a well-connected way 
 after having read him so often, as he wrote — that 
 is, at random, according to the day and the hour. 
 
 As much as one can surmise from what is known 
 of him and what he said of himself, Nietzsche 
 was honest, proud and aggressive. He had many 
 other characteristics but one must confine one's self 
 within the essentials in order to see clearly and 
 to avoid the risk of disentangling nothing through 
 wishing to perceive everything. 
 
 He was honest, hated hypocrisy and that approx- 
 imative conscience which is nothing but a kind of
 
 NIETZSCHE SEEKS HIMSELF 3 
 
 hypocrisy. He wished to see with a clear sight, 
 absohitely and right down to their depths, others 
 and himself, ideas and systems. Later he scoffed 
 mercilessly at " that people," his own " which 
 loves to be fuddled and makes a virtue of the lack 
 of clearness." He exclaimed lyrically, thinking 
 mostly of himself: "But at last we are getting 
 clear; we have become clear!" This intellectual 
 honest}', which is after all but a form of moral 
 honesty, was with him uncompromising. It was 
 that which later compelled him ever to lift the veils, 
 ever to tear out the masks, ever to inquire " what 
 else lies under this idea, what else is there beyond 
 this first principle; what unacknowledged feeling, 
 what unavowed tendency, which perhaps cannot be 
 acknowledged? " It was that which compelled him 
 to think, say and write down things which were 
 contradictory and which contradicted his general 
 thought, if they seemed true to him at the time he 
 was conceiving them. It was that which gave to all 
 he wrote the air of being a confession, a haughty 
 one to be sure, but yet a public confession. 
 
 He was proud to the utmost. He was thoroughly 
 convinced of the superiority of his intellect. He 
 was haunted by the feeling, often enough a correct 
 one, that all that he was thinking was being thought 
 out for the first time. He was ever excited by 
 the well-known itching which consists in always 
 suspecting that what the majority of people think 
 is stupid, that one can hardly err by being paradox- 
 ical and that paradox, being at least a flight out of 
 the realm of stupidity, is a step towards truth.
 
 4 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 His insatiable thirst for independence proceeded 
 from his pride. He could bear no yoke, either from 
 men, from circumstances or even from habits. 
 Very significant was his remark on short habits, 
 " My nature is altogether organized for short habits, 
 even in the needs of physical health, and generally, 
 as far as I can see, from the highest to the lowest. 
 I always fancy that such and such a thing will sat- 
 isfy me permanently. . . . One day, and it is gone. 
 The short habit has had its time. . . . Already some- 
 thing new knocks and clamors at my door. . . . 
 It is thus with me, whether in dishes, in ideas, men, 
 towns, poetry, music, theories, arrangements for 
 the day, or in my taste in wise men. . . . On the 
 other hand, I hate lasting habits. They make me 
 think of a tyrant, who would rule over me. I be- 
 gin to fancy that the atmosphere of my life has 
 darkened as soon as events shape themselves in such 
 a way that lasting habits seem as if they would 
 inevitably follow. In the depths of my soul, I feel 
 even grateful for my physical misery and my sick- 
 ness since they provide me with a hundred means of 
 escape through which I can steal away from lasting 
 habits." 
 
 Finally, out of his honesty and pride combined, 
 there was born in Nietzsche a sane daring, a frank 
 valor, a dauntlessness of opinion that made him 
 quarrelsome, aggressive, pugnacious, an arrant con- 
 tradictor, ever fighting and prone to exaggeration. 
 He was not unlike a man that tells you before you 
 speak : " You are wrong." And after you have 
 spoken : " I knew it but now I am assured of it."
 
 NIETZSCHE SEEKS HIMSELF 5 
 
 And who was truly sure of it before as much as 
 after. He was not unlike the man of whom wc 
 say : " He is coming up the stairs ; he is getting 
 ready to contradict me." He was not unlike the 
 man of whom we say : " I am going to take up the 
 opposite of my opinion before him because he speaks 
 well and I like to hear him express my own views." 
 . . . All the exaggerations of Nietzsche come from 
 there. There was in him much of the temperament 
 of a Joseph de Maistre. 
 
 — Thus had nature made him. Since he was 
 bom unwittingly a German, his first school was that 
 of romanticism, of pessimism and of Wagner and 
 until he gained full conscience of himself, he wor- 
 shipped them. Goethe, by those sides of his nature 
 which are accessible to the young and to the crowd, 
 Schopenhauer and Wagner were his first teachers 
 and idols. If not saturated, at least he was im- 
 pregnated with German romanticism, so different 
 from our own — I do not mean that it is either bet- 
 ter or worse — which is made up especially of sen- 
 sibility and emotion, of gemiithltchkeit,^ of dreamy, 
 tender and pitying melancholy and in which feeling 
 greatly overpowers imagination. 
 
 He was more deeply penetrated with pessimism. 
 That is a natural result of that long practiced and 
 smouldering romanticism. That feeling of the in- 
 curable misery of all things leads one either to wish 
 
 ^ This and the other italicized words throughout the vol- 
 ume were underlined by Nietzsche in the manuscripts of 
 his works with the exception of a few cases when Faguet 
 wished to call especial attention to one of his subject's 
 main points, usually a paradox. — (Translator's Note.)
 
 6 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 or to insist that they should cease to be, or to destroy 
 them, as it were, within one's self so as to avoid 
 feeling them, and to take refuge in an indifiference 
 which is analogous to the Nothingness or is at least 
 a near-approach to Non-Being. 
 
 He was enthusiastic, for a long period, over the 
 music of Wagner, which throws one into a kind of 
 ecstatic state, which is vital and depicts life, but 
 which paints it in its nervous, enervated, tired 
 phases and especially in its longing for rest. 
 
 In short, he caught the romantic diathesis. He 
 caught it complete, without missing any symptom 
 thereof. A Frenchman cannot very well conceive 
 this diathesis. French romanticism was French. 
 The further away one examines it, the better one 
 sees it and the more one is persuaded of this truth. 
 It was clear, orderly, quick and passionate. Most 
 of its great representatives threw themselves into 
 action. It was optimistic with its two great leaders 
 and pessimistic with the others only by fits and 
 starts. No great philosopher was found to express 
 the little pessimism it contained. Neither Comte 
 nor Renan, nor Taine even were pessimists. Fi- 
 nally, it had no special musician, apart perhaps 
 from one. French romantic music proper does not 
 exist. Therefore if we take French romanticism 
 as the type of romanticism, we must give the Ger- 
 man romanticism another name. And if we take 
 German romanticism as the type of the Nineteenth 
 Century romanticism we must find another name 
 for French romanticism. This I would feel in- 
 clined to do.
 
 NIETZSCHE SEEKS HIMSELF 7 
 
 We have in France, no idea of what a young 
 German romantic could have been about 1870. He 
 was hemmed in on all sides by romanticism, satu- 
 rated with it through every influence ; he received it 
 through poetry, fiction, philosophy, music, conversa- 
 tion and patriotism. He flattered himself with the 
 thought that romanticism was something essentially 
 German, a part of the national glory and patrimony. 
 Such precisely was Friedrich Nietzsche a little be- 
 fore 1870. 
 
 It was his diathesis. It was not his temperament. 
 He shook himself free from it. . . . It was not 
 his temperament. It was not his temperament, I 
 should say. It was somewhat his temperament and 
 M. Fouillee perceived that fact very well. It was 
 somewhat his temperament in this sense that he 
 was sickly, often sad and also prone to exaggeration 
 and to fall in love with anything colossal and gigan- 
 tic, that he was a little disorderly and hardly able to 
 bring material order in his ideas, that he was also 
 very personal even in the bad sense of the word and 
 did not dislike the literature that is a confidence, an 
 outpouring and a confession. I am prepared to 
 grant all this. After all, there must have been 
 something romantic in his make-up since he re- 
 mained relatively romantic for so long a period. 
 Yet, the basis, or if you prefer — since I do not 
 quite know what the basis was — some very consid- 
 erable parts of his make-up were very different and 
 contradictory. He was quick of thought, perhaps 
 even too quick. He was fond of clearness. He 
 liked order albeit not altogether wittingly. In his 
 
 V^
 
 8 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 pride he was an aristocrat. Art is always aristo- 
 cratic of course, but romantic art is nevertheless 
 more popular, appealing as it does more to the 
 emotions than to ideas and especially more than to 
 exalted ideas. Again, Nietzsche was independent 
 and aggressive. It may be merely circumstantial 
 but it is important to note that, aside from other 
 considerations, the fact that the whole of Germany 
 was soaked in romanticism was a sufficient reason 
 for him to turn rapidly the other way. He freed 
 himself. 
 
 ■ He freed himself first, I think, through France 
 and then through Greece, perhaps through both at 
 the same time. At all events, since that does not 
 matter much and we must take them in order, let 
 us begin with France. Let us note, moreover, that 
 he was led to France and to Greece by his great 
 friend Goethe who loved one as much as the other. 
 The influence of Goethe upon Nietzsche cannot be 
 exaggerated. One cannot be sure enough of it to 
 say that all Nietzsche is to be found in Goethe, but 
 we certainly find Goethe at every turn in the road 
 followed by Nietzsche — at the chief landmarks of 
 his evolution. The Traveler and his Shadow is one 
 of Nietzsche's titles. He traveled in the great 
 shadow of Goethe, attempting sometimes with some 
 success to " jump out of his shadow." In this case 
 it was a possible feat. 
 
 Be that as it may, he addressed himself to France. 
 He read Montaigne, whose charming loquacity he 
 praised. " A loquacity which springs from the joy 
 of turning the same subject ever in a new fashion
 
 NIETZSCHE SEEKS HIMSELF Q 
 
 is what we find in Montaigne." He read Pascal, 
 whom he quotes a hundred times. He read La 
 Rochefoucauld, and as a matter of fact was his last 
 editor, with plentiful commentaries. He read Cor- 
 neille, whom he understood thoroughly and whom 
 we shall meet again in his company in the course 
 of this volume. He read La Bruyere, Voltaire and 
 Vauvenargues. He read Cham fort, in whom he 
 traced Schopenhauer. Nietzsche hated Chamfort 
 and, at the same time, excused him for having be- 
 longed to the party of the Revolution. He found 
 in Chamfort " a man rich in deep ideas and who 
 touched the very bottom of the soul, gloomy, suffer- 
 ing, fiery and the most witty of all moralists." He 
 represents him as " having remained a stranger to 
 the French," but where did Nietzsche discover that? 
 He read Fontenelle, whom he admired, I think, too 
 much, as a man whose witty sayings and paradoxes 
 have become so many truths. He read Stendhal, as 
 one may well have expected. Since he would go no 
 further than our XVHIth century, he was bound to 
 read Stendlial, who was of it. He judged Stendhal 
 to be " of all Frenchmen of that century, perhaps, 
 the man whose eyes and ears were richest in 
 thoughts." 
 
 All this fascinated him and showed him where 
 lay his true intellectual nature. He was classical. 
 Here are the formulas of classical art, new or seem- 
 ingly new to him, which gush forth under his pen. 
 No personal literature. " An author must become 
 silent when his work begins to speak. Reality, 
 nothing but reality, yet not all that is reality."
 
 lO ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 Precisely as the good prose writer uses only words 
 that belong to the language of conversation but 
 is most careful not to use all the vocabulary of that 
 language — thus precisely is a select style formed — 
 in that way shall the good poet of the future repre- 
 sent nothing but real things, neglecting altogether 
 vague and obsolete objects. In this, the ancient 
 poets showed their strength. Nothing but reality, 
 yet not at all the whole of it. Rather a selected 
 reality. Scattered in the works of Nietzsche, one 
 could find an almost complete theory of classical 
 art, especially of French classical art. It is at least 
 certain that clearness, precision, order and selection 
 afforded him a kind of ravishing revelation. He 
 evidently swore to himself to offer a sacrifice to 
 these new idols or rather to consider as idols every- 
 thing that did not pertain to these gods. 
 
 Did France lead him to Greece, or did Greece lead 
 him back later to France ? The following quotation 
 could illustrate either of the two contentions or 
 again that which claims that he studied both Greek 
 and French classics at the same time. " When one 
 reads Montaigne, La Rochefoucauld, Fontenelle, — 
 especially his Dialogues of the Dead, — Vauven- 
 argues and Qiamfort, one is nearer to antiquity than 
 with any group of six authors of any other nation. 
 Through these six writers, the soul of the last 
 centuries of the ancient era has come to life again. 
 Joined together, they form an important link in the 
 great endless chain of the Renaissance. Their 
 books rise above change in national taste and those 
 philosophical shades with which it is thought now-
 
 NIETZSCHE SEEKS HIMSELF II 
 
 adays that each book should ghtter in order to 
 achieve fame. They contain more true ideas than 
 all the books of German philosophy together. To 
 voice a very intelligible praise, I should say that 
 written in Greek, their works zvoidd have been un- 
 derstood by the Greeks. On the contrary, how 
 much could a Plato have understood of the writings 
 of our best German thinkers, say of Goethe or 
 Schopenhauer, not to mention the repugnance he 
 would have felt at their method of writing — I mean 
 in what they have which is obscure, exaggerated 
 and sometimes dry and stilted? These are faults 
 which these two writers show least of all 
 German thinkers, and yet they show them overmuch ! 
 Goethe, as a thinker, has embraced the clouds more 
 willingly than one should wish he had. Schopen- 
 hauer threaded his way almost invariably among the 
 symbols of things rather than among the things 
 themselves. On the contrary, what clearness and 
 delicate precision in these Frenchmen! The most 
 subtle of the Greeks could have been compelled to 
 approve of this art. There is one thing they would 
 even have admired and worshiped — the French sly- 
 ness of expression. They were very fond of that 
 sort of thing without achieving great success in it." 
 
 He was growing away, more and more, not only 
 from German romanticism but from Germany it- 
 self. No doubt he was beginning to ask himself 
 whether there " were any German classics." That 
 is, whether there were German writers whose genius 
 was sufficiently general and universal, who were 
 sufficiently out of actuality, while establishing their
 
 12 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 reputation during their own lives, who had suffi- 
 ciently conquered the future by the greatness of 
 their thought and the imperishable force of their 
 expression to remain, to grow greater or at least 
 not to decline fifty years after their death. Per- 
 haps he was beginning to answer in the negative, 
 as he wrote later in Human, All too Human. 
 " Of the six great ancestors of German literature, 
 five are now unquestionably growing old or have 
 already grown old. ... I am placing Goethe apart. 
 . . . But what can I say of the five others? Even 
 before his death, Klopstock was venerably old and 
 so thoroughly so that his Republic of the Savants, 
 the mature work of his old age has never been 
 seriously taken by any one to this very day. 
 Herder had the misfortune always to write books 
 which were too new and yet already out of date. 
 In the eyes of the more subtle and more daring men 
 like Lichtenberg, the chief work of Herder seemed 
 somewhat obsolete from the day of its publication. 
 Wieland who had abundantly lived and generated 
 life was wise enough to forestall by death the de- 
 cline of his influence. Lessing still stands to-day 
 but only among the young and ever younger sav- 
 ants. Schiller has dropped out the hands of 
 the young men to fall into those of the little boys, 
 of all the little German boys. It is one way of 
 getting old for a book to fall back upon less and 
 less ripe generations." 
 
 The fact is Nietzsche was more and more shed- 
 ding his Germanism and he felt himself attracted 
 towards the lands where clearness ruled and to-
 
 NIETZSCHE SEEKS HIMSELF I3 
 
 wards the straight-lined horizons. At that time, 
 that is about 1870, he discovered Greece. It would 
 be interesting to know whether, as a schoolboy, 
 at the g)'mnasium, he had already some inclination 
 towards Hellenism. I do not know and after all 
 the interest is only one of curiosity. The only 
 education that counts is the second one, that which 
 we give ourselves. The real tastes, the deep tastes, 
 those that survive through life are formed between 
 the twentieth and the thirtieth years. It was there- 
 fore about 1870, as he admitted it most clearly 
 himself in his Preface to the Origins of Greek 
 Tragedy and in his comments on that work, that 
 he felt a deep taste, a truly passionate love, a sort 
 of devotion for Greece. To him it was a new 
 light. I am sure he must have said to himself: 
 
 Devenere locos loetos et amoena vireta . . . 
 Purior hie campos oether et lumine vestit 
 Purpureo. 
 
 This was the period of Nietzsche's great intel- 
 lectual and even moral crisis. The whole of his 
 final development dates from that crisis. He 
 wished to discover the deep roots of the tragic art 
 among the Athenians, its psychological springs, the 
 state of mind which that art presupposed in those 
 who practiced it, either as authors and interpre- 
 ters, or as audiences. Gradually he conceived an 
 idea, false I believe, but original, interesting and 
 most fruitful in consequence, of the Greek soul, 
 temperament and race. This idea he toyed with. 
 It penetrated and intoxicated him. From it he was
 
 14 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 to build Up a whole system of philosophy, of so- 
 ciology and morality. All Nietzsche is truly in the 
 Origins of the Greek Tragedy. 
 
 Here is the general idea Nietzsche formed of 
 the tragic art of the Greeks and of the Greek soul. 
 We can trace it in spite of much clumsiness, grop- 
 ing and obscurity. 
 
 A race there was whose people cared for nought 
 but beauty and life. Especially they loved life, a 
 strong and exuberant, a mighty and joyful, an 
 enthusiastic and exultant life. This we may call 
 their Dionysian soul. But they loved also beauty, 
 purity of line, dignity of attitude, majesty of the 
 brow and serenity of the eye. That we may call 
 their Apollonian soul. 
 
 These two aspirations meet and unite as it were 
 in the Olympian conception. Olympus is a dweUing 
 place for superior beings, at once strongly alive 
 and nobly beautiful, exultant in the joy of being 
 alive and, in the will to live, immortal. We have 
 too often repeated this word immortal and thereby 
 lost the sense of its meaning. Immortal, — that is 
 insatiable of life, wishing for a life eternal and 
 wanting an ever inexhaustible life. These dwellers 
 in Olympus delight also in being beautiful, in being 
 tall, strong, noble and harmonious. They take de- 
 light in themselves and in an indefinite progression 
 of beauty in themselves; they realize beauty and 
 apply themselves ever more to reahze it. The 
 Olympian is a higher being who unites in his person 
 the Dionysian and the Apollonian states. 
 
 He is the model of the Greek. In his own life
 
 NIETZSCHE SEEKS HIMSELF I5 
 
 and art, the Greek tries to approach that ideal. He 
 seeks, in his tragedy, the synthesis or at least the 
 union between the Dionysian and the Apollonian 
 states of mind. He places the Dionysian state in 
 the chorus (this is very doubtful) and the Apol- 
 lonian in the characters. At any rate, he seeks a 
 form of art where life and beauty can be realized 
 and deeply welded, where beauty is shown alive, 
 moving and active and where life is shown beau- 
 tiful, ever beautiful and with all the forms of 
 beauty, music, rhythm, verse, restful attitudes, in- 
 timate union of beauty and life, intimate union of 
 the Apollonian and the Dionysian states of mind 
 and the near-realization of Olympianism. 
 
 Even, in his own life, the Greek still sought to 
 realize that union of his dream. Watch his con- 
 quering activity, political activity, colonizing ac- 
 tivity, administrative activity. Withal there was 
 art always; the art of the poets, of the sculptors, 
 of the architects and the art of the painters. 
 Greece poured out and wished to pour out together 
 her life and her art over the Universe. To live 
 and to live beautifully, to make the world live and 
 make it live beautifully — such seems to have been 
 her constant preoccupation and her changeless will. 
 
 We may therefore consider the Greek tragedy 
 as the intermediary, one could risk saying as 
 the mediator, between the Greek Heaven and the 
 Greek Earth. That tragedy offers to men an ap- 
 proximate view of this union between the Apol- 
 lonian and the Dionysian states which the im- 
 mortals are realizing above. It places before them
 
 l6 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 the example of this union between the Apollonian 
 and the Dionysian states which they must realize 
 here below. Through the medium of the Olympian 
 tragedy, the Olympians say to men : ** Be your- 
 selves Olympians; Life and Beauty in the Heavens, 
 Life and Beauty upon Earth; Celestial Life and 
 Beauty taught to the Earth by Tragedy." 
 
 Does not all this put many things in the tragedy 
 of the Greeks? Did the Athenians seek anything 
 else in tragedy but an opportunity to get cloyed 
 with tears, as Homer said, and to satisfy their sen- 
 timentalism? 
 
 Not at all, Nietzsche replies. It is sufficient to 
 read both Plato and Aristotle to realize how the 
 Greeks understood tragedy in the main, evejt when 
 they disagreed. Plato expelled the poets from his 
 Republic because he feared that they might with 
 their sentimentalism cause the strong and joy- 
 ful race to become effeminate. Aristotle, ever in 
 contradiction with Plato, defended tragedy on the 
 ground that, by applying the sentimentalism of its 
 audiences to false notions, it purged them of that 
 very sentimentalism and gave them back to life, 
 energetic, joyful and strong. This means that both 
 men wanted an energetic race, in love with life and 
 that both well understood that art must not cause 
 life to become languid and relaxed. 
 
 Nietzsche moreover went beyond Plato and Aris- 
 totle — to use a Nietzschean expression. He says 
 that this very taste of the Greek race for an art 
 which, albeit Dionysian and Apollonian, was pa- 
 thetic, was sad and laid bare human horror and
 
 NIETZSCHE SEEKS HIMSELF 17 
 
 miser}', that this taste reveals a strong and nimble 
 race which did not shirk from a display of misery 
 and sorrow, which did not demand happy endings, 
 or optimistic lies, which had enough self-confidence 
 to contemplate human wretchedness to find therein 
 an aesthetic pleasure and not to be dismayed thereby. 
 That race may have thus needed temporary diver- 
 sion from its optimism in order to find it again 
 whole and intact the next moment. Perhaps it 
 felt a masculine and fierce joy in looking upon 
 human woe, in feeling its threat, in feeling itself 
 threatened by it and yet marching to action at the 
 risk of seeing that woe befall it. Perhaps it de- 
 rived a virile and sane pleasure from saying before 
 Goethe " Over the tombs, forward ! " At any rate, 
 that race sought in art no solace, no narcotic or 
 stupefying draughts but, like the strong of the earth, 
 I do not know what bitter and tonic beverage. . . . 
 Thus possessed of a view of Greek art which is 
 very much open to discussion but which he used as 
 truth, Nietzsche meditated upon this revelation and 
 became unsettled concerning all he had been taught. 
 He had been brought up on German romanticism, 
 that is on an art made of sadness, melancholy and a 
 sentimentalism full of pity. He believed he had 
 discovered a race and an art that were nimble, joy- 
 ful, energetic, in love with life not with death, 
 Apollonian in their calm periods, Dionysian in their 
 moments of exaltation, looking towards life even 
 when Apollonian, that is to say, remaining Dionysian 
 even when they were Apollonian. . . . That was 
 of course almost the opposite of romanticism.'
 
 l8 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 He had been taught pessimism, that is, at heart 
 and in a general way, the beHef that life is bad. 
 Now he thought he saw an art and a race drunk 
 with love of life and deeply optimistic. More than 
 that, an art and a race which impressed pessimism 
 into the service of optimism and therefore eclipsed 
 both and wiped out especially the pedantic and child- 
 ish oppositions of one to the other, their false an- 
 tinomy, an art and a race which, beyond optimism 
 and pessimism met life, life in all its fulness, other- 
 wise life in beauty. 
 
 He had been taught a music which had almost 
 intoxicated him but which he now judged debilitat- 
 ing. Then he thought he had discovered a race and 
 an art in which music only served to accompany 
 lively exaltations of the sense of life or to regulate 
 virile, joyful or martial dances. He felt himself 
 much shaken. 
 
 Do not let us believe that this brought him no 
 regret, that he did not look back or that his state of 
 mind became, in that crisis, all of a sudden the 
 Dionysian one. I have warned you that the chief 
 characteristics of Nietzsche were not all his char- 
 acter. In spite of his pride and warlike disposition 
 he knew the sorrows of the man who breaks away 
 from his country, or his party, or his coterie. Every 
 man endowed with any individuality has known this 
 sadness. In spite of all his pride, he had had, thank 
 Heaven, some share of the tractableness, the respect 
 for one's teacher, the famulism which characterizes 
 every German schoolboy. His heart knew anguish 
 when he had to think for himself. " I know a
 
 NIETZSCHE SEEKS HIMSELF I9 
 
 man who had accustomed himself from childhood 
 to think well of the intellectuality of men, that is of 
 their genuine inclination towards matters of the in- 
 tellect . . . and to hold on the contrary, a very poor 
 opinion of his ozcn intellect — judgment, memory, 
 readiness of wit, imagination. He granted himself 
 no favor when he compared himself to others. 
 Yet, in the course of years, he was compelled, first 
 once, then a hundred times to change his opinion 
 on this point. One might think he was overjoyed 
 and greatly satisfied in so doing. As a matter of 
 fact, there was something of that feeling, but, as he 
 said once, there was also bitterness of the worst 
 kind, a bitterness I have not known in my previous 
 yeais; because since I appreciate others and myself 
 with more accuracy in connection with intellectual 
 needs my own mind seems to me less useful. With 
 him, I can no longer think myself able to do any 
 good work because the mind of others does not 
 agree to accept it. I now see forever before me the 
 frightful abyss which lies between the man who is 
 willing to help and the man who needs help. That 
 is why I am tortured by the unhappiness to possess 
 alone my own mind and to enjoy it as much as it is 
 bearable. But to give is better than to possess. 
 What can the richest of all men do when he lives in 
 the solitude of a desert?" 
 
 We cannot meditate too deeply upon this passage 
 if we wish to understand Nietzsche well. It is full 
 at once of modesty and haughtiness, of the deception 
 of pride and of that feeling of solitude which is at 
 the same time the pride and the misery of superior
 
 20 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 men. This 'explains the usual bitterness of 
 Nietzsche. No feeling is strong unless born of suf- 
 fering. If Nietzsche was personal and lonely with 
 impertinence and insolence, it may be first of all, if 
 you like, because his nature prompted him to ex- 
 aggerate. Then, if you like, and as M. Fouillee 
 remarked, it was because Germans do delight in 
 magnifying a point in the same way, as, say, Renan 
 loved to tone it down. Especially it was because 
 he had tremendously suffered with his isolation and 
 with his individuality which set him up against the 
 ideas of the multitude. Therefore he was taking his 
 revenge in a way when exaggerating that individual- 
 ity, that originality, that isolation, when arming it 
 to back himself up and free himself from suffering, 
 when magnifying it almost angrily against himself, 
 saying : " Yes, I think alone against all the others 
 and that shall no longer make me suffer." It is 
 thus with the man who was once shy with women, 
 and having conquered his shyness, takes a victor's 
 pleasure in being too bold with them. It is thus 
 with the orator who began by being paralyzed with 
 fright on the platform and, having cured himself of 
 that trouble, becomes too much of an improviser 
 because of a voluptuousness that was born of his 
 past terror. 
 
 After all, if Nietzsche did break away with a sor- 
 row that most honored him, he did it with that 
 courage which lay truly at the bottom of his nature. 
 He shook off the influence which had weighed him 
 down with a push of his shoulders, sharp, harsh and 
 final. He cured himself of his ailments — these are
 
 NIETZSCHE SEEKS HIMSELF 21 
 
 his own expressions — with a spontaneous, a very 
 energetic and radical medication. " It was great 
 time to take leave. This was at once made plain to 
 me. Richard Wagner, seemingly the most triumph- 
 ant of them all, but in reality a decrepit and desper- 
 ate romantic, collapsed suddenly, irretrievably anni- 
 hilated as if before the Holy Cross. Was there no 
 German then with eyes to see, with pity in his con- 
 science to bewail this horrible spectacle? Am I then 
 the only one he caused to suffer? Never mind. 
 The unexpected event threw for me a sudden light 
 on the place I had just left and brought me also that 
 shudder which one feels after having unconsciously 
 run a very great danger. When I took up my lonely 
 road again / shivered. A little later I fell ill, more 
 than ill. tired of the continuous disillusion in the 
 midst of all the things that still raised the enthusiasm 
 of us poor men of today . . . tired with disgust of 
 all that is feminism and disorderly exaltation in that 
 romanticism, of all that idealistic lying and of that 
 softening of the human conscience which had con- 
 quered there one of the bravest, tired in fine, — and 
 that was not the least of my hardships, — with the 
 sadness of a merciless suspicion. I foresaw that, 
 after that disillusion, I was to be sentenced yet to 
 increase my caution, to despise more deeply, to be 
 more absolutely alone than ever. It was then I 
 took side, not without anger, against myself and 
 with everything which was justly hurting me and 
 painful to me. . . . This event in my life — the 
 story of a sickness and a cure, for it ended in a cure 
 — was it but an event personal to me only? Was
 
 22 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 that merely my own ' human, all too human ' ? To- 
 day I am tempted to think it was not. ... I recom- 
 mend my travel books to those whom a past dis- 
 tresses and whose mind is sufficiently real for them 
 to suffer also of the mind of their past. Before all, 
 I recommend them to you whose task is the hardest, 
 you the scarce men, daring intellectuals, you the 
 most exposed of all, whose duty it is to be the con- 
 science of the modem soul and who must, as such, 
 possess its science, you in whom is gathered all there 
 can be to-day of sickness, poisons and danger. To 
 you whose destiny it is to be more ill than any other 
 individual, because you are more than mere indi- 
 viduals, you whose solace it is to know the path to 
 a new health and, alas, to follow that path. . . ." 
 
 He often turns back to this crisis and seeks to 
 explain it. He seeks especially to explain that past 
 error of which he flatters himself so highly to have 
 recovered. However much courage we may have 
 or we may put in proclaiming past errors, we like 
 nevertheless to show that we had erred for a few 
 good reasons and that therefore, while in the wrong, 
 yet we were not so very far from being in the 
 right. He has explained his pessimism-roman- 
 ticism as being the Dionysian instinct gone astray, 
 the latent Dionysian instinct existing in him and 
 erring only in seeing a manifestation of himself 
 where there was none. It is a half-mistake, which 
 might have led deplorably far, but yet a half -mis- 
 take. Precisely as the Greeks, even in the midst of 
 their optimism, in reality admitted a pessimism of art 
 which may have served merely to reinforce but
 
 NIETZSCHE SEEKS HIMSELF 23 
 
 which certainly helped to stimulate and excite their 
 fundamental optimism as we have seen, in the same 
 way it may be that it was an error to take the Ger- 
 man pessimism of i860 for something analogous to 
 the pessimism of art of the Greeks, for something 
 that may be auxiliary to optimism and even a func- 
 tion of optimism. 
 
 That is the error in which Nietzsche thinks he fell 
 and he flatters himself that he erred in that much 
 only : " I was considering . , . the philosophical 
 pessimism of the XlXth century as the symptom of 
 a superior force of thought, of a more reckless dar- 
 ing, of a fulness of life more triumphant than that 
 proper to the XVIIIth (Hume, Kant, Condillac). 
 I took the tragic knowledge to be the true luxury 
 of our civilization, its channel of lavishness, the 
 most precious noble and dangerous one. And yet, 
 owing to its opulence, a permissible luxury. In that 
 same way I understood German music as the ex- 
 pression of a Dionysian power of the German soul. 
 One can see that I misjudged them, both in philo- 
 sophical pessimism and in the German music, that 
 which gave it its true character, its romanticism. 
 Every art and every philosophy can be considered 
 as remedies. . . . But there are two sorts of pa- 
 tients. There are those that suffer from a super- 
 abundance of life and there are those that suffer 
 from impoverishment of life. Those that suffer 
 from superabundance of life want a Dionysian art 
 and also a tragic vision of inner and outer life. 
 . . . The Dionysian not only takes pleasure in the 
 spectacle of what is terrible and disquieting; he loves
 
 24 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 the terrible fact in itself as well as all the luxury of 
 destruction, disaggregation and negation because of 
 an overflow which he feels in himself and which he 
 thinks sufficient to turn every desert into a fertile 
 land. . . . Those that suffer from impoverishment 
 of life ask from art and philosophy mere calm, 
 silence, a smooth sea — or else also intoxication, 
 convulsions, torpor and madness. This double need 
 is satisfied by romanticism in art and philosophy 
 and also by Schopenhauer and Wagner, to mention 
 these two romanticisms, the most famous and the 
 most expressive among those I had then wrongly 
 interpreted, not at all however, to their disadvan- 
 tage :" 1 
 
 Certainly there was ground for mistake. Since 
 superabundant and degenerate ones ask precisely 
 the same things, it is hard to know from what they 
 ask, from what is given them and from what they 
 accept, whether they are degenerate or super- 
 abundant. It is hard to tell if the Greek tragedy 
 is a sign of superabundance in those who cheer it 
 and if the drama of Wagner, which follows its 
 every feature, is a sign of degeneracy in those that 
 applaud it. Therefore Nietzsche's mistake was a 
 very easy one. 
 
 The difference, says Nietzsche, is romanticism. 
 Quite so; but on the one hand, it is very hard to 
 define romanticism and, on the other, the point in 
 question is the psychic disposition of those who 
 
 1 Gay Savoir, page 370. I have recast his passage to 
 make it clearer, without, I think, betraying its meaning in 
 any way.
 
 NIETZSCHE SEEKS HIMSELF 25 
 
 listen. It is likely that the Greeks would have 
 heard Wagner in a classical spirit, satisfied therein 
 their superabundance of life and derived none but 
 Dionysian inspirations. Again, since nothing is 
 more difficult to gauge than the psychic moods with 
 which Europeans listened to Wagner's music in the 
 year 1865 whether it was in the classical or in the 
 romantic spirit, I must repeat that Nietzsche's error 
 was an easy one to fall into. It was so easy that, 
 not only was he right in presenting it as a semi- 
 error of judgment, but it is even possible that it 
 was no error at all. 
 
 Be that as it may, here is Nietzsche, after many 
 attempts, much suffering and courage — this I 
 mean most seriously — utterly cut off from pessi- 
 mism, romanticism and Wagner, thoroughly smitten 
 with the French of the XVIIth and XMIIth cen- 
 turies and with the Greeks of the days of Soph- 
 ocles and absolutely passionate for two things; in- 
 tense life and beauty. 
 
 Let us pause awhile and ask what it is he had 
 gained. It was not a new system but a new tend- 
 ency. It was not precisely a new mentality but a 
 new heart. He loved elsewhere. He had there- 
 after a mastering tendency that had not possessed 
 him before and that was the opposite of the pre- 
 vious one. 
 
 That is not altogether true, for these things are 
 never true. Only the snakes shed their skins, and 
 there is no animal that changes its instinct. 
 Nietzsche was ever a lover of novelty, and a little 
 also of eccentricity. He should have reflected upon
 
 26 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 the fact that he never followed Kant or Hegel. He 
 had been with Schopenhauer because Schopen- 
 hauer was the latest arrival. He was with Wag- 
 ner precisely for the same reason. Nietzsche al- 
 ways retained a taste for something new that would 
 somewhat astonish the Philistine. We see where 
 he is now — what is he ? A man who seeks to be 
 up-to-date, an innovator, a revolutionary and still 
 a rebel. How is he to achieve this? In an excel- 
 lent way : through a new thought that would be his 
 own. He seeks novelty in originality and in indi- 
 viduality. He is quite right. Yet he is still obey- 
 ing one of the earlier instincts of his nature. 
 
 This is what we should say. One of Nietzsche's 
 inborn tendencies inclined him to adopt, towards 
 his twenty-fifth year, a general tendency which was 
 assuredly not his previous one. 
 
 However, Nietzsche found himself; at least he 
 found a general tendency for his feelings. Hence- 
 forth he shall love with passion everything that is 
 intense life and splendid beauty and he shall love 
 everything that may contribute to the realization 
 here below of intense life and beauty. He shall ex- 
 perience suspicion, then aversion, then hatred, then 
 anger against everything he thinks likely by its na- 
 ture to hinder or delay that realization.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 PREACHING HIS FAITH. 
 
 Friedrich Nietzsche is therefore going to preach 
 to the whole world and especially to himself, love 
 of life, love of intense life, love of beauty, love 
 of beauty made of strength, and to proclaim ecsta- 
 tically — for it is his way, he was born a lyrical 
 poet, a Dionysian poet — " To Life ! Ever more 
 life! Let us put more life in the world! Long 
 live Goethe ! " Nietzsche is hardly more than a 
 nervous and frantic Goethe. 
 
 As it is, he thinks he has discovered that if the 
 world has a meaning, it has but a meaning in beauty. 
 It can only be understood as a manifestation of a 
 desire for the beautiful and in a final analysis, only 
 the artists understand the world. For, after all, if 
 we want to understand the world as a manifestation 
 of justice, we are very soon convinced of the use- 
 lessness of our effort. It is quite certain that, out- 
 side the human brain, there is not a particle of 
 justice in the world. If we want to understand the 
 world as a manifestation of morality, our hopes are 
 very soon shattered. If we want to understand the 
 world as a manifestation of goodness and to repeat 
 after Plato : " God created the world out of Good- 
 ness," we are close to the ludicrous. It is plainly ab-
 
 28 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 surd to conceive a power that creates beings out of 
 Goodness to make them suffer. When, however, we 
 look upon the Universe as a manifestation of 
 Beauty, the objections vanish, the contradictions of 
 thought are solved, the absurdities disappear and 
 what scandalized our reason and our conscience is 
 also dissipated. There is no further question of 
 " evil on earth " if we say that the Universe has its 
 raison d'etre in its beauty and only in its beauty. 
 God is justified if he is an artist. 
 
 " We must rise resolutely to a metaphysical con- 
 ception of art and remember that proposition pre- 
 viously set forth that the world and existence may 
 only appear justified in so far as they constitute an 
 ccsthetic phenomenon. In that sense the object of 
 the tragical myth for instance is precisely to con- 
 vince us that even what is horrible and monstrous is 
 but an aesthetic game, played ivith itself by the Will 
 in the eternal fullness of its gladness." The world 
 unintelligible as justice, morality or goodness, be- 
 comes intelligible as beauty. Later Nietzsche was 
 to say the opposite of this; but we shall see; it is 
 possible that Nietzsche's contradictions may be solv- 
 able. To march towards life, beauty and joy is 
 therefore going in the same wise as the world; it is 
 to follow it, to adhere to it; it is especially, not to 
 enter with it this conflict and this struggle which 
 tear up the best among us. How important this is ! 
 Not to leave the earth, not to turn one's back to the 
 earth, not to deny the earth, to remain faithful to the 
 earth : " Brothers, I intreat you, remain faithful to 
 the earth; place no faith in those that speak to you
 
 PREACHING HIS FAITH 29 
 
 of supra-terrestrial hopes. Willy nilly they are 
 prisoners. They are contemners of life, moribunds 
 and poisoned men themselves. They belong to 
 those of whom earth is tired. Let them depart! 
 Brothers, remain faithful to earth with all the force 
 of your virtue. Let your generous love and your 
 knowledge serve the meaning of the earth. I beg 
 of you. I intreat you. Let not your virtue fly 
 away from terrestrial things and beat its wings 
 against walls eternal. Alas there has always been 
 so much misguided virtue ! Bring back, as I am 
 doing, misled virtue to the earth." 
 
 Therefore, our certain duty, is to develop our- 
 selves, to expand ourselves wholly in all our poten- 
 tialities ; it is to succeed in becoming fully what 
 we feel ourselves to be. " What we want, we, is 
 to become ourselves." It is a matter of saying yes 
 to life, always to answering it yes. That is, not to 
 accept it, for that is merely a way of submitting to it, 
 but to live it lovingly and passionately to embrace it. 
 " This last yes, addressed to life, a joyful yes, over- 
 flowing with petulancy, is not only the highest but 
 also the deepest vision, that which truth and science 
 confirm and maintain with the greatest strictness. 
 Nothing that is should be suppressed ; nothing is 
 superfluous. ... In order to understand this, one 
 must be possessed of courage and, as a condition of 
 this courage, of an excess of strength, because in 
 the same measure in which courage dares carry itself 
 forward does strength come near to truth. Knowl- 
 edge and affirmation of truth are a necessity for the 
 strong man just as the weak man, prompted by
 
 30 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 weakness, feels the necessity of cowardice and of 
 flight before reahty, feels the necessity of what he 
 calls the ideal." 
 
 Come to think of it, pessimism, idealism, Chris- 
 tianity, all these states of renouncement to the world 
 as it is are nothing else but suicides. They are, at 
 least, secessions. Man withdraws from the real 
 into the ideal as the people of the city went to the 
 Holy Mount. He calls " holy " this place merely 
 because he withdraws thereon but there is no reason 
 whatsoever thus to name it and only as a tomb is it 
 hallowed. We are part of the Universe, and I do 
 not see very well what could give us the right to 
 judge it. It exists and we exist. Our business is to 
 accept it with joy and to go where it goes, perhaps 
 helping it to get there by adding to its expansion, to 
 its broad and passionate development, to the glory 
 of its movement, of its rhythm and of its action. 
 To bring to it rather a dissonance is, besides being 
 a childish attempt, not, it seems to me, very rational. 
 No, I do not want the stubborn, pouting and sullen 
 man ; " I want the proudest, the most alive, the most 
 assertive man. I want the world, I want it such as 
 it is, I want it again and I want it for ever. In- 
 satiably do I cry : again ! — not only for myself but 
 for the whole performance and the whole spectacle, 
 and not only for the whole spectacle but, when all is 
 said and done, because the spectacle, is necessary 
 to me, I am necessary to it and because I make it 
 necessary." 
 
 Of course, this mood of the soul necessitates a 
 struggle because it is not enough to accept the world
 
 PREACHING HIS FAITH 3I 
 
 for the world to accept you. The fact that one 
 loves it compels one to conquer it. 
 
 Precisely ! We must be ready for love and for 
 struggle, for love of the world and for a struggle 
 against it out of love for it: "One produces only 
 on condition that one is rich in antagonisms ; one 
 remains young only on condition that the soul does 
 not slacken, does not aspire to rest. . . , Nothing 
 has become more alien to us than this desideratum 
 of the past, to wit, the peace of the soul. Nothing 
 brings us less envy than the cud-chewing morality 
 and the thick happiness of a clear conscience." 
 
 But this rule of life will soon be turned against 
 you. It is very likely that, in seeking life, life's ex- 
 tension, life ever more alive you may meet pain, 
 sufferings, a wound and a fatal one too. — Very well 
 and precisely! Complete and true optimism car- 
 ries the harm along w'ith itself. It accepts it joy- 
 fully, it embraces and envelops it in itself until this 
 continuous absorption causes it to disappear. 
 "Dangerously must we live!" (This is one of the 
 finest sayings ever uttered by human lips.) We 
 must live in the dangers in order to relish life in its 
 fulness and even to know what life is : "Believe 
 me, the secret to reap the most fruitful existence, 
 the highest enjoyment of life, is to live danger- 
 ously. Erect your cities beside the Vesuvius. 
 Send out your ships into unexplored seas. Live 
 in a state of war with your fellowmen and with 
 yourselves. Be brigands and conquerors so long 
 as you cannot be possessors, you who seek knowl- 
 edge. Soon the time will have passed when you
 
 32 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 were satisfied to live in the forests as so many 
 frightened stags." 
 
 Were death a certainty, it remains game for your 
 optimist. For what is death? A proof that you 
 sought it. Therefore a proof that you have lived. 
 Therefore it is part of Hfe as a proof thereof, as 
 its stimulant, as its aim and its reward. In sooth, 
 death, thus understood, is replete with life and in 
 its last glitter, it is the supreme glitter : " The fin- 
 est life for the hero is to grow ripe for death through 
 constant fight." Therefore, O Grief, where is thy 
 sting? I see it very well and to it I render my 
 thankfulness. But, O Death, where is thy victory ? 
 I fail to see it. Death does not triumph ; I it is who 
 triumph in it. — I do not think one could go further 
 into optimism, " beyond good and evil." It is an 
 optimism that envelopes and carries with itself 
 both good and evil beyond the human horizon and 
 that, like Hercules, conquers death itself by this 
 very fact, by the fact that it transmutes it and 
 turns it into an apotheosis of life. 
 
 Nietzsche gave up about half of his writings to 
 the glorification of life, love of life, of all that is 
 Hfe. I shall insist no longer. It is not analytical 
 and does not need to be analyzed. It is affirmative 
 and lyrical. However fine from the point of view 
 of art, it is not meant to be commented upon or 
 discussed. It is Nietzsche in presence of the objec- 
 tions and discussing himself that we must see and 
 follow. Let us begin.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES: 
 FIRST OBSTACLES. 
 
 Although the idea already shows through, Nie- 
 tzsche remained until then in the domain of feeHng. 
 Struck, as an artist, with the beauty of Greek life, 
 as he saw it, he was in love with beauty and free 
 life, with beauty and free power and he reached 
 the following general feeling concerning existence. 
 We must live with all our energies and create a 
 beauty that lives in ourselves and, outside ourselves, 
 through a daring and heroic use of all our energies. 
 That is well. But Nietzsche saw clearly and far. 
 He now met all the obstacles which, in human na- 
 ture and in the history of humanity, are opposed to 
 life understood and felt in this wise. These ob- 
 stacles are numerous. He saw them all, I think, and 
 attempted to destroy and to smash them all, not one 
 after the other — that never was his way — but all of 
 them, attacking, according to his mood, now this one 
 now that one, sometimes two or three together in the 
 ceaseless fight of a skirmisher and of a scout. He 
 criticised the obstacles. That is to say, he applied 
 himself to show the inanity, the childishness, the 
 absurdity or the mischievousness of everything in 
 human institutions and in human opinions which 
 
 3i
 
 34 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 contradicted or thwarted optimism, and prevented 
 man from living freely, gaily, powerfully, heroic- 
 ally and beautifully. 
 
 Of course, these obstacles are innumerable and we 
 shall consider with him merely the chief ones. 
 
 A first obstacle, an inner one as it were, is man's 
 diffidence in his search for truth, the diffidence of 
 man towards the knozvledge of how to unravel, to 
 circumvent, to catch and to conquer truth. We are 
 not honest thinkers. We are afraid of truth ; per- 
 haps, as Pascal said, we hate truth. Knowledge 
 frightens us. We do not approach it with honesty. 
 It is because we know that it has its dangers. Of 
 course it has them. It has them in proportion to its 
 delights. One could write a story that never was 
 written, that of the Don Juan of Knowledge. It 
 would be neither the story of Montaigne, of Sainte- 
 Beuve nor that of Renan. Neither of the three 
 reached the last chapter. The complete life story of 
 the Don Juan of Knowledge would be as follows. 
 "He lacks love for the things he discovers. But he 
 is possessed with brains and with sensuality and he 
 enjoys the hunt and the intrigues of knowledge 
 which he pursues as far as the highest and furthest 
 stars. Here it ended for Montaigne, Sainte-Beuve 
 and Renan. At length there is nothing left for him 
 to hunt unless it be that which is absolutely pain- 
 ful in knowledge, as the drunkard ends by drinking 
 absinthe and nitric acid. For this reason he will 
 end in a desire for hell. It is the last knowledge 
 that seduces him. Perhaps that also shall dis- 
 appoint him like everything else he has learned.
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES 35 
 
 There he should remain for all eternity. Nailed to 
 deception and himself become the marble guest, he 
 shall long for the banquet of the eventide of knowl- 
 edge, a feast which can never more fall to his share. 
 For the whole world of things can not find one 
 single mouthful to feed this hungry man." 
 
 One can well understand, therefore, this fear of 
 being deceived which stops man at the very outset of 
 his personal search for truth. We find here once 
 more the general cowardice of mankind. But we 
 must not be cowardly ; we must not be fearful of 
 defeat, because, to fear defeat, is to be defeated 
 before the fight. It is to be beaten, not to risk los- 
 ing. One must set out in quest, valiantly and with 
 love of knowledge. With a previous love of knowl- 
 edge like that prince who was in love with the dis- 
 tant princess whom he had never seen. W'e must 
 tell ourselves that life's only sense is the quest of 
 truth, and that we can find it good only from the 
 moment we take it as such : " No, life did not 
 deceive me ! On the contrary, I find it, year after 
 year, richer, more desirable and mysterious, since 
 the day when the great deliverer came to me, I mean 
 that thought that life could be an experience to 
 him who seeks knowledge instead of a duty, a 
 fatality and a fraud. Let knowledge be some- 
 thing else for others, as for instance, a resting couch 
 or the road to a resting couch, or again a pastime or 
 a lounging. To me it is a world of dangers and 
 victories, where heroic sentiments also have their 
 place for dancing and playing. Life is a means 
 to knowledge. With that principle in one's heart,
 
 36 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 one may not only live daringly but also live joyfully 
 and laugh for sheer joy. How could one under- 
 stand how well to laugh and well to live if one 
 were not first of all skilled in war and victory ? " 
 
 In seeking knowledge, one must not only be hon- 
 est and loyal; one must also feel the scruples of 
 honesty. We must love truth for itself, whatever 
 it may turn out to be, to such an extent that we do 
 not love it for ourselves but against ourselves. We 
 must ever contradict ourselves. — This might be a 
 sufficient explanation for the innumerable contradic- 
 tions of Nietzsche; he contradicts himself out of 
 loyalty; he does not strike out an objection which 
 he raises against himself, — We must always wel- 
 come the opposite of our thought and scrutinize 
 what worth this opposite may have : " Take an 
 oath never to hold back or to keep silence before 
 yourself concerning what can be raised in contradic- 
 tion to your thoughts ! This is part of the thinker's 
 first duty. Every day you must make war also 
 against yourself, A victory or the taking of a but- 
 tress are no longer your own affair but the business 
 of truth — and your own defeat, that also is no 
 longer your affair." 
 
 But this honesty in the quest of knowledge is ex- 
 ceedingly rare among men. As a rule they want to 
 deceive themselves and to be deceived. Now what 
 is it they derive from this? It saves them from 
 pain personally, true, but very likely it entails gen- 
 eral pain which is eternal. For it is probable that 
 man is born to understand, at least, all he needs in 
 order to live. Animals know and understand every-
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES 3/ 
 
 thing they need to understand, and to know so as to 
 satisfy their own needs, and even the comforts of 
 their Hves. It is therefore Hkely that man should 
 seek all the truth susceptible to make him happy. 
 Yet he is unhappy, says he. Let him seek then 
 with frankness and courage, without loving error, 
 without trusting in error, without thinking it use- 
 ful, without this fear of truth which is a strange 
 tiniorousness. This obstacle to life in power is the 
 first one that should be demolished, the first one of 
 which we must show up the inanity, the childish- 
 ness, the vileness and, properly speaking, the inept- 
 ness. Let us have at least the courage to open our 
 eyes. 
 
 At all events, Nietzsche leads the way. No 
 thinker is more honest. None more than him goes 
 to the heart of things, at least to what he thinks is 
 the heart of things, without troubHng himself about 
 the fear that, in the heart of things, may be found 
 something unpleasant, painful, hateful or that there 
 may even be nothing at all. 
 
 Another obstacle prevents one from reaching, on 
 the one hand, truth and knowledge, on the other, life 
 in strength, freedom and beauty. This obstacle is 
 habit, which in this case is called tradition. Human- 
 ity lives on its past to which it clings by force of 
 habit ; and this past is and can be nothing but error. 
 Man is brought up by these errors. Tliey have be- 
 come as a foundation of his nature from which he 
 can not easily shake himself free. These errors per- 
 sist and stretch themselves out. Coming into con- 
 tact with truths they also combine with them and
 
 38 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 produce new errors which may be more serious, like 
 every error that is mixed with truth and obtains 
 thereby new credit : " Man was brought up by his 
 errors. . . . First of all he never saw himself but 
 incompletely." Thereupon he conceived a rule of 
 life that could not be applied or could only be ill- 
 applied and helped to give him an incomplete idea of 
 himself. ..." Secondly he attributed imaginary 
 qualities to himself " as for instance the faculty to 
 know the future, or the faculty of free will or the 
 faculty to understand the supernatural. These er- 
 rors were producive of rules of life which still sub- 
 sist and which deceive him. " Thirdly he felt him- 
 self in a false situation towards the animals and the 
 whole of nature." He felt himself to be different 
 from them. That brought him to believe in an an- 
 tagonism between him and the rest of nature, which 
 was an error or an imperfect view and which set 
 man in the wrong direction.^ 
 
 " Fourthly man has invented ever new codes of 
 goodness. He has considered, during a period of 
 time, each of them in turn to be eternal and absolute 
 with the result that now it was this instinct, now 
 that other that occupied the first place and was 
 ennobled by reason of this appreciation." In this 
 wise, the very series of these successive codes of 
 morality caused general error or general confusion 
 which remained in the human mind, darkening it or 
 at least preventing it from being enlightened. 
 
 One could add several others to these four initial 
 
 ^ Here I am less certain of my interpretation.
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES 39 
 
 or as good as initial errors. Who could therefore 
 evince any surprise at the fact that man lives in 
 error or ever returns to the error which was his from 
 the cradle, which had to he and could not but be his? 
 The habit is there, not to mention heredity. The 
 habit is there, which prcscnrs in cultured mankind 
 what was natural and necessary in primitive man- 
 kind. 
 
 It is not only habit. Think of language. Lan- 
 guage is the prison of the mind. It confines the 
 thought of the men of today within the thought of 
 the men of times past, since it allows the men of to- 
 day to express their thoughts but in the words of 
 the men of old, smce the only means of exit it gives 
 my thougiit is the window through which emerged 
 the thoughts of my ancestors, since, in last analysis, 
 it compels me thus to take the thought of Descartes 
 to express my own. Language is therefore the 
 keeper of ancient errors or, it may be, of ancient 
 truths. At all events it is conservative and anti- 
 liberator. It is " a great danger for intellectual free- 
 dom. Every zvord is a prejudice." 
 
 When we realize that even in silence we speak 
 nevertheless, that the inner thought becomes precise 
 only through an inner word and in it, that it only 
 found itself when it found the word for it, that as 
 soon as I think, I speak, and that before I thought 
 in words I was more attempting to think than ef- 
 fectively thinking, we can understand the extent to 
 which the first errors, natural and necessary as they 
 were, enjoy a very broad sway, one that can be 
 shaken ofT with great difficulty and that is, over
 
 40 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 the mind of man, almost imprescriptible. For these 
 primitive errors are lasting and self-lasting since 
 they pertain to weaknesses of our nature that may 
 be eternal. Their force lies in habit, in tradition 
 and in the necessity we find to express them to a 
 certain extent even when we intend to express an- 
 other idea or even one that opposes it. 
 
 And so Nietzsche fights and intreats us to 
 fight the philosophical timorousness, the insufficient 
 philosophical honesty, the obscurity which often is 
 but a subtle artifice to which our diffidence ac- 
 commodates itself and the philosophical dishonesty 
 of which lures us. He fights and begs us to fight 
 habit and tradition which are very often again mere 
 forms of timorousness, and finally the verbal sug- 
 gestions that mislead us, make us say the contrary 
 of what we wish to say or only half of what we wish 
 to have said by ourselves and understood by others. 
 
 Such are the first obstacles he found to the truth 
 he was bringing forth.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES: 
 SOCIETY. 
 
 Another obstacle to the diffusion of the true doc- 
 trine hes in our present societies. Let us state from 
 the outset that this is the cause which brought some 
 people to consider Nietzsche an anarchist, ahhough 
 he was far from being one and was in truth precisely 
 the opposite. He was no anarchist. He was not 
 anti-social. Rut he saw very clearly that all modern 
 societies, and all societies established from long ago 
 ■were directly opposed to his creed and by their very 
 constitutions hampered his creed. Present day so- 
 cieties, no matter which one we take, absolute mon- 
 archies, restricted monarchies, democracies, none of 
 them aims to foster life in beauty or to help man to 
 Jive freely, powerfully, and beautifully. If they 
 aim at anything, which is after all doubtful, it is at 
 .causing to live the largest possible number of men. 
 .'Such is certainly the aim, subconsciously conceived 
 and felt, of their general bearing. 
 
 Vaguely thinking of this, at least not thinking of 
 anything cjlse, they can but aim at assuring to all 
 men an exceedingly mediocre life, a .small, mean and 
 restricted life which does neither dvsturb, nor en- 
 croach, nor expand, a life so arrang.cfl that all are 
 .cramped and restricted and tha^ po o^^ "i^y P^c- 
 
 41
 
 42 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 vent the others, first from being born and then from 
 possessing they also, each his own httle corner, his 
 little place, his small field o£ evolution. The ideal 
 of each of these societies resembles that of the archi- 
 tect or of the director of a hospital who would meas- 
 ure most minutely the indispensable amount of air 
 cubics and then say : " By gaining five more centi- 
 meters on each one I shall get four extra beds in, 
 maybe five." — It is hard to live freely, beautifully, 
 powerfully and superabundantly with this system 
 and with this practice. 
 
 Human societies are most evidently careless of 
 the quality of their ordinary citizens and of their 
 soldiers alike. What matters to them is the quan- 
 tity. They wish neither to do big things, nor beauti- 
 ful things nor even perhaps good things. They wish 
 to do numerous things. It seems that this pertains 
 to their very constitution, apart from any political 
 system. They feel, or think they feel that men 
 constitute themselves in society to guarantee each 
 other against a possible enemy and to live in peace 
 and happiness, not at all to live dangerously. — One 
 uses the term " constitute themselves in societies " 
 and it really matters very little that this is his- 
 torical nonsense ; the point is only one of goal and of 
 ideal aim. Consequently men constitute themselves 
 into societies rather to call to life the largest possible 
 number of people and to maintain them alive than 
 to make them live with beauty, power and danger. 
 After all, the very fact that the largest possible num- 
 ber of people are called to life restricts the space 
 as we have seen and sets up in itself an obstacle to
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES: SOCIETY 43 
 
 life beautiful. " Altogether too many men are born ; 
 the State was invented for the superfluous ones. 
 See how it attracts them, the superfluous ones! 
 How it entwines them, how it chews and rechews 
 them ! " Modem Societies — and they may be 
 termed " modern " back to a fairly distant past — are 
 by their nature anti-Nietzschean and Nietzsche can- 
 not prevent himself from being somewhat anti- 
 social (and especially seeming to be). Most cer- 
 tainly, why not admit it? He must have had his 
 moments of anti-societism and said : " Life such 
 as I conceive it may quite possibly be that of the 
 savage and may be only realized fully or brilliantly 
 in the * natural state ' or in that primitive state, with 
 its loosely organized societies that is sometimes re- 
 ferred to as the natural state. In the end, it is the 
 social invention itself that stands against me." 
 
 He may have said that to himself, albeit I do not 
 find it anywhere in his writings, and Nietzsche wrote 
 down everything he thought with much cour- 
 age and daring. He may have thought that some- 
 times and, personally, I know him to have been too 
 intelligent and do not doubt that he made that re- 
 flection. But he was persuaded, perhaps wrongly 
 so, that there had been a race, meaning the Greek 
 race, that was organized into a society and yet 
 created a free, beautiful and powerful life, and he 
 did not tarry over the anti-social idea. He left to a 
 few disciples of his, who may have been logical, the 
 task or the pleasure of deducting that idea from his 
 premises. 
 
 Modern Society it is of which he has made a penc-
 
 44 ON READING NIETZSCHfi 
 
 trative, subtle and harsh criticism. He attacked at 
 once, vigorously and disdainfully, modern society, 
 the utilitarian society, the society whose dream is 
 to give to a very large number of human beings a 
 small, narrow, ugly and disgusting happiness. That 
 society is the pet aversion of Nietzsche. It is his 
 bete noire, of if you like, his black herd. He pur- 
 sued it with fiery jeers that are admirable. That 
 society confessedly wants two things that are emi- 
 nently anti-natural, that is, justice and equality. It 
 tends to a goal that is eminently anti -aesthetic, 
 that is again anti-natural, to mediocrity and to flat- 
 ness. Listen to the tarantulas. Listen to them 
 speaking of justice, that is, of spite and vengeance : 
 " It is precisely what we call justice when the world 
 is filled with the storms of our vengeance." . . . 
 " Thus prattle the tarantulas among themselves." 
 ..." We want to wreak our vengeance upon all 
 those that are not down to our own measurements 
 and to cover them with our outrages." . . ." To this 
 do the tarantulas pledge themselves in their hearts." 
 . . . And again : " And * Will to Equality '— that 
 itself shall henceforth be the name of virtue; and 
 against all that hath power will we raise an out- 
 cry !"..." They are people of bad race and line- 
 age ; out of their countenances peer the hangman and 
 the sleuth-hound. Distrust all those that talk much 
 of their justice! Verily, in their souls not only 
 honey is lacking." ..." My friends, I will not be 
 mixed up and confounded with others. There are 
 those that preach my doctrine of life, and are at the 
 same time preachers of equality, and tarantulas."
 
 CRITICISIXG THE OBSTACLES! SOCIETY 45 
 
 ..." With these preachers of equality \Nill I not 
 be mixed up and confounded. For thus speaketh 
 the justice unto me: ' Men are not equal.' " 
 
 Nietzsche has never done with the tarantulas. 
 He considers Socialists as the "most honest, the nar- 
 rowest and most noxious race of the Universe." He 
 holds them to be in love with uniformity, mediocrity 
 and ugliness, and most foreign to life, most hostile 
 to life and most destructive to life. The democrat 
 stands before him as some strange friend of the 
 shadows and of damp dark places, the least Apollon- 
 ian person in the world. The socialist is for him — 
 and he is right — but a logical democrat, a creature 
 of night whose only cure is to blow upon anything 
 that may even slightly resemble the sun. 
 
 An unpleasant factor is that those that could be 
 powerful, those that are marked to lead, those whom 
 the Greeks would have named aristdi, even they, ac- 
 cept a certain solidarity with the tarantulas. They 
 think or seem to believe first in the necessity for the 
 latter's existence, then in the legitimacy of their de- 
 sires and finally they associate with them. It is 
 wrong : " Life is a source of joy ; but wherever the 
 mob comes to drink, all the fountains are poisoned. 
 ... I asked one day, nearly choked by my own 
 query: What! Does Life need the mob? . . . 
 And I turned my back upon the dominators when I 
 realized what it was these days they called domi- 
 nation : bargaining and trafficking on equal terms 
 with the mob." 
 
 Thus is established a strange modern State, the 
 State resting on the mob. the State-Mob, one could
 
 46 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 say and this State, which is anti-natural and anti- 
 aesthetic thinks itself adorable, affirms that it is 
 adorable and makes others adore it. It is "the 
 new idol." It invites worship on the strength of a 
 lie, similar to that which led people to the ancient 
 sanctuaries of oracles. If it be not a lie, at least 
 it is a counter-truth in which the State-Mob may be- 
 lieve and in which the mob does believe. It says it 
 is the people, calls itself the people while it is pre- 
 cisely the opposite. " The State is the coldest of all 
 the cold lies. It lies coldly and here is the lie which 
 crawls from its mouth : * I, the State, I am the 
 People ! ' . . . It is a lie ! They were creators, 
 those that founded the nations and suspended a neiv 
 faith and love above them: Thus they were serving 
 life. But they are destructors, those that set traps 
 for the large number and call that a State; they 
 suspend a sword and a hundred appetites above 
 them." 
 
 Here is, in truth, the modern State. It persuades 
 the people that it springs up from the people and is 
 the people. It uses this pretext to lower the people 
 by adulation instead of raising it towards some- 
 thing lofty. Instead of awakening and stimulating 
 the people, it lulls them to sleep. Instead of dis- 
 ciplining the people, it scatters and pulverizes them 
 or lets them remain in their natural scattered and 
 pulverized condition. And it is in order to accom- 
 plish this that it wishes to be worshiped and that 
 it " roars, monster that it is." ..." There is noth- 
 ing greater than me upon earth and I am the dis- 
 posing finger of the Lord."
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES: SOCIETY 4/ 
 
 Where does all this, if you please, lead us? 
 Where can it lead, where is it bound to lead? Mod- 
 ern societies, with their taste for the greater num- 
 ber, for the ever greater number, for mediocrity and 
 for platitude and the State-Idol with its taste for uni- 
 formity and its natural hatred for all individual 
 superiority, the Statc-Rabblc in a word — these 
 mean nothing else but the more or less slow suicide 
 of humanity : " The State, such as we have defined 
 it, is in every place where all men, good and bad, 
 are absorbing poisons. The State is wherever all 
 men, good or bad, are ruining themselves. The 
 State is ivherevcr slow suicide of all men is called 
 life." 
 
 If we imagine what this regime will make of man- 
 kind if no change takes place, we foresee them in the 
 distant, even possible in the near, future : " I pass 
 among these people and keep my eyes open; they 
 are become smaller and continue to become ever 
 smaller. This is due to their doctrine of happiness 
 and virtue. Limpingly they advance and thus prove 
 an obstacle to those that wish to hurry. ... A few 
 of them intend ; but the most of them are intended. 
 . . . They are round, honorable and kindly to each 
 other, as the grains of sand are round, honorable 
 and kindly towards the grains of sand. Modestly to 
 embrace a small happiness, this they call resignation. 
 In the same breath they are already squinting mod- 
 estly in the direction of a new small happiness. 
 They have after all but one desire: that no one 
 shall harm them ; this ihcy call virtue but it is 
 cowardice. ... To them virtue is what renders one
 
 48 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 modest and tame. Thus they made of the wolf a 
 dog and even of man the best domestic animal of 
 man. . . . This is mediocrity, albeit named modera- 
 tion." 
 
 See them well as they will be to-morrow. They 
 will have discovered happiness. They will be sure 
 of that and, as a matter of fact, they will have dis- 
 covered what they are now seeking and is not at all 
 difficult of discovery. They are now beforehand 
 calling it happiness, and it is a thing that should 
 sicken one : " Lo, I show you the last man. * What 
 is love, creation, desire ? What is a star ? ' So 
 asketh the last man and blinketh." " We have dis- 
 covered happiness " the last men say " and they 
 blink. They have given up the regions where life is 
 hard because they need warmth. One still loveth 
 one's neighbor and rubbeth against him, for one 
 needeth warmth. . . . They still work, for work is 
 a pastime. But they take care that this pastime 
 shall not hurt them. They want neither poverty 
 nor riches ; either of them is too burdensome. Who 
 would care still to issue orders? And who obeys? 
 Both actions cause care. No shepherd and one 
 single flock! All want the same thing. All are 
 equal. Whoever thinketh differently goeth volun- 
 tarily into the mad house. — We have discovered 
 happiness, the last men say ; and they blink." 
 
 It seems that such are truly the modern State, 
 its principles, its present and its future. If it be 
 the case, does it not turn its back to culture, to art, 
 beauty and civilization and, generally, to what is 
 usually called human life? May it not be that we
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES: SOCIETY 49 
 
 are standing between two stages of barbarism with 
 our " chair in the middle " ? One of them is behind 
 us, a violent, restless and chaotic barbarism. The 
 other awaits us; it is enervated, decrepit, soft and 
 lives in stagnant air. This progress vaunted by our 
 generation — is it not that of the quicksand or of the 
 mire that rises in gentle and imperceptible motion 
 from our legs to our waist and from our waist to 
 our shoulders ? We see it rising with precision and 
 sureness and then proudly we exclaim : " Oh, oh ! 
 Something is rising ! " But it is not necessary that 
 we should inquire whether it is not we who are go- 
 ing down — that is not impossible — and whether 
 the time is not nearing when some one will say: 
 ** and there remained but mire." 
 
 Nietzsche at least is sure of it, and, having ex- 
 amined human society, he thus concludes for the 
 time being: "this also is an obstacle to my faith. 
 This is contrary to life, beauty and light." This is 
 an easy descent into the night, facile descensus 
 Averno. Either we must have no society or else 
 we need one that were precisely the opposite of 
 this. We shall go into this later on. For the time 
 being let us note one sure, well-gotten point : this 
 society is another obstacle.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES: 
 RELIGION. 
 
 Are the belief in the supernatural phenomenon, the 
 faith in God and the immortality of the soul, the 
 metaphysics and the religious signs of human 
 strength or of human weakness ; do they denote 
 health or sickness in the human race ; do they com- 
 fort or depress it? This is not one of the queries 
 that Nietzsche sought most deeply to answer, but 
 ask himself the question he did nevertheless and, as 
 always, with anguish. He answered it, as always 
 again, with final decision. Metaphysics and reli- 
 gions are, to begin with, a sign of weakness in 
 humanity and they increase and enhance this weak- 
 ness from which they spring. Hardly any one will 
 deny that the religions are born of the terror of 
 ignorant men in the presence of the forces of na- 
 ture. It is therefore primarily from a weakness that 
 the religions are born. It is useless to insist on this 
 point. But from being terrifying, the religion be- 
 came beneficent and this necessitates closer scrutiny. 
 From being terrifying the religions have become 
 beneficent. This means first that men took to sup- 
 posing the existence of good and favorable powers 
 by the side of the evil and hostile powers that sur- 
 rounded them. It means again that they bethought 
 
 SO
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES: RELIGION 5I 
 
 themselves to propitiate the hostile forces by means 
 of words and respectful actions and to convert them 
 into favorable and beneficent powers. Do you not 
 see on all sides the weakness that trembles, the 
 weakness that flatters and the weakness that be- 
 seeches? The Instinct of IVeakncss, the conscious- 
 ness of his weakness — this is what creates in man 
 the need of religion. This need creates its own 
 organ and the organ shall last so long as the need 
 persists. Religion and metaphysics show the need 
 of general certainty, of universal certainty wherein 
 shall fit the particular certainties, or of fundamental 
 certainty upon which shall rest the certainties of cur- 
 rent use. Therefore it is a lack of will which we 
 find, historically speaking at the origin, and morally 
 speaking at the root, of every religion and every 
 metaphysics. For the will needs no certainty. It 
 proceeds to its goal of its own accord and simply 
 because it is and i)ecause it is by nature inclined to 
 spring up and to spread. 
 
 There are therefore those that are inclined to ad- 
 mit that the need to believe is a form of the need 
 to act. The need to believe is a form of the need to 
 rest or at least to lean on something. *' We can 
 measure the degree of the strength of our faith — 
 or more exactly the degree of its weakness — by the 
 number of principles that our faith refuses to see 
 shaken because they are used as supports. . . . Man 
 is thus made: one can refute a thousand times an 
 article of his faith. If he needs it he will always 
 continue to hold it true. . . . This desire of cer- 
 tainty also ... is the desire for a support, for a
 
 52 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 prop, in short, that instinct of weakness which, if it 
 does not create the religions, the metaphysics, and 
 the principles of all kinds, at least preserves them. 
 It is a fact that around all these positive systems 
 rises the fog of a certain pessimistic darkening, 
 either fatigue, fatalism, deception, or fear of a new 
 deception, or again display of resentment, bad hu- 
 mor, exasperated anarchism (interior anarchism, a 
 powerlessness in ruling one's self which becomes 
 angry?) or again symptoms whichever they may be 
 of the feeling of weakness, or masquerades result- 
 ing from that feeling. . . . Faith is always more in 
 demand, need of faith is ever more urgent, as the 
 will fails. . . . Hence we should perhaps conclude 
 that the two great religions of the world. Buddhism 
 and Christianity, might have very well found their 
 origin and especially their sudden development in a 
 colossal access of sickness of the will." 
 
 Let us make a remark here which will confirm 
 this. Man being ordinarily in a certain state of 
 weakness it follows that even his states of strength, 
 his periods of health and energy, inspire him with 
 the belief in God. When man is utterly conscious 
 of his weakness he turns to God. But when man 
 is astonished at his own strength, whenever he hap- 
 pens to have any, he attributes it to God. "The 
 states of power inspire in man the feeling that he is 
 independent of the cause of these states, that he is 
 not responsible for them. They come unsought and 
 therefore we are not their authors. The conscious- 
 ness of a change in ourselves without our having 
 wanted it requires an outside will. Man has not
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES: RELIGION 53 
 
 dared to attribute to himself all the surprising and 
 strong moments of his life. He has fancied those 
 moments to be passive and thought he was submit- 
 ting to them and governed by them. . . . Thus he 
 made two parts of himself, one pitiful and weak and 
 he called it man, the other very strong and sur- 
 prising and he called it God. " 
 
 Therefore everything led man to religion. He 
 was led by his weakness and by his strength, by his 
 accidental strength in proportion even to his ordi- 
 nary weakness and also by his ordinary weakness in 
 proportion to his accidental strength ; because if he 
 were always weak he could not feel his weakness 
 and it is his accidental strength that causes him to 
 feel and to fathom his customary weakness. Here 
 is seemingly the origin of the religions sufficiently 
 explained since one can explain from what precedes 
 why they are and why it is hardly possible that they 
 should not be. 
 
 Add to this instinct which craves religions, to this 
 double instinct which creates religions, or rather to 
 this double-headed instinct doubly creative of reli- 
 gions, add the creators themselves, that is the or- 
 ganizers of the religious instinct. Either through 
 rapid intuition or deep reflection these do a thing 
 which is very simple in itself but has consequences 
 that are incalculable. They think out the state, 
 the natural also the acquired, then and especially the 
 ordinary and general state of a people in that state : 
 Firstly they discipline it, secondly they divinize it. 
 They give it the backing of a theological and theo- 
 cratic idea.
 
 54 • ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 They discipline it : from what was common prac- 
 tice they make a rule (practice observances and 
 rites), a secondary thing important nevertheless for 
 what we do because we are in the habit of doing it 
 grows wearisome. What we do because it is the 
 rule and the duty is attractive and even comforting. 
 ,The rite destroys weariness by imparting dignity to 
 wearisome actions. 
 
 They divinize the ordinary life of a people. They 
 persuade men that their ordinary lives have a 
 meaning and a beautiful meaning, a divine meaning, 
 a mysterious meaning that is pleasant to a superior 
 power and desired by it. 
 
 The Jews are a plundering and pillaging nation. 
 That life does not satisfy them every day. A man 
 comes to them, telling them that there is a God, who 
 loves them and them alone, who hates all the nations 
 that are not their own and who delights in seeing 
 the other nations pillaged, betrayed and ravaged by 
 them. At once the life of this nation takes on a 
 meaning, and a beautiful meaning. It becomes the 
 good, a moral good, an ideal for which one is ready 
 to sacrifice one's life, at all events something beauti- 
 ful which can no longer prove distasteful or tiring 
 or futile. This man that said this to that nation 
 transposed an instinct of that people and sent it soar- 
 ing, with the result that the nation first of all found 
 itself in the thought of this man, which was neces- 
 sary, and found itself again in beauty with ex- 
 traordinary consequences for its moral welfare and 
 its happiness. 
 
 To this same people, which had become tired and
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES: RELIGION 55 
 
 languishing, exhausted as it was by long civil wars, 
 and to some other nations also there came another 
 man that extolled and praised as divine what? 
 Their very life, their small, mean and lowly life. He 
 interpreted it in beauty. " He finds about him the 
 life of small people of the Roman provinces. He 
 interprets it. He gives it a superior meaning and 
 thereby the courage to despise every other kind of 
 life, the quiet fanaticism that the Moravian Breth- 
 ren were to take up again later, the secret and sub- 
 terraneous self-confidence that grows ceaselessly 
 until it is ready to overcome the world." 
 
 What did Buddha find about him? Scattered 
 practically in all the classes of his people he found 
 men who were good, kindly, lazy and soft. He per- 
 suaded them of nothing at all except this, that lazi- 
 ness was a superior state, a divine state, that the 
 aspiration to rest and to nothingness was the highest 
 conception of the world and that God has none other. 
 Of the Z'is iucrtia: he made a creed — and it was a 
 mark of genius to have conceived so simple an idea. 
 In fact it was to understand people who did not 
 understand themselves. " To be the founder of a 
 religion one must have psychological infallibility in 
 the discovery of a class of average souls that have 
 not yet recogniacd that they ivere of the same kind." 
 These souls are united by the founder of religion. 
 This is why the founding of a religion becomes 
 always a long feast of thanksgiving. 
 
 Thus created and organized, such religion is trans- 
 mitted by habit and heredity. It is proved and con- 
 firmed by the acts of very real courage that it
 
 56 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 prompts. Since thus strength is born out of weak- 
 ness or seems to be born, rehgion wields at length 
 over the imagination the influence and prestige of 
 moral force. But do we need to say that martyr- 
 dom proves nothing? It proves, if you like, and 
 even this could be contested, that some one is very 
 much convinced. But conviction is no proof of 
 truth, although, to be sure, it is no proof of error, 
 Yet it presumes error since we see very well, and all 
 the time that the more man is intelligent, the less he 
 asserts, and since, therefore, a man who is suffi- 
 ciently affirmative to die for his affirmation may be 
 presumed to have an energetic will, a fiery passion, 
 but a narrow mind. The martyrs, therefore, proved 
 nothing at all, but they bewitch, they hearten and 
 they intoxicate. They are necessary to the develop- 
 ment of religion and they are the true pillars almost 
 unshakable of the temple. " It is so little true to 
 say that a martyr could prove the truth of anything 
 that I should like to affirm that no martyr ever had 
 anything to do with truth. . . , The sufferings of 
 the martyrs have been a great historical misfortune : 
 they have bewitched. Is the cross then an argu- 
 ment ? " 
 
 Thus religion is born of human weakness. It is 
 organized by the skill, sincere withal and even un- 
 conscious, of clever psychologists. It is strength- 
 ened and confirmed by solemn and striking acts of 
 confession, devotion and sacrifice. Thus does a reli- 
 gion extend its influence over a section of humanity. 
 What destroys it is the coming forth of another 
 religion that corresponds to a new state of mind
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES: RELIGION 57 
 
 but always to a state of weakness on the part of 
 humanity or of a portion of humanity. The " reU- 
 gion of human sorrow " for instance, which is but a 
 form of the *' reHgion of humanity," tends nowadays 
 to substitute itself for the others. It matters not 
 whether or not it has a chance of survival. It is but 
 an example of the way in which religions attempt to 
 establish themselves. This religion of pity — what 
 is it? First of all it is a remnant of Christianity. 
 To be sure. That is necessary since a new religion 
 must correspond to a general state of mind and even 
 identify itself with the general state of mind, reli- 
 giously conceived, and since there must be remnants 
 of Christianity in the prevalent state of mind about 
 the year 1880, then this new religion is a negation of 
 Christianity in relation to the decrepit paths of 
 Christianity. It appeals no longer to God, seems no 
 longer to think of God at all. Perhaps it does not 
 believe in Him. It rejects the idea of justice and 
 the idea of State. It rejects the idea of authority 
 and that of hierarchy ; all ideas which had been, at 
 least, accepted by Christianity, It is, therefore, 
 partly a remnant of Christianity and partly a re- 
 action against Christianity, as Christianity had been 
 partly a remnant of Judaism and partly a reaction 
 against Judaism. Finally it rests upon human weak- 
 ness, it makes an appeal to it and divinizes it. It 
 corresponds to the state of lassitude of Europe over- 
 burdened with wars, invasion and armed peace, and 
 it makes a virtue of this lassitude. It says : " Never 
 any shedding of blood, never any war even a just 
 one: let pity stop and suppress carnage." After
 
 58 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 all, it amounts to saying : " You are cowards. 
 Very well, I am going to reveal to you a divine se- 
 cret which will please you : you are right." 
 
 This is the way in which a new religion attempts 
 to destroy an ancient religion, and sometimes suc- 
 ceeds. We have there the three necessary condi- 
 tions that are sometimes sufficient conditions for a 
 new religion to destroy another and establish itself 
 in its stead. 
 
 But who can destroy all the. religions without put- 
 ting another one in the place of the last? One thing 
 only, and it is, in truth, very difficult. It is the de- 
 struction of the supernatural, the energetic affirma- 
 tion that the supernatural does not exist ; it is the 
 challenge for any one to prove that the supernatural 
 does exist. The first thing that the prophet of 
 the future must cry out is : " God is dead. I am 
 telling you in truth a true fact: God is dead." 
 That was the first word of Zarathustra. One must 
 assert with energy that God no longer exists. 
 
 When that idea took hold of Nietzsche he pushed 
 it so far that he forgot one of his favorite theories, 
 that is that the world is a manifestation of beauty. 
 For this theory may lead to God, to a God, to some- 
 thing theological : it contains something divine. If 
 the world is a manifestation of beauty, it entails the 
 existence of an artist ; it may be above it or it may 
 be below it or it may be in it but still somewhere or 
 else it entails the world itself to be an artist, the 
 artist of itself. Even in this there is too much that 
 is divine. Therefore when Nietzsche warms up in
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES: RELIGION 59 
 
 atheism, he denies the beauty of the world and we 
 must acknowledge that he cannot do anything else : 
 '* The general condition of the world is chaos for all 
 eternity not through lack of a necessity but in the 
 sense of a lack of order, of structure, of form, of 
 beaiitx, of wisdom, whatever may be the names of 
 our human a^stheticians. ... It is neither perfect 
 nor beautiful nor lofty and wishes to become neither 
 of these. It does not tend at all to an imitation of 
 man. It is not touched by any of our aesthetic and 
 moral judgements. . . ." 
 
 God is dead : but take care, there remain shadows 
 of God. After the death of Buddha there still 
 showed for centuries his shadow in a cavern, a huge 
 and fearful shadow. " God is dead but to judge 
 from the ways of mankind there may yet be for 
 thousands of years caverns where they will show 
 His shadow." 
 
 These shadows of God are precisely the beliefs 
 in something intelligent about the universe, in some- 
 thing either beautiful, as we have seen, or orderly 
 or intentional. Metaphysics is a shadow of the 
 supernatural ; the simple humanization of the uni- 
 verse is a shadow of the supernatural ; the simple 
 and more or less firm belief that the universe means 
 anything at all is a shadow of the supernatural. To 
 understand the universe is to believe in God; to 
 think that one understands it is to believe in God ; 
 to try to understand it is still to believe in God. To 
 suppose that the universe is intelligible is to be a 
 theist even when one believes one's self to be an
 
 60 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 atheist. A deep thought this which Nietzsche 
 grasps very clearly to its end with the clearest sight 
 that he ever had. 
 
 Let us therefore dispel these shadows of God. 
 Let us take care not to believe that the universe is 
 intelligible. Let us beware of all the hypotheses by 
 which we try to explain it to ourselves. " Let us 
 beware (pantheism for instance) to think that the 
 world is a living being. How should it develop it- 
 self? On what could it subsist? How could it 
 succeed in increasing and growing? We know 
 pretty nearly what organized matter is and we 
 ought to change the meaning of all that there is un- 
 speakably derived, belated, rare and haphazard, of 
 what we perceive on the earth's crust to make of it 
 something essential, general and eternal. Yet that 
 is what those do that call the universe an organism. 
 That is disgusting to me." Without going quite so 
 far, " let us take care also not to consider the uni- 
 verse a machine. It certainly was not constructed 
 with any aim in view : and by using the word ma- 
 chine we do it much too great an honor. Let us 
 take care not to admit for certain everywhere and 
 in a general fashion something definite like the cyclic 
 movement of the constellations that are nearer to 
 us : one glance at the milky way already awakens 
 one's doubts, leads one to believe that there may be 
 there motions which are much coarser and more con- 
 tradictory (than those of the solar system) and also 
 stars that are precipitated as if in a straight line 
 forward. The astral order in which we live is an 
 exception. That order as also the passing duration
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES I RELIGION 6l 
 
 which is its condition has itself rendered possible the 
 exception to the exceptions : the formation of what is 
 organic. . . . Let us beware again from saying that 
 there are lazvs in nature. There are but necessities. 
 Nobody there that commands, no one that obeys, no 
 one that infringes. When* you have learned that 
 there are no aims you shall know also that there is 
 no hazard ; for it is only by the side of a world of 
 aims that the word ' hacard ' has any meaning. Let 
 us beware again from saying that death is opposed 
 to life. Life is but a variety of death and a very 
 scarce variety at that. Let us beware . . . but 
 when shall we ever reach the end of our bewares 
 and cautions? When \\\\\ all these shadows of God 
 cease to trouble us ? When shall we have altogether 
 stripped nature of its divine attributes? This brings 
 us back to asking: when shall we have done with 
 humanizing nature ? " 
 
 Religions and also metaphysics, these reflections 
 of religions, will only disappear when man becomes 
 able to understand, to see something as different 
 from himself. But that is what he has not yet come 
 to do, what he cannot do : " We do but operate 
 with things which do not exist, with lines, surfaces, 
 atoms, divisible periods and divisible spaces. How 
 could an interpretation be possible if of everything 
 we first of all make an image, our image? We are 
 still considering science as a humanization of things 
 as faithful as can be. In describing things and their 
 succession we learn merely to describe ourselves 
 ever more exactly. . . ." 
 
 So long as man shall sec and know but himself
 
 62 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 and so long as he can tinder the pretext of explain- 
 ing things but transform them into himself he shall 
 be dominated by religions and metaphysics, which 
 are born of his physical weakness and kept up by his 
 moral weakness. 
 
 See in one example the weakness inherent to the 
 metaphysical beliefs and the weakness which derives 
 front it. Men have long believed in the immortality 
 of the human soul. " The will to power," one could 
 say to Nietzsche, a powerful and intense desire to 
 live ever and ever more, the dream of an Olympian 
 or of a being who wishes to be Olympian. That 
 is possible, Nietzsche would answer, for the will to 
 power also has its errors. But this is a false will to 
 power, and, at bottom, it is but a weakness, the 
 horror and the fear of death, and it generates a 
 perhaps more serious weakness which is this. With 
 the belief in an immortal soul man is compelled to 
 take before his death a decision, a side, since on the 
 side that he shall choose shall his salvation depend. 
 Look at Pascal, The result is an extreme timor- 
 ousness that prevents knowledge from advancing 
 and causes man to hold himself in fear as on the 
 threshold of knowledge : " The most useful con- 
 quest that perhaps has ever been made was the re- 
 nouncing of the belief in an immortal soul. Human- 
 ity has now the right to wait. It need no longer 
 hurry and accept ill-examined ideas as it had to do 
 previously. For in those days, the salvation of the 
 poor immortal soul being dependent upon its con- 
 victions during a short life, it had to decide in a day, 
 and knowledge had a terrifying importance. We
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES: RELIGION 63 
 
 have reconquered the good courage to err, to at- 
 tempt, to take for the time being. All that is now 
 of lesser consequence. And, precisely because of 
 this, individuals and whole generations may now 
 face tasks so imposing that they would have ap- 
 peared to be folly in the days gone by, and seemed 
 an impious game with heaven and hell. We have 
 the right to make experiments with ourselves. Even 
 the whole of humanity has that right." 
 
 Among all these religions and metaphysics there is 
 one that Nietzsche pursues with a beloved hatred. 
 One can even surmise that it is because of that one 
 that he hates them all, and this invites us attentively 
 to follow him upon that ground. This religion is 
 Christianity. For Nietzsche — and we have come 
 to those ideas of Nietzsche that are the most just 
 in the main if not in all the consequences that he 
 derives from them — for Nietzsche Christianity is 
 nothing else but one of the events and the most con- 
 siderable and decisive one of plebeianism. It is 
 because of it that he sees in it the most hateful and 
 redoubtable enemy, the eternal obstacle to his gen- 
 eral ideas. Christianity is the advent of plebeian- 
 ism. 
 
 It was prepared by Socrates and by Plato who, 
 whatever may have been their political ideas, ac- 
 customed the minds to consider all things from the 
 point of view of morality, sub specie ethices and 
 have also fostered the custom of despising 
 and denying the right of the strong, the right of the 
 best, and of wanting all men to be submitted to one 
 single rule.
 
 64 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 It was prepared by Buddhism or by infiltrations of 
 Buddhism, the first plebeian religion to call all 
 men equally to its bosom and to its faith that the 
 world seems to have known. It was prepared (this 
 Nietzsche seems to have forgotten completely or 
 passed under silence) by the Hebrew prophets, for 
 that was a movement formally popular, plebeian, 
 democratic and equalitarian. 
 
 All these " preparations " are execrable but Chris- 
 tianity is yet more execrable than everything that 
 prepared it. We know how it was born : everything 
 that was low, vile, tired and social waste and social 
 decadence was called upon to consider itself as holy, 
 as divine, as " living member of God " and to despise 
 everything that was alive, energetic, beautiful and 
 noble, everything that had the wealth of life and 
 beauty. 
 
 " Christianity is the religion proper for aged 
 antiquity. As first conditions of survival it has 
 needed ancient degenerated civilizations upon which 
 it knew how to act and upon which it acted like a 
 balm. At the periods when the eyes and the ears 
 are * full of dust ' to the extent that they no longer 
 perceive the voice of reason and philosophy, that 
 they hear no longer the living and personified wis- 
 dom whether it bears the name of Epictetus or 
 Epicurus, the erected cross of the martyrs and the 
 trumpet of the last judginent will probably suffice to 
 produce an effect that will induce such peoples to 
 make a decent ending. Think of the Rome of Juve- 
 nal, that venomous toad with the eyes of Venus, and 
 you will understand what it means to erect a cross
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES : RELIGION 65 
 
 before the world. . . . Most men were bom in those 
 days with satiated souls and with the senses of an 
 old man. What boon was it for them to meet those 
 beings who were more souls than bodies and seemed 
 to realize that Greek idea of the Shades of the 
 Hades 1 This Christianity considered as the knell 
 of the good antiquity, sounded on a bell, tired and 
 broken, yet retaining a melodious sound, this Chris- 
 tianity even for the man who to-day skims those cen- 
 turies merely from the historical point of view, is 
 a balm to the ear. What then may it not have been 
 for the men of that time ! On the other hand Chris- 
 tianity is a jioison for young barbaric nations. To 
 plant, for instance, the doctrine of sin and damnation 
 in the souls of the old Germans, these heroic, 
 childish and bestial souls, what was it but to poison 
 them? The consequence of all this was a formid- 
 able fermentation, and a chemical decomposition, a 
 disorder of feelings and of decision, a pressure and 
 an exuberance of the most dangerous things ; and 
 later a thorough weakening of those barbaric na- 
 tions." 
 
 Such was the first nature, the first complexion of 
 Christianity : divinized gentleness, divinized weak- 
 ness, humility, submission and platitude divinized. 
 Hence the two perpetual hostilities of Christianity: 
 hostility to life and hostility to art. Christianity has 
 had at all times a raging and vindictive r('])ugnance 
 "towards life itself." ... It was ** from the outset, 
 essentially and radically, a satiety of life and a dis- 
 gust with life; feelings that only masquerade and 
 hide under the disguise of faith in another and bet-
 
 66 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 ter life." Is it not evident that any doctrine that 
 appeals to another life, condemns this present life, 
 complains of it and curses it, invites one either to 
 leave it, or to wish to get away from it or to reduce 
 it to its minimum? Hence, in the Christian doc- 
 trine, one finds eternally the " hatred of the world," 
 the " anathema to the passions, the dread of beauty 
 and pleasure, a future beyond, which was invented 
 the better to disparage the present, a background, a 
 desire of nothingness, of death, of rest until the sab- 
 bath of the sabbaths." 
 
 Witness St, Paul " that Jewish Pascal " as Pas- 
 cal was a Christian Paul ; see this puny, sickly man, 
 this epileptic, perhaps this ex-criminal, in all cer- 
 tainty this ex-slave to violent passions. What he 
 seeks is the abolition of sin within himself through 
 an intimate union with his God, that is he seeks to 
 cause life to disappear in death which is a new and 
 the only desirable hfe. No " will to power," no 
 " will do dominate " is as formidable, since every 
 effort is will to power. But where does this effect 
 lead ? Straight to death, to actual death which is a 
 necessary and beloved condition of real life. " To 
 death! — To Glory!" the Polyeucte of Corneille 
 says magnificently and most exactly. To glory 
 through death, is the very motto of the Christian. 
 
 A necessary sequel is that Christianity feels a con- 
 stant and incurable hostility towards beauty and 
 art. One might begin by saying that what is hos- 
 tile to life is almost forcibly hostile to art since " all 
 life rests upon appearance, art and illusion " and 
 upon faith in an illusion considered beautiful, se-
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES : RELIGION (fj 
 
 ductive and strengthening. Without going so far, 
 Christianity is hostile to art, because it admits noth- 
 ing but that which is strictly moral and aims at 
 morality as its end. This excludes art or subordi- 
 nates it and thus degrades it and by degrading it, 
 kills it. If we take up the hypothesis of the ex- 
 planation and justification of the world by its beauty, 
 an hypothesis which, as we know, Nietzsche has 
 sometimes found pleasant, " nothing is more com- 
 pletely opposed to the interpretation and the purely 
 aesthetic justification of the world than the Christian 
 doctrine which is and wants to be nothing else but 
 morality and which, with its absolute principles, as 
 for instance, its veracity of God, relegates art, all 
 art, into the dominion of lies and therefore denies, 
 condemns and curses it." 
 
 Christianity rejects the whole of art. It is neither 
 " Apollonian nor Dionysian. It denies all aesthetic 
 values ; it is nihilistic in the deepest sense of the 
 word." To its shame and condemnation, there is 
 this difference between what prepared it and itself 
 that Socratism subordinated art to morality, and 
 considered that art as all the other sides of human 
 work should tend towards morality as its final goal. 
 Upon this ground then it still admitted art or thought 
 it did ; it enervated art but did not proscribe it or 
 thought it did not. But Christianity proscribes art 
 and, being most intelligent, fears it as its mortal, that 
 is, living, enemy. So soon as a Christian is intelli- 
 gent and deep, so soon as he understands Christian- 
 ity (Luther, Calvin, Pascal, de Maistre), he pro- 
 scribes art. So soon as a Christian understands half
 
 68 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 or more of Christianity, he reduces art to be a 
 modest and servile auxihary of morahty : (Tolstoy). 
 So soon as a Christian, albeit sincere, is but a super- 
 ficial, recent, accidental and somewhat deliberate 
 Christian, and withal understands it not at all, he 
 aims at wedding art to Christianity: (Chateau- 
 briand). 
 
 At heart, the Christian is a man of death, of 
 sepulchral shadows, a lover of death. Look about 
 yourselves. Christians are in love with death; the 
 men and women whom their natural tendency leads 
 to a taste for death have a sort of natural disposi- 
 tion to be Christians. The Christian priests are 
 " the most repulsive species of dwarfs," and " crea- 
 tures of the underground." 
 
 This doctrine has renewed human nature. It is 
 quite conscious of that fact and justly boasts of it. 
 But it has falsified human nature. It has created 
 new feelings that are most anti-human. Nietzsche 
 applies to Christianity the same reproach, or a very 
 similar one, which Christianity addressed to Stoi- 
 cism. Christianity taxed Stoicism with a pretence 
 of suppressing passions instead of skilfully direct- 
 ing them. Nietzsche taxes Christianity with having 
 also pretended to suppress the passions or with 
 having, by diverting them from their purposes, made 
 them more evil and also more attractive and corrup- 
 tive. Christianity aimed at suppressing ambition, 
 which is the best and most natural of human in- 
 stincts, which is in fact, the " Will to Power." But 
 the will to power was merely diverted from its 
 course. It took its revenge and became the will
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES: REUGION 69 
 
 to conquer Heaven. It threw man back into the 
 strife, moreover, which was more cruel and bitter 
 than that of ambition proper, in the strife with 
 himself and " the world." Through it man has be- 
 come rough, violent, sad and wretchedly unhappy. 
 This follows the desire to suppress a passion, the 
 substitution of one passion for another and the sub- 
 stitution, for a good passion, of a bad one, or for 
 a bad passion, of a worse one. 
 
 The Christians have aimed at suppressing love; 
 they wanted it considered as a fatal passion, as an 
 enemy. Very well. But " the passions become evil 
 and perfidious zvhen we consider them in an evil and 
 perfidious fashion." The Christians have turned 
 Eros and Aphrodite into Genii from Hell, into lying 
 Spirits. First of all it is doubtful that what has 
 been created with a view to propagating the species ' 
 could be deceitful and fatal in itself. Then it is a 
 sign of vulgarity, it is proper to the most vulgar 
 souls ever to consider their enemies as bad and evil. 
 We must pay attention to this. An enemy if you 
 like. But to have an enemy is necessary to life, to 
 any life, and the creature whom we could conceive 
 to be without an enemy should be a very unfortunate 
 and a very low being, very close to the non-being. 
 — Finally and especially, by turning love into both 
 a sin and a mysterious and redoubtable enemy, Chris- 
 tianity has poetized it, divinized it and turned it into 
 a seductive joy of which one dreams with a blend of 
 delight and shudders and of which therefore one 
 dreams for ever. Therefore in aiming at the de- 
 struction of love, Christianity created it: "This
 
 70 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 diabolization of Eros ends in comedy: Eros, the 
 demon., has, little by little, become more interesting 
 than angels and saints, thanks to the whisperings 
 and mysterious little ways of the Church in all 
 things erotic. It is due to the Church that love af- 
 fairs have become the one interest truly common to 
 all centres and this with an exaggeration which 
 would have been unintelligible to the antiquity and 
 which no doubt will some day cause people to laugh. 
 The whole of our poetry, high and low, is marked 
 and more than marked by the diffuse importance it 
 gives to love which it always presents as the princi- 
 pal event. Because of this judgment it may well be 
 that posterity will find in the whole inheritance of 
 civilization something shabby and insane." 
 
 Christianity has therefore renovated human na- 
 ture by falsifying, altering, degrading and corrupt- 
 ing it. In the true sense of the word, Christianity 
 is corruptive. 
 
 It is dead, they say, and the comments which we 
 have made have but an historical interest. Do not 
 let us delude ourselves. In the same way as " God 
 is dead " but left " shadows " behind, these meta- 
 physical shadows of which we have spoken, and of 
 which humanity may not be able to rid itself for 
 thousands of years, in that same way, it is interest- 
 ing to see what shadows Christianity also has left 
 behind. Christianity has said : " Save yourselves 
 through faith," and upon these words, " dogma " 
 was founded. But it said also : " Love ye each 
 other; love your neighbor as yourself; love your 
 ' enemy ' " ; and upon these words was Christian
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES : RELIGION 7I 
 
 morality established. Little by little the dogma fell 
 down but morality took the foreground. Note that 
 it came there as the dogma fell down. The more 
 the dogma was relegated into oblivion, the more one 
 felt bound in honour to practice and especially to 
 extol morality, to prove how one could be virtuous 
 without being Christian. There are atheists whose 
 chief moral incentive is their very atheism, so anx- 
 ious are they to prove that an atheist may be a good 
 man and to what extent he may be one. The trou- 
 ble is that if one detaches one's self from Christian- 
 ity in that way, one becomes more Christian than 
 ever and more than ever a propagandist and vul- 
 garizer of the Christian idea. This shadow of 
 Christianity, is Christianity still hovering above the 
 world. This residue of Christianity is the essence 
 thereof. 
 
 Watch w-ell the sequence of things : " The more 
 one parted from the dogmas, the more, in a way, 
 one sought the justification of that parting in a cult 
 of love for humanity. The secret stimulus of the 
 French free thinkers from Voltaire down to Auguste 
 Comte was, not to remain behind the Christian ideal 
 on this point but to outbid it if possible. Auguste 
 Comte, with his well-known moral formula ' to live 
 for others ' in fact out Christianizes Cliristianity. 
 In Germany it was Schopenhauer, and in England 
 John Stuart Mill, who gave the greatest fame to the 
 theory of sympathetic affections, of pity and of use- 
 fulness to others as the principle of action. Rut 
 they themselves were mere echoes. These doctrines 
 arose everywhere at the same time under forms that
 
 'J2 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 were either subtle or coarse, and with extraordinary 
 vitality, since about the time of the French Revolu- 
 tion, and all the systems of Sociahsm placed them- 
 selves unwittingly as it were upon the common 
 ground of these doctrines. . . ." 
 
 Such are the residues of Christianity, which it is 
 necessary to burn down and such are the shadows of 
 Christianity, which must necessarily be dispelled. 
 
 To resume, the religions and also the metaphysics, 
 which are but pale reflections of the religions, are 
 born of human weakness. They are always adopted 
 and grasped by the weak in order to repress and, if 
 possible, to enslave the strong. They succeed first 
 in repressing them and then in enslaving them. 
 Sometimes even they succeed in seducing them. As 
 a result, penetrated by these reflections and the 
 shadows, they themselves repress themselves, enslave 
 themselves and by consecrating their strength to the 
 cause of the weak, they destroy strength. — Reli- 
 gions and Metaphysics and all the dreams of the 
 supernatural in general are therefore auxiHaries of 
 death, enemies of life and beauty, and betrayals and 
 degradations of human race. At all events, they 
 are again obstacles to the Nietzschean conception of 
 life.
 
 CHAPTER VL 
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES: 
 RATIONALISM AND SCIENCE. 
 
 What then, if we were to turn to what generally 
 passes for the antithesis, the antipode and the an- 
 tagonism of rehgion and metaphysics, if we turned 
 to science ? — Let ns see. 
 
 Science is first of all the savants. A somewhat 
 sorry crowd. They are timid, fusty, sad and short- 
 sighted, wonderful when it comes to not seeing the 
 world, to not appreciating men, to not knowing what 
 man is, also to not knowing either the principles, 
 origins and foundations nor the end, the importance 
 and the consequences of the very science they are 
 studying. Often enough they are superstitious and 
 dogmatic in their superstitions and prejudices be- 
 cause, knowing exactly what effectively they know, 
 they bring to the expression of their prejudices the 
 strictness and imperiousness of the formulas of their 
 laboratories and studies. They are good workmen 
 of knowledge who, when all is said, know nothing 
 at all, as the workers in a factory are strangers to 
 the work it turns out ultimately. They are average 
 in all things, an intermediate class between the mob 
 and the elite, and have neither the qualities of tbe 
 one nor even the qualities that are attributed to 
 the other. Most of them are moreover infatuated 
 
 73
 
 74 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 with their vainglorious timorousness and number 
 more pedants than any other class of society and 
 even of the human species. — Nietzsche always 
 speaks of the savant as a professor that fled from 
 the profession. Let us pass on. 
 
 Science itself, apart from its practical usefulness, 
 to which men may, if they care to, attach some im- 
 portance, is but a very great sham. It was invented, 
 about four hundred years before Christ, by Soc- 
 rates, whatever he may have said or perhaps 
 thought. What existed before Socrates, or at best 
 what held the first rank and enjoyed precedence was 
 the intuitive man, who, in his highest expression, 
 was the artist and the poet. What existed after 
 Socrates, or at least what took primacy in the mind 
 of men, in the consideration of men, was the theori- 
 cal man, that is to say the reasoning man who must 
 know in order to reason, who therefore learns and 
 classifies and criticises and who, upon the gathered 
 data, builds up deductions and theories, in a word 
 the savant and the rationalist. 
 
 But this man also is a mortal enemy of art and 
 life. He also is as anti-Dionysian as can be. Soc- 
 rates is well enough known for an anti-artist and 
 Plato wished to banish the poets from the Republic : 
 " The most illustrious antagonist of the tragic (that 
 is the artistic) conception of the Universe, is Sci- 
 ence. Art causes life to be loved by presenting 
 it a synthetic fashion ; science discolors it and freezes 
 it by analyzing it. Science kills what art had vivi- 
 fied. Whoever is prepared to dwell upon the most 
 immediate consequences of this scientific spirit,
 
 RATIONALISM AND SCIENCE 75 
 
 whoever goes relentlessly forward, will understand 
 at once how through it ' the myth was put out 
 of existence, and how, through this annihilation 
 poetry, disjx)ssessed of its natural ideal birthplace, 
 was compelled henceforth to wander like a homeless 
 vagabond.' " 
 
 Socrates it was who truly built piecemeal that 
 theorical man. He did it by his doctrine which was 
 singularly deep in the sense that it went straight out 
 to the end of the initial thought, but his radically 
 false doctrine was that morality is in proportion 
 to knowledge, that the man that does not do good is 
 a man that does not know the good and that the man 
 that knows the good does assuredly do it. Here it 
 is precisely, the theorical man introduced as king 
 of the world! Now nothing is more false than this 
 notion. The opposite is more likely to be true. The 
 man that knows the good does not do it, because he 
 is satisfied with knowing it and that is enough for 
 his conceit and because, knowing the good and know- 
 ing that he knows it, he fancies that he is doing it 
 and that he has accomplished and fulfilled his duty. 
 The good is instinctive and passionate ; the good is 
 in the action and the action is, we must admit, rarely 
 inspired by the idea and by knowledge. It is fre- 
 quently, one must admit, the effect of an instinctive 
 and unconscious movement. 
 
 Yet this thought is truly the fundamental or cor- 
 ner stone of the doctrine of the theoretical man. 
 Socrates said to the world : " Know, think and rea- 
 son. To know is to have the power to do the good. 
 Know, think and reason for that is the whole of
 
 76 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 man. The rest belongs to childhood." — He should 
 have said : " Follow your instincts ; they are good." 
 
 It really seems as if Socrates, who was a mistaken 
 but a truly inspired man, understood all that he 
 taught and that is indeed a rare thing. The final 
 word and ultimate meaning of his doctrine was that 
 his doctrine went against life, for listen to him in 
 his last breath : " You shall immolate a cock to 
 Esculapius." That is to say : " Esculapius has 
 now cured me of life." Therefore life is evil. 
 Final pessimism, the pessimism of aim which the 
 doctrine of Socrates contains. Socrates perceived it 
 truly indeed and expressed it magnificently in his last 
 words, surely the most pessimistic words ever 
 uttered. 
 
 However, the man of theory, by opposition to the 
 man of instinct, to the man of creation and to the 
 man that causes life to be loved, the artist that is, 
 has been established and enthroned. He will learn, 
 reason, know and build theories. All this is very 
 futile. Science may fill its strength but it is radi- 
 cally and ridiculously powerless to fulfill its aim. 
 What does it propose to do ? To know, of course. 
 Very well, but what is knowledge? To know is to 
 establish the way in which all that is in ourselves 
 perceives what is not ourselves. It is not therefore 
 to know, but to know ourselves; to test our faculties 
 in the exercise of themselves, precisely nothing else. 
 It is to establish how we are, feel, think, measure 
 and reason. Nothing else. We have not yet come 
 out of ourselves. We know ourselves better and 
 nothing else.
 
 RATIONALISM AND SCIENCE ^^ 
 
 But by testing our faculties we strengthen them. 
 
 To be sure, and after having thus strengthened 
 them for thousands of centuries, where shall we be? 
 We shall be able to see what our faculties, which 
 will be very much exercised and very much strength- 
 ened, can accomplish and how, very much exercised 
 and very much strengthened, they perceive the 
 world. Is the world better known thereby? The 
 world, not at all, but yet our faculties. W'e have 
 not yet come out of ourselves; wc have developed 
 oxirsclves but without coming out of ourselves. 
 We have pushed further our own selves but with- 
 out ever escaping them, for that is not a possible 
 feat. We know ourselves better or we know a 
 greater self but of what is not of us, we know 
 nothing. What, then, is the use ? " Seek knowl- 
 edge ! Yes, but always as man ! What ! For ever 
 to remain a spectator of the same comedy, for ever 
 to play a part in the same comedy? Never to be 
 able to look upon things but with these same eyes? 
 Yet, how many beings there must be — innumerable 
 are they — whose organs are fitter to gather knowl- 
 edge than our own! At the end of all its knowl- 
 edge, zcliat shall humanity have knoivnf Its or- 
 gans. And that may conceivably mean : impossi- 
 bility of knowledge. What misery and disgust! 
 ... A bad spell comes over you ; your reason is 
 doing you violence. To-morrow however you shall 
 be once more right in the midst of knowledge and 
 by the same token right in sheer nonsense and by 
 this I mean in the joy that everything human will 
 cause you. Let us go to the seaside! "
 
 78 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 Indeed, let us shake off this yoke; let us escape 
 from the jaws of the vice of subjective scepticism. 
 It is nevertheless unavoidable and will always return 
 to do us violence; it is absolutely irrefutable. But 
 let us escape from it and do what men have always 
 done, let us pretend that it is possible for us to know 
 something. Very well, let us take up the thread 
 again. What is the aim of science? Well, it sets 
 itself up facing the world, please note it is the world, 
 and it aims at knowing and explaining it, to impart a 
 real and true knowledge thereof; real meaning com- 
 plete, and true meaning logical, connected, systema- 
 tic. In other terms, or else the words have no 
 meaning whatsoever, it sets out to empty the infinite. 
 By definition it is powerless. — You may argue that 
 it is something, to pull something out from the in- 
 finite and to explain it, to make it clear and under- 
 stood. But every part of the infinite holds to the 
 whole of the infinite and cannot be explained with- 
 out the whole being explained. Hear the words of 
 Claude Bernard : " If I knew any one thing thor- 
 oughly, I would know everything." The explana- 
 tions of science are therefore always so superficial 
 that they are equivalent to a non-explanation, that 
 they are a non-explanation, and that all the knowl- 
 edge of science knows nothing. 
 
 Science may be a game, if you like, quite a seri- 
 ous and honorable game. But there is no sufficient 
 reason to give those that are thus playing a game 
 any pre-eminence in humanity, to entrust humanity 
 to them. It even savors of the ridiculous : " The 
 adepts of science give the impression of people who
 
 RATIONALISM AND SCIENCE 79 
 
 would have intended to dig a vertical hole piercing 
 the earth from end to end. The first one discovers 
 that, if working during the whole of his life with the 
 greatest assiduity, he could but succeed in piercing 
 an infinitesimal part of the enormous depth and that, 
 moreover, the result of his work would be filled in 
 and reduced to nothing by the work of his neighbor." 
 The savant, the rationalist, the man of theory is 
 therefore a degenerate man, an under-man. Have 
 you read Faust? Did you understand it? Well, 
 it is the condemnation in three parts of the man of 
 theory. Faust is at first the man of to-day, the man 
 of theory, the man who would have been utterly 
 unintelligible to a Greek before Socrates ; he is the 
 man who is eaten up with a passion for knowledge, 
 eaten up with a passion for " culture." — He per- 
 ceives the vanity thereof and experiments with 
 sentimental life. — Sentimental life does not offer 
 him much resistance, does it ? — Then, having 
 tlirozi'H himself into the contemplation of the Hel- 
 lenic antiquity and having long tarried there-mith, 
 what does he reach? He reaches the life of action, 
 the life that does not reason nor does it sing the 
 sentimental romance but acts and creates. What 
 does this mean? It means that the progress of 
 Faust consisted, in going back from the XlXth cen- 
 tury to the Renaissance and from the Renaissance 
 to pre-Socratic Greece. The progress of Faust con- 
 sisted in his turning his back to " Progress." Each 
 true progress shall do likewise. Scientific life, ra- 
 tional and theorical life it is that indicates decadence. 
 " The fact that science has gained this extent of
 
 8o ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 sovereignty shows that the XlXth century has es- 
 caped from the dominion of the ideal, j A certain 
 lack of aspirations and desires renders possible to 
 us the scientific inquisitiveness and strictness, this 
 kind of virtue which is proper to us." 
 
 Inquisitiveness is a passion but it is the last of 
 them; it is an old man's passion. An old man it 
 was who first said : " Out of mere inquisitiveness 
 am I still alive," and he said it with much melan- 
 choly. No doubt, there are men who are born 
 with that " high curiosity " as Renan called it ; but 
 they are those who are born old. Youth wants 
 to live and do. The scientific age is the last age of 
 humanity, or it would be the last if humanity were 
 not fortunate enough to fall under the law of " eter- 
 nal return " which is one of Nietzsche's dogmas, or 
 one of his hopes. 
 
 There is hardly a more powerful illusion than 
 this idea, truly universal nowadays, which consists 
 in confusing civilization and science. The idea is 
 general, with the men who think they have medi- 
 tated and even with any other man, whether he 
 belongs to the people or to the elite, and perhaps 
 even more so with the man of the people. The civ- 
 ilized man is the man that knows ; the cultured man 
 is the man that knows. Nothing is more false than 
 this idea. The artist that knows nothing at all 
 and the man of action that knows little are as cul- 
 tured and civilized, often much more so, than the 
 savant : " All our modern world is caught in the 
 web of Alexandrine culture and has for its ideal the 
 man of theory, armed with the most powerful
 
 RATIONALISM AND SCIENCE 8l 
 
 means of knowledge, working in the service of 
 science and whose prototype and original ancestor 
 was Socrates. This ideal is the principle and the 
 aim of all our educational methods. All other kinds 
 of existence (art, life of action or industrial life) 
 must painfully struggle, accessorily develop itself 
 not as a projected end but as a tolerated occupa- 
 tion. A disposition almost appalling caused this for 
 a long time, that the cultured man was only ac- 
 knowledged as such if he took the form of the 
 learned }nan. Our very art of poetry is born of 
 learned imitations. . . . The type of Faust, at his 
 starting point, would seem utterly unintelligible to a 
 true Greek. . . ." Think, however, of the end of 
 Faust and note also what Goethe said to Eckermann. 
 They were speaking of Napoleon. Eckermann did 
 not understand him at all. " But, my friend," 
 Goethe said, " in actions also is there productivity." 
 In this " delightful and naive way " Goethe was 
 reminding his friend that the non-theorical man 
 oflfers to the men of to-day, to the Eckermanns, 
 something " improbable and disconcerting " and 
 therefore that the wisdom of a Goethe is necessary 
 for one to conceive and verily to excuse so unusual 
 a mode of existence." 
 
 Goethe saw very well that science did not offer 
 the only means of productivity. It is even an in- 
 ferior one and prevents the display of the higher 
 glorious means of productivity. The new idol is 
 somewhat lowly and if it is, as we have shown it 
 to be, also barren, it diverts men from the direction 
 of the fertile sources. It chills and hardens the
 
 82 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 world; renders it insipid without even fulfilling its 
 pretentious design, which is to cause the world to 
 be known. 
 
 Has science even that fine merit of which it brags, 
 of being the opponent of credulity, of destroying 
 faith? Science and faith, how often these two 
 words and what they stand for have been set up 
 against each other? Please note, however, that 
 science is based upon a faith, that it is a sign that 
 man does need a faith, a mystical certainty and 
 that it confirms and strengthens in the minds of 
 men their mania for credulity and their irrational 
 and childish need for mystical certainty. " The 
 fierce desire for certainty is poured out to-day in 
 the compact masses with scientific and positivist 
 airs " and again " this desire to obtain at any price 
 something tangible is that same desire for a prop 
 and a support, that same instinct of weakness which 
 creates or preserves religions and metaphysics." 
 Faith in science is but merely a form of piety and 
 nothing else : " In what manner, we also, are we 
 still pious?" In this way. We, the scientists, we 
 pledge ourselves firmly not to believe out of faith, 
 out of a priori convictions, to believe but that which 
 shall have been proved real and true. Very well. 
 But in order to impose this discipline upon our- 
 selves " so that this discipline may begin to act " 
 must there not be an a priori conviction, to wit that 
 the proved is better than the not proved? To be 
 sure that conviction is needed and it must be im- 
 perious and absolute, and it is an imperative and it 
 is not proved. But, please, it is a faith ! " It is
 
 RATIONAUSM AND SCIENCE 83 
 
 well shown that science therefore also rests upon a 
 faith and that no unconditional science could exist." 
 
 You may say that it is not a faith but merely the 
 desire, merely a natural and legitimate desire, not 
 to be deceived. Very well, but then this desire 
 not to be deceived presupposes another idea which 
 is this : it were better not to be deceived than to 
 be deceived. Speaking in the domain of general 
 ideas, how do you come to know that? It is most 
 unproved that it were better not to be deceived than 
 be deceived. Speaking in the domain of general 
 truth, your will of truth is therefore a gratuitous 
 one ; it exists because it exists ; it exists because that 
 you were born with it. It is an a priori con- 
 viction: it is a faith. 
 
 You may retort that that is not quite the case. It 
 is not that I do not wish to be deceived ; it is rather 
 that I do not wish to deceive others. Well, of 
 course, that is another thing. We were in the do- 
 main of metaphysics, and we are now in that of 
 morality. I thought I had to deal with a meta- 
 physical faith ; but it is a moral one. Still, it comes 
 to the same point or very near to it. Again it is an 
 imperative, an unproved and unprovable fixed idea. 
 You want the truth because you do not wish to 
 deceive; because you are an honest man. Very 
 good. But who told you that you should not de- 
 ceive, who persuaded you of that little Don Quixo- 
 tism, of that " enthusiastic little nonsense "? Your 
 conscience, your holy conscience! All right, but 
 then you can see that the wish for truth rests upon 
 an imperative^ which does not give its reasons and
 
 84 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 which is determined not to give them, again upon 
 a faith. Therefore, whether your wish for truth 
 comes from a wish not to be deceived or from a 
 wish not to deceive, it rests either upon an a priori 
 philosophical conviction or upon an a priori moral 
 conviction. The desire to possess what is proved 
 rests upon an idea or a feeling, neither of which is 
 proved or can be proved. Therefore " it is again 
 upon a metaphysical belief that rests our faith in 
 science." Whence comes this metaphysical belief? 
 
 Well, it is most likely to come from the an- 
 cient theologies which have penetrated and soaked 
 us for thousands of years. All this is still a rem- 
 nant of God : " We ourselves who are to-day seek- 
 ing knowledge, we the anti-metaphysicians and im- 
 pious men, are still borrowing our kindling sparks 
 from the fire that was lit by a thousand years old 
 faith, by that Christian faith that was also that 
 of Plato and that established as a principle that 
 God is truth and that truth is divine." 
 
 Come to think of it for a while, it is strange that 
 this same science that has freed mankind and must 
 free it more and more — you know the common- 
 place — needs itself a slavery, necessitates that 
 slavery and at the same time refuses to hear about 
 it, brings it forth in deed and proscribes it in words. 
 The theorical, scientific, " Alexandrine " civilization 
 came by degrees to thinking, conceiving and pro- 
 claiming equality among all men. Very well, if you 
 wish it. But simultaneously, it needs, for its mines, 
 its coal, its railways, its buildings, its division of 
 work which derives from it all, it needs a " people "
 
 FL\TIONALISM AND SCIENCE 85 
 
 which is as much a people of slaves, and, is in cer- 
 tain aspects more so than was the servile mob of 
 Athens and Rome : The Socialists have proved this 
 point very clearly and moreover in this part of their 
 reasoning they are right. Here is an antinomy. 
 Here is moreover a danger. That danger is that 
 the Alexandrine civilization, that is, our own, may 
 be destroyed some day, possibly some near day, by 
 the double result of its practical necessities and its 
 theorical and declamatory preachings. Both tend 
 to or end in precisely the same result : " One may 
 no longer conceal from one's self wdiat lies hidden 
 beneath this Socratic culture : the boundless illusion 
 of optimism. Nor may one be surprised any longer 
 at the fruit of such optimism ripening; nor at so- 
 ciety being increasingly shaken by the fever of pride 
 and of the appetites because it has become corroded 
 down to the lowest layers by the acid of such a 
 culture ; nor at the faith in an earthly happiness for 
 all and in the possibility of such a scientific civiliza- 
 tion, gradually transforming itself into a threaten- 
 ing will, which exacts this Alexandrine happiness 
 upon earth and invokes the intervention of a Dcus 
 ex Machina, in Euripides fashion. One must note 
 that in order to maintain itself, the Alexandrine 
 civilization needs a state of slavery, a class of slaves ; 
 and yet, owing to its optimistic conception of exist- 
 ence, it denies the necessity of this state. There- 
 fore, when the efTect of those fine deceiving and 
 soothing words has been worn out over the dignity 
 of man and the dignity of labor, that civilization 
 gathers speed towards an appalling annihilation. 
 
 /
 
 86 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 There is nothing more terrifying than a barbaric 
 people of slaves who have learned to look upon their 
 existence as an injustice and are prepared to revenge 
 themselves thereof not only by themselves but by the 
 strength of all the generations to come." 
 
 Thus is science most futile in its work, pretend- 
 ing as it does to exhaust the inexhaustible and hav- 
 ing, moreover, explained nothing at all so long as it 
 has not explained everything. It is a portent of 
 decadence, it replaces the man of production by the 
 barren and impotent man of theory. It is a leaven 
 of decadence in this that it drives man away from 
 life and beauty to restrict him to the contemplation 
 and the examination of a " truth " which is after 
 all unattainable. It does not even enjoy the distinc- 
 tion of not being faith, and of warding ofif mankind 
 from a faith considered childish since it rests itself 
 upon a faith which remains as unproved, as un- 
 provable and as childish as any other. From all 
 points of view, science also is an alien, an importu- 
 nate intruder and an obstacle.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES: 
 MORALITY. 
 
 The religions are false and science is vain; all are 
 obstacles to strong life and to real life and leavens 
 of decadence in humanity. Let us now turn to 
 morality, to non-religious morality, so as not to 
 come back to matters already examined ; let us turn 
 to independent morality, as considered since Soc- 
 rates, perhaps even since days that came before 
 him ; let us study it as the law and rule of human- 
 ity and as a thing that guides and uplifts, strengthens 
 and broadens mankind. It is true? Let us see. 
 To begin, it seems that morality is really false in 
 itself, without going any further into the analysis 
 that could be made of it and into the study of 
 its effects. Morality is a commandment that en- 
 joins us not to be natural and to avoid nature. Is 
 not this already strange? Why should a being, 
 who is natural beyond any doubt, who is part of 
 nature, hold it as a duty and a rule of life, to live 
 contrarily to nature and, admitting that he should 
 do so, live outside it? "Man against the world," 
 against " the whole world," man as " negatory prin- 
 ciple of the world " — is not this so strange that it 
 becomes a laughable matter? That everything 
 
 87
 
 88 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 should have its laws, is possible; it is at all events 
 the principle laid by our opponents. That preten- 
 tion and that other which claims that we also have 
 our own principle, but one contrary to the universal 
 law, but one that denies, that directly attacks and 
 despises the universal law, a mite of a thing against 
 the world, a next-to-nothing against all things, that 
 is like the paradox of an insane man. " The mon- 
 strous bad taste of such an attitude is apparent to 
 our conscience and inspires in us nothing but dis- 
 gust." 
 
 It seems established that if morality is not in na- 
 ture and is even against nature, it is simply because 
 it is false. A physician to whom you were to say : 
 " Here is a most peculiar body ; it does not obey the 
 law of attraction. It is the only body in nature that 
 fails to obey attraction ; it even resists it most firmly. 
 How do you account for that fact? " would reply in 
 the words of Arago : " There is one explanation : it 
 is that the fact you mention is not true. You are 
 under a delusion concerning that body; if it were 
 endowed with intelligence and had that same illusion 
 upon itself I would tell it that it is crazy." 
 
 Morality, considered in what it is in the main, that 
 is, a law peculiar to man, one that the universe 
 does not obey and that is contrary to those obeyed 
 by the universe, is a mere folly, an illusion and 
 therefore untrue. 
 
 Men have felt this perfectly well. Finding in 
 spite of all, the paradox of that very small man set 
 up against the whole immense universe too mon- 
 strous, they invented, as counterpoise, another uni-
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES: MORALITY 89 
 
 verse that would stand in with man on the same 
 side of the scale. They invented the divine world. 
 There is the universe ; it is absolutely immoral, that 
 is so; but here is Gk)d who is moral, like man, just, 
 like man ; who is the keeper and avenger of morality 
 and justice and puts everything right at a given 
 moment, in a given place and according to justice 
 and morality. Hence a counterpoise. On the one 
 side is the universe; on the other stand God and 
 man. Even admitting man to be worthless, God 
 is infinite. It is therefore the universe, which, by 
 comparison with God and man together becomes a 
 negligible quota and a mere nothing. Conse- 
 quently, morality, which has for itself one part of 
 what is in nature and the whole of the super- 
 natural as well, cares nothing at all for the universe, 
 which is in turn but a part, an atom and even a 
 midget of an atom and immoral. 
 
 Very well played. And, by the way, it proves 
 once more what intimate connection there is be- 
 tween morality and religion, and between morality 
 and the supernatural. When morality docs not 
 come from the supernatural, does not proceed from 
 it, morality needs it in order to avoid being paradox- 
 ical and ridiculous and invents it to secure ballast, 
 and weight and authority and to force itself upon 
 men. " The transcendental world was conceived 
 by Kant so that he could leave moral liberty its 
 place." 
 
 Very well played. But it is a game, it is sheer 
 jugglery. We are in nature. This nature has its 
 laws; it may be that they were established by God
 
 90 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 but laws it has. The natural, the true and the 
 divine points are, if nature is the work of a God, 
 that we should conform to the natural laws and 
 not that we should revolt against them. A fish that 
 would want to live in the air and that would be 
 persuaded that its duty commands it to live there, 
 would be a most peculiar animal. 
 
 Who fails to perceive that such an invention of a 
 whole supernatural world in order to explain, or to 
 found morality, or to save it from the appearance 
 of being absurd, is merely an artificial transposition 
 and projection? The moral man, surprised in a 
 way at his being one, wishing to investigate that 
 point and to justify himself for his being moral, 
 projects himself into the infinite and invents a moral 
 God who is but man himself immoderately en- 
 larged. He delights and recomforts himself in that 
 shadow of himself and says to himself : " I am 
 not alone; I am not the only one of my kind. I 
 have a sublime and strong companion whom I re- 
 semble and who supports me against the world 
 which is so different from myself and which is no 
 doubt an hostile world. He will defend me against 
 it and reward me for my resistance. At least he 
 gives me confidence by his mere presence. At 
 least he saves me from being ludicrous and from 
 the terror of being alone of my kind, as a stranger 
 in an unknown land." Morality, inventing the 
 transcendental world to reassure itself, is like a 
 traveler conversing in friendly terms with his own 
 shadow. 
 
 But, notwithstanding the whole real universe
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES : MORALITY 9I 
 
 and independently of the transcendental universe. 
 I find the moral law in my own conscience. That 
 also is a fact, a real fact, which we must surely 
 take into account and upon which I would be glad 
 to have your opinion. 
 
 Nietzsche answered this in a Critic of the Con- 
 science, which offers us nothing very new for it is 
 almost wholly to be found in La Rochefoucauld 
 but which is renovated by the liveliness of his elo- 
 quence and of his sarcasms, by his psychological 
 penetration and the vigor of his dialectic. These 
 are personal to Nietzsche and would have made 
 that work of his an incomparable little volume but 
 for the fact that its contents are scattered in a 
 score of passages of his works. I shall do little else 
 than gather it together. Quotations, in this case 
 as in every other whenever Nietzsche enjoyed clear 
 sight, are much to be preferred to interpretations, 
 no matter who tenders them. 
 
 You allege that your conscience imperiously com- 
 mands you to do this or that, and that it is painful 
 to you not to obey its dictates. You say that " when 
 man decides that this or that is good as it stands 
 and when he concludes that, for that reason, it 
 must be so and finally that, when he does what he 
 has thus found to be right and necessary, then the 
 action is a moral one." That is what you say. 
 " But, my friend, you are speaking here of three 
 actions instead of one, because your judgment: 
 ' this or that is good as it stands ' is a first action." 
 W'ell, that action is arbitrary or at least uncon- 
 trolled. " Whatever it is that you are thinking of,
 
 92 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 why do you consider it to be right? Because my 
 conscience shows it to me " to be right. Well, what 
 leads you to think your conscience infallible ? Why 
 not take conscience of your conscience? Why do 
 you not analyze its decision ? " Your decision * this 
 or that is right as it stands ' has a previous history 
 which lies in your instincts, in your tendencies, your 
 antipathies, your experiences and your inexperi- 
 ences. You should be asking yourself : * How did 
 it come to be there ? ' and again, later : What is in 
 the end, prompting me to listen to it ? " Because, 
 see this : " You may be heeding its command as a 
 brave soldier receives an order from his command- 
 ing officer. Or as a woman that loves the man 
 whose bidding she does. Or as a flatterer and a 
 coward that fears his master. Or as a fool that 
 obeys because he finds no ready retort to the order. 
 In short, you may be obeying your conscience in a 
 hundred different ways." 
 
 Think also of the habits one forms. " When you 
 pay attention to such and such judgment as being 
 the voice of your conscience, with the result that 
 you consider something to be right, you may be 
 doing it because you have never thought deeply upon 
 yourself and have blindly accepted what ever since 
 your childhood has been pointed out to you as being 
 right." 
 
 Think also that there may be a subtle disguise 
 over your selfishness, as La Rochefoucauld would 
 have said, and that is over your selfishness. When 
 you pay attention to this or that judgment as being 
 the voice of your conscience, it may be that you do
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES: MORALITY 93 
 
 it " because your daily bread and your position came 
 to you along with what you call your duty ; and you 
 consider that duty to be right because it seems to 
 you to be the condition of your existence, for your 
 right to existence seems to you irrefutable." 
 
 Again, perhaps " the firmness of your moral judg- 
 ment might well be a proof of personal paucity, of a 
 lack of individuality. And the moral force might 
 spring from your own stubbornness or from your 
 inability to perceive a new ideal. If, to sum up, you 
 were a shrewder thinker and more observant and 
 had learned more, at no price would you still be 
 calling duty and conscience this duty and this con- 
 science which you fancy to be personal to you; 
 your religion would be enlightened as to the way in 
 which moral judgments are always reached." — 
 They are formed in a thousand different ways. It 
 is strange that one should fail to analyze the " cate- 
 gorical imperative " as one would any other phe- 
 nomenon of the consciousness. It is because of this 
 phenomenon one docs not ivish to analyze it ; one 
 does not care to analyze it and there are pretty good 
 reasons for that too. They do not wish to analyze 
 the categorical imperative those that want to act 
 with energy and that, at the same time, need to obey, 
 without discussing it, something very high which 
 commands without reasoning its order. They need 
 the absolute, as a man of action needs absolutism : 
 " All men that feel the need of the most violent 
 words and intonations, the most eloquent gestures 
 and attitudes in order to he able to act, revolution- 
 ary politicians, socialists, preachers, with or with-
 
 94 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 out Christianity, all those who wish to avoid half- 
 success — they all speak of ' duties ' and of duties 
 with an absolute character. Otherwise, and they 
 know this very well, they would have no right to 
 their immoderate pathos. They are well aware of 
 it. For that reason, they seize greedily a philosophy 
 of morality that preaches any kind of categorical 
 imperative. Or else they assimilate part of a re- 
 ligion, as did, for instance, Mazzini. Because they 
 desire that others should have absolute confidence 
 in them, it is necessary that they should begin hav- 
 ing absolute confidence in themselves, according to 
 any kind of ultimate commandment, which must be 
 indisputable, sublime and without a restriction, a 
 commandment of which they may feel themselves to 
 be the servants and instruments and of which they 
 would like to be acknowledged as the servants and 
 instruments. In them, we find the most natural 
 adversaries of moral emancipation and of skepti- 
 cism. They are often very influential ; but they are 
 scarce." 
 
 They do not wish either to analyze the categorical 
 imperative, those, and they are much more numer- 
 ous, who have a selfish interest in disguising wholly 
 terrestrial and temporal submission and servility 
 under the mask of a spiritual submission and a re- 
 ligious or moral character. This is a subtle move 
 of egotism, of which those that benefit most by it 
 may be more or less the dupes : " A man that feels 
 disgraced at the thought that he is the tool of a 
 prince, a party, a sect or even a financial power and 
 yet wants to be, or is compelled to turn himself
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES*. MORALITY 95 
 
 into, such a tool, will need to face himself and pub- 
 lic opinion, some pathetic principles that can ever be 
 upon his lips, some principles of an absolute obli- 
 gation to which he may without shame submit and 
 show his submission. Every manner of servility 
 with any ingenuousness at all holds on to the cate- 
 gorical imperative and shows itself the deadly enemy 
 of those who wish to divest duty of its absolute 
 character." 
 
 All this may bring one back to stating that con- 
 science, far from being the very foundation of our 
 nature, upon which we must ever rest, is but an 
 adaptation of ourselves to all our surroundings and 
 to that with which we are compelled to live. Here 
 is what Leibnitz thought of the intellectual con- 
 science : Knowledge is but an accident of represen- 
 tation, not its essence. What we call (intellectual) 
 conscience is but a condition of our intellectual be- 
 ing. We cannot think without forming conscious- 
 ness of a certain quantity of our representations; 
 but that is merely an accident, a relatively scarce 
 one. No doubt, it is necessary for our thinking 
 but it is not at all the foundation of our intellectual 
 being; it is but the surface thereof. In the same 
 way, the moral conscience is but the intellectual con- 
 sciousness of an inceptive act to which we are attrib- 
 uting a certain value or a certain beauty. We need 
 this conscience in order to act. It conditions our 
 actions ; it is the condition of our actions. Without 
 it, we should have no reason for action or we should 
 have a different one. Must we then conclude that 
 it is imperative and legitimately imperative? Not
 
 96 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 at all. It is an incentive like any other, to be con- 
 trolled like any other, one that can be divided up 
 and subdivided into several back-incentives like any 
 other and not at all a living table of the law to which 
 we had but blindly to submit. 
 
 You may object: "Controllable! Controllable 
 by what? By our conscience, of course, and here 
 we are back to nonplus," To this I shall re- 
 ply: "Assuredly." It is controllable by the con- 
 science beyond the conscience. As there are back- 
 incentives in the bidding of the conscience con- 
 sidered as an incentive, there must be back-con- 
 sciences to control those back-incentives. Please 
 note, however, that in thus falling back and in 
 throwing the conscience back, we are destroying it 
 because we throw it back gradually into the uncon- 
 scious, where it gets lost. By means of analysis I 
 may subdivide the prompting of my conscience into 
 several motives or incentives and I may, to be sure, 
 control them with my conscience. But these in- 
 centives, heredity, education, temperament or mul- 
 tiple social influences are either lost in the dark 
 past or scattered in the space of the present. They 
 escape me. I am no longer their judge nor yet 
 their master. I am even unable to recognize them. 
 Where, then, is my control? This very conscience 
 which seemed so firm has weakened and feels itself 
 powerless. This very conscience which seemed so 
 strong and as it were, so compact, has crumbled and 
 thereby vanished. 
 
 Therefore the " evidence " and the " command " 
 of conscience are but prejudices and illusions, like
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES: MORALITY 97 
 
 SO many other things that have not been analyzed. 
 Conscience is a niuhiple thing which presents itself 
 to us as simple and that lends it authority. It is a 
 variable thing which presents itself to us as immut- 
 able and that lends it credit. It is a very condi- 
 tioned and relative thing which presents itself to 
 us as absolute, and that lends it a divinity which it 
 lacks. It is an idol only to those that consult it 
 without looking at it. But take a look at it. Hav- 
 ing seen that it is made of materials and of what 
 materials it is made, you will no longer tremble be- 
 fore it. 
 
 Yet there is responsibility, the feeling of re- 
 sponsibility, which is also a fact and perhaps a uni- 
 versal fact and which, following the dictates of 
 conscience, confirms it, sanctions it and conse- 
 quently strengthens it. I am receiving — I fancy 
 that I am receiving an order from within ; that is the 
 first fact. If I obey it, I am pleased with myself; 
 if I do not, I am displeased with myself; that is the 
 second fact. You have analyzed the first fact and it 
 may be you have dissolved it, but there remains the 
 second for you to analyze. Willingly. It seems to 
 me that the feeling of responsibility is an illusion. 
 This illusion comes to you from believing that you 
 know how your actions are accomplished, how " the 
 human action is performed." That belief is an 
 error. We do not know at all how the human action 
 is performed. To think that they know how human 
 actions are performed is the error of children and 
 primitive people. It has taken us centuries to learn 
 " that exterior things are not what they seem to be.
 
 98 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 Well, the same is exactly true of the inner world. 
 . . . All actions are by essence known." The an- 
 cients believed that an action is contained in the 
 thought we have of it, like the bird in its egg and 
 that it must necessarily come out of it. This caused 
 both Socrates and Plato logically to conclude that 
 to perform an action is to know it, that he who knows 
 it does it, that he who does not do it is merely a man 
 who did not know it and that the criminal is but a 
 man who does not know virtue. Does not this seem 
 quite childish to you ? Yet it would be the truth if 
 we knew how an action is accomplished. In that 
 case, it would be perfectly correct to measure the 
 thought by the action and, from such and such 
 action left undone, to conclude that the thought 
 thereof had not existed and, from an act accom- 
 plished, that the thought thereof had existed. But 
 that is far from being correct. There is between 
 thought and action something which we do not know 
 at all. " What one may know of an action is never 
 sufficient to accomplish it and the passage from un- 
 derstanding to action has never to this day been 
 estabHshed in any case." Hence responsibility dis- 
 appears. You can hardly be the cause of an action 
 when it is impossible to you to make out with your- 
 self what caused it to be. So long as one does not 
 know how the passage from idea to cause is ac- 
 complished and so long as one is ignorant of all 
 there is between them both, of all that there may 
 be and of all that there must be between them, to 
 hold one's self as responsible is the effect of an illu- 
 
 m
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES: MORALITY 99 
 
 sion, of a prejudice and of a clumsy and erroneous 
 knowledge of one's self. 
 
 Let us reflect awhile upon the impossibility in 
 which we stand truly to know our inner mechanism 
 and consequently to be responsible, rewardable, or 
 punishable or even to hold any opinion thereon. 
 Think of this: we hardly know ourselves and can 
 hardly give names to even our coarsest instincts ; 
 and as to " their power, their ebb and flow, their 
 reciprocal play, as to the laws that rule over their 
 nutrition, these are utterly unknown to us." Why 
 does the same fact irritate one man and amuse an- 
 other and why does it irritate and amuse the same 
 man according to his mood ? " We notice, one day, 
 while crossing a public place, that some one is laugh- 
 ing at us. . . . According to the kind of man we are, 
 the event will be a different one. One may take it 
 as he would a drop of rain, another may shake it 
 away from him as he would an insect. One man 
 will seek therein a cause for quarrel, another will 
 examine his clothes to see whether they are afford- 
 ing a cause for laughter ; another will be thinking of 
 the ludicrous in itself ; finally there may be one man 
 who will rejoice at having unwittingly contributed 
 to add one sun ray to the gaiety of the world. — And 
 in every one of these cases, a certain instinct will 
 find its satisfaction, whether it be that of vexation, 
 or that of combativeness, that of meditation or that 
 of kindliness." 
 
 I have been supposing several men ; but I might 
 have supposed one same man as feeling any of
 
 lOO ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 these sentiments. Why is that? Because at that 
 time it happened to be his " mood," to use a popular 
 saying. But when we say mood, what do we mean ? 
 It means that one particular instinct of the man, and 
 not another instinct, pounced upon that incident as 
 if it were a prey, or loot and fed on it. But why 
 this particular instinct and not another ; why pre- 
 cisely this one ? Because it had at the time reached 
 the climax of its craving, because it was famished 
 and on the watch. But why at that special mo- 
 ment? That you will never know. You do not 
 understand the nutrition of your instincts. 
 
 Here is one of Nietzsche's personal recollections : 
 " Recently, at eleven o'clock in the morning a man 
 fell down straight before my eyes as if struck by 
 lightning: all the women about the place began to 
 scream. But I set him up again on his feet and 
 waited near him until he recovered his power of 
 speech. I felt no emotion. I felt neither fear nor 
 pity. I simply did what there was to be done and 
 quietly went my way. Suppose that some one 
 should have warned me the day before that the next 
 day at eleven o'clock a man would fall at my feet, 
 I should have undergone the most varied torments, 
 I could not have slept and when the decisive moment 
 came I might have been taken like that man instead 
 of helping him. For in the interval all the instincts 
 that one can imagine would have had time to rep- 
 resent themselves and to comment upon the fact. 
 The events of our life are much more what we put 
 in them than what they contain themselves. It may
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES: MORALITY lOI 
 
 be that they themselves are ahogether empty. It 
 may be that to Hve is to invent." 
 
 The point is that the play of our instincts and 
 especially the causes of the play of our instincts are 
 unknown to us. " Our estimates and our moral 
 judgments are mere images and fancies hiding a 
 physiological process which is unknown to us, . . . 
 Everything that we call conscience is after all noth- 
 ing but the more or less fanciful comment made 
 upon an unknown, perhaps upon an unknowable 
 text." — How could we then be responsible for a 
 spectacle the whole of which we do not see, which 
 we see badly, which we hear badly, of which we 
 know neither the side scenes nor the ins and outs 
 and of which we are certainly not the authors? 
 
 The mistake over this judgment of the conscience 
 lies in imagining that it has a value and that it gives 
 a " value." It is a phenomenon of registration. It 
 registers a state of content or of discontent, of appe- 
 tite or of repugnance, it does not assess the action to 
 be performed or the action that has been performed ; 
 it should not be consulted in order to know whether 
 the action has or has not a value : " Otherwise we 
 would be reasoning as follows: our conscience re- 
 jects and repulses this action; therefore this action 
 should be condemned. But as a matter of fact the 
 conscience disapproves of this action because this 
 action has been disapproved of for a long time. It 
 creates no value." We shall agree to this more read- 
 ily if we think that, at the beginning, it was not con- 
 science ' which led in the end ' doubtlessly to the re-
 
 102 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 jection of certain actions ; it was the judgment or the 
 prejudice relating to the consequences of that ac- 
 tion." 
 
 Taking it thus the conscience is but the registrar 
 of feehngs, of ideas and prejudices which are past, 
 and obsolete and which have lapsed in themselves. 
 And if you look upon it as the register of quite 
 actual feelings or thoughts, its authority as a crea- 
 tor of values, as causing something to have a value, 
 is no greater ; because in fine " the approval of the 
 conscience and a feeling of comfort which comes 
 from being at peace with one's self are of the same 
 order as the pleasure of an artist before his own 
 work. They prove nothing at all. Content is not a 
 measure to assess that to which it relates, not any 
 more than the lack of content can be used as an 
 argument against the value of a thing. We are far 
 from knowing enough to be able to assess our 
 actions; we lack for this the possibility of taking 
 an objective point of view. Were we even to disap- 
 prove of an action, we should not be judges but 
 parties to it. The noble sentiments which accom- 
 pany an act prove nothing as to the value of the act : 
 in spite of a most pathetic state of elevation the art- 
 ist may give birth to a very poor thing. — One 
 hardly knows if one should not even go further and 
 say that these impulses of conscience " are deceiv- 
 mg." That may be that. " They may cause us to 
 look in the wrong place, they may divert our power 
 for critical judgment; they may lead us away from 
 caution and from the suspicion that we may do some- 
 thing stupid " ; they may " make us stupid.'*
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES: MORALITY IO3 
 
 Men are most illogical. It is understood and tlie 
 consent is practically unanimous over this that we 
 are not responsible for our dreams. But why? 
 " Nothing belongs to you more properly than your 
 dreams ; nothing is more thoroughly your own work. 
 Subject, form, sector, spectator, you yourself are 
 all these and everything is yourself in those com- 
 edies." It is the dreams that the self perhaps unal- 
 loyed, perhaps almost allowed, at all events with 
 much less alloy than in our state of wakefulness, is 
 revealed to us. Awake, under the influence of all 
 your surroundings, you repress and correct your 
 thoughts and feelings as they come forth, in consid- 
 eration and conformity with the people and the 
 things about you. You are ashamed or afraid of 
 this or that thought which comes to you because it 
 would shame you before others. You repress it, 
 you strangle it a moment before it is quite clear, so 
 as not to have had it, to be able to tell yourself that 
 you have not had it. And it is true that you did not 
 have it in full. Therefore the share of others in 
 your thoughts and in your feelings when you are 
 awake is enormous. In your state of wakefulness 
 it is I, as much as yourself, who is thinking within 
 you. Surely not in that state must one seek and try 
 to seize and snap your personality. 
 
 In the state of sleep on the contrary you have no 
 longer this power to repress your dawning thought. 
 Sleep is the domain of unrestricted thought. The 
 dream is the thought freed and consequently the 
 pure self. If you want to know if you are brave, at 
 heart and truly brave, if you are a coward, or if you
 
 104 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 are kind or wicked, pay attention to what you do 
 in your dreams. You have there the most precious 
 and surest text that you could consult concerning 
 yourself. Nevertheless you pretend that you are 
 not responsible for your dreams, I should feel in- 
 clined to conclude " that the great majority of men 
 must be having appalling dreams." If they had fine 
 dreams they would be proud of them and they would 
 enthusiastically declare themselves responsible for 
 them ; they would " exploit the nocturnal poetry to 
 increase human pride." Nevertheless your dreams 
 are yourself ; they are more you than you are your- 
 self when awake. When one studies the character 
 of a person and makes him narrate his dreams, one 
 finds again in him that person's feelings in the high- 
 est degree of artlessness and in a neater and purer 
 light of artlessness and candor. 
 
 Well, let us go back to it. You do not wish to be 
 responsible for your dreams. You are right. But 
 you are no more, you are much less and with a much 
 stronger reason, responsible for yourself in your 
 state of wakefulness. " For life is but a dream, a 
 little less inconstant," as Pascal said. That is, life 
 is a little more repressed and amended by the non- 
 self which is no doubt not yourself. If you are 
 more free in your dreams than when awake that is 
 not any reason why you should believe in your free 
 will only when you are awake. In last analysis, 
 " free will finds its father and mother in human 
 pride and vanity." We must note here that there is 
 perhaps something " anti-religious in this theory of 
 free will ; that something may be unconscious but it
 
 CRITICISIXG THE OBSTACLES: MORALITY 'IO5 
 
 is there. The theory of free will pretends to ' create 
 for man a right to take himself as condition and 
 cause of his superior acts.' It is therefore correct 
 and properly speaking a * form of the feeling of 
 growing pride.' And here is its processus: ' Man 
 feels his power, his happiness as one says. It must 
 be that his will comes into play in the face of this 
 state of mind; otherwise it seems to him that power 
 and happiness did not belong to him. Virtue is, 
 therefore, the attempt to consider an act of volition 
 in the present or in the past as an antecedent neces- 
 sary to each feeling of high and intense happiness. 
 If the will of certain actions is regularly present 
 in conscience one may foresee that a feeling of 
 power shall result.' That is an illusion natural 
 enough of our conceit. It is an * optical play of 
 primitive psychology.' It always proceeds from 
 * the false supposition that nothing belongs to us 
 unless it be in our conscience in the shape of 2vill. 
 The whole doctrine of responsibility is tacked on 
 this naive psyc'hology that the zcill alone is a cause 
 and that one'must be conscious of having manifested 
 one's will to be able to consider one's self as a 
 cause.' It is plain therefore that if we go back to 
 its principle, the principle of the illusion that con- 
 stitutes it, ' free will finds its father and mother 
 in the human pride and vanity. It may be that I 
 say this a little too often ; but that does not make 
 it a he.' " 
 
 One should be thinking of this when in the pres- 
 ence of a criminal one has to judge. Of course 
 society must be protected against those that hamper
 
 I06 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 it. On this point Nietzsche never varied ; he is even 
 an extremely harsh protector of society. But when 
 it comes to punishing, that is an aberration. The 
 criminal alone knows to what extent he is guilty; or 
 rather he does not know it but he knows it incom- 
 parably better than you do. He knows the whole 
 chain of exterior and interior circumstances that 
 led him to his crime, or rather he does not know 
 them, but as compared to you he knows them. It 
 follows " that he does not consider, as his judge or 
 prosecutor does, his act as being outside order and 
 comprehension." You, as judge or prosecutor, are 
 astonished, stupefied before an act that you have not 
 committed, and which it was impossible that you 
 should commit. And you " measure the penalty pre- 
 cisely according to the degree of astonishment that 
 you have felt." Herein lies the injustice that is 
 derived from ignorance. 
 
 Do you know in what consists the work of the de- 
 fender in a criminal case? It is very simple. It 
 consists in gradually emerging out of his ignorance 
 concerning the antecedents and circumstances of the 
 act. It consists in knowing the act. When he 
 knows it, the astonishment of which I have spoken 
 gradually diminishes and with it the horror of the 
 act. The action perpetrated comes back within the 
 order of things. In the end it does not appear at 
 all as a fault but merely as something that threatens 
 the community. If the public prosecutor was not 
 dominated by his professional instinct, and since he 
 does exactly the same thing as the counsel for the 
 defence, he also would, through searching and know-
 
 CRITICISING THE obstacles: MORALITY I07 
 
 ing the antecedents of the criminal, end by no longer 
 seeing the fault as a fault. He would end by under- 
 standing the crime as if he had committed it and 
 consequently he would end in not finding it at all 
 criminal but merely dangerous for society. 
 Through analyzing a criminal action, that is through 
 knowing it, one empties it of all criminality. It is 
 extremely dangerous if one wants to punish, to study 
 a criminal affair; because one ends by diminishing 
 the distance between one's self and the criminal until 
 that distance is altogether suppressed. Starting 
 from this idea : " I never would have done such a 
 thing," one reaches this other one : " I certainly 
 would have done likewise." The institution of the 
 jury is with regard to this point an essentially social 
 thing. The juryman is an honest man whom crime 
 astonishes prodigiously and for whom crime is a 
 thing in which he does not enter. He is therefore in 
 the disposition where one should be in order to pun- 
 ish. The judge, who is very much accustomed to 
 crime, who lives with crime, would end by being 
 exceedingly indulgent to crime, so much would he 
 end in finding it natural and almost necessar}', that 
 is with regard to each individual case. Yet when 
 the magistrates decide on criminal cases instead of 
 the jury they are not gentle. Pardon me. Peo- 
 ple had no doubt perceived so well that there was 
 social danger in having criminals judged by men 
 accustomed to crime that they had invented a round- 
 about way and a fiction. It was forbidden, if you 
 please, the judge was forbidden to judge the crim- 
 inal. He was only permitted to apply the law to the
 
 I08 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 criminal. He had to judge not at all according to 
 his conscience but strictly according to the law. He 
 did not have to say : " In my soul and conscience 
 this man is guilty "; but he had to seek the line of a 
 certain book which corresponded to the crime com- 
 mitted by that man, and he had to apply that line 
 to that action without any intervention of his con- 
 science, without any intervention of his moral sensi- 
 bility. That is, we know it, the way in which the 
 judges of the old regime always gave their verdict, 
 and considered it their duty to do so. In other 
 words the law was made to judge. That is some- 
 thing which was as far removed as possible from 
 the species, and in which it was absolutely impossible 
 to study the psychology of the particular criminal 
 that had caused it, and which knew nothing at all 
 of the particular point. In other words again it 
 was the crime not the criminal that had to be de- 
 cided upon. And that was quite right, if one wanted 
 to punish. There you can see a very good proof 
 that no confidence attached to an intelligent judge, 
 precisely because of his intelligence, in order that 
 the man should be punished. By a roundabout way 
 and through a fiction he was compelled not to decide 
 himself. And that was quite right if one wanted to 
 punish. There are but two ways to insure the pun- 
 ishment of criminals: have them judged by a book 
 which does not know them, and which has foreseen 
 them only in the abstract, or have them judged by 
 men especially selected as being incapable of under- 
 standing them. And both systems are very good if 
 one wants society to protect and defend itself.
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES: MORALITY lOQ 
 
 Let us retain from this that guilt is a kind of prej- 
 udice and that we never know to what extent a man 
 is guilty, nor whether he is guilty at all. All that 
 we know, and even that is very hard to assess", is 
 that the criminal is a danger for the society that we 
 have built up and that we wish to preserve. 
 
 In these matters of guilt and innocence, of vice 
 and virtue, truth may not be, perhaps, the opposite 
 of what we have believed until now Init rather the 
 reverse of what we have believed. We have too 
 long been accustomed to consider virtue and vice 
 as causes. We are now inclined to hold them to be 
 consequences and we are in a way turning the ques- 
 tion inside out. " We turn the relation between 
 cause and eflfect inside out in a curious fashion. 
 Nothing perhaps distinguishes us more thoroughly 
 from the ancient believers in morality. For in- 
 stance we no longer say : * If a man is degenerating 
 physiologically it was vice that caused it.' Neither 
 do we say : ' Virtue causes man to prosper, it brings 
 long life and happiness.' On the contrary our opin- 
 ion is that vice and virtue are not causes but re- 
 sults. We hold onto the idea that, in spite of every- 
 thing, in spite of education, surroundings, fate or 
 circumstance, one can but become what one is. 
 One becomes an honest man because one is an honest 
 man ; that is to say, because one was born as a 
 capitalist of good instincts and favorable condi- 
 tions. When one is born to the world poor, born 
 of parents who, in all things, have but wasted and 
 have reaped nothing, one is * incorrigible,' I mean 
 ripe for the penitentiary or the lunatic asylum. We
 
 no ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 can no longer to-day visualize moral degeneracy as 
 separated from physiological degeneracy. The 
 first is but an ensemble of the symptoms of the 
 second. One is necessarily evil as one is necessarily 
 sick. The word evil here expresses certain in- 
 capacities which are physiologically linked to the 
 type of degeneracy, as for instance, weakness of the 
 will, uncertainty and even multiplicity of the per- 
 son, powerlessness in suppressing the reaction to any 
 given excitation, and in dominating one's self (like 
 the impulsives), or the incapacity to resist any kind 
 of suggestion from a foreign will. Vice is not a 
 cause ; it is a consequence. The word ' vice ' is used 
 to sum up in an arbitrary definition certain conse- 
 quences of physiological degeneracy. A general 
 proposition like that taught by Christianity that 
 'man is evil' would be justified if one could admit 
 that the type of the degenerate is to be considered as 
 the normal type of man. But that may be an ex- 
 aggeration." 
 
 Again, in order well to understand the nature of 
 this morality of which men are so proud, we must 
 go back to its origins and ask ourselves whence it 
 came and ask ourselves also whence it comes to 
 us in the present time, which is not quite the same 
 thing. 
 
 Whence did it come? Very likely from the idea 
 of a celestial Nemesis, from the idea that some very 
 powerful beings who dominate us and who may pun- 
 ish us, like us to suffer and like to see us suffer. 
 Here is the sequence of things ; in primitive so- 
 ciety, in barbaric society, which were in constant
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES I MORALITY III 
 
 danger, and perhaps ferocious by nature but at all 
 events accustomed to ferociousness by a state of per- 
 petual warfare : " one liked to cause suffering, to 
 avenge one's self ; it was a virtue to be resource- 
 ful in vengeance and insatiable in vengeance." The 
 community grows conscious of its strength and com- 
 forts itself, or thinks it comforts itself, with bloody 
 spectacles. In a word " cruelty is one of the most 
 ancient merr>'-makings of humanity." Under these 
 conditions what could men believe concerning their 
 Gods? As they make them after the image of 
 man of course they fancy that the Gods also take 
 pleasure and rejoice in the sufTerings of men; 
 that the spectacle of human happiness makes them 
 sad, and that the spectacle of human unhappiness 
 " amuses them and puts them in right good humor." 
 Man, therefore, just as he causes his kind to suffer 
 to please himself, so, to please his Gods, causes him- 
 self to suffer, especially when he feels happy, when 
 he feels too happy, happy to such an extent that he 
 might disturb or disj)lcase the divinities. 
 
 In that way war against happiness becomes a duty 
 and voluntary' suffering a pious deed. There is 
 nothing else to permit him morality. Morality is a 
 methodical succession of sacrifices in the most pre- 
 cise sense of the word. One struggles against a 
 desire, it is a sacrifice to the Gods ; one denies one's 
 self a pleasure, it is a sacrifice to the Gods ; one re- 
 trenches from one's superfluous or even one's neces- 
 sary, it is a sacrifice to the Gods. One makes a 
 martyr of one's self and it is a sacrifice to the Gods. 
 The struggle of man against himself is to this
 
 112 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 day the whole of morality. Much more so, that is 
 more precisely so, was it the whole of morality in 
 primitive times. " Thus was introduced the notion 
 of the moral and God-fearing man, that is to say, the 
 idea that virtue consists in suffering deliberately de- 
 sired, in privation and in mortification, not at all, we 
 should note here, as a means of discipline, self- 
 domination or aspiration towards personal happi- 
 ness ; but as a virtue which causes the evil Gods to 
 be favorably disposed towards the community be- 
 cause it brings up to them ceaselessly the smoke 
 of the expiatory sacrifices." 
 
 Once this idea had penetrated the world, and that 
 must have been very early, a bent was taken and 
 man always considered himself compelled to fight 
 himself to satisfy . . . well, what was it? It may 
 have been at first evil and jealous gods, then 
 later on, a kind but severe God who wants men to 
 think of him and, if not that they should torture 
 themselves, at least that they should not abandon 
 themselves altogether to themselves, which were a 
 manner of forgetting him ; or again conscience, that 
 is an inner God, God come within ourselves, a rem- 
 nant of the divinities of old, a theological residue 
 with all the characteristics of the Gods of old. 
 These characteristics may be toned down ; they may 
 be sometimes identical and sometimes exaggerated. 
 This inner God is severe, wants us to think of him 
 as exacting, evil and cruel ; he is never satisfied ; he 
 is harsher, more susceptible and imperious as we 
 give him more ; he commands categorically and with- 
 out giving his reasons. He is in short, God, the God
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES: MORALITY II3 
 
 of old; he has merely passed from outside and from 
 afar within ourselves; he is as mysterious as the 
 others and his commands are " mysteries." Moral- 
 ity is nothing else but transformed religion and espe- 
 cially Nemesis transformed. 
 
 Nietzsche might add this: do not tax me with 
 sometimes deriving religion from morality, as pre- 
 viously (a morality that is compelled to invent reli- 
 gion, not to be absurd) and sometimes deriving mor- 
 ality from religion, as I am doing now. There is no 
 contradiction, as you can see, since morality and reli- 
 gion are the same thing. They are two forms of the 
 same thought. It is perfectly true that now this 
 thought, under the guise of religion, creates moral- 
 ity, builds it up, develops it and leaves it to humanity 
 even after its own departure ; and now under the 
 guise of morality, needs religion to support itself, to 
 prove itself, to give itself an appearance of reason 
 and, in turn, creates religion. Religion and morality 
 create each other alternately or at the same time. 
 They beget each other reciprocally, indefinitely, 
 through the course of time or, in better words, they 
 are consubstantial with each other. They are, if you 
 like, one and the same divinity in two persons, which 
 presents to humanity one of its two persons, then 
 the other. The first always brings the second in its 
 wake, and the second ever brings back and is ever 
 compelled to bring back the first. Which is chrono- 
 logically the first we do not know, and very likely 
 can not know because it is almost certain that, 
 chronologically and also essentially, there is neither 
 first nor second, and that they exist in all eternity.
 
 114 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 distinct but inseparable and indivisible, being at heart 
 one and the same thing. 
 
 And now think of habit, tradition and heredity. 
 Think that morahty, as also religion, continues and 
 prolongs itself among men by a sort of atavistic 
 fatality, by a sort of submission to customs and 
 habits with the result that " cowardice and laziness 
 are the first conditions of morality " and you have 
 in all its instalments the history of morality in the 
 human world. 
 
 This morality, whose depth we have seen and how 
 vain it is, whose origins we have seen and how little 
 respectable they are — is it good at least in its re- 
 sults, and does it serve any purpose ? 
 
 Morality depresses ; it makes everything vulgar, 
 uglier and weaker in the common sense of the word. 
 It demoralizes. It says to man : " sacrifice yourself 
 to your kind," and then leads him to a sort of suicide 
 which is not even useful to his kind, of whom it 
 spoke to him. Morality exhausts in the heart of 
 man all the springs of his activity, the desires, the 
 passions, the egotism, the tendency to persevere in 
 the being, and to increase one's being and the will 
 to power. And it is that being, now dried up and 
 enervated which morality thinks is going to prove of 
 some use to other men. Its pretention and its tac- 
 tics consist in causing the activity of each partic- 
 ular individual to drift towards the general good. 
 That is all very well but it starts by breaking all the 
 springs of that same activity. It turns out slaves 
 and expects from them the good results of free 
 work. Worse even, it turns out men-tools, men-
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES: MORALITY II5 
 
 machines. It seeks to endow man with that " bHnd 
 tenaciousness that is the typical quahty of instru- 
 ments and tools " and it is from these same mate- 
 rialized men, from these men fallen from their 
 humanity that morality expects a labor that may be 
 of use to humanity. 
 
 All things considered, we find altruism turning in 
 a circle or venturing in a blind alley. 
 
 It turns in a circle in advising us to " work for 
 others, to be disinterested." Who said we were to 
 do this? The others. We have therefore interest 
 advising us to practice disinterestedness and clamor- 
 ing for it. W'e have the right to give it the answer 
 given to the fo.x whose tail had been cut off : " Turn 
 round, if you please, and we shall answer you." In 
 order to advise disinterestedness, one must be dis- 
 interested one's self. Altruism "could only be or- 
 dered by some one who would be, thereby, renounc- 
 ing his own advantage, and who would be risking to 
 bring about his own fall, through this sacrifice ex- 
 acted from individuals." But if those (neighbors, 
 individuals or society) that are asking from me the 
 sacrifice of myself, derive, or merely think they de- 
 rive, a great advantage, they are advising disinter- 
 estedness in their own interest, they advise altru- 
 ism out of egotism and therefore contradict them- 
 selves. Their tongue says: "Sacrifice yourself" 
 and their example says: "Do not sacrifice your- 
 self." Whom do they intend, whom do they hope, 
 to convince ? 
 
 So much for the circle. Now for the blind alley. 
 
 ,You say : " you my neighbors, or the community,
 
 Il6 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 or Society: be strong for my benefit. Very well 
 but how shall I do it, by being weak for your bene- 
 fit? begin by destroying all your strength in your- 
 selves, and then be you strong for my service. 
 Have no passions; but be passionate for my bene- 
 fit. Do not tend towards persevering in the being 
 but apply all your energies to cause that I should 
 persevere in mine. Annihilate yourselves to bring 
 me strength. Be each of you a nothing in order 
 that, from all the nothings that you will compose 
 there may be an immense strength that shall be 
 myself. There is the blind alley. Altruism tells 
 man to walk ahead after it has erected a wall in 
 front of him. If we change the metaphor, it tells 
 him to walk ahead after it has cut off the tendons of 
 his legs. 
 
 It is not always altruism that speaks with the 
 voice of morality; sometimes morality will speak 
 to the individual in the interest of the individual. 
 It says strange, disastrous things to him. Some- 
 times it will say this : " Toil ye stubbornly and 
 furiously. That will bring ye to begin with riches 
 and honors ; then it will safeguard ye against pas- 
 sions and boredom. These are great advantages." 
 It is not easy to see where lay these vaunted great 
 advantages. In truth, that " blind tenaciousness " 
 may somewhat dispel boredom but the latter is most 
 subtle and knows very well how to slip through the 
 intervals of work. It may somewhat allay the 
 passions, but these are themselves most tenacious 
 and they disturb one even in the middle of one's 
 work in a worse and more pernicious way than if
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES : MOR-\LITY II7 
 
 they had been indulged. Especially, this blind and 
 maniac tenaciousness " deprives the organs of that 
 delicacy with the help of which riches and honors 
 could procure enjoyment." Moreover these alleged 
 radical remedies against boredom and passions blunt 
 the senses at the same time and make them re- 
 luctant to feeling any new excitement. " The most 
 active period, that is our own, does not know what 
 to do with all its gold and with all its activity be- 
 yond piling up ever more gold and ever more activ- 
 ity, because more genius is required for spending 
 than for acquiring. And we shall end by growing 
 heartily sick of them." Yes, " we are now ashamed 
 to rest, we feel remorse for our moments of medi- 
 tation . . . we live as would someone who feared 
 always to let something slip by. Rather do anything 
 than be doing nothing. That is a principle. The 
 principle is however a dodge used to deal the death 
 blow to superior taste. ... It will soon come to this 
 that one will no longer follow an inclination towards 
 contemplative life, no longer walk out in the com- 
 pany of one's thoughts or of friends who are not 
 self -despising and endowed with an evil con- 
 science. . . ." There you have one of the fine out- 
 comes, one of the latest to date, of morality. 
 
 When morality is not urging us to a rage for 
 activity, which degrades the fine human nature, it 
 leads to other kinds of debasement. Most often, it 
 leads to mediocrity in both good and evil, to some 
 form of cowardly temperament, to that moderation 
 in all things which already the ancients, albeit not 
 those of the heroic period, to be sure, had made into
 
 Il8 ONf READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 a virtue and which is a gray, colorless, ugly and 
 repugnant thing. This small bourgeois morality, 
 please note that it is the true one, advises what 
 morality has so far discovered as the best, the most 
 reasonable according to its reason and the most 
 logically in agreement with itself. That morality 
 seems to have for supreme aim merely to bring a 
 good night's sleep to every man at the close of every 
 day. Such is the noble aim to which morality 
 aspires and to which it leads mankind. One may 
 well ask whether the great rule of human conduct 
 can truly be one that has no nobler end than this 
 and that attains, or even desires, no more glorious 
 result. 
 
 " People commended unto Zarathustra a certain 
 wise man, as one who could discourse well about 
 sleep and virtue : greatly was he honored and re- 
 warded for it, and all the youths sat before his chair. 
 To him went Zarathustra, and sat among the youths 
 before his chair. And thus spake the wise man: 
 " respect and modesty in presence of sleep. That is 
 the first thing. Go out of the way of all that sleep 
 badly and keep awake at night. Modest is even 
 the thief in presence of sleep: he always stealeth 
 softly through the night. Immodest, however, is 
 the night-watchman; immodestly he carrieth his 
 horn. No small art is it to sleep ; it is necessary for 
 that purpose to keep awake all day. Ten times a 
 day must thou overcome thyself : that causeth whole- 
 some weariness, and is poppy to the soul. Ten times 
 must thou reconcile again with thyself; for over- 
 coming is bitterness, and badly sleep the unrecon-
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES: MORALITY Ilt^ 
 
 ciled. Ten truths must thou find during the day ; 
 otherwise wilt thou seek truth during the night, 
 and thy soul will have been hungry. Ten times must 
 thou laugh during the day, and be cheerful ; other- 
 wise thy stomach, the father of affliction, will dis- 
 turb thee in the night. Few people know it, but 
 one must have all the virtues in order to sleep well. 
 Shall I bear false witness? Shall I commit adul- 
 tery? Shall I covet my neighbor's maid-servant? 
 All that would ill accord with good sleep. And 
 even if one have all the virtues, there is still one 
 thing needful: to send the virtues themselves to 
 sleep at the right time — that they may not quarrel 
 with one another, the good females. And about 
 thee, thou unhappy one! Peace with God and thy 
 neighbor: so desireth good sleep. And peace also 
 with thy neighbor's devil. Otherwise it will haunt 
 thee in the night. Honor to the government, and 
 obedience, and also to the crooked government ! So 
 desireth good sleep. How can I help it, if power 
 like to walk on crooked legs? He that Icadeth his 
 sheep to the greenest pasture, shall always be for 
 me the best shepherd: so doth it accord with good 
 sleep. Many honors I want not, nor great treas- 
 ures : they excite the spleen. But it is bad sleeping, 
 without a good name and a little treasure. A small 
 company is more welcome to me than a bad one : but 
 they must come and go at the right time. So doth 
 it accord with good sleep. Well, also, do the poor 
 in spirit please me: they promote sleep. Blessed 
 are they, especially if one always give in to them. 
 Thus passeth the day unto the virtuous. When
 
 I20 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 night cometh, then take I good care not to sum- 
 mon sleep. It disliketh to be summoned — sleep, 
 the lord of the virtues ! But I think of what I have 
 done and thought during the day. Thus ruminat- 
 ing, patient as a cow, I ask myself : ' What were 
 thy ten overcomings? And what were the ten rec- 
 onciliations, and the ten truths, and the ten laugh- 
 ters with which my heart enjoyed itself?' Thus 
 pondering, and cradled by forty thoughts, it over- 
 taketh me all at once — sleep, the unsummoned, the 
 lord of the virtues. Sleep tappeth on mine eye, and 
 it turneth heavy. Sleep toucheth my mouth, and it 
 remaineth open. Verily, on soft soles doth it come 
 to me, the dearest of thieves, and stealeth from me 
 my thoughts : stupid do I then stand, like this aca- 
 demic chair. But not much longer do I then stand : 
 I lay me already." 
 
 When Zarathustra heard the wise man thus 
 speak, he laughed in his heart: for thereby had a 
 light dawned upon him. And thus spake he to his 
 heart : " A fool seemeth this wise man with his 
 forty thoughts, but I believe he knoweth well how to 
 sleep. Happy even is he who liveth near this wise 
 man ! Such sleep is contagious — even through a 
 thick wall, it is contagious. A magic resideth even 
 in his academic chair. And not in vain did the 
 youths sit before the preacher of virtue. His wis- 
 dom is to keep awake in order to sleep well. And 
 verily, if life had no sense, and had I to choose 
 nonsense, this would be the desirablest nonsense for 
 me also. Now know I well what people sought 
 formerly above all else when they sought teachers
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES: MORALITY 121 
 
 of virtue. Good sleep they sought for themselves, 
 and poppy-head virtues to promote it. To all those 
 belauded sages of the academic chairs, wisdom was 
 sleep without dreams: they knew no higher signifi- 
 cance of life." 
 
 It is very likely therefore that morality is a nar- 
 cotic of which humanity, tired of the tumult of pas- 
 sions, has felt the need to arm itself at some given 
 time. This is, of course, no reason why it should be 
 proscribed. Yet it gives it no title to glory, and is 
 no reason why we should worship it. It seems evi- 
 dent that the constitution of morality was a first 
 step in the decadence of humanity. Morality has 
 doubtlessly existed at all times, since we have seen 
 that it loses itself in religion, that it creates it and 
 is created by it. Yet there was a moment, perhaps 
 one such moment for each nation, when morality was 
 created, when it became a thing apart, a definite in- 
 stitution and understood as such by almost every- 
 body (the tiine of Socrates among the Greeks). At 
 that moment surely decadence began. There is a 
 time when weariness turns back on life, when the 
 " instinct of degeneracy " turns against the will to 
 live with a " secret thirst for vengeance." Such is 
 either the time of Socrates, or that of Christianity, 
 or that of Schopenhauer's philosophy, or, in a way 
 already, that of Platonism. It is even " the whole 
 of idealism." At length there always comes a time 
 when man wishes to escape life, when he ceases to 
 agree to it and to affirm that it is good, including the 
 passions that are the very shapes of life, a time when 
 he ceases to affirm the very forces of life, including
 
 122 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 the sorrows that are Hfe's ransom, are inseparable 
 from it and constitute its sanctions and conditions. 
 Then it is that morahty is established and that it is 
 well understood to be established, and that all men 
 have at least a confused feeling that it is established. 
 
 In other words, morality is nothing else but a sign 
 of weakness, cowardice and sickness in humanity. 
 It is a sort of general and contagious neurasthenia. 
 Because that illness has deep roots, its own regular 
 bearing and its hygiene, there is in a way some gen- 
 tility about it, and it has become accepted as if it 
 were something good and healthy. Its causes are 
 its justification. Why live passionately, why live 
 intensely since we are weak and powerless worms? 
 Let us live according to our nature. The regular 
 signs of that illness are taken for laws and rules of 
 conduct. One becomes inured to seeing humanity 
 bending, from stage to stage, its steps towards an 
 ever purer, ever stricter, ever more correct moral- 
 ity. This progress in the weakening, in " Progress " 
 itself, seems to be a most venerable ascent. Finally 
 because that illness has its own hygiene and regime, 
 both regime and hygiene are looked upon as vir- 
 tues and those that prescribe them as teachers of 
 virtue. It is nevertheless a disease taking roots, 
 settling itself down, and developing itself and yet we 
 cultivate it carefully and it becomes a diathesis. 
 It looks as if man were only fully reassured and 
 satisfied when it has become incurable. 
 
 One hardly knows why it does, but morality holds 
 a real hypnotizing sway over the minds of even the 
 thinkers, especially, I should perhaps say, over the
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES: MORALITY 123 
 
 minds of the thinkers. It is apparently intangible. 
 People will discuss God, the super-natural world or 
 the immortality of the soul but one does not discuss 
 morality. There is more ; no matter to what philo- 
 sophical party one may belong, one wishes to end in 
 morality, and to make it plain that one does get there 
 in the end. No matter what philosophical system 
 one may invent or support, one finds a way in the 
 end to bend it towards morality, and to prove that 
 it gets there. There is still more ; one always makes 
 it a point of honor to prove that one's own fa- 
 vored system leads to morality by some better way 
 than does any other, that it sustains morality, en- 
 tails it and contains it in its own folds more and 
 better than any other. There is this also; in order 
 to prove its own excellence, each system asserts it- 
 self to be eminently in agreement with morality. In 
 order to prove the others bad, it fancies that it needs 
 but to prove that they lead to immoral conclu- 
 sions. The words that condemn the others are the 
 same that we use in sel f -apology ; the supreme 
 words are always : " morality is at stake." 
 
 Morality is a sanctuary; it also is a criterion that 
 is thought infallible and a touchstone that is con- 
 sidered absolute. " In presence of morality we are 
 not allowed to think, let alone to speak ; we must 
 obey. . . . To go so far as to criticise morality ; 
 morality as a problem, to hold morality as proble- 
 matic, why, it is . . . immoral." 
 
 This form of hypnose must be analyzed. Mor- 
 ality seduces and fascinates because it knows how to 
 " arouse the enthusiasm." It persuades people that
 
 124 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 its own is a holy cause ; that to consecrate one's self 
 to its service has all the beauty o£ a sacrifice, and 
 that in serving it, one is willingly forgetting and neg- 
 lecting one's own interests. It persuades people that 
 he who follows it is something between a hero and 
 a saint. It insinuates that whoever teaches it, and 
 especially whoever sets it up on its own basis again 
 after it has been shaken — and that is always hap- 
 pening — has saved the world. Thus it " cripples 
 the critical will " or else " attracts it to its own 
 side " and into its own camp, or else it " causes it 
 to turn against itself with the result that the spirit 
 of criticism, like the scorpion, sinks its sting in its 
 own body." 
 
 In short, morality is the Circe of the Philosophers. 
 It changes them into animals that are harmless to 
 itself but, unfortunately, also useless to anyone. It 
 makes them deviate from their straightest paths. 
 It makes them close or lower their eyes in its pres- 
 ence. Or, when they dare to gaze upon it, morality 
 dazzles them to such an extent that they modify 
 their own ideas so far as it is concerned, and with 
 regard to its wishes. By means of clever windings, 
 it causes them to become mere rivulets that flow 
 towards morality and lose themselves in it. 
 
 Hence comes the fact that " it is to * good and 
 evil ' that people have until now given the least re- 
 flection." This is appalling when one thinks of it. 
 It is certain that good and evil, the rule and influ- 
 ence of habits, are the most important. But moral- 
 ity has made itself so venerable ; it has terrorized 
 the minds and made itself intangible to such an ex-
 
 CRITICISING THE OBSTACLES: MORALITY I25 
 
 tent that it has become barren. Through refusal to 
 let it be discussed, niorahty has made it impossible 
 for any one to study it. It has made itself so much 
 of a sacred place that it has become a desert. 
 
 We must at last look it well in the face and see 
 that it is a prejudice that has been able, owing to 
 a special privilege, to gain the respect of the most 
 daring minds until it had them stupefied, that it is 
 an uncontrolled prejudice which has made itself un- 
 controllable, yet a prejudice that deserves that name 
 more than any other since it alone has been able 
 to avoid almost all analysis and scrutiny. 
 
 It is also a noxious prejudice because as we saw, 
 it lowers mankind, enervates and emasculates it, 
 turns it into a timid, fearful, regular and correct 
 animal, one of a herd, quite the opposite of what it 
 would well seem primitive man was and of what it 
 seems that man, whose brow is raised towards the 
 heavens, should be. 
 
 Yes, here again we have an enemy of life in 
 strength and beauty ; here again is an obstacle to 
 life in strength and beauty ; here again is something 
 which is opposed and more opposed than everything 
 else, to man becoming strong and doing beautiful 
 things. An artist must be the born enemy of moral- 
 ity and, as a matter of fact, artists are, instinctively, 
 very often immoralists. They are right. Morality 
 is organized against the force and the beauty of 
 mankind. Of course, it is itself a force, but a 
 weakening and disfiguring force. One must fight 
 morality with all the love one feels and should 
 feel for strength and beauty.
 
 CHAPTER Vlir. 
 
 THE THEORY. 
 
 Having reached this point, Nietzsche collects his 
 thoughts and gathers himself up, so to speak. 
 Everything in which men generally place faith he 
 has now denied and rejected as evil: reason, reli- 
 gion, science and morality. Would he rank then 
 as a nihilist or a sceptic? He must have asked 
 himself that question, and answered in the same 
 breath that he was certainly neither. He is as little 
 of a nihilist as one can be. He accepts everything, 
 he subscribes to everything, he agrees to everything, 
 he embraces everything with passion, joy and en- 
 thusiasm. Far, far beyond the quarrels of pessi- 
 mism and optimism, which he despises, far beyond 
 optimism and pessimism, which he finds equally nar- 
 row, with an optimism — if we like to use this term 
 for the lack of another — or with affirmation, if one 
 will accept this word, which includes both optimism 
 and pessimism, Nietzsche valiantly accepts the 
 world with its beauty and its ugliness, its joys and 
 sorrows, its pleasures and its strictness, its smiles 
 and its atrocities. He accepts it as something that 
 must be loved to ecstasy in a beautiful Dionysian 
 delirium, and whose development, expansion and in- 
 definite embellishment one must desire. He accepts 
 
 126
 
 THE THEORY 12/ 
 
 it as something that one must desire to be ever 
 whole, ever aUve, ever Hvely, ever full of a more 
 intense and a more reviving life. 
 
 What displeases him sometimes is that this world 
 seems to be growing old, and that certain ideas with 
 which it was smitten and certain sentiments which 
 delighted it, render it senile and risk to render it 
 decrepit. There is nothing of the nihilist in these 
 dispositions of the mind. 
 
 Is he a sceptic ? One may not be perhaps a scep- 
 tic merely because one does not believe what the 
 majority of men believe. Nietzsche feels strongly 
 that he believes in something and that there is a deep 
 faith. He believes in the Greeks of the days before 
 Socrates. Well, that is something. It is to believe 
 in the beauty and the nobility of the human race. 
 It is to believe that man may realize an ideal of 
 liberty, free strength, beauty, grace, nobility and 
 eur}-thmy. It is to believe that man is an excep- 
 tional animal, not a reasonable one as some fancy, 
 not a mystical one as a few will advance, not a 
 moral one as so many will believe, nor anti-natural 
 as some persist in alleging ; but that he is strong and 
 beautiful and made to create strength and beauty, a 
 beauty below which one may always feel a manifes- 
 tation of strength, and a strength always following 
 the mysterious laws but laws that he feels of 
 etemal beauty. Such is the faith of Nietzsche. He 
 is not a sceptic. He is not a sceptic in this that 
 he is not without a faith or without a will. These 
 are the two essential ways in which one is a sceptic. 
 He does not believe in nothing, he does not give
 
 128 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 himself up or relax or let his arms drop nor does he 
 abstain from action. Well, this faith of his — he 
 wishes to spread it; and the object of this law — he 
 wants to realize it. 
 
 One word will express it all. He wants to create 
 a freed humanity, to restore it to its true nature. 
 He wants a humanity freed from morality, from 
 religion, from the superstition of science and that 
 of reason; he wants to restore it to the strong in- 
 stincts and the strong passions that made human- 
 ity great and beautiful in its green and luxuriant 
 youth. The eulogy of the passions — there you 
 have all the affirmative Nietzsche. The passions 
 are good. What is their common root? Egotism. 
 Well, egotism is good. 
 
 First of all it can neither be uprooted nor avoided 
 and it were folly to attempt to extirpate it or to free 
 one's self from it. Moreover it is an excellent, a 
 holy thing. They tell you: love your neighbor. 
 When one analyzes that thought one sees that it is 
 false to the point of childishness and that it is a 
 weakness. This love of your neighbor is but " a 
 bad love of yourself," because you go " to your 
 neighbor to fly from yourself and this is what you 
 want to turn into a virtue but I can see through your 
 disinterestedness." What you are seeking in your 
 neighbor is somebody who will support you because 
 you do not know how to support yourself and some- 
 body who will love you because you cannot love 
 yourself enough and in the way you should. " I 
 would like to see every kind of neighbors and the 
 neighbors of those neighbors becoming unbearable
 
 THE THEORY I 29 
 
 to you because then you would be compelled to 
 make of yourself a friend and a friend with a strong 
 and overflowing heart." But you approach the 
 others to speak well of yourself, to bring them to 
 speaking well of yourself and to draw upon what 
 you have heard them say to think yet more of your- 
 self, "^'ou approach others to forget yourself or to 
 seek yourself, and to both the instincts together that 
 is to forget the man you are in reality and to seek 
 the man you pretend to be. You approach others to 
 cultivate the most evil side of your egotism and to 
 neglect what there might be in it that is excellent 
 and fruitful if it were cultivated. No, I am not ad- 
 vising you to love your neighbor. I would much 
 rather advise you to love that which is furthest. 
 " Higher than love for our neighbor is love of the 
 furthest and future ones; higher still than love for 
 mankind is love for things and phantoms. This 
 phantom that runneth on before thee, the future, 
 brother, this phantom is fairer than thou. Why 
 shouldest thou not lend it thy flesh and thy bones? 
 But thou fearest and runnest unto thy neighbor. 
 My brethren, I do not advise you to neighbor 
 love ; I advise you to furthest love." — Thus spake 
 Zarathustra. 
 
 One could hardly believe, in spite of the pain 
 La Rochefoucauld took to warn us against such 
 errors, how many things there are we find disin- 
 terested but are really pure selfishness, how many 
 things are set down in the column of altruism are 
 but "self-love" pure and simple. But self-love in 
 disguise and which, thus disguising itself, becomes
 
 130 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 perverted. That self-love would be much better; it 
 would be good, excellent and capable of the very 
 best results if it did not choose to disguise itself, per- 
 vert itself, and if it did not fall to pieces by thus 
 deluding others and itself as well as to its own na- 
 ture. Our neighbor love — what is it but an im- 
 perious desire for possession, for a new ownership? 
 Our love for science, what is it but a desire for 
 novelty? "Gradually we weary of what is old, 
 of what we possess with certainty and we begin 
 again to stretch out our hands." Thus the most 
 beautiful scenery in which we have been living for 
 three months inspires us with nothing but the de- 
 sire to see another one. Man is the " Don Juan of 
 Knowledge." Renan, who more than any other 
 man in the world was the Don Juan of Knowledge, 
 complained of the restlessness of his mind, which 
 after he had found truth caused him still to seek it. 
 
 What is pity? It is a desire for possession. 
 When we see somebody suffer we willingly seize that 
 opportunity given us to take up someone, to make 
 him ours. This charitable man calls love " that de- 
 sire for a new possession awakened in him and he 
 takes his pleasure as if he were in presence of a 
 new conquest that beckons him." That is what 
 lay at the basis of this religion of mercy with 
 which they dun our ears and to which people would 
 like to convert us. The attempt is vain because we 
 know " too well the little young men and the hysteri- 
 cal little women who need it to-day to use it as a 
 veil and an ornament." 
 
 And it is especially sexual love that reveals it-
 
 THE THEORY I3I 
 
 self most clearly as a manifestation of an ardent 
 desire for ownership, that is to say, as intense sel- 
 fishness.^ " He who loves wants to possess to him- 
 self the object of his desire. ?Ie wants to hold 
 absolute power over both the soul and the body of 
 that person ; he wants to be loved alone and to in- 
 habit the other soul, to rule therein, and he looks 
 upon this as the loftiest and most admirable thing. 
 If we consider that it means nothing else but the 
 exclusion of the whole world from something preci- 
 ous, from a happiness and a pleasure, if we con- 
 sider that the man that loves aims at depriving and 
 making poorer all his competitors, that he seeks to 
 become the dragon of his treasure just as if he were 
 the most indiscreet and selfish of all conquerors and 
 exploiters; finally if we consider that to a man in 
 love the rest of the world seems indifferent, color- 
 less and worthless and that he is ready to give up 
 anything for his love, to disturb any kind of order, 
 to relegate to the background all the interests, one 
 must be surprised that this savage avidity, this in- 
 iquity of sexual love, has been glorified and divinized 
 to such an extent and at all times. One must be 
 surprised that from this * love ' one could have 
 caused to issue the idea of Love as opposed to sel- 
 fishness, while it is very likely the most natural 
 expression of selfishness." True love should not 
 know jealousy. That would be its sign and if it 
 
 1 La Rochefoucauld. Maxims, LXVIII : "Love is in the 
 soul a passion to rule, in the minds a sympathy and in the 
 body a hidden and delicate desire to possess what one 
 loves, after many mysteries."
 
 132 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 exists it is the mark thereof and there can be none 
 other. But lovers know so well that love without 
 jealousy does not exist or hardly exists, that it is 
 precisely jealousy which they set up as the sign and 
 mark of love and that they always say : " You are 
 not jealous, you don't love me." While good psy- 
 chology should cause us to say : you are not jealous ; 
 you do not love yourself. Of course they know 
 very well, being good psychologists in their fash- 
 ion, that is to say practical, that he who is not 
 jealous is very seldom the man that makes " abstrac- 
 tion of himself so much does he adore but in al- 
 most every case the man, having possessed, be- 
 comes indifferent to his present possession and anx- 
 ious for a new one " ; and, in the practice, they are 
 right. Jealousy indicates a desire to possess and 
 to possess alone. If it is a sign of love it shows that 
 love is but an instinct for ownership. It is rather 
 strange that this instinct for ownership should have 
 been called love instead of being called selfishness 
 or greed or avidity (avaritia). But "those that 
 established this current expression in the languages 
 were apparently those that did not possess and that 
 desired to possess. They have always been the 
 most numerous. Those, on the contrary, that have 
 been favored in this domain with much possession 
 and satiety have, every now and then, allowed an in- 
 vective to escape their lips, an invective against the 
 * furious demon,' as Sophocles said, the most lov- 
 able and the most beloved of all the Athenians ; but 
 Eros would always laugh at these slanderers who 
 were precisely his greatest favorites."
 
 THE THEORY I33 
 
 We could thus review all the passions, all the in- 
 clinations and all the z'irtiies which are by unanim- 
 ous consent the cortege, the court, the household, 
 the family or the children of altruism, and which 
 at bottom are nothing but disguises of selfishness or 
 perhaps, and that is the most favorable view pos- 
 sible, transformations of selfishness. There is no 
 need to do it since it has been done by La Roche- 
 foucauld. 
 
 This, however, is my point. La Rochefoucauld 
 analyzed the substitutes of selfishness in order to 
 flay them by bringing them back to selfishness for 
 he held selfishness as a thing to be condemned, hated 
 and proscribed. That was wrong. The truth is 
 that selfishness is hateful in its substitutes, its dis- 
 guises, or if you like, its transformations, but very 
 good in itself, excellent in itself. What we should 
 do is to fight all the disguises of selfishness, to shame 
 them, to show them up as being stupid, ridiculous, 
 hateful and fatal. Then, having led mankind away 
 from them, we should bring it to pure selfishness 
 which is good and get men to become accustomed 
 to blush before all the disguises of selfishness, and 
 no longer to blush before selfishness itself. In 
 other words, selfishness tried to get itself accepted 
 and, to do that, began to play all sorts of parts all 
 over the world. It plays them badly and the dra- 
 matic critic recognizes it fully through every one 
 of them. We must persuade selfishness that it is 
 more beautiful in its natural state, that it is also 
 more fruitful and useful, that humanity needs it 
 but, in its purest state, not in the role of disguises.
 
 134 C>N READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 which it seeks, or in the mixtures, which it makes 
 of itself with other things, or in these strange and 
 unhealthy combinations which, it delights to enter. 
 
 These combinations — do you see them ? They 
 are most often frigid virtues. What is moderation ? 
 A caution that is nothing else but cowardice, that is 
 the lowest form of selfishness, blended perhaps with 
 a little care not to hurt, clash with, or incommodate 
 others. Now, that is not beautiful, and there is 
 nothing in it to boast about. Moreover, it is mod- 
 eration that places humanity in a state of general 
 platitude, universal mediocrity^ unanimous indo- 
 lence and of prostration before small tyrants, them- 
 selves no less moderate, almost as mediocre, and 
 quite as insipid. To have made a virtue of moder- 
 ation shows that there is a decay and almost a de- 
 liquescence of the human race. 
 
 What is pity? It is an emotion that takes hold 
 of you in presence of misfortunes in which you 
 yourself may fall. Hodie tibi; eras mihi. It is 
 foresight or I should say foreknowledge, that is to 
 say, a selfishness that can see unto the morrow. It 
 is hard to find in this such an admirable virtue. 
 Moreover pity enervates man by persuading him 
 that he has fulfilled his duty when he has shed a 
 tear upon the fate of another man, that he has 
 done his duty when he has given a little of his 
 superfluous to some unfortunate being. It ener- 
 vates him by throwing him back into a gentle quiet- 
 ness as soon as he has paid that ridiculous tribute 
 to humanity. It enervates him by leading him away 
 from all great, strong, civilizing, ascending actions,
 
 THE THEORY I35 
 
 actions which might cause tears to be shed or trou- 
 ble the general quietness and your own, perhaps 
 even cost a number of human beings their lives. 
 Pity is the bom enemy of heroism. You may be 
 sure that it was invented by someone that was, in 
 no wise, a hero himself. 
 
 " This virtue, which Schopenhauer taught as be- 
 ing the highest and only virtue, the foundation of 
 them all ; this pity I have recognized as more dan- 
 gerous than any vice. To fetter, out of principle, 
 the choice in the species, the purification of this one 
 among all the wastes — that until today was called 
 virtue preeminently." Compassion, as soon as it 
 truly creates some suffering — and this should be 
 here our only point of view — is a weakness as much 
 as the giving way to a prejudicial virtue. It in- 
 creases the amount of suffering in the world. If, 
 here and there, as a sequel to compassion, a suffer- 
 ing is indirectly lessened or suppressed, we must not 
 use these occasional consequences, quite insignificant 
 in the whole, to justify the work of a pity that is 
 baneful. " To allow this procedure to predominate 
 for even one single day is to let it immediately 
 lead humanity to its downfall. Compassion has in 
 itself no more of a beneficial character than any 
 other instinct. Only when it is exacted and vaunted 
 — and this happens when one fails to realize what 
 it has that leads to prejudice, and when one dis- 
 covers instead a source of joy therein — does com- 
 passion cloak itself, as it were, with a good con- 
 science : it is only in that case that one will give one's 
 self up willingly to it, fearless of its consequences.
 
 136 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 . . . If we allow our minds to be darkened by the 
 misery and sufferings of others, and we hide our 
 own sky with clouds, who shall bear the conse- 
 quences of this darkening? The other mortals, of 
 course, and that will be a weight added to their 
 own burden. We can neither help nor comfort 
 them if we wish to be the echoes of their misery 
 and if we want ever to lend an ear to that misery — 
 unless we were to learn the art of the Olympians and 
 sought to recover our serenity through the misfor- 
 tune of man instead of drawing wretchedness there- 
 from. But this is somewhat too Olympian for 
 us. . . ."^ 
 
 We hear much nowadays of solidarity. It is an 
 especially modern virtue which is made much of in 
 official as well as in popular speeches. The agree- 
 ment seems to be complete on solidarity. It is, at 
 bottom, nothing but the need to lean upon each other 
 so much is every one convinced of his own weak- 
 ness, infirmity and faint-heartedness. It is some- 
 thing like the egotism of fear, a sort of cowardly 
 
 1 La Rochefoucauld : " I am little sensitive to pity and 
 I would like not to feel it at all. Nevertheless there is 
 nothing I would not do to relieve any one who is afflicted 
 and I effective-believe that one should do everything even 
 to the point of making a show of much compassion for 
 his trouble; for the wretches are so stupid that it gives 
 them the greatest comfort in the world; yet I hold also 
 that one should be satisfied with making a show thereof 
 while taking good care not to feel any. It is a passion 
 that is worthless in a well-constructed soul, that can 
 but weaken the heart and that should be left to the mob, 
 who since they never do anything through their reason, 
 need passions to prompt them to do things."
 
 THE THEORY I 37 
 
 selfishness. Sheep that press close to each other are 
 practicing sohdarity in the most precise and correct 
 fashion. There is nothing, however, to indicate that 
 they are ver}' proud of it nor that they make it a 
 matter of pubHc speeches. Sohdarity is like trad- 
 ing by association, a deal in which each party hopes 
 to gain more than the other, and in which each hides 
 under the affectation to render services a burning 
 desire to receive one. It is, after all, possible that 
 there is in that a touch of altruism. But what is 
 most distinctly seen is a sneaking and hypocritical 
 selfishness that dissimulates itself, disguises itself, 
 contrives, insinuates, has neither the courage of its 
 opinion nor perhaps the consciousness of it. How 
 ugly is selfishness when it besmears itself and yet 
 how truly beautiful it would be if it were to wash off 
 all the virtues with which it paints itself! 
 
 Shall we speak of piety? It is no longer a very 
 fashionable virtue but in the olden days it was the 
 queen of them all, and it still stands as it were on 
 the steps of its ancient throne. Piety is a particu- 
 lar selfishness with pride in its background. It con- 
 sists in believing most deeply that there is a superior 
 power which is immense, sublime and infinite, with 
 which we hold intimate relations, which we address 
 when we wish, which listens to us whenever we 
 speak to it and which — wc truly believe that, and 
 dare to let it know that we do — can refuse us noth- 
 ing so much do we love it. Xot in vain have men in 
 many of their languages attributed the same de- 
 nomination to " love " and to love of God. They do 
 not differ very much. Just as love is a desire and
 
 138 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 an appetite for possession, so love of God is a deep, 
 more or less conscious, desire to possess God, to 
 own Him as one's dependent and at one's disposal, 
 and to obtain from Him all imaginable favors in 
 time and in eternity. And the bearing of each of 
 these two loves is very nearly the same. It is with 
 declarations of love, made as eloquent as he can, that 
 the pious man will attempt to conquer his God, and 
 the basis of his reasoning, as ludicrous as that of the 
 lover, is as follows : " It is really necessary that 
 you should love me. I deserve it since I love you." 
 Desire constituting a right — that is the sophism of 
 the lovers, the pious men, the socialist collectivists, 
 of those that solicit the Cross of the Legion of 
 Honor. The pious man prays in order to obtain 
 just like the lover. These prayers must have been 
 at first, — and we have seen examples showing this 
 to be the case — very much alike. 
 
 What a strange aberration of pride and desire is 
 prayer. If prayer were to have any meaning it 
 would mean firstly " that it could be possible to de- 
 termine or to change the feeling of the divinity " : 
 secondly " that the man that prays should know pre- 
 cisely what he lacks and what he needs." Christian- 
 ity is a curious thing. These two conditions neces- 
 sary to prayer have been denied by Christianity, 
 which has invented that omniscient and omni-provi- 
 dent God, that motionless God, and affirmed that God 
 alone knows what we need while we do not. And 
 yet Christianity has preserved prayer. It has pre- 
 served prayer " in parallel to faith in an omniscient 
 and omni-provident reason of God. Prayer loses
 
 THE THEORY I39 
 
 thereby its import and becomes even blasphema- 
 tory." It showed great craft in this. " It showed 
 the admirable snake-hke cunning of which it dis- 
 posed. Because a clear commandment : ' Thou 
 shalt not pray I ' zvould have led Christians to God- 
 lessness. In the Christian axiom ' ora et labora,' 
 the ura takes the place of pleasure. And what would 
 have become, without the ora, of all these unfortu- 
 nates who were denying themselves the labora, the 
 saints? But to hold conversation with the Lord, 
 to ask from him a thousand pleasant things, to 
 take some slight pleasure in perceiving that one 
 could still have desires in spite of a father so perfect 
 — that was an excellent invention for the saints." 
 And if this seems to be rather refined, let us say 
 that there lingers always in Christianity, as Comte 
 showed it very well, a residue of paganism, and that 
 prayer, which is so much in the way of the Chris- 
 tian philosopher and of the Christian who is a phil- 
 osopher (see Malebranche) is one of the very many 
 remnants that paganism has left to its successor, 
 perhaps with an unspoken intention to poison it. 
 What is certain is that the Christian prays his God 
 sometimes as a Christian but often, more often, 
 most of the time, as a lover begs from the woman 
 he loves. 
 
 W'e might carry the analogy further. It should 
 be carried further. Just as there is no love with- 
 out jealousy so does the man who believes, the pious 
 and fervent man, refuses to admit, or admit with 
 great reluctance, that any other man could share in 
 the favors of his God. Hence the religious wars,
 
 140 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 as atrocious wars as the quarrels that love has 
 brought about, and still brings about among men. 
 The believer is a jealous lover whom love and 
 jealousy have made ferocious. In his heart he 
 would like to have a God to himself. Primitive 
 religion was fetichism and there will always remain 
 some of it. Religion becoming little by little a 
 sociological and truly social force changed from an 
 individual into a communal thing; but it retained 
 always its primitive character of a jealous and 
 suspicious love. If it is no longer between man 
 and man that suspicion arises, if it is no longer this 
 man accusing that man of wanting to steal his fetich 
 from him, it is now from sect to sect that they mis- 
 trust each other. The white sect charges the black 
 sect with wanting to attract to itself the God of the 
 white sect, with wishing to lead him astray and 
 to bribe him. And for that reason the white sect 
 attacks, slays and furiously massacres the black 
 sect. The Jews, from whom we have religiously 
 speaking inherited so many things, afford the most 
 remarkable example of this religious jealousy and 
 of this love of God, which is an acute form of 
 monopoly. Holy piousness is another transforma- 
 tion not the least remarkable nor the least hateful 
 one of selfishness. 
 
 Will any one say that there must be some vir- 
 tues that cannot be ascribed to selfishness? Let 
 us again turn to La Rochefoucauld, and, to cut 
 short, let us take a last example, the very one, doubt- 
 lessly, that some might triumphantly oppose to us. 
 " Would you say, you will exclaim, that disinter-
 
 THE THEORY I4I 
 
 estedness is selfishness, that disinterestedness is in- 
 terestcdness ? " To be sure one may say it, and 
 with reason. The disinterested man that pursues 
 an aim witliout foreseeing the possibihty of any 
 personal advantage, that does it for its own beauty, 
 for what he dimly perceives therein that is great, 
 higli and sublime, that man derives such enjoyment 
 from his renouncement that we should perhaps say 
 that he is the most selfish of men. The eternal 
 error is the belief that one may get rid of one's 
 own self or detach one's self from it. One may 
 never detach one's self from it. The only result 
 of an attempt at doing so is to fall deeper in it and 
 to get more buried under it. If you like, one sinks 
 deeper as it were in a deeper self; one becomes de- 
 tached from the superficial side of the self, to get 
 nearer the roots of the self, and to become inti- 
 mately and inextricably and indissolubly intertwined 
 with it. The disinterested man, you say! But he 
 enjoys his disinterestedness in the most intense 
 fashion. He takes an infinite interest in his dis- 
 interestedness. He has not sacrificed himself, he 
 has better invested it, and by investing it better he 
 has increased it as one would one's capital. He 
 has prodigiously increased it. Be he priest or sa- 
 vant, let us say Vincent de Paul or Pasteur, do you 
 imagine that these men are not happy? But they 
 have not given up their share of happiness; they 
 have made no sacrifice, no renouncement. You 
 cannot call them disinterested. You may call them 
 sublime egotists if it pleases you but call them ego- 
 tists you must. They arc deeply, royally and di-
 
 142 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 vinely so. Because they are that, differently from 
 and better than the others, would you say that they 
 are not selfish? They are more so! More, no, 
 they are better! But, better and more, it is the 
 same thing if they are conscious of it. And how 
 could it be that they should not be conscious of it, 
 that they should not feel their own happiness? 
 
 Again, I do not blame them. I am in favor of 
 selfishness. I merely blame the disguise. I only 
 blame selfishness when it hides itself and gives itself 
 favorable names, because that spoils it. I merely 
 blame here the pretension of interest to give itself 
 as disinterested and the error with which one mis- 
 takes the strongest egotism for disinterestedness. 
 
 Let us make our confession. You are a Christian 
 and I am a man of science. We both flatter our- 
 selves to be disinterested, to have renounced. Let 
 us truthfully examine your case and mine. " No 
 book is there which contains with more abundance, 
 which expresses with more candor, what can benefit 
 all men, the happy and exalted fervor that is ready 
 for sacrifice and death — than the book which 
 speaks of Christ. A wise man may learn therein 
 all the ways with which one may make of a book 
 a universal book, everybody's friend, and above all, 
 the master-means to present all things as discov- 
 ered and to fail to admit that anything may still 
 be imperfect or in process of formation. . . . The 
 reason which causes such books to be replete with 
 results — must it not by the same token cause any 
 purely scientific book to be of little weight? Is 
 not the latter condemned obscurely to live among
 
 THE THEORY I43 
 
 obscure men and to be at length crucified, never 
 to be resuscitated? Compared to what reHgious 
 men proclaim concerning their knowledge of their 
 sacred spirit, are not all honest men of science poor 
 in the spirit? Can any religion, no matter which 
 one we take, exact more renouncement, more piti- 
 lessly exclude the selfish than does science? This 
 is very near to what we could say, we, the men of 
 science, and not without some historical backing, 
 when we have to defend ourselves against the be- 
 lievers because it is hardly possible to defend any- 
 thing without a certain amount of cabotinagc. But 
 when we are among ourselves our language must 
 be more honest. Down then with renouncement! 
 Away with these airs of humility. Better on the 
 contrary to say that here lay our truth. If science 
 were not linked with the joy of knowledge, wedded 
 to the usefulness of knowledge, what would science 
 mean to us? If a little faith, a little hope and love 
 did not lead our soul to knowledge, what then could 
 attract us to science? And, although in science the 
 self means nothing, it is nevertheless true that the 
 inventive and happy self, and even any fruitful and 
 earnest self, matters a great deal in the republic of 
 the men of science. The esteem of those that con- 
 fer esteem, the joy of those to whom we wish well, 
 or of those whom we respect, and, in certain cases, 
 glor)', and the relative immortality of the person — 
 such is the price that one may expect for the giving 
 up of one's personality. This docs not include 
 lesser results and compensations, although it is pre- 
 cisely because of these that most men do swear
 
 144 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 faithfulness to the laws of that republic and in gen- 
 eral to science, and that they continue ever to remain 
 attached to it. Had we not remained, in a certain 
 measure, non-scientific men, what importance could 
 we still attach to science ? After all, and to give my 
 axiom all its generality, knowledge would be indif- 
 ferent to a purely knoiving being. It is not the 
 quality of our faith and piousness that distin- 
 guishes us from pious men. It is the quantity, — we 
 are satisfied with little. But the others will say, if 
 such is the case : * be satisfied then and admit also 
 that you are satisfied.' To which we could easily 
 retort : * it is quite true that we do not belong to the 
 dissatisfied ones. But you, if your faith makes you 
 happy, do you also admit that you are happy ' , . ." 
 Therefore it must be acknowledged that there is 
 so much selfishness in the virtue which seems to 
 consist in the very exclusion of selfishness, in that 
 virtue the very name of which is precisely abo- 
 lition of all selfishness, that one inquires if this 
 virtue is not selfishness itself. After that suf- 
 ficiently striking example, and the legitimate con- 
 clusions drawn therefrom it seems that we need go 
 no further and that we must admit that the virtues 
 are, to use the common language of mankind, subtle 
 forms of selfishness, hypocrisies of selfishness and 
 degradations of selfishness. They are not good be- 
 cause, masking selfishness, they hamper it, and dis- 
 guising selfishness they hinder it, and forcing it to 
 a strained bearing they fetter it, and, because mixing 
 it with some foreign matter, they alter and corrupt 
 it. It is selfishness in the pure state that is beautiful
 
 THE THEORY I45 
 
 and good. Men are not mistaken because they are 
 selfish and because they want to remain so. They 
 are mistaken because they want to dissimulate their 
 selfishness, to hide it from themselves and the others. 
 Note that man thinks he needs this mask of 
 virtue, this morality mask, all the more and in sooth 
 that he needs it really all the more as he becomes 
 more civilized. In other words he needs it all the 
 more according to the length of time he has borne 
 it. The civilized man, man moralized, has become 
 very ugly, most insipid, most puny and hideous. 
 The mask has made the face ugly. All the more 
 reason, therefore, why he should mask himself and 
 so on indefinitely. Suppose a man who, in order to 
 make himself agreeable, has begun to wear a mask, 
 and his mask has given him a cancer. From being 
 an alleged ornament, the mask becomes a horrible 
 necessity. That is where we stand in the Europe 
 of 1880; and this is no doubt a difficulty which the 
 immoralists fully appreciate and which would al- 
 most cause them to hesitate on the road. " The 
 spectacle of man's nakedness is generally shameful. 
 I am speaking of us Europeans. . . . Let us im- 
 agine some extremely merry guests at a banquet, 
 and that, by some sly trick of a magician, they find 
 themselves suddenly unveiled and undressed. I am 
 thinking that, at that very minute, not only would 
 their pleasant mood suddenly disappear, but even 
 that the most ravenous appetite would be discour- 
 aged. It seems that we Europeans cannot ])ossibly 
 do without that masquerade which we call clothing. 
 The same good reasons then might perhaps exist for
 
 146 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 the advocating of a disguise for moral men, leading 
 us to ask that they be wrapped up in moral for- 
 mulas and notions of propriety, and to ask also that 
 our actions be benevolently hidden under the ideas 
 of duty, virtue, civic spirit, honorability and dis- 
 interestedness. Not that I think that we should 
 mask human wickedness, that dangerous wild beast 
 that lurks within us. On the contrary. It is pre- 
 cisely as domestic animals that we afford a shameful 
 spectacle and that we need a moral disguise. The 
 inner man in Europe is not sufficiently disquieting 
 to be able to show himself with a ferociousness that 
 could make him beautiful. The European cloaks 
 himself with morality because he has become a 
 sickly, infirm, and crippled animal, with the best of 
 reasons for being tamed since he is almost an abor- 
 tion, something imperfect, misshapen and awkward. 
 It is not the ferociousness of the beast of prey 
 which feels the need of a moral disguise; it is the 
 animal from the herd with its thorough mediocrity, 
 and the fear and boredom it gives itself. Morality 
 decks out the European, let us acknowledge it, so 
 as to give him distinction, importance in appearance, 
 and to make him divine." 
 
 Because it is becoming difficult to return to pure 
 selfishness and to rediscover selfishness in its pure 
 state, where it is beautiful, sane and fruitful, that 
 is no reason why we should not try it again. Es- 
 pecially is that no reason why it were untrue to say 
 that selfishness is the natural and the best state of 
 man. It is so, and we should have the intelligence 
 to understand it and the courage to say it. The
 
 THE THEORY I47 
 
 depths of the sane man reveal an ardent, energetic 
 and boundless egotism, and *' will to power," the 
 desire for extension, the desire and the need to be 
 ever greater, more expanded, influential, ever to 
 extend further his action, ever to occupy more 
 space. 
 
 There is some delusion in the assurance that the 
 basis of mankind is the desire for happiness — 
 that is, if there may be any delusion when one uses 
 so elastic, plastic and vague a word as happiness. 
 If by happiness, one understands a state of rest, 
 quietness and tranquillity in which one wishes and 
 can wish nothing, that is surely not man's desire 
 and, when he does desire it, he is mistaken about 
 himself. Assuredly he does, though, and Pascal 
 said it very well : " He tends towards rest through 
 agitation." But we need to realize that Pascal 
 meant : " he tends towards rest through agitation, 
 and that indefinitely." Therefore, in last anal- 
 ysis, it is agitation that he needs. He agitates 
 himself to increase himself, believing perhaps that, 
 having reached a certain stage of increase, he will 
 be able to rest in his acquired greatness and upon 
 his conquest. But that is a mere illusion, and we 
 must leave it aside. Man agitates himself to in- 
 crease himself, and his only true need is agitation 
 for the sake of power. 
 
 As a matter of fact, he knows it subconsciously 
 very well. When he says that he will rest when he 
 has reached such and such an aim, and that he will 
 enjoy a " well-earned rest," he only half-believes it, 
 and is somewhat laughing at himself. Within him-
 
 148 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 self, behind the man who says that, there is one 
 that laughs in his sleeve. This is precisely the rea- 
 son why most men of action set up a goal for them- 
 selves, true enough, and it is understood that on 
 reaching it they will rest themselves, but they take 
 good care to set it up so far that never can they 
 reach it. They fear above all things the morrow of 
 the task accomplished, that gloomy sadness with 
 which Gibbon was seized when he had written the 
 last line of his huge Roman History. Gibbon had 
 always feared not to finish his Roman History; but 
 in his heart there was ever the secret hope that he 
 might die before ending it. 
 
 The will to power, the wish to persevere in the 
 being and, indefinitely, to expand one's being, pure 
 egotism in short, — there you have natural man. 
 When he thinks he renounces it, he does not re- 
 nounce it ; when he alters it to a smaller or a larger 
 extent, he denatures himself ; when one denatures 
 one's self, one degrades and weakens one's self; 
 and moralized man is but a perverted egotist. In 
 order to reintegrate man into his humanity, we must, 
 at all cost, persuade him to become once more a pure 
 and simple egotist. Radical egotists they were, 
 those nations of the antiquity that did not even ad- 
 mit, that did not even understand that there could 
 be any other destiny for a people but to be con- 
 queror or conquered, which were ever going forth, 
 ceaselessly conquering, piling up increases upon in- 
 creases, extending and developing their personality, 
 wishing to fill the world with their self, until the 
 day, by them accepted, when in turn they would be
 
 THE THEORY I49 
 
 conquered. And yet these nations were those 
 that created civiHzation. One cannot say that they 
 had a bandits' morahty or that their conception of 
 Ufe was worthy of barbarians or savages. They 
 were men and that is all. They were fully men. 
 They had the " will of power," that is to say, a sane, 
 young and lively egotism, and they expanded, ac- 
 cording to the law of nature, by conquest, by the 
 founding of cities, by colonial settlements, by liter- 
 ary and artistic creation. With morality, they both- 
 ered themselves no more than if it had not existed, 
 unless it were with that morality zvhich is but a 
 rule of civil and civic discipline. 
 
 Let any one tell me what was the morality of a 
 Themistocles, a Pericles, a Scipio, a Sylla, a Marius 
 or a Caesar unless it were this : " I myself, great 
 in the ever greater motherland ? " Warriors' mo- 
 rality, brigands' morality. It may be clever to say 
 this. At all events it is very " ecclesiastical " and 
 very bureaucratic, and there is no clergyman or 
 established petty official who has not said it a dozen 
 times in his life. Note here that they quickly 
 change their morality as soon as their own country 
 wins a small victory. But I say to you ; " my 
 brethren in war! I love you from the very heart. 
 I am, and was ever, your counterpart. And I am 
 also your best enemy. So let me tell you the truth. 
 I know the hatred and envy of your hearts. Ye 
 are not great enough not to know of hatred and 
 envy. Then be great enough not to be ashamed of 
 them. And if ye cannot be saints of knowledge, 
 then, I pray you, be at least its warriors. They
 
 150 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 are the companions and forerunners of such saint- 
 ship. I see many soldiers ; could I but see many 
 warriors ! ' Uniform ' one calleth what they wear; 
 may it not be uniform that they therewith hide! 
 Ye shall be those whose eyes ever seek for an enemy 
 — for your enemy. And with some of you there 
 is hatred at first sight. Your enemy shall ye seek ; 
 your war shall ye wage, and for the sake of your 
 thoughts. And if your thoughts succumb, your 
 uprightness shall still shout triumph thereby. Ye 
 shall love peace as a means to new wars — and the 
 short peace more than the long. You I advise not 
 to work, but to fight. You I advise not to peace, 
 but to victory. Let your work be a fight, let your 
 peace be a victory. One can only be silent and 
 sit peacefully when one hath arrow and bow ; other- 
 wise one prateth and quarreleth. Let your peace 
 be a victory! Ye say it is the good cause that 
 halloweth even war ? I say unto you : it is the good 
 war that halloweth every cause. War and cour- 
 age have done more great things than charity. Not 
 your sympathy, but your bravery hath hitherto saved 
 the victims. * What is good ? ' ye ask. To be brave 
 is good. Let the little girls say : * To be good is 
 pretty, and at the same time touching.' They 
 call you heartless : but your heart is true, and 
 I love the bashfulness of your goodwill. Ye are 
 ashamed of your flow, and others are ashamed of 
 their ebb. Ye are ugly? Well then, my brethren, 
 take the sublime about you, the mantle of the ugly. 
 And when your soul becometh great, then doth it 
 become haughty, and in your sublimity there is
 
 THE THEORY I5I 
 
 wickedness. I know you. In wickedness the 
 haughty man and the weakHng meet. But they 
 misunderstand one another. I know you. Ye shall 
 only have enemies to be hated, but not enemies to 
 be despised. Ye must be proud of your enemies ; 
 then, the successes of your enemies are also your 
 successes. Resistance — that is the distinction of 
 the slave. Let your distinction be obedience. Let 
 your commanding itself be obeying. To the good 
 warrior soundeth * thou shalt ' pleasanter than ' I 
 will.* And all that is dear unto you, ye shall first 
 have it commanded unto you. Let your love to life 
 be love to your highest hope; and let your highest 
 hope be the highest thought of life. Your highest 
 thought, however, ye shall have commanded unto 
 you by me — and it is this : man is something that is 
 to be surpassed. So live your life of obedience and 
 of war. What matter about long life? What war- 
 rior wisheth to be spared ? I spare you not, I love 
 you from my very heart, my brethren in war. — 
 Thus spake Zarathustra." 
 
 However the devastating egotism has always been 
 termed ez'il for two sufficiently reasonable reasons. 
 The first one is that this devastating egotism, what- 
 ever it is with which you blend it, is after all wick- 
 edness. The second is that it begins at least with 
 an accumulation of disasters and by causing awful 
 sufferings to mankind. If that be not evil, what is 
 evil? Well, if that be evil, I might feel some- 
 what tempted to exclaim : " Long live Evil ! " as 
 Proudhon once exclaimed : " Long live Satan ! " 
 for this evil is singularly beneficent and, after all,
 
 152 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 I can see nothing but that as being beneficent. If 
 you have not yet observed that a pacifist civilization 
 lulls nations to sleep and gradually becomes some 
 culture fluid for all the vices, especially for the most 
 shameful among them! ... It seems to me that 
 nearly all the good that was accomplished in the 
 world has been the work of " evil." Good men have 
 Iheir good points but they have a few less than the 
 bad men. The good is good, to be sure but evil 
 is better : " The strongest and most wicked minds 
 are the very ones that have to this day led human- 
 ity to its greatest progress. They always were re- 
 kindling anew the passions that were falling 
 asleep, — for every organized society puts the pas- 
 sions to sleep. They reawakened relentlessly the 
 sense of comparison and of contradiction, and the 
 pleasure that lay in the new, the dared, the non-felt. 
 They compel man to set up opinions against opin- 
 ions, to oppose an ideal type to an ideal type. Most 
 of the time they achieve that by force of arms, 
 by breaking down the frontiers and by violating 
 piety ; but they did it also through new religions and 
 new moralities. The same wickedness is in the soul 
 of all the masters and of all the preachers of the 
 new, that same wickedness that discredits a con- 
 queror. Nevertheless, what is new is, no matter 
 how you look at it, evil, for it is that which con- 
 quers and aims at pulling down the old landmarks 
 and the ancient pieties. Only the ancient can be 
 good. The good men of all periods were those that 
 searched deeply into the old ideas to make them 
 bear fruit ; they were tillers of the mind. But there
 
 THE THEORY 153 
 
 is no soil that does not become exhausted and 
 there must always come back to it the point of the 
 plough of evil. There exists nowadays an abso- 
 lutely erroneous doctrine of morality, a doctrine 
 that is especially welcome in England. Accord- 
 ing to its tenets the judgments good and evil are 
 the accumulation of past experiences concerning 
 what is opportune and inopportune; and, according 
 to them, what is called good is what preserves the 
 species, and what is called evil is what threatens it. 
 But, to say the truth, the bad instincts are oppor- 
 tune; they are the keepers of the species and its 
 renovators to the same extent as the good ones. It 
 is only their function that differs." 
 
 For all these irrefutable reasons it becomes neces- 
 sary to reinstate man's only true virtue, the will to 
 power, an integral egotism, a radical, uncompromis- 
 ing, undisguised, and unadulterated egotism, an open 
 and daring egotism. We must shed morality as we 
 would some cumbersome and choking garment or 
 exude it as we would a deadly virus. This morality 
 never has but one aim, one end, one anxiety, one 
 passion — that is to kill the individual, with the pur- 
 pose, erroneous at that, to cause society to live on. 
 
 Is^othing is more ferocious than this so-called 
 altruistic morality. It is but a piece of atrocious 
 and murdering social selfishness. It never says: 
 "I am sacrificing myself" but "do ye sacrifice 
 yourselves to me." What is it you name " virtues " ? 
 You name a man's virtues good, beautiful and ad- 
 mirable " not because of the results they have for 
 him personally but with regard to the results you
 
 154 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 suppose them to entail for yourselves and for 
 society." In sooth, you show very little disinterest- 
 edness in your praise of disinterestedness; you are 
 remarkably selfish in your praise of non-selfishness. 
 For otherwise you would have noticed that the vir- 
 tues, such as application, obedience, chastity and 
 piety are detrimental as a rule to him that practices 
 them. . . . When you possess a virtue, a true and 
 complete virtue, not merely the small instinct of a 
 virtue, you are the victim of that virtue. That is 
 the very reason that prompts your neighbor to 
 praise your virtue. We praise the worker, albeit 
 his application is detrimental to his visual faculties, 
 to the originality and the freshness of his mind. 
 We pity and respect the young man who " tired 
 himself out with work " because we judge as fol- 
 lows : " the loss of an individual, of even the best 
 individual is but a small sacrifice for society as a 
 whole. It is to be regretted that this sacrifice was 
 necessary. Yet it would surely be much more to be 
 regretted if the individual zvere to think otherwise 
 and attached more importance to his own preserva- 
 tion and his own development than to his work, per- 
 formed in the service of society." Such is your 
 reasoning in the face of the virtue of others. It is 
 not what one would call virtuous. Properly speak- 
 ing it is a cynical reasoning. Those that praise vir- 
 tue should put us out of conceit with it, because of 
 the profoundly perverse fashion in which they 
 praise it; I should rather say, because of the very 
 principle at the basis of the praise that they deal 
 out to it.
 
 THE THEORY 1 55 
 
 It is true that you pity that young man at the 
 same time as you respect him but it is not " for him- 
 self that you pity him. You do it because, through 
 his death a docile instrument, or as you term it a 
 good man, has been lost to disinterested society. 
 It may be that you take into consideration the fact 
 that he would have proved even more useful to 
 society if he had worked with more care of him- 
 self, and had kept himself going for a longer period. 
 One does not deny the advantage that would have 
 accrued in that case, but one estimates more lasting 
 and higher the other advantage that a sacrifice has 
 been made and that the notion of the sacrifice vic- 
 tim has once more received visible confirmation." 
 The eulogy of virtue, in other words, morality, is 
 therefore the exaltation of " a certain unreason in 
 virtue, thanks to which the individual allows him- 
 self to be transformed into a function of the collec- 
 tivity." 
 
 The eulogy of virtue, othenvise named morality 
 is the exaltation of " something detrimental in the 
 individual, the praise of some instinct, learned, ac- 
 quired or traditional which deprives man of the 
 noblest love of himself and of the strength to pro- 
 tect himself." At all cost we must get rid of that 
 kind of morality. 
 
 This sort of egotism-himting by morality, pur- 
 sued with monstrous egotism, takes at times a most 
 peculiar character and brings out results that are 
 as ludicrous as they are detrimental. The great 
 motto of morality, is it not, " have command of 
 one's self; learn to conquer one's self. Gnotlii
 
 156 , ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 seaiiton; micah seauton "f There may be some good 
 in that, but it is rather Hkely to breed maniacs and 
 wretched ones too. " These teachers of morahty 
 that recommend to man above and before all things 
 to possess himself, inoculate him with a peculiar 
 disease, a sort of continuous itching. I mean the 
 constant irritability against all natural impulses and 
 inclinations. Whatever comes to him from within 
 or from without, be it a thought, an attraction or a 
 desire, the irritable man always fancies that now 
 is his mastery over himself running a risk. Un- 
 able to trust and abandon himself to any instinct, 
 to any free flap of his wings, he is forever making 
 defensive gestures. Armed against himself, his eye 
 sharp and defiant, he has constituted himself the 
 eternal keeper of his own tower. He may, with all 
 this, be great. But how unbearable to others he 
 has become, hard to put up with, and how he has 
 beggared himself and isolated himself from the fin- 
 est hazards of the soul and from all possible future 
 experiences. For one should know hozv to love 
 one's self for a time if one wishes to learn some- 
 thing of those that are what zve ourselves are not." 
 
 Delenda est Carthago! Morality must be abol- 
 ished. It is a social Moloch, a destroyer of all the 
 sane, free and fecund energies. Pure egotism must 
 be reinstated. 
 
 One may advance the idea that when egotism 
 does not transform itself into alleged virtues, 
 through the metempsychosis or the mimicry that 
 we have studied, it transforms itself into passions; 
 rather that passions are its natural forms and vari-
 
 THE THEORY 1 57 
 
 ous aspects. Are you going to defend and support 
 the passions? They have until now been generally 
 considered as diseases of the soul. Is not that the 
 case? 
 
 Of course not. The passions are no diseases. 
 They are manifestations of life. They are trans- 
 ports, effervescences ; they are fevers if you like but 
 they are not diseases. There may be a rule for pas- 
 sions, as there is one for games, as plays have their 
 programs, travels their time tables, walk its method 
 and racing or dancing their laws. These are ju- 
 dicious and time-saving dispositions that aim at 
 helping one to derive the utinost possible enjoy- 
 ment out of the various things they regulate. Let 
 then the passions have their rules; that is very ac- 
 ceptable and even evident. But passions in them- 
 selves are sane, as Descartes well knew long ago, 
 and if they are manifestations of egotism, it is be- 
 cause they are manifestations of life, for egotism is 
 life itself. 
 
 Some sincere men have spoken ill of human pas- 
 sions. They had a reason and some common sense 
 at least in this case. They did it because the pas- 
 sions to which men are a prey are very often not 
 passions at all but imitations of passions, apeings 
 of passions. " How many men there are," ex- 
 claimed La Rochefoucauld, " who would never have 
 fallen in love had they not heard people speak of 
 love." Nothing is more true than this. We have 
 as many false lovers, false jealous, false autorita- 
 rians, false ambitious men, false sectarians, false 
 party men, false men of convictions, as we have
 
 158 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 false poets, false writers and false thinkers. At 
 the beginning of his life, man takes very often, ex- 
 tremely often, for a passion, for his passion, a very 
 fugitive and very superficial inclination that comes 
 to him, prompting him to imitate this or that person 
 about him, this or that character of modem or 
 ancient history, or of some novel or poem. It is 
 certain that such a passion is ludicrous, leads but to 
 follies and causes his unhappiness. One must not 
 fool one's self over one's passions any more than 
 over one's aptitudes, since after all passions are 
 aptitudes. 
 
 But the deep, true passions are all of them excel- 
 lent forces for both the individual and society. 
 The ugliest of them, say that of the miser, is 
 precious and fruitful. Fere Grandet,^ who was a 
 great man, a poet, did, so far as himself was con- 
 cerned, taste deep joys, ecstasies, the ravishments 
 of a collector, a founder and a conqueror. And 
 so far as society was concerned, he created for it 
 one of those reserves of accumulated work which 
 is very useful that some men should prepare. 
 All the passions are good when they are true. To 
 flay or proscribe them shows a detestable pharisaism. 
 
 Teachers of morality have a safe game when 
 they abuse the passions. They provide an easy 
 field of exploitation because, to be sure, the pas- 
 sions, like everything that is beautiful, are replete 
 with dangers. But these teachers exaggerate to 
 begin with and impose upon us, and, moreover, it is 
 precisely the affairs that are pregnant with dan- 
 
 1 Balzac's well known character.
 
 THE THEORY 1 59 
 
 ger that are worthy of man's attachment. That is 
 the sign by which we know tliem. " What themes 
 have not iliese preachers of morality embroidered 
 upon the inner 'misery' of the 'wicked' men? 
 What hes have they not prated of the wretched- 
 ness of passionate men ? Lies, yes, that is the right 
 word. They know very well the extreme happi- 
 ness of that sort of men but they say nothing of it 
 because it would refute their theory, according 
 to which no happiness can be born but from the 
 annihilation of passion and the silencing of desire." 
 As to the recipe of all these soul physicians and 
 their recommendation of a radical and rigorous 
 cure, one may be allowed to inquire: " Is our life 
 really sorrowful enough and hateful enough for 
 us to exchange it with advantage for the stoicism 
 of some petrified life? We do not feel ourselves 
 sufficiently sick to need become sick in a stoic fash- 
 ion. It seems to me that people have always been 
 speaking with exaggeration concerning pain and 
 sorrow, as if it were good form to exaggerate in 
 this matter. On the other hand, people maintain 
 silence on the innumerable ways to alleviate sor- 
 row. We are very good at shedding tears upon 
 our grief, and especially upon the grief of the 
 soul ; there are resources open to us in our cour- 
 age and loftiness and in the noble delights of 
 submission and resignation. A trouble is merely 
 a trouble for an hour. One way or another, it is 
 as a present fallen therewith from the sky, such as 
 new strength even if it be but a new occasion to 
 display strength."
 
 l6o ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 These preachers of morality, if they are sincere, 
 and that is not lilcely, have failed sufficiently to 
 mediate on the necessary, natural and, withal, very 
 fortunate intricacy of pleasure and pain. Pain 
 and pleasure are linked and intermingled to such 
 an extent that they are each other's function, or are 
 at least, in any and every case, joined in an indis- 
 soluble union to the extent that they are at times 
 indistinguishable, " What ! Is then the final aim 
 of science to create for man as much pleasure and 
 as little pain as possible? How could that be if 
 pleasure and grief were so tightly bound together 
 that the man that wished to take his fill of the one, 
 who would learn to jubilate to the heavens, must 
 needs also prepare himself to be sad unto death? 
 (Himmeloch jauch^end. Zum Tode hetrueht. — 
 The Song of Clara in Goethe's Egmont.) And that 
 may be true. The stoics at least believed it, and 
 they were consistent, when they asked the least 
 pleasure possible in order that life should cause them 
 the least pain possible. When you utter the sen- 
 tence : ' The virtuous man is the happiest,' you 
 are in the same breath, exhibiting the sign to the 
 masses and setting forth a casuistic subtlety for 
 the more subtle people. Today you can still make 
 your choice : either you decide upon the smallest 
 amount possible of pleasure, in short the absence 
 of pain. After all, socialists of all brands could not 
 honestly promise any more to their supporters. 
 Or else you may decide in favor of as much grief as 
 possible, as the price you are prepared to pay for 
 the expansion resulting from a mass of enjoy-
 
 THE THEORY l6l 
 
 merit and of pleasures, all subtle and seldom tasted 
 to this day. If you decide in favor of the first 
 alternative, if you wish to lessen and diminish the 
 sufferings of mankind, well, you will have to di- 
 minish and lessen at the same time their capacity 
 for joy. It is certain that one may favor either 
 of these two with the help of science (philosophical 
 science, general science, otherwise named know- 
 ledge). Perhaps one knows science now rather 
 owing to its faculty to deprive men of their pleasure 
 and to render them colder, more insensible and 
 stoical. But one could also discover in it facul- 
 ties of a great dispenser of pain. And the^i its 
 opposite force might be discovered at the same 
 time, its immense faculty to light up a new starry 
 heaven for joy." 
 
 It is certain that the passions are forces that 
 'can be repressed but not without repressing and 
 even suppressing life itself. It is certain that they 
 are the very life, and that they give to the man 
 that abandons himself to them lively sorrows and 
 deep joys, pleasure in suffering, happiness along 
 with unhappiness — and therefore happiness. For 
 that is the point we must reach : man is made for 
 a life in which enters an unhappiness mingled with 
 joys. He is intended for a checkered life, for a 
 dramatic life and for a dangerous life. A dan- 
 gerous life, that is the natural life of man. That 
 is what preserves him from boredom, melancholy, 
 depression, stagnation, disgust and the low pas- 
 sions, or in better words from what is low and 
 vile in each passion, from the low forms of each
 
 l62 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 passion. The dangerous is the true life. For do 
 you know what the word " true " means ? " True 
 — that means : that which upHfts the human type." 
 The dangerous life is the superior life. The dan- 
 gerous life is the good life. For do you know 
 what the good is? The good is the beautiful. It 
 is not at all a little more pleasure or a little more 
 comfort. To cause the good to depend upon such 
 things is very mean and cowardly; it is almost 
 nihilism or something that leads to it. " The pre- 
 ponderance of pain over joy, or vice versa, these 
 are two doctrines that give signs of incipient 
 nihilism. In both cases no other final meaning is 
 set but the phenomena of pleasure or grief. But 
 that is the way of the kind of men that lack the 
 courage to set themselves a will. For any saner 
 kind of men, the value of life is not measured by 
 the standard of such accessory things. — ' Life is 
 not worth living ' and on the other hand ' of what 
 use are tears.' That is a weak and sentimental 
 argumentation. . . . The fundamental instinct of all 
 vigorous natures is that there exists something which 
 is a hundred times more important than to know 
 whether we find ourselves well or not — and con- 
 sequently also to know whether others find them- 
 selves well or not. This instinct tells them that 
 we have an aim for which one does not hesitate to 
 make human sacrifices, to run the risk of all dan- 
 gers or to take the worst upon one's self. That 
 is the great passion. For the subjective is but a 
 fiction. The ego of which one speaks when one 
 blames egotism does not exist at all."
 
 THE THEORY 163 
 
 Opposed therefore to morality, the doctrine of 
 life unfolds the passions to cause man to live an 
 ardent and superior life. Superior to what? Su- 
 perior always to something, always to itself, and 
 more and more to itself since man's nature, law 
 and aim is to rise above himself. The will to power 
 in its end and, perhaps, even in its very essence 
 is precisely the will to live dangerously. And the 
 dangerous life, the first life of man, if we go back 
 along the course of time, is the only vita vitalis, 
 the only one that is worth the trouble of living and 
 that is worthy to be lived. Decadence is pre- 
 cisely what so many men call progress; it is the 
 passage from life dangerous to the flat and ignoble 
 life of security. 
 
 One will scoff at this philosopher who in his 
 peaceful study or on the shore of the Mediterranean 
 Sea, at last pacified, intoxicates himself in this way 
 with the beauty of perilous and tumultuous life. 
 He confesses that his own existence is most un- 
 worthy and despicable enough when compared to 
 that of the conqueror or the explorer. But we all 
 do what we can, and he does also what he must 
 when he gives himself merrily to his true passion. 
 The philosopher himself has his own passionate 
 and dangerous life. He has his passionate life, and 
 his passion is the obstinate and sorrowful quest 
 of truth. He is himself one of those that " seek 
 with mourning." He has his dangerous life and 
 in order to conquer truth he defies the prejudices 
 and the scorn of men. He also defies, and that is 
 more sorrowful, the resistance, the revolts and the
 
 164 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 cries of anguish of the " old man " who must be 
 always torn, bit by bit, if one is to put him off and to 
 liberate and install the new man. There you have 
 the little battlefield and the little garden of sorrows 
 of the philosophers, which, after all, are not without 
 their greatness, as Nietzsche said in the finest page 
 that he wrote, and one of the finest pages ever 
 written. In media vita. — " No, life has not de- 
 ceived me. On the contrary I find it from year to 
 year richer, more desirable, and more mysterious, 
 since the day when came to me the great liberator, 
 the thought that life might be an experience to the 
 man that seeks knowledge, instead of a duty, a 
 fatality and a trickery. Let knowledge itself be 
 another thing to others, such as a resting couch, or 
 the road to a resting couch, or a game or a careless 
 stroll. To me it is a world of dangers and vic- 
 tories in which the heroic sentiments display them- 
 selves and have also their dancing place and their 
 hall for games. Life is a means to knowledge. 
 With this principle in our heart, we may not only 
 live bravely, but also live with joy and laugh for 
 sheer joy. And how could one know how to 
 laugh and live well if one had not experienced first 
 both the fighting and the victory ? "
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 DEVELOPING THE THEORY. 
 
 Upon reaching this stage in the evolution of his 
 thought Nietzsche was, I beheve, confronted with 
 an objection which my readers must have felt more 
 than once in the previous chapters. This rule, 
 this ideal, this standard of life, applies but to a 
 small number of men. It is not, of course, a moral- 
 ity since we know that Nietzsche will not hear that 
 word. It is not a morality, since morality should 
 of course be universal. It is not even a general 
 doctrine, not a doctrine with any degree of gen- 
 erality. It is not a thing that it were good to tell 
 many men, nor even one that could be told to many 
 men. It is something like the password of an 
 elite ; something like a code of rules for the use of 
 the general staff of humanity. 
 
 Could you really go to the masses, to the coarse 
 masses and tell them : be selfish and give yourselves 
 up to your passions ; be selfish not merely without 
 any scruple but even dashingly, cheerfully and en- 
 thusiastically ; give yourself to your passions with 
 all your courage? The mass, the mob, has — you 
 are well aware of it — but a dull selfishness and 
 low passions. Their expansion — you know it well 
 — not only will have nothing of strength or beauty, 
 
 165
 
 l66 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 nothing of the Apollonian or the Dionysian; but 
 it will prove, moreover, abominably detrimental to 
 the mass, and would fast lead it beyond any doubt 
 to death. What then do you make of your rule of 
 life? How would you overcome this difficulty? 
 Q«o vadisf or simply quidf 
 
 Nietzsche realized very well this natural and un- 
 avoidable objection. He realized it not merely at 
 a certain precise stage in the evolution of his 
 thought as I supposed it a minute ago for the sake 
 of convenience and to make clearer my exposition; 
 he realized it throughout the whole of his intel- 
 lectual life or very near, as we can see when 
 reading almost any of his works. He was driven to 
 it as into a corner through his own motion. He 
 was not concerned about it ; he neither avoided it nor 
 went around it. He dashed straight at it, and ac- 
 cepting it in its whole; he destroyed it. 
 
 He answered : " what you say is right. My rule 
 of life is not meant for the masses, it is meant for 
 an elite that alone represents humanity, that alone 
 is truly humanity, and that should govern human- 
 ity and truly despise the masses, their temperament, 
 complexion, customs and prejudices. My theory 
 is essentially and radically aristocratic." 
 
 As is nearly always the case this was at once 
 cause and effect. Nietzsche's theory drove him per- 
 force to aristocratism, and Nietzsche, who was an 
 aristocrat by nature and temperament, has derived 
 his theory from his own aristocratic tendencies. 
 Nietzsche was an aristocrat because he was an im- 
 moralist and he was an immorahst because he was
 
 DEVELOPING THE THEORY 167 
 
 an aristocrat. His master idea which was at the 
 same time philosophical and historical, was that 
 morality, had been invented by the people to re- 
 strain, muzzle, curb and paralyze those that were 
 strong and those that were beautiful, those that 
 wished to live in force and beauty; and that the 
 people being patient and crafty had thoroughly suc- 
 ceeded. The people with their lower instincts can 
 live neither in beauty nor in force. They want to 
 live dully, peacefully, safely and gently, and never 
 to do great things. They love the dangerous life 
 not at all. They want to eat bread, to look on at the 
 circus, to reproduce themselves, to drink sometimes, 
 to sing a few silly songs, to work as little as possible, 
 and not at all if they can, and, finally, to die very 
 late. They have their own art, at all times the same, 
 and one that characterizes their lives. It is an 
 art without imagination or lyricism, without sublim- 
 ity, without even the appearance or the intention 
 thereof. It is an art made up of timid, plaintive, 
 and insipid mawkishness, an art of romances or of 
 painting in the moving, touching manner. It is an 
 art purely elegiac or if you like altogether gemiith- 
 licli. On the other hand it is a coarsely comic art 
 made up of heavy jokes and jests of the knockabout 
 variety. There is nothing in this popular art of 
 any period that urges action, to enterprise, to an 
 energetic, diligent, rough, strong and beautiful 
 life. At all times and everywhere the people is a 
 " herd " of shy and supine creatures. 
 
 Feeling above themselves either a conquering 
 race which was not their own and which was imbued
 
 l68 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 with energetic instincts and an aspiration towards 
 the great and the beautiful, or a race sprung from 
 their own midst but which had acquired, through 
 auto-selection, and then heredity, these same in- 
 stincts, the people took very late, but take them 
 they did, measures destined to muzzle and ener- 
 vate that superior race. 
 
 These measures were of various kinds. In cer- 
 tain countries the superior kind had very wisely 
 provided against its union by marriage with the 
 plebeians. The plebes had no rest until they had 
 caused that injustice and that " immorality " to dis- 
 appear and until they had softened, cowed, de- 
 virilized the superior race through a mixture of 
 blood. 
 
 In other countries the same mob felt conscious of 
 its numbers and knew that, if there was union, num- 
 ber was a force. There the plebe weighed down the 
 elite with its own weight ; organizing agricultural, 
 industrial or military strikes, taking advantage of 
 the failures of the superior race, it entered the city 
 and the government thereof and practically drowned 
 the superior race in its own stream. And that was 
 the end of the conquering, civilizing, artistic and 
 ascendant city, of the city that honored human- 
 ity and was leading it to a brilliant destiny. 
 
 Finally, and almost everywhere, the people in- 
 vented morality. That is to say they submitted the 
 superior kind to their own ideas, having devised 
 some means to give and impose them and to make 
 them seem to be good, sane, just, compulsory and di- 
 vine ; and that whoever lacked those ideas should be
 
 DEVELOPING THE THEORY 169 
 
 despised. That was an incredibly clever trick, a 
 miraculous one; it was stupefying — but truly 
 woithy of admiration. We must evince no surprise 
 at the fact that it took a very long time to succeed, 
 since it is almost fabulous; but, in the end, it suc- 
 ceeded. The plebes succeeded in almost every coun- 
 try in introducing the scruple in the soul of the elite; 
 they caused the elite to say : " It is possible that what 
 I am doing is not good; it is possible that it is not 
 fair for me to do great, strong and beautiful things 
 by myself or with the help of people who do not 
 care for them.'' 
 
 Scruple is a disease, like repentance. As soon as 
 that disease was introduced in the soul of the elite, 
 no matter where, the elite was stupefied by it as 
 one becomes paralyzed by one of the poisons that 
 act on the nervous centers. Little by little, fol- 
 lowing the progress of the intoxication, it abdicated 
 and the instinct of mediocrity gradually replaced 
 the instinct of greatness; and that was a sort of 
 social bemiring. 
 
 Do you wish for a sketch of this popular morality? 
 " Where do you think morality could possibly find 
 its most dangerous and vindictive advocates? Here 
 is a man, a failure, who has not enough of a mind 
 to rejoice in it and who has just enough culture to 
 know what he lacks. Bored and sickened he has 
 nothing but scorn for himself. Possessing a small 
 inheritance he is unfortunately deprived of the last 
 solace, of the blessedness of work, the forget ful- 
 ness of one's self in a daily task. It may be that 
 such a man, who is at heart ashamed of his own
 
 I70 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 existence, is, moreover, harboring a few small vices. 
 He cannot prevent himself from being more and 
 more corrupted. He is irritated by a luxury to 
 vi^hich he has no right, or by a society too intellectual 
 for him to lead it. In such a failure the mind be- 
 comes a poison, culture becomes a poison, ownership 
 becomes a poison, solitude becomes a poison. Such 
 a man, poisoned through and through, ends by fall- 
 ing into a permanent state of vindictiveness. He 
 breathes revenge and a will to vengeance. What do 
 you think he needs, absolutely needs to give himself 
 from outside himself the appearance of being supe- 
 rior to the most intellectual men, to create for him- 
 self the joy of exacted vengeance, at least in his im- 
 agination ? Morality. You may swear to it ; it will 
 always be morality; always big words of morality, 
 always the big drum of justice, wisdom, reason, 
 holiness and virtue; always a stoic bearing (how 
 well does stoicism hide that which one does not 
 have!). Always the cloak of wise silence, of con- 
 descension, of gentleness, no matter what names one 
 may give to the cloak of the ideal under which hide 
 themselves the incurable belittlers of themselves who 
 are at the same time the incurably vain ones of the 
 earth. I must not be misunderstood. It does 
 happen sometimes that from among these born 
 enemies of the mind there are developed those rare 
 samples of humanity whom the people venerate as 
 saints and sages. It is from among such men that 
 emerge those monsters of morality who make a 
 ' splash ' who make history. St. Augustine was one 
 of them. The dread of the mind, the vengeance
 
 DEVELOPING THE THEORY I7I 
 
 against the mind, alas, how often have those vices 
 which are endowed with a true dynamic power 
 given birth to virtue ! Aye, to virtue ! Between 
 ourselves, the philosophers' pretension to wis- 
 dom, that most insane and immoderate pretension, 
 which has been raised here and there on earth, was 
 it not always to this day, in India as well as in 
 Greece, first of all a hiding place ? Sometimes per- 
 haps it took up the cloak of education, that point 
 of view which hallows so many lies, and they 
 have wished to show some tender care for beings 
 who are developing themselves and growing, for 
 disciples that must be often protected from them- 
 selves, from a faith in their teacher. But most of 
 the time wisdom is a hiding place for philosophers 
 in that which they dissimulate themselves because 
 of their age, their weariness, their lukewarmth or 
 their hardening, because they are sensing that they 
 are nearing their end with the sagacity or the instinct 
 that animals have before their death. They set 
 themselves apart, become silent, choose solitude and 
 take refuge in caves; then become sages. How so? 
 Is then wisdom a place where the philosopher hides 
 from his own mind ? " 
 
 This is the kind of people, the worst of whom be- 
 ing venomous impotent men, poisoned with their 
 own venom, and the best being timid and weak- 
 ened, sick men, and all of them jealous, who have 
 constituted at all times the grand army of morality. 
 •Morality is plcbcianism against the elite. It is 
 the conspiracy and the plot of all the cowardly in- 
 stincts against the lofty and energetic instincts.
 
 172 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 It is a plot against the ideal. It gives itself as an 
 ideal and succeeds, through I know not what tricks 
 of a cunning slave, in being taken seriously, in be- 
 ing worshiped by the very people against whom 
 it had been framed. 
 
 The slaves' shifts of which I spoke are many. 
 The inferior kind exploits pity for instance and 
 that is the most debilitating, anti-social feeling that 
 can exist. When pity enters the heart of the 
 superior kind the latter is lost and, with it, the 
 nation and a whole civilization, and one has to begin 
 all over again. 
 
 Again, the inferior kind " unlearning modesty 
 swells its needs," and its general ideas which are 
 but forms of its needs, " until it makes of them 
 cosmic and metaphysical values." The philosophers, 
 if that kind produces any and that does happen, are 
 admirable in operating the transformation. They 
 give out as general principles for the guidance of 
 humanity what is but the needs of the plebe, desires 
 of the plebe, jealousies of the plebe and confused as- 
 pirations of the plebe towards the particular form of 
 happiness that suits it. Again, the inferior kind 
 invents real sophisms such as that of the equality 
 of men without any one ever being able to discover 
 upon what ground, upon what scientific, historical, 
 ethnographical or ethical basis, or any basis you 
 may fancy, such an absurdity ever could have been 
 built. This idea of equality either the inferior 
 kind extracts from religion or it invents a religion 
 to confirm it. If there exists a religion which as- 
 serts that all men are equal before the Gods it
 
 DEV'ELOPING THE THEORY I73 
 
 gradually comes to the conclusion that consequently 
 — and what a consequence ! — all men must be 
 socially equal. Or else if it has once asserted that 
 all men, because they are men — and what a rea- 
 son ! — are equal, it imagines a religion that en- 
 dows this childishness with the authority of a 
 divine rule and the majesty of a celestial dogma. 
 Or again, these two ideas, these two confused 
 sentiments, the social and the religious, develop 
 themselves together without any one being able to 
 discover which has generated the other, and they 
 lend each other mutual help and support, and they 
 vie with each other to suppress the superior kind 
 and to drown and dissolve it in the plebe. 
 
 Again, the inferior kind invents the idea of 
 plurality, the idea of the right of plurality: what 
 must be done is what suits the greatest number ; 
 therefore the only thing to do is to count heads. 
 This is a confusion ludicrous if involuntary, and 
 hateful if deliberate, between the qualificative and 
 the quantitive. Is it a matter of counting or of 
 weighing? The general i§ one and the army a 
 hundred thousand. Is it the one who is one who 
 must obey those who are a hundred thousand? 
 If the quantity is to be preferred to the quality 
 it is incontestable that it is the general who must 
 obey or rather who should not exist at all. 
 
 Such are the principal shifts conscious or un- 
 conscious used by the inferior kind against the 
 superior. 
 
 Let us note that it also happens, and that is not 
 the least important factor in this evolution, that
 
 174 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 the " superior kind " gives way and ends in ** de- 
 faulting." " The superior kind defaults, I mean 
 the kind whose inexhaustible fecundity and power 
 maintained the belief in mankind. Think of what 
 we owe to Napoleon : almost every one of the 
 superior hopes of the century." The superior kind 
 disappears owing to exhaustion, following a long 
 effort, to the neglect of renewing itself by means 
 of the admission to its fold of the best elements of 
 the inferior kind, or through forgetfulness of its 
 principles and rules of action, through carelessness, 
 disgust, refining or artistic delicacy. The latter is 
 one of its own particular instincts and one of the 
 best but it should have nothing but its own share: 
 good taste. In that case good taste, in the end, en- 
 croaches upon the other instincts and destroys the 
 equilibrium. If through these means the superior 
 kind allows itself to be conquered and seduced by 
 the coarse sophisms of the plebe, it is lost and 
 with it goes the civilization it had created and of 
 which it is still, but futilely bearing the banner. 
 For " in this wise the whole existence of the nation 
 is vulgarized; because so long as the masses rule 
 they tyrannize the exceptional men, which causes 
 the latter to lose faith in themselves and drives 
 them to nihilism." 
 
 Let us take a trip along history and watch through 
 the accidents of the road and of the stages and 
 through the regressions, which we shall neglect, 
 the joint progress of this plebeianism and of this 
 morality, which are two diverse forms, hardly 
 diverse and hardly distinct, of one and the same
 
 DEVELOPING THE THEORY I75 
 
 thing. The Greeks and the Romans, these crea- 
 tors of two civiHzations, and, together, of all known 
 civilization, Greeks and Romans were at the same 
 time absolute aristocrats and inimoralists. Do not 
 speak to me of the Athenian democracy, a democ- 
 racy of a few thousand citizens set up above three 
 hundred thousand mongrels and slaves. Greeks 
 and Romans were thorough aristocrats. They 
 were also thorough immoralists. They knew but 
 one duty, the duty to the State. Please understand 
 that this means that here we have a superior kind 
 which acknowledges no duties towards the slaves 
 or the foreigner, toward the plebeian or towards 
 woman, and which knows but one duty, that to main- 
 tain itself ; for it is the State, to maintain itself in 
 health, in strength, in greatness, in beauty and in an 
 infinite capacity for expansion and development. 
 
 Such was the whole morality of the Greeks and 
 the Romans, and that comes back to saying that 
 Greeks and Romans had no morality. It is enough 
 to read Cicero's De Officiis, an admirable book 
 withal it dates from the beginning of the deca- 
 dence, well to understand that a Roman knew 
 no duties beyond those to his country. To tell 
 the iruth, these latter duties he knew well. 
 
 The Greeks and the Romans were therefore pure 
 aristocrats and i)ure immoralists. A superior kind 
 established itself one does not know very well in 
 what way, upon a rock promontory, upon seven 
 hills overlooking vast plains. That was the nucleus 
 of a great city and it attracted many individuals of 
 the inferior kind. It disciplined them, ruled them,
 
 176 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 and never thought of but one thing: to be strong, 
 great and beautiful. For that purpose it imposed 
 upon itself and upon its servants enormous and in- 
 cessant sacrifices. That is all. There is not a sha- 
 dow of morality in this. 
 
 They had a religion. 
 
 Precisely. That is a very curious point. They 
 had a religion ; but it was a religion altogether 
 of the city, all consecrated to the city, all civic. 
 The gods were but a sort of celestial Senate 
 above the Senate of here below, a sort of immortal 
 Senate above that of the mortals. The gods be- 
 longed to the city. They were superior citizens and 
 enlightened, severe and somewhat jealous protectors 
 of the city. They were Olympian aristo'i. That 
 religion was patriotic and was even as the very 
 sanctuary of patriotism. If it contained any 
 amount of morality, and it did that we must ad- 
 mit because there would always be infiltrations, at 
 least it contained so little of it that it was neces- 
 sary for philosophers to invent and create piecemeal 
 a morality beside that religion and outside of it 
 and somewhat against it, which last fact it some- 
 times made plain to the philosophers. Nothing 
 shows better that morality was at first most foreign 
 to these peoples. They were patriots. They were 
 religious from patriotism or rather they had the 
 cult of the motherland, but they were aristocrats 
 and consequently immoralists. And these peoples 
 are the greatest that antiquity and even the whole 
 of history has produced, and they shed untold glory 
 upon the planet which we inhabit.
 
 DEVELOPING THE THEORY I77 
 
 See now, further away, between the Mediterran- 
 ean peoples and the Oriental world, a small nation 
 belonging to another race. That nation also is 
 patriotic ; it also has its national god, its local god, 
 a provincial god, as it were. But its people are 
 not aristocrats. They are all of them plebeians and 
 they have a most peculiar morality which would 
 greatly astonish a Roman or a Greek. This little 
 nation has invented sin. Understand by this that 
 sin is not to them an action detrimental to a fellow 
 citizen and therefore a deed against the city. Sin 
 is to them a deed against God, an action that dis- 
 pleases God and can be wiped ofif through repentance 
 alone, through a prayer for pardon, a prayer for 
 grace, through contrition and self-abasement before 
 the ofTendcd divine majesty. This was a most 
 peculiar conception. It was equalitarian, because, 
 in presence of the divine greatness, all human great- 
 ness is equal, being in itself a mere nothing, and the 
 sin of the powerful and of the rich man is no less 
 grievous than any other, taken as an offence to God. 
 It was ecclesiastical, because if there were men in 
 the confidence of the divine thought and interpreters 
 thereof, they had to be the judges of sins and hold 
 rich and poor alikp, strong and weak alike, to 
 account for them. It was moral, because here was 
 no matter of a country to be defended, of a city to be 
 served, of a will to power to be used in helping 
 and supporting others. It was a matter of a code 
 given by a God, imposed ujion men in the interests 
 of that God and for his glory. That code com- 
 mands imperatively, gives no reasons and must be
 
 178 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 obeyed because it commands and for that reason 
 alone. The categorical imperative was born. 
 
 There you have morality, in this case altogether 
 religious. Elsewhere it will assume another shape 
 and follow different paths to success. But there 
 you have it such as we, the men of today, know 
 it. There it stands in its main features : " Origins 
 of sin." Sin as we view it today wherever Chris- 
 tianity rules or has ruled, sin is a Jewish sentiment 
 and a Jewish invention. Considering this basic plan 
 of all Christian morality, Christianity has in effect 
 sought to Juda'ise the whole world. We get the 
 best idea of the amount of success it achieved in 
 Europe from the degree of strangeness which the 
 Greek antiquity — a world free from the notion of 
 sin — retains before our sensibility in spite of all 
 the goodwill to bridge over and to assimilate which 
 has never been lacking throughout whole genera- 
 tions and in the minds of many men. ** Only if thou 
 repentest shall God be merciful to thee." Such 
 words would have aroused hilarity and anger in a 
 Greek. He would have exclaimed : " Here are 
 slaves' sentiments 1 " Here, among the Hebrews, a 
 God is accepted who is powerful, supremely power- 
 ful and yet he is an avenging and vindictive God. 
 His power is so great that one can generally cause 
 him no damage, unless it be in what pertains to 
 honor. Every sin is a sign of lack of respect in 
 him, a crimen laesae majestatis divinae, and it is 
 nothing more than that. Contrition, dishonor, 
 abasement, here are the first and last conditions 
 upon which his grace depends. What he demands
 
 DEVELOriNG THE THEORY 1/9 
 
 therefore is the re-establishment of his divine 
 honor, reparation for his divine honor. That, on 
 the other hand, the sin may have caused a damage, 
 may have entailed a profound and growing disaster 
 which is snatching and strangling one man after 
 another, that matters little to this oriental despot 
 who is enthroned above in the heavens. The sin 
 was a lapse towards him and not towards humanity ! 
 He grants also that indifference to the natural se- 
 quence of sin to the man to whom he has given 
 his grace. God and humanity (or the city) are 
 here imagined so far apart, so much in opposition 
 to each other that it is fundamentally impossible to 
 sin against the latter. Ever>' deed must be con- 
 sidered only in view of its supernatural conse- 
 quences, without a care for the natural conse- 
 quences. Thus the Jewish sentiment will have it 
 because, to them, everything that is natural is in itself 
 unworthy. The Greeks, on the contrary, willingly 
 accepted the idea that sacrilege also and even theft 
 could be endowed with dignity, as was the case 
 with Prometheus. ... It was in their need to 
 imagine dignity in sacrifice, and to incorporate it 
 therein that they had invented tragedy — an art and 
 a joy which, notwithstanding the poetical gifts 
 and the taste of the Jews for the sublime, remained 
 deeply foreign to that people. 
 
 This morality took other paths also as I said, 
 and, under somewhat different aspects, we see its 
 birth among the Greeks, in the Socratic times, 
 while it remained in a stationary state with the 
 Jews, later to expand and to pour itself out like a
 
 l80 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 torrent. The following idea took root among the 
 Greeks of the days of Socrates: Morality — that 
 is the becoming personally better, that is the being 
 loved by one's neighbors and one's kin, that is 
 the being harmless — morality is something which 
 is superior to everything and must regulate every- 
 thing, in relation to which all things must be regu- 
 lated, and to which all things must be subordinated. 
 
 You may mention science. That means little 
 and the greatest savant is the man that knows that 
 he knows nothing. But if there does exist some- 
 thing that calls itself knowledge, it only has any 
 value (i) if it is not opposed to morality (2) if 
 it tends thereto, leads thereto, if it serves and 
 supports morality. 
 
 You may mention politics and sociology. Politics 
 only have a value if their aim is to make men 
 happy by making them better men and if they 
 achieve that result, and consequently if they act, 
 strictly and undividedly, as soldiers of morality, 
 workers of morality and handmen of morality. 
 
 You may mention the arts. They are despicable 
 matters, like cooking or cosmetics, unless perhaps, 
 (but it is doubtful whether they are capable of 
 that) they serve to teach or to prompt morality. 
 
 There lay the whole of Socratism — to bring all 
 human occupations, all human efforts and all human 
 recreations back to morality as being their ulti- 
 mate aim, to admit them as justified by that aim 
 and sanctified thereby if, that is, they do tend 
 towards it, and to proscribe and brand them if it 
 is proved, or evident or merely likely, that they are
 
 DEVELOPING THE THEORY l8l 
 
 not tending to morality or that they cannot reach 
 it : " The conmion feature in the history of moral- 
 ity since Socrates, is the attempt to bring the moral 
 values above all the other values in order that they 
 become, not only the judges and guides of life, but 
 also the judges and guides (i) of knowledge (2) 
 of the arts (3) of the political and social aspira- 
 tions. To become better is considered the only 
 task. All the rest is but a means to that end — or 
 else it is a perturbation, an obstacle or a danger 
 and must be fought therefore to destruction. A 
 similar movement can be traced in China and there 
 is one also in India." 
 
 What are the reasons for that state of mind. 
 ( I ) The herd instinct directed against the strong 
 and independent men. (2) The instinct of the dis- 
 inherited and suffering ones directed against those 
 who are happy. (3) The instinct of the mediocre 
 ones directed against the exceptions. So soon as 
 any single one of these instincts assumes some 
 strength in a human race, it upsets the order of 
 the values. No longer is it the strength of body 
 and heart which is prized. It is the timidity and 
 the regularity of private life. No longer is it 
 splendor, fine lu.xury, artistic and patrician magnify 
 icence which are looked upon with admiration. 
 It is suitable property, the narrow economic life 
 of the small bourgeois or sometimes the abstinence 
 or the useless asceticism of the stoic, the cynic or 
 the cenobite. No longer is it genius which draws 
 admiration ; on the contrary it is looked upon as 
 dangerous and almost insolent. Our admiration
 
 l82 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 goes to mediocrity of the mind, of the soul, of the 
 character and of the daily life, which mediocrity 
 is held to be the ideal that all should realize, and 
 it goes to a social level beyond which no one must 
 venture, the penalty being ostracism or death. It 
 was after the Greco-Roman world had already 
 started upon that descent that Christianity ap- 
 peared. 
 
 We must set Jesus apart, of whom but little is 
 known and who seems to have been, if we try to 
 visualize him through the contradictions of doc- 
 trine and of tendencies shown by the Gospels, much 
 more an aristocratic mystic than a plebeian — we 
 must set him apart because the idea of justice was 
 unbearable to him, and in these matters the notion 
 of justice is the one touchstone. It is quite likely 
 that, as Aristophanes took Socrates for a sophist, 
 so did the Pharisees take Jesus for a plebeian, for 
 the last of the Prophets, for a demagogue; while 
 he was perhaps the very opposite of one. How- 
 ever, we do not know. We must needs set Jesus 
 apart since of him, all things considered, nothing 
 is known. 
 
 But Christianity, such as it was built up by St. 
 Paul and his disciples, was the greatest moral and 
 plebeian movement of known history. In sooth it 
 was the very advent of plebeianism as I have previ- 
 ously said: "The main idea was to bring to the 
 top a certain category of souls. It was a popular 
 insurrection in the midst, first of a sacerdotal 
 people," then of nations that had remained aristo- 
 cratic albeit they already had some plebeian tend-
 
 DEVELOPING THE THEORY 183 
 
 encies and therefore were all prepared for the 
 arrival of the new one. It was a pietist move- 
 ment sprung from people of the depths, fishermen, 
 toll-gatherers, women, sick people, then the plebeian 
 mob of Antioch, Corinth, Rome, the African cities, 
 the mob of all the capitals and all the great towns. 
 
 Note the long abstention of the peasants. The 
 peasants are the last pagans (pagani) not merely 
 because news reaches them more slowly and be- 
 cause they are the backward ones in all periods, 
 but also because the spirit of submission to the 
 exception is a primitive sign, while the spirit of 
 equality, that is to say, the spirit of domination of 
 the mediocrity over the exception, is a modern 
 sign in each civilization, otherwise a symptom of the 
 decomposition of that civilization. 
 
 Note the prompt and ardent adhesion of the 
 women. It may perhaps have been due to senti- 
 mentalism, to emotion felt at the story of the mar- 
 tyrdom, the hysteria of the Cross, a disease since 
 then very much studied and well known. It was 
 due to this especially, which is more simple and 
 natural, that woman was, in the antiquity, a slave 
 and that the notion of equality struck her at once 
 as an arrow. It was due to this also, that woman 
 is essentially mediocre in the precise sense of the 
 word, more intelligent than the man in the lower 
 classes, and less intelligent than the man in the 
 higher classes, that she often reaches a most re- 
 markable intellectual development but never reaches 
 genius, that she is therefore mediocre, average 
 and consequently very favorable, as soon as she
 
 184 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 can grasp its meaning, as soon as she can get an 
 inkling of it, to the rule of the middle classes, to 
 the reign of the mediocre ones and to the domina- 
 tion of the mediocre ones over the exceptional ones 
 and to the proscription of the exceptions. Femin- 
 inity is a ready-made plebeianism, a plebeianism 
 natural. Democracies will naturally tend to the 
 establishment of political suffrage for women; they 
 would even accommodate themselves very easily 
 to the political suffrage of the women alone, to be 
 ruled by the women. That sort of government 
 would truly prove very good for them and ensure 
 them with certainty that kind of happiness and 
 social welfare which has their preference. It was 
 due to this also, that women, much more than men, 
 need morality, need that the weak be held sacred 
 and the strong held in check, bridled with scruples, 
 shackled and choked with a conscience, hesitating 
 about his rights and blushing of his very strength. 
 
 Thus armed, Christianity vanquished the old 
 world. It persuaded humanity that it needed to be 
 mediocre, low, somewhat ugly, not led by the strong, 
 courageous and intelligent men, not illustrated and 
 nobly intoxicated by the artists, but led by those 
 who fast and pray, and scornful of the men who 
 have the sense of the beautiful. 
 
 The strong, the courageous, the intelligent men 
 and the artists never abdicate, or at least they 
 never resign, and they have, later on, partly regained 
 their positions even in Christianity, as priests, 
 bishops, popes, preachers, founders of religious 
 orders, painters, sculptors and architects. Yet
 
 DEVELOPING THE THEORY 185 
 
 for a long time the spirit of Christianity remained 
 what we have just seen. It was never altogether 
 abolished nor even modified to any large extent, and 
 this has had mighty consequences, as we shall see. 
 
 The Roman Empire was enervated and disor- 
 ganized, in the precise meaning of that word; its 
 organism was undermined by a number of causes 
 but especially by that spirit of Christianity, con- 
 cerning which it was under no illusion is was 
 proved by the persecutions with which it attempted 
 to defend itself. It fell a fairly easy prey to the 
 Barbarians. The Barbarians were neither intelli- 
 gent nor artistic but they were courageous and 
 strong, organized according to force, and free from 
 any spirit of weakness in their constitution or their 
 habits. They won. 
 
 They won, but Christianity seduced and capti- 
 vated them ; it domesticated them. How did it ever 
 succeed in that? Nietzsche points out the fact, ex- 
 presses his surprise but does not explain it: "A 
 nihilistic religion comes from a tired and stale 
 nation and outlives all the violent instincts inherent 
 to that nation. It is gradually carried into another 
 sphere and penetrates at last young nations zvhich 
 have not yet lized at all} How strange that is! 
 A happiness of decline and of eventide, a shepherd's 
 happiness preached to barbarians, to Germans! 
 How much need there was first of all to Germanize 
 and to barbarize all that! To those that had 
 dreamed of a Valhalla! To those that found all 
 
 1 Underlined by Nietzsche, perhaps as an explanation?
 
 i86 
 
 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 happiness to lay in warfare ! A supernational 
 religion, preached in the midst of a chaos wherein 
 there did not even exist any nations ! " 
 
 As a matter of fact, it is difficult to find the 
 explanation. It may be that those barbaric warriors 
 were seduced by the legend of God Who Was Made 
 Man, of God making Himself man in order to bring 
 glad tidings to humanity and suffering death through 
 that undertaking. That sentimental idea must have 
 a very great hold upon all men and especially upon 
 simple and rough men. " Oh, had I but been 
 there with my barons ! " ^ 
 
 It may be that the Barbarians, as they began to 
 win and advanced through fertile lands and found 
 milder climates, lost some of their barbarism, ceased 
 to think that all happiness lay in warfare and took 
 readily, as they settled down and became founders 
 of nations, to a religion of rest, quiet and gentle- 
 ness. 
 
 It may be that they felt those priests to be at 
 heart their auxiliaries, as being the enemies of the 
 old Romans, of the traditionalist Romans who 
 were attached to their gods and the memory of 
 them, attached to paganism as holding the strength 
 of their ancient institutions and civilization, or as 
 having brilliantly expressed them. Barbarians and 
 Christian priests were equally enemies of ancient 
 Rome. That was enough for them to agree, or, at 
 least, it was the road to an agreement. Then again, 
 
 1 Exclamation attributed to Clovis, the founder of the 
 Prankish dynasty (465-511) when he was converted to 
 Christianity. — (Translator's Note.)
 
 DEVELOPING THE THEORY iSj 
 
 as Nietzsche remarked with his usual finesse: " they 
 must have begun by very much Germanizing and 
 barbarizing all that." 
 
 The fact is there at all events. The Barbarians 
 became Christians and that may have been an evil. 
 The world was handed over to Christianity. 
 
 Christianity, in truth, evolved itself. It ceased 
 to be demagogical. It became aristocratic and as- 
 pired, in the person of its leaders, either at sharing 
 the power of government or at monopolizing it 
 wholly by ruling the ruling power itself. It ceased 
 to be anti-artistic, anti-Apollonian or anti-Dionysian, 
 became most refined in the person of its chiefs and 
 called the artists and the other joys of life to its 
 fold. The ancient spirit was taking its revenge. 
 The Renaissance, beloved of the Popes, was but a 
 resurrection of Hellenism and of the Hellenic spirit. 
 
 But please note two points. First of all, the 
 Christian spirit, the true Christian spirit, remained 
 throughout in the popular clergy, in the clergy- 
 people, in that clergy which in olden days elected 
 the bishops, in that clergy which in olden days en- 
 joyed the right to marry, in that dispossessed small 
 clergy — large in numbers — which is the democ- 
 racy of the Church, which shall never be very fond 
 of Rome, which shall never love the powerful ones, 
 either temporal or spiritual, which shall never love 
 the artists, and which shall speak the demagogical 
 and socialistic language against the powerful ones 
 of the earth at the times of trouble and license, 
 that is at the times when it can speak. On the eve 
 of the French Revolution that clergy was ready
 
 l88 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 to make it and contributed, as a matter of fact, very 
 strongly to its first approach and its first victories. 
 
 There have ever been two superimposed Chris- 
 tianities. One was a perverted Christianity, an 
 Hellenized and Romanized Christianity of which it 
 could be said : " Graecia capta ferum victor em 
 cepit." The other was the true Christianity of 
 Jewish origin, of the " Hebrew Prophet " brand, 
 the democratic, plebeian and plebeianistic Christian- 
 ity which kept alive, and caused to persevere in the 
 being. Saint Paul's own spirit. 
 
 Note the second point. It is not more important, 
 but more striking, than the first. Withal, they are 
 at bottom the same. Whenever Christians have 
 wished to revert to the primitive Church, to the 
 spirit, the character, the moral state and the state 
 of soul of the primitive Church, it was a plebeian 
 revolution which they made or attempted. Thus 
 came the anti-Roman, anti-aristocratic, anti-artistic, 
 very soon equalitarian Lutheran movement, which 
 became republican and mingled with socialistic ideas, 
 feelings or tendencies. 
 
 Thus came the anti-Roman, anti-aristocratic, anti- 
 literary, anti-artistic, profoundly " moral " Jansen- 
 istic movement, as much moral as Calvinism, which, 
 moreover, was of French origin, and unconsciously 
 Republican, and upon this point Louis XIV was un- 
 der no delusion. 
 
 Something should be said for the benefit of the 
 fools who attack religion, or, if one likes, of the 
 men who attack religion in a foolish manner: 
 " The struggle against the Church is certainly also,
 
 DEVELOPING THE THEORY 189 
 
 among other things, the struggle of the more vulgar, 
 more gay, more familiar and superficial natures 
 against tlie domination of the men who are heavier, 
 deeper, more contemplative, that is to say, more 
 wicked and distrustful, who long ruminate the sus- 
 picions that come to them concerning the value of 
 existence and also their own value. The vulgar in- 
 terest of the people, its joy of the senses, its * good 
 heart ' revolted against those men. The whole 
 Roman Church rests upon a southern mistrust of 
 human nature, a mistrust always ill-understood in 
 the north. That mistrust was inherited by south- 
 em Europe from the deep East, mysterious antique 
 Asia and its contemplative spirit. Already Prot- 
 estantism was a popular revolt in favor of the 
 reliable, candid and superficial people. The North 
 was ever heavier and more insipid than the South." ^ 
 We find then that there existed between the high 
 Catholic clergy and the low Catholic clergy, and in 
 a more general way, between the Catholics above 
 and those below, and in a still more general way, 
 between the Christians above and those below, the 
 same difference, the same antinomy and the same 
 hidden struggle which exist at all possible times 
 between the superior and the inferior kinds. Yet 
 there always remained in Christianity that primitive 
 spirit in favor of the inferior kind, that deeply 
 plebeian primitive spirit, that primitive spirit which 
 had freed woman and .slave, that primitive spirit 
 which had called the poor to the Kingdom of God 
 
 1 Fapiict wisely had this quotation followed by a query 
 mark in his text.— (.Traiiblator's Note.)
 
 IQO ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 and represented the entrance of the rich therein as 
 impossible, that primitive spirit which, all things 
 considered, was truly a protest and an insurrection 
 against the whole of antiquity and against all prin- 
 ciples and ideas — aristocratism, slavery, virilism, 
 taste for the strong and beautiful — upon which 
 antiquity had rested, and which had given it all its 
 virtue and all its strength. 
 
 Then came the French Revolution which was but 
 an incident. It was nevertheless a considerable 
 incident in the history of plebeianism. It was an 
 explosion of that plebeian, equalitarian, optimistic 
 and moral spirit. As we all know, the whole 
 French Revolution is expressed in two words : 
 Equality, National Sovereignty. The rest was so 
 very little its true spirit that it was obsolete from 
 the outset, was very soon abandoned and has never 
 been seriously taken up again unless by the enemies 
 of the French Revolution and those it injured in 
 their interests. Equality and national sovereignty 
 are nothing else but pure and simple plebeianism, 
 unalloyed and utterly irreconcilable with anything 
 that is not itself. Because note that if equality 
 is destructive of liberty, which has been proved a 
 hundred times, and which facts have proved in the 
 past, are proving now and shall ever prove better 
 than could any reasoning, national sovereignty itself 
 destroys equality. It assuredly destroys equality it- 
 self because, if it is plurality that rules without 
 any corrective, what does take place? This, to wit 
 that the superior kind, the elite, the exceptional 
 ones are purely and simply suppressed. Their
 
 DEVELOPING THE THEORY I9I 
 
 thoughts, feelings, judgments, tastes do not count. 
 They are sacriticed. So that there is not equality 
 between all the citizens; there is oppression of the 
 superiors by the inferiors, of the elite by the " herd- 
 animals," or, if you like, of the exceptions by the 
 average. Democracy suppresses the exceptions. 
 It organizes the oppression of the smaller by the 
 greater number. It turns the " superior kind " into 
 a caste of pariahs. That is not at all equality. 
 
 Yet that is precisely what the Revolution wanted. 
 It wanted at heart neither liberty, nor fraternity 
 nor even equality. It wanted the sovereignty of the 
 greater number, that is to say, the oppression and 
 hence the short and swift suppression of the higher 
 class, that is to say again, pure and simple plebeian- 
 ism. The Revolution was plebeianism itself in its 
 purest, most decisive and conscious state : " It was 
 the French Revolution that placed definitely and 
 solemnly the scepter in the hand of the ' good ' man, 
 the lamb, the ass, the goose, and of all that is dull 
 and brawling, ripe for the mad house of modem 
 ideas." 
 
 This of course, in the name of morality, in the 
 name of that plebeian morality, the evolution of 
 which we hcve carefully followed. It is interest- 
 ing to consider that Rousseau, Kant and Robes- 
 pierre are hand in hand: Rousseau the very type of 
 the plebeian moralist, with his sentimentalist effu- 
 sions, his moralizing pathos, resembling that of a 
 Calvinist pastor, his taste for life mediocre, peace- 
 ful and idyllic, his gcmiitli, his hatred of tlie arts 
 and the letters; Kant with his fine philosophical
 
 192 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 intelligence, but a man that remained ever as if 
 hypnotized by the vision of a beautiful moral 
 building to be erected upon an unshakable basis ; 
 Robespierre with his soul of plebeian priest, nar- 
 row, authoritative and fanatical. " All philosoph- 
 ers have constructed their monuments under the 
 seduction of morality ; Kant no less than the others 
 (more than the others). Their intention merely 
 seemed to bear towards certainty, truth and knowl- 
 edge. But, in truth, they aimed at the majestic 
 monument of morality, to use once more the inno- 
 cent language of Kant who held it to be his task 
 and his work, to be the task ' less brilliant but 
 not without merit ' to ' level and straighten the 
 ground upon which that majestic moral edifice was 
 to be built.' Alas, he did not succeed; quite the 
 contrary, we must admit today. With intentions of 
 that kind, Kant was truly the son of his century. 
 . . . He also had been bitten by that moral tarantula 
 that stung Rousseau; he also felt his soul weighed 
 down by that moral fanaticism of which another 
 disciple of Rousseau believed himself and pro- 
 claimed himself to be the executor. I mean Robes- 
 pierre, who wished to found upon earth the empire 
 of wisdom, justice and virtue (his speech of June 
 
 7, 1794) " 
 
 This line is continued unto our own days by the 
 
 true heirs of the French Revolution, and the only 
 
 logical ones. They are the Socialists of all shades, 
 
 " the most honest and the most stupid race in the 
 
 world." They simply wish, and with much reason 
 
 if one were to admit the revolutionary principle.
 
 DEVELOPING THE THEORY I93 
 
 that equality should become real, that there be no 
 longer any superior kind, in any way, neither by 
 riches, or titles, or honors, or more complete edu- 
 cation, or higher culture. They wish to suppress 
 every exception. They want the reign of equality, 
 justice and concord established upon earth : ** That 
 reign would be, in all imaginable cases, that of 
 mediocrity and one resembling that of the Empire 
 of China." In admiring the Chinese as they were so 
 fond of doing, the philosophers of the XVTIIth 
 century seem to have understood what they were 
 saying and to have distinctly seen where led the 
 theories that were dear to them. 
 
 But this thought of destroying the elite and sup- 
 pressing the exception is a dream. It is a very 
 fanciful idea. The exception is a natural thing 
 and will always happen. The men of elite are the 
 product of nature and will always be born. 
 
 To be sure ; yet to begin with it is not quite 
 true. Plebeianism by preventing the superior kind 
 from refining and strengthening itself by heredity 
 reduces its numbers. On the other hand, in pre- 
 venting the superior kind from developing itself 
 through a distinct education and culture, and care- 
 fully reducing it to the rudimentary education, 
 which can be given to all it reduces its numbers still 
 further. Plebeianism reduces the superior kind to 
 its minimum. It brings it back to being composed 
 merely of the individuals that are born very distin- 
 guished and most exceptional, and whose force of 
 ascent nothing could stop. 
 
 Moreover, plebeianism still further diminishes
 
 194 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 the superior kind through discouraging it. When 
 plebeianism rules, what advantage could a man who 
 is born superior find in cultivating, developing or 
 merely allowing others to see his superiority? His 
 own interest is to hide it. To show it would be to 
 make himself suspected. To show it would be to 
 denounce himself. To show it would be to pro- 
 claim himself candidate for a pariah, and would 
 mean that very soon he would be classified in fact 
 as a pariah. Under a plebeian regime of what use 
 is it to have any merit? It is the contrary which 
 proves advantageous. " Let us be mediocre and 
 not give ourselves the pain of becoming oppressed." 
 Thus reason many men of merit, and thus again is 
 the superior kind further decreased. Minimum of 
 a minimum. 
 
 There remain nevertheless in the end those very 
 few men who are very superior, who cannot agree to 
 hide or to strangle their superiority, or who can in 
 truth neither repress it, so strong is it, nor hide it, 
 so radiant is it. But plebeianism is not sorry that 
 these men should exist, because they threaten it 
 with no danger owing to their small number, and be- 
 cause they afford it matter for triumph. There 
 must be pariahs so that one may feel one's self part 
 of a dominating class, and there must be oppressed 
 men so that we can enjoy the pleasure of feeling 
 ourselves oppressors. Do you think that the French 
 plebeianism, a very benevolent one but one that is 
 nevertheless jealous of its legitimate prerogatives, 
 did not derive great pleasure from seeing that re- 
 nown? Taine and Pasteur had no influence what-
 
 DEVELOPING THE TUEORY I95 
 
 soever in the state and were nothing in the city. 
 That is the very victory of democracy, that genius 
 enjoys less rights in it than mediocrity or sottish- 
 ness. Consequently it is necessary that there should 
 be men of genius for democracy to be able to taste 
 its triumph in setting them aside, for democracy 
 to be able even to take consciousness of itself in re- 
 pelling them and in saying to them : " I know ye 
 not." If the superior kind had utterly disappeared, 
 plebeianism would feel the boredom of the too com- 
 plete victories, and would feel no longer the pleas- 
 ure of being itself. It would lose the passion of 
 itself, which is both the salt and the spur of life. 
 
 Therefore the natural movement of rising ple- 
 beianism consists in diminishing by all the means 
 that we have seen the superior kind, while pre- 
 serving a few specimens, or rather in congratulating 
 itself that there shall always be a few samples 
 thereof. 
 
 This decadence of a society or a civilization in the 
 same measure as aristocratism declines is quite 
 patent to the eyes if we consider the three centuries 
 which we have studied. The various " sensibili- 
 ties "of the last three centuries can best be ex- 
 pressed as follows: "Aristocratism: Descartes, 
 the rule of reason, proof of the sovereignty in the 
 will — Feminism: Rousseau, reign of sentiment, 
 proof of the sovereignty in the senses, lies. — 
 Animalism: Schopenhauer, reign of the appetites, 
 proof of the sovereignty of the animal instincts, 
 more true but also more gloomy. 
 
 " The 17th century is aristocratic ; it co-ordinates,
 
 196 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 it is haughty towards everything that is animal, 
 stern towards the heart, deprived of sentimental- 
 ism, non-German, ungemiithlich; opposed to what 
 is burlesque and natural. It has the generaHzing 
 spirit, sovereign towards the past; because it be- 
 lieves in itself. At heart it holds much more of 
 the ferocious beast and to retain mastery practices 
 the ascetic discipline. The century of the strength 
 of will is also that of the violent passions. The 
 1 8th century is dominated by woman. It is en- 
 thusiastic, witty, and colorless, but it has spirit 
 for the service of its aspiration and of the heart. 
 It is libertine in the enjoyment of all the most intel- 
 lectual things, and undermines all the authorities. 
 It is intoxicated, lucid, human and sociable; it is 
 false before itself, and at heart quite rascally. 
 The 19th century is more animal-like, more earthy, 
 uglier, more realistic, more mobbish, and because 
 of that * better and more honest ' . . . but weaker 
 in will, sad, confusedly exacting, but fatalistic. 
 Neither fear nor veneration in the presence of rea- 
 son any more than in the presence of the heart; 
 secretly persuaded of the domination of the appetites 
 . . . morality itself is reduced to an instinct (com- 
 passion)." 
 
 Does plebeianism with the instincts we now know 
 to be its own, capture the State? It is interesting 
 to know what it does with the State and let us say 
 it right here for the sake of clearness, to know how 
 thoroughly it disfigures it. What is the State in its 
 principle? It is a league of defense against an 
 enemy considered to be powerful, dangerous and
 
 DEVELOPING THE THEORY I97 
 
 imminent. " The community is at its beginning the 
 organization of the weak ones to balance threaten- 
 ing forces, ... or in order to become superior to 
 those threatening forces." Most of the time that 
 organization merely consists in placing one's self 
 in the hands of a man himself powerful, who in 
 truth differs not at all from the powerful enemy 
 against whom one wishes to defend one's self. " The 
 brigand, and the strong man who promises to a 
 community that he will protect it against the brigand, 
 are probably both very much alike, with this one 
 difference, that the second reaches his own advan- 
 tage by a diflferent path, that is to say, by means of 
 regular tributes which the community shall pay him 
 and no longer by war levies. The same relation 
 exists between the merchant and the pirate who can 
 both, for a long time, remain one and the same man : 
 as soon as one of the two functions seems no longer 
 a prudent one, they take up the other. At bottom, 
 even to-day, the merchant's morality is but the mo- 
 rality of a better-advised pirate: it is a matter of 
 buying as cheaply as possible, of spending unless in- 
 dispensable nothing but the expenses of the under- 
 taking, and of selling as dearly as possible. The 
 essential point is that this powerful man promises to 
 balance the brigand : the weak ones see therein the 
 possibility for them to live. Because it is necessary 
 either that they should group themselves to form an 
 equivalent power or else that they submit themselves 
 to a man who is able to counterbalance that power. 
 As a rule the preference is given to that second 
 process, because it checks two dangerous men, the
 
 198 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 first by means of the second and the second by the 
 advantage which is guaranteed him. The protector 
 gains in well-treating those that are bound to him 
 so that they may both feed themselves well and feed 
 him well." 
 
 There you have the origin of the State. There is 
 here nothing absolutely that is " moral." It is a 
 bargain. Some men have bought a beast of prey to 
 turn it into a defender. Thus does one buy a watch 
 dog. Nothing is more natural or legitimate, but 
 there is absolutely no morality in it. 
 
 But let us go still a little further and note that 
 the State is even an organized immorality. " Prin- 
 ciple : only the individuals feel themselves to be re- 
 sponsible. Collectivities have been invented to do 
 things that the individual does not have the cour- 
 age to do " and that he scruples to do. " The 
 whole of altruism is a result of the intelligence of 
 the private man ; societies are not altruistic towards 
 each other. The Commandment to love one's 
 neighbor has not yet been broadened by any one 
 into the commandment to love the others. On the 
 contrary we must consider as true what we find in 
 the laws of Manu," as a parenthesis, one may 
 add that this shows why the study of the societies, 
 by the consideration of what they are at the pres- 
 ent time or by historical researches, is so useful to 
 help the knowledge, the true knowledge of man. 
 Effectively " all communities and all societies, be- 
 cause they are a hundred times more sincere, are a 
 hundred times more instructive concerning the na- 
 ture of man than the individual could be since he is
 
 DEVELOPING THE THEORY I99 
 
 too weak to have the courage of his desires. . . . 
 The study of society is so precious because man 
 is much more naive as part of a society than man 
 as an individual. Society never considered virtue 
 otherwise than as a means to attain force, power 
 and order." 
 
 But what is the mechanism of this strange trans- 
 formation ? How does man, as member of a com- 
 munity, become so different from man as individual? 
 " How is it that a great number of people can do 
 things to which the individual would never agree? 
 By the division of the responsibilities, the com- 
 mandment and the execution." It is that which 
 introduces, or helps to introduce, " virtue, duty, 
 love of country and love for the sovereign " and 
 it is that which " maintains pride, severity, force, 
 hatred and vengeance — in short all those typical 
 characteristics which are repugnant to the member 
 of the herd." 
 
 Therefore we must know it and know how to say 
 it; "the State is organized immorality: within, in 
 the form of police (to you as individual, inquisition 
 and informing are no doubt hateful), police and the 
 penal code (individually you do not lay claim to 
 the right to punish), et cetera; — outwardly in the 
 form of will to power, warfare, conquest and ven- 
 geance." 
 
 What does plebcianism do with that State which 
 is immorality, or if you like, organized immoralism? 
 // transfers to the State the virtues of the private 
 wan. It wishes to put in the State the virtues of 
 the private man, and is utterly convinced that the
 
 20O ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 " virtues " of the private man must also be State 
 virtues. In other words, it kills the State. It 
 wants the State to be a good, peaceful, gentle, shy, 
 kindly and weak man. It wants the State not to 
 go to war. It would like the State not only not 
 to attack but to defend itself as little as possible. It 
 would like the State to turn the other cheek and 
 to give moreover its coat when it has had its mantle 
 taken off. It wants the State not to judge, or to 
 judge with the indulgence of a weak and even of 
 a weakened family man. Strange enough, it wants 
 the State to be everything and to do nothing, in 
 which — albeit it is somewhat burlesque — plebeian- 
 ism is right. For in order that the superior kind be 
 repressed and diminished it is necessary that the 
 State constituted by the plebeian plurality be every- 
 thing. And in order that the State possess the 
 virtues, ideas, sentiments and habits of the plebeian 
 plurality it is necessary that it do nothing at all. 
 Thus the plebe organizes, if we may call it organ- 
 ize, a State destructive of the superior kind (or of 
 a large part of the superior kind) and disarmed 
 on the one hand against the greedy foreigner and 
 on the other hand internally against the violent or 
 the subtly gnawing enemies, the witting or unwit- 
 ting enemies of society. This plebeian State curbs 
 the highest portion of the superior kind as we saw 
 and it also destroys the slightly less high portion 
 of the superior kind in this wise that it calls, attracts 
 and leads it on towards politics and therein ex- 
 hausts it. " All the political and social conditions 
 together are not worthy of gifted minds being com-
 
 DEVELOPING THE THEORY 201 
 
 pelled to busy themselves with them. Such a wast- 
 ing of minds is after all more serious than a state 
 of misery. Politics are a field of work for the 
 more mediocre brains and that field of work should 
 not be open to the others. . . . What we see today 
 is a great and ridiculous folly, today when not only 
 do all men think that they should be daily informed 
 as to the political matters but when everybody wants 
 also to take active part in these matters at every 
 minute and is prepared to abandon his own work 
 to do that. Public security is much too dear at 
 the price. And what is madder still, one reaches, in 
 this wise, the opposite of public security, as our own 
 excellent century is busy demonstrating as if it had 
 never been demonstrated before. To ensure for 
 society security against thieves and fire, to make it 
 infinitely easy for all kinds of trade and relations 
 and to transform the State into a providence, in the 
 good or the bad sense of the word — these are in- 
 ferior, low, mediocre and not at all indispensable 
 aims. And no delicate instruments should be ap- 
 plied to them. Our period, albeit it speaks much 
 of economy, is very wasteful indeed; it wastes the 
 most precious thing, brains." 
 
 More especially is the plebeian State a disarma- 
 ment of the State and a denaturation of the State, 
 a transformation of the State into a dissociation, a 
 transformation of the State into a thing which has 
 but private virtue, and no State virtue whatsoever, a 
 transformation of the general strength into general 
 weakness. 
 
 In the course of its ascent towards that goal the
 
 202 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 plebe proceeds as follows : " The oppressed ones, 
 the inferior ones, all the great mass of the slaves and 
 the semi-slaves want to reach power. First degree : 
 they free themselves, they release themselves, doing 
 it first in their own imagination; they recognize 
 each other and they impose themselves. Second 
 degree: they take up the fight; they wish to be 
 recognized; equal rights, 'justice.* Third degree: 
 they insist upon privileges; they force the repre- 
 sentatives of power onto their side. Fourth de- 
 gree: they want the power for themselves alone 
 and they take it," — and thus they succeed in estab- 
 lishing a State, of which we have just seen the 
 picture. 
 
 This State, which we must need worship, this 
 State, which is the " new idol," is fictitious, lying and 
 deadly. " Somewhere there are still peoples and 
 herds, but not with us, my brethren : here there are 
 states. A state? What is that? Well, open now 
 your ears unto me, for now will I say unto you my 
 word concerning the death of peoples. A state, is 
 called the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly lieth 
 it also ; and this lie creepeth from its mouth. ' I, 
 the state, am the people.' It is a lie! Creators 
 were they who created peoples, and hung a faith 
 and a love over them: thus they served life. De- 
 stroyers are they who lay snares for many, and 
 call it the state : they hang a sword and a hundred 
 cravings over them. Where there is still a people, 
 there the state is not understood, but hated as the 
 evil eye, and as sin against laws and customs. This 
 sign I give unto you : every people speaketh its
 
 DEVELOPING THE THEORY 203 
 
 language of good and evil : this its neighbor under- 
 standeth not. Its language hath it devised for itself 
 in laws and customs. But the state lieth in all 
 languages of good and evil ; and whatever it saith, it 
 lieth ; and whatever it hath, it hath stolen. False 
 is everything in it ; with stolen teeth it biteth, the 
 biting one. False are even its bowels. Confusion 
 of language of good and evil; this sign I give unto 
 you as the sig^ of the state. Verily, the will to 
 death indicateth this sign ! Verily, it beckoneth 
 unto the preachers of death ! Many, too many are 
 born : for the superfluous ones was the state devised ! 
 See just how it enticeth them to it, the many-too- 
 many! How it swalloweth and cheweth and re- 
 cheweth them ! ' On earth there is nothing greater 
 than I : it is I that am the regulating finger of God ' 
 — thus roareth the monster. And not only the 
 long-eared and short-sighted fall upon their knees ! 
 Ah, even in your ears, ye great souls, it whisper- 
 eth its gloomy lies! Ah, it findeth out the rich 
 hearts that willingly lavish themselves ! Yea, it 
 findeth you out too, ye conquerors of the old God! 
 Weary ye became of the conflict, and now your 
 weariness serveth the new idol ! Heroes and hon- 
 orable ones, it would fain set up around it, the new 
 idol! Gladly it basketh in the sunshine of good 
 consciences, — the cold monster! Everything will it 
 give you, if ye worship it, the new idol : thus it 
 purchaseth the luster of your virtue, and the glance 
 of your proud eyes. It seeketh to allure by means 
 of you, the many-too-many! Yea, a hellish artifice 
 hath here been devised, a death-horse jingling with
 
 204 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 the trappings of divine honors ! Yea, a dying for 
 many hath here been devised, which glorifieth itself 
 as life: verily, a hearty service unto all preachers 
 of death ! The state, I call it, where all are poison- 
 drinkers, the good and the bad : the state, where all 
 lose themselves, the good and the bad: the state, 
 where the slow suicide of all — is called ' life.' Just 
 see these superfluous ones! They steal the works 
 of the inventors and the treasures of the wise. Cul- 
 ture, they call their theft — and everything becom- 
 eth sickness and trouble unto them ! Just see these 
 superfluous ones! Sick are they always; they 
 vomit their bile, and call it a newspaper. They 
 devour one another, and cannot even digest them- 
 selves. Just see these superfluous ones! Wealth 
 they acquire, and become poorer thereby. Power 
 they seek for, and above all, the lever of power, 
 much money — these impotent ones! See them 
 clamber, the nimble apes! They clamber over 
 one another, and then scuffle into the mud 
 and the abyss. Towards the throne they all 
 strive : it is their madness — as if happiness sat on 
 the throne ! Ofttimes sitteth filth on the throne, — 
 and ofttimes also the throne on filth. Madmen they 
 all seem to me, and clambering apes, and too eager. 
 Badly smelleth their idol to me, the cold monster: 
 badly they all smell to me, these idolaters. My 
 brethren, will ye suffocate in the fumes of their 
 maws and appetites! Better break the windows 
 and jump into the open air ! Do go out of the way 
 of the bad odor! Withdraw from the idolatry of 
 the superfluous! Withdraw from the steam of
 
 DEVELOPING THE THEORY 20$ 
 
 these human sacrifices ! Open still remaineth the 
 earth for great souls. Empty are still many sites 
 for lone ones and twain ones, around which tloatcth 
 the odor of tranquil seas. Open still remaineth a 
 free life for great souls. Verily, he who possesseth 
 little is so much the less possessed : blessed be mod- 
 erate poverty ! There, where the state ceaseth — 
 there only commenceth the man that is not super- 
 fluous: there commenceth the song of the necessary 
 ones, the single and irreplaceable melody. There, 
 where the State ccasctli — pray look thither, my 
 brethren ! Do ye not see it, the rainbow and the 
 bridges of the Superman ? — Thus spake Zara- 
 thustra." 
 
 To resume, when plebcianism has carried the day 
 it destroys the State without replacing it and is 
 utterly unable to replace it. It has conquered power 
 but is unable to exercise it. It has secured domina- 
 tion for itself, for a mere nothing. In the name of 
 morality it has conquered the empire for negation. 
 The ascent of plel)cianism is the rising tide of nullity 
 and morality, which was its ascensional force, is a 
 negative and nihilizing virtue. — Morality is the 
 " will to power " of the powerless.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 DISTANT PERSPECTIVES OF THE 
 DOCTRINE. 
 
 If this be the case, it is necessary that we should 
 use all possible means to destroy, abolish and anni- 
 hilate morality. To deliver man to all his passions, 
 and to urge him to abandon himself to them. . . . 
 Here you have the conclusion and the solution. — 
 Not at all, Nietzsche answers, after having thought 
 it over, not at all. What results from what we have 
 seen is not that morality is deadly to men, it is that 
 morality is deadly to the smaller number of men, 
 and deadly to society, which in order to subsist, 
 must be ruled by these men; and it is deadly to 
 humanity, which should be led by those men if it is 
 to avoid becoming mere dust or mire. But it is far 
 from being deadly to the great number; for the 
 inferior kind, to the masses; it is their very life. 
 It is the conception of life, the rule of life and the 
 ideal of life to which these masses may rise, and 
 which they need ; for it is natural to them : " What 
 is allowed only to the strongest and most fecund 
 natures in order that their existence be possible — 
 leisure, adventures, incredulousness and even de- 
 bauches, that, if it were allowed to the average 
 natures, would necessarily cause them to perish," 
 
 206
 
 DISTANT PERSPECTIVES OF THE DOCTRINE 207 
 
 As a matter of fact, that is what takes place. 
 " Activity, rules, moderation, ' convictions ' are 
 seemly in a word as virtues for the herd. With 
 their help, that kind of men, the average men, will 
 reach the form of perfection which is proper to 
 them." 
 
 What is needed then is to maintain morality for 
 those that need it and not to subject to it those 
 to whom it is not necessary, and to whom it is harm- 
 ful and deadly, just as we maintain water for the 
 fish without compelling the birds to live in it. " A 
 doctrine and a religion of ' love,' ( fetters to the affir- 
 mation of the self), a religion of patience, resigna- 
 tion, mutual help in deed and words, might be of a 
 superior lalue in those strata, even in the eyes of 
 those that dominate. For they repress the feelings 
 of rivalry, resentment and envy, which are proper to 
 ill-gifted beings. They divinize for them under the 
 name of ideal, of humility and obedience, the state 
 of slavery, inferiority and oppression. This ex- 
 plains why the dominating classes (or races), as 
 well as the individuals, have always preserved the 
 cult of altruism, the gospel of the meek and lowly 
 and the God on the Cross." 
 
 Let the men of the inferior kind retain morality. 
 After all, they are those who invented it. They in- 
 vented it according to their nature and their needs. 
 There is nothing to say about it. Their only error 
 consists in wanting to submit to it those for whom 
 it was not made and whom it annihilates, to the 
 great cost of society and mankind. What is wrong 
 with the fish is not that they want to live in the
 
 208 ON" READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 water: the wrong would come if the fish wished 
 to compel the eagles, those conquerors, and the 
 nightingales, those artists, to live thereunder. You 
 have the saying of Napoleon, a perfectly just one: 
 " that you should listen to the voice of sentiment 
 and pity, that is your business and it is very good on 
 your part ; but to me, Monsieur de Metternich, what 
 does it matter that a hundred thousand men live or 
 perish." 
 
 It is established that humanity, the mass of hu- 
 manity, cannot live without morality, perhaps even 
 not without a religion, religion being the develop- 
 ment, the derivation and also the support of that 
 morality. It is proved also that the elite of hu- 
 manity cannot live, and also cannot lead humanity 
 along the path of greatness and beauty unless it is 
 freed from that morality. Let us conclude that 
 humanity needs a morality and that there must be 
 none for the elite. The words so often jeered at: 
 " there must be a religion for the people " are not 
 in the least grotesque. They are the confirmation 
 of a fact. What was ridiculous was the words of 
 the hair-dresser to Diderot : " even though I may 
 be nothing but a surgeon's helper you should not 
 think that I have any religion." 
 
 But we are reaching two " moralities," or if you 
 like, two rules of life, which is much the same 
 thing, one morality for the small men and one 
 morality for the great ones ; because the absence of 
 morality for the great ones must, of all necessity, be 
 more than merely a negation. It will need to pre- 
 cise itself, to discipline and organize itself, and
 
 DISTANT PERSPECTIVES OF THE DOCTRINE 209 
 
 itself to become a morality of a certain kind, a 
 morality differing from vulgar morality, a morality 
 even contrary to vulgar morality, an immoralistic 
 morality, but yet a rule of life, and that is to say a 
 morality, and here we have therefore the two 
 moralities. 
 
 Well, precisely, Nietzsche answers, the error 
 lay in wanting morality to be " the universal moral- 
 ity " as the ancient courses of philosophy taught. 
 Morality cannot be universal. It could only be so 
 if all men had the same nature, and you know very 
 well that such is not the case. It is the notion, still 
 groping, of equality that inspired the old philoso- 
 phers with this idea of universal and uniform mo- 
 rality. Holding in a vague way the prejudice that 
 men were equal and of a same nature, they formed 
 the notion that the same rule of life should be ap- 
 plied to them, and was inscribed, as it were, in all 
 their hearts. But this is an error upon an error. 
 Men are not equal; they are not uniform, they are 
 neither cast in the same mold, nor animated with the 
 same spirit ; there are great ones and small ones ; 
 there are some that are capable of one rule of life, 
 and there are others that are capable of another rule 
 of life for which the first ones are not fit. The 
 unbearable impertinence of those that are cast in 
 the little molds consists in wanting to force into 
 them those that are too big to dwell therein, and 
 exactly the same thing happens in morality as in 
 politics, and the foolishness of equality and the 
 foolishness of universal morality are one and the 
 same foolishness.
 
 2IO ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 In other words, if you prefer, I admit morality, 
 I even respect it, but I give it its own portion. I 
 want it to reign and act where it is very good in its 
 own place, and upon those that are made for it, since 
 they made it. But I stop it where its dominion ends 
 and at the boundary beyond which it becomes use- 
 less and soon detrimental. I want it to have, like 
 many other things, its department, but not every- 
 thing for its own share, as it pretends to have. 
 
 Strange pretension. Can you imagine art pre- 
 tending that everything is made for art, that all 
 human things must be subordinated to art, that all 
 the branches of human knowledge must be com- 
 pelled to tend towards art as the ultimate end, and 
 that all men should be artists ? 
 
 Can you imagine science — and if that happens 
 sometimes it is a ridiculous indiscretion — pre- 
 tending that everything has been made for science, 
 that everything must be regulated by science, that 
 everything must lead to it as towards a unique aim, 
 that it is obligatory, and that all men must be men 
 of science? 
 
 Morality is one of the branches of human knowl- 
 edge, good in its own sphere, as the others are, but 
 evil when beyond its own purpose. It is the knowl- 
 edge that mediocre men have of their needs and 
 their desires. Let it then be used by the mediocre 
 men, but it must leave the others alone. Morahty 
 alone has the pretension to be universal, to be oblig- 
 atory for all men and to bend all men under its laws. 
 It is that pretension only which I condemn and 
 reject. Morality in its own home !
 
 DISTANT PERSPECTIVES OF THE DOCTRINE 211 
 
 You may say : " but those whom you are freeing 
 from morahty will necessarily establish a morality 
 for themselves, a rule of life for themselves, if for 
 no other reason than to agree among themselves, 
 to organize and discipline themselves, to know what 
 they want, and where they tend, and to recognize 
 and communicate with each other concerning the 
 means to reach their aim, since you are giving them 
 one, that is to say, the strength, the greatness and 
 the beauty of mankind. And there you are in the 
 presence of two moralities, that of the small and that 
 of the great ones." I accept quite willingly this 
 conclusion, or rather merely this fashion of putting 
 things. Yes, in my idea, there is a morality for 
 the small ones and there is something for the great 
 ones, which is very immoral but which you may call 
 morality if you like. For the mediocre ones — 
 traditional morality, which I need no longer define 
 or describe since it is what I have been doing all 
 along, while attacking it. For the men of the su- 
 perior kind — a particular morality, which I shall 
 make no bones about describing in its main lines. 
 Here is the morality of the superior ones and the 
 morality of the mediocre ones opposed to each 
 other : the morality of the masters and the morality 
 of the slaves. 
 
 " In a tour through the many finer and coarser 
 moralities, which have hitherto prevailed or still 
 prevail on the earth, I found certain traits recurring 
 regularly together, and connected with one another, 
 until finally two primary types revealed themselves 
 to me, and a radical distinction was brought to light.
 
 212 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 There is master-morality and slave-morality; I 
 would at once add, however, that in all higher and 
 mixed civilizations, there are also attempts at the 
 reconciliation of the two moralities; but one finds, 
 still oftener, the confusion and mutual misunder- 
 standing of them, indeed, sometimes their close 
 juxtaposition — even in the same man, within one 
 soul. The distinctions of moral values have either 
 originated in a ruling caste, pleasantly conscious of 
 being different from the ruled — or among the ruled 
 class, the slaves and dependents of all sorts. In the 
 first case, when it is the rulers that determine the 
 conception ' good,' it is the exalted, proud disposi- 
 tion which is regarded as the distinguishing feature, 
 and that which determines the order of rank. The 
 noble type of man separates from himself the beings 
 in whom the opposite of this exalted, proud disposi- 
 tion displays itself : he despises them. Let it at once 
 be noted that, in this first kind of morality, the an- 
 tithesis ' good ' and ' bad ' means practically the same 
 as * noble ' and * despicable ' ; — the antithesis 
 ' good ' and ' evil ' is of a different origin. The 
 cowardly, the timid, the insignificant, and those 
 thinking merely of narrow utility are despised; 
 moreover, also, the distrustful, with their con- 
 strained glances, the self-abasing, the dog-like kind 
 of men who let themselves be abused, the mendicant 
 flatterers, and above all the liars : — it is a funda- 
 mental belief of all aristocrats that the common 
 people are untruthful. ' We truthful ones ' the 
 nobility in ancient Greece called themselves. It is 
 obvious that everywhere the designations of moral
 
 DISTANT PERSPECTIVES OF THE DOCTRINE 2I3 
 
 value were at first applied to men, and were only 
 derivatively and at a later period applied to actions; 
 it is a gross mistake, therefore, when historians of 
 morals start with questions like, * Why have sym- 
 pathetic actions been praised?' The noble type of 
 man regards himself as a determiner of values ; he 
 does not require to be approved of ; he passes the 
 judgment: ' What is injurious to me is injurious in 
 itself '; he knows that it is he himself only who con- 
 fers honor on things ; he is a creator of values. 
 He honors whatever he recognizes in himself : such 
 morality is self-glorification. In the foreground 
 there is the feeling of plenitude, of power, which 
 seeks to overflow, the happiness of high tension, the 
 consciousness of a wealth that would fain give 
 and bestow : — the noble man also helps the un- 
 fortunate, but not — or scarcely — out of pity, but 
 rather from an impulse generated by the super- 
 abundance of power. The noble man honors in 
 himself the powerful one, him also who has power 
 over himself, who knows how to speak and how to 
 keep silence, who takes pleasure in subjecting himself 
 to severity and hardness, and has reverence for all 
 — that is severe and hard. * Wotan placed a hard 
 heart in my breast,* says an old Scandmavian 
 Saga: ^ it is thus rightly expressed from the soul of 
 a proud Viking. Such a type of man is even proud 
 of not being made for sympathy ; the hero of the 
 Saga, therefore, adds warningly : * He that has not 
 a hard heart when young, will never have one.' The 
 
 1 " When God made the heart and the bowels of men, 
 he put therein first of all Goodness. — (Boss.)
 
 214 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 noble and brave who think thus are the furthest 
 removed from the morahty that sees precisely in 
 sympathy, or in acting for the good of others, or in 
 desinteressement,^ the characteristic of the moral: 
 faith in oneself, pride in oneself, a radical enmity 
 and irony towards ' selflessness,' belong as definitely 
 to noble morality, as do a careless scorn and precau- 
 tion in presence of sympathy and the * warm heart.* 
 It is the powerful that knoiv how to honor, it 
 is their art, their domain for invention. The pro- 
 found reverence for age and for tradition — all law 
 rests on this double reverence, — the belief and 
 prejudice in favor of ancestors and unfavorable to 
 newcomers, is typical in the morality of the power- 
 ful; and if, reversely, men of ' modern ideas ' believe 
 almost instinctively in ' progress ' and the ' future,' 
 and are more and more lacking in respect for old 
 age, the ignoble origin of these ' ideas ' has com- 
 placently betrayed itself thereby. A morality of 
 the ruling class, however, is more especially foreign 
 and irritating to present-day taste in the sternness 
 of its principle that one has duties only to one's 
 equals ; that one may act towards beings of a lower 
 rank, towards all that is foreign, just as seems 
 good to one, or * as the heart desires,' and in any 
 case, ' beyond good and evil ' ; it is here that sym- 
 pathy and similar sentiments can have a place. The 
 ability and obligation to exercise prolonged grati- 
 tude and prolonged revenge — both only within the 
 circle of equals, — artfulness in retaliation, refine- 
 
 1 In French in Nietzsche's text.
 
 DISTANT PERSPECTIVES OF THE DOCTRINE 21$ 
 
 ment of the idea in friendship, a certain necessity 
 to have enemies (as outlets for the emotions of 
 envy, quarrelsomeness, arrogance — in fact, in or- 
 der to be a good friend) : all these are typical char- 
 acteristics of the noble morality, which, as was 
 pointed out, is not the morality of ' modern ideas,' 
 and is therefore at present difficult to realize, and 
 also to unearth and disclose. It is otherwise with 
 the second type of morality, slave-morality. Sup- 
 posing that the abused, the oppressed, the suffering, 
 the unemancipated, the weary, and those uncertain 
 of themselves, should moralize, what will be the 
 common element in their moral estimates? Prob- 
 ably a pessimistic suspicion with regard to the entire 
 situation of man will find expression, perhaps a 
 condemnation of man, together with his situation. 
 The slave has an unfavorable eye for the virtues 
 of the powerful ; he has a scepticism and distrust, a 
 refinement of distrust of everything * good ' that is 
 there honored — he would fain persuade himself 
 that the very happiness there is not genuine. On 
 the other hand, those qualities that serve to alle- 
 viate the existence of sufferers are brought into 
 prominence and flooded with light ; it is here that 
 syn^.pathy, the kind, helping hand, the warm heart, 
 patience, diligence, humility, and friendliness at- 
 tain to honor; for here these are the most useful 
 qualities, and almost the only means of supporting 
 the burden of existence. Slave-morality is essen- 
 tially the morality of utility. Here is the seat of the 
 origin of the famous antithesis 'good' and 'evil':
 
 2l6 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 — power and dangerousness ^ are assumed to reside 
 in the evil, a certain dreadfulness, subtlety, and 
 strength, which do not admit of being despised. 
 According to slave-morality, therefore, the ' evil ' 
 man arouses fear; according to master-morality, it 
 is precisely the ' good ' man that arouses fear and 
 seeks to arouse it, while the bad man is regarded as 
 the despicable being. The contrast attains its maxi- 
 mum when, in accordance with the logical conse- 
 quences of slave-morality, a shade of depreciation 
 
 — it may be slight and well-intentioned — at last 
 attaches itself to the ' good ' man of this morality ; 
 because, according to the servile mode of thought, 
 the good man must in any case be the safe man : he 
 is good-natured, easily deceived, perhaps a little 
 stupid, iin bonhomme. Everywhere that slave-mo- 
 rality gains the ascendancy, language shows a ten- 
 dency to approximate the significations of the words 
 ' good ' and ' stupid.' A last fundamental differ- 
 ence : the desire for freedom, the instinct for happi- 
 ness and the refinements of the feeling of liberty 
 belong, as necessarily, to slave-morals and morality, 
 as artifice and enthusiasm in reverence and devotion 
 are the regular symptoms of an aristocratic mode 
 of thinking and estimating." 
 
 There stand, according to Nietzsche, the two 
 morals. There you have the two races facing each 
 other, each with its own rule of life. Never will 
 they understand each other. They will always look 
 upon each other with the deepest astonishment, be- 
 
 1 Dominium, dangier, danger.
 
 DISTANT PERSPECTI\i:S OF THE DOCTRINE 217 
 
 cause not only are their actions different, but the 
 distant motives of their actions belong to different 
 spheres, or stand on different geometrical planes. 
 We have here two worlds : " All noble and gener- 
 ous feelings seem improper to the vulgar natures, 
 and hence, most often, unlikely." They wink when- 
 ever they hear of those feelings, as if they were 
 saying to one another : " there should be a good lit- 
 tle profit in this ; people cannot see through all the 
 walls." They show envy towards the " noble " man 
 as if he were seeking his own advantage along dubi- 
 ous paths. 
 
 Nevertheless, there are cases when it is difficult to 
 find, and even almost impossible, to seek an inter- 
 ested motive to a noble action. Then it is that the 
 man below finds the man above to be insane. He 
 looks upon that man with awe, fear or pity accord- 
 ing to his personal character, but he is persuaded 
 that he is in the presence of a man that has lost his 
 head and that is not in his senses. As a matter of 
 fact it was not a question of " common " sense, the 
 only thing that the man below can understand : 
 " if they are convinced with too much sureness 
 of the absence of selfish intentions and personal 
 tastes, the noble man becomes a sort of madman to 
 them. They despise him in his joy, and laugh at 
 his radiant eyes : ' How can one rejoice at the 
 prejudice caused to him? How can one accept a 
 disadvantage with open eyes? Nobility of senti- 
 ments must surely be complicated with a sickness 
 of the reason.' They thus think, and cast him a 
 despising glance, the same that they have when
 
 2l8 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 they see the pleasure a madman takes in his fixed 
 idea. ..." 
 
 Note that they are right, and that there is a sort 
 of folly in the greatness of the soul. Greatness of 
 soul is a " will to power," a " will to nobility," a 
 " will to elevation " which is the most energetic 
 form of egotism, the most energetic form of the ex- 
 altation of the ego. But it destroys egotism in the 
 vulgar sense of the word ; it destroys the egotism of 
 preservation, the only one that the man from below 
 understands and can understand. Consequently, the 
 superior nature is " the more un-reasonable one 
 when compared to the vulgar nature, because the no- 
 ble and generous man, the man that sacrifices him- 
 self, sinks in fact under the burden of his instincts. 
 His reason is at a standstill during his best moments. 
 An animal, which protects its young at the risk of its 
 own life, or one which, when in heat, follows the 
 female until death, is not thinking of the danger 
 of death. Its reason also is at a standstill, since 
 the pleasure given it by the sight of its young or by 
 the female, and the fear of being deprived thereof, 
 altogether dominate it." It becomes more animal 
 than it usually is. Thus the noble and generous 
 man feels a few sensations of pleasure or pain with 
 so much intensity that the intellect must needs be- 
 come silent or place itself at the service of those 
 sensations. *' His heart will then overpower his 
 brain and the word of passion will henceforth ap- 
 ply." ..." It is the un-reason of passion in the 
 noble and generous man that the vulgar despises." 
 There are many passions that the man below
 
 DISTANT PERSPECTIVES OF THE DOCTRINE 219 
 
 will understand and condone ; but they are the pas- 
 sions that pertain to vulgar egotism, to conserva- 
 tive egotism and that are mere exaggerations, 
 modifications or perversions thereof. Thus, the 
 man below will " no doubt be irritated by the pas- 
 sions of the stomach, but he understands, neverthe- 
 less, the attraction which that tyranny exercises," 
 and he excuses it or smiles at it. But how could he 
 understand that one would " for instance, for the 
 sake of a passion for knowledge, endanger one's 
 health and one's honor"? There, in his eyes, be- 
 gins folly. To the men below, the superior men are 
 mere maniacs. 
 
 We must thoroughly understand this if we wish 
 to remain fair. The hatred of the vulgar men for 
 the superior men is not made up altogether of jeal- 
 ously, envy, angry spite, humiliated selfishness and 
 irritated vanity. All these elements enter into the 
 composition of that hatred, to be sure, and in high 
 doses. But there is something else, which, if not 
 worthy of respect, deserves at least consideration ; 
 there is the stupor of the normal being in presence 
 of the monstrous being.^ And vice versa, the su- 
 perior man is profoundly unfair to the man below. 
 The superior man has a natural taste for the things 
 which as a rule leave men quite cold, for art, sci- 
 ence, beauty, high curiosity or high virtue. Com- 
 pared to the mass, the superior men are seekers of 
 exceptions, seekers of the rare : " The taste of t\^e 
 superior natures fixes itself upon the exceptions, 
 
 ^Mediocre man: normal man. Lombroso.
 
 220 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 Upon things that seem to have no flavor." In short, 
 " the superior nature has a way of appreciating 
 which is its own." 
 
 As the masses do with morahty, the superior men 
 want to turn the particular rule of their own kind 
 into a universal rule and there lies their unfairness : 
 " In its idiosyncrasy of taste, the superior kind 
 fancies, as a rule, that it has no peculiar fashion of 
 appreciating things. On the contrary, it sets its 
 own most particular values and non-values, which 
 are altogether its own peculiar ones — it sets them 
 up as universal values, and falls thereby into what 
 is incomprehensible and unrealizable. It is very sel- 
 dom that a superior nature retains enough reason 
 (or flexibility of common sense and comprehensive 
 intelligence) to appreciate and treat ordinary men 
 as ordinary men. It has, as a rule, faith in its own 
 passion, as if that passion were the passion which 
 has merely remained hidden in the others. In that 
 idea the superior kind shows itself full of ardor 
 and eloquence. When such exceptional men fail 
 to consider themselves as exceptional men, how 
 could they ever be capable of understanding the 
 vulgar natures and of assessing the rule in an equit- 
 able fashion? Thus they also speak of the folly, 
 the impropriety and the fantastic mind of humanity. 
 They also are full of astonishment before the frenzy 
 of a world which will not recognize what * should 
 be for it the only necessary thing.' That is the 
 eternal folly of the men that are noble." 
 
 Therefore, we must leave to each man his own 
 way of feeling, his own appreciation of values, his
 
 DISTANT PERSPECTIVES OF THE DOCTRINE 221 
 
 own rule of life, his own *' morality." No one must 
 encroach, or wish to encroach upon others. That 
 were a vain idea, an unrealizable danger and a use- 
 less attempt. Neither of the two parts of humanity 
 must try to convert the other, neither the one below 
 that which is above, nor the one above that which 
 is below. Let us leave to the people its morality and 
 let us have our own. Which one is that? I have 
 said it a hundred times but let us be still more 
 precise. 
 
 The superior kind must needs practice that supe- 
 rior egotism which we have indicated as being its 
 nature, the basis of its complexion, its aim and very 
 mission. It must be hard on itself and on the 
 others, but especially on itself, pitiless to itself as 
 to others but much more pitiless to itself than to 
 the others. (" Be hard," Zarathustra is always tell- 
 ing his disciples.) Be solidaristic, practice the firm- 
 est concord and consider yourselves as one family, 
 without in the least believing that you are related 
 to the rest of mankind. Honor the tradition and 
 the past, and therefore old age. Be extremely safe, 
 cordial, devoted and passionate in friendship ; show 
 contempt for love and all sensuality, without, more- 
 over, attaching any moral value to chastity, con- 
 tempt in general for all that is personal and indi- 
 vidual interest, for all that is mere enjoyment of 
 property, and that fails to be enjoyment of caste. 
 Show your contempt, for instance, for domestic 
 comfort and your royal passion for the luxury of 
 hereditary palaces, senatorial palaces, for temples 
 and museums. Seek ever an aim that is in great-
 
 222 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 ness, strength in extension, beauty in realization sur- 
 passing its own power and exhausting them, since 
 man has no other true law but to try and overcome 
 himself. Aspire always to uplifting the human kind 
 in its own collective person. Olympianize man in a 
 few superhuman samples, thus forming a formid- 
 able, redoubtable elite which will lead, and roughly 
 lead, humanity, after having imposed upon itself by 
 dint of science, a disciplined will and the very aston- 
 ishment that will must needs inspire. Find in all 
 this work, indefinitely continued, the intense delights 
 of true egotism, substituted to vulgar and apparent 
 egotism, the acute and deep delights of the asser- 
 tion, the expansion, the extension and the violent 
 tension of the self. " Ye are over-sparing, ye give 
 way too much. Of that is the soil upon which ye 
 grow made up. But for a tree to become great, 
 it must shoot hardy roots around hard rocks. . . , 
 Alas, why are ye not comprehending my words? 
 Do ye always what ye will; but first of all do ye 
 know hoiv to will; be ye of those who can will. 
 Always love your neighbor as yourselves, but be ye 
 first of all of those that love themselves ; that love 
 their own selves with the greatest love and the 
 greatest contempt." Thus spake Zarathustra, the 
 impious one. Note this. It is somewhat surpris- 
 ing at first, but it becomes quite natural when one 
 thinks it over for a while. Christianity, which is 
 a slaves' morality, has, nevertheless, given pre- 
 cisely the models of these men and traced their 
 rules of life. The reason is a very simple one. 
 Christianity, at a certain time, found itself to have
 
 DISTANT PERSPECTIVES OF THE DOCTRINE 223 
 
 become, in the collective person of its Church, an 
 aristocracy which felt the need to become and to 
 remain a superior kind. Thus, like the directors of 
 Christianity, the superior kind will be wise if it puts 
 into use some practices of an ecclesiastical char- 
 acter, as, for instance, asceticism, fasting, the life of 
 the cloister and festivities. All this has been often 
 corrupted, altered, deviated, and ill-understood by 
 Christianity. But at bottom, it is excellent: "As- 
 ceticism: one has hardly yet the courage to put its 
 natural usefulness into light, its indispensable char- 
 acter as educator of the zvill. The absurd world 
 of our educators, which has at present in mind the 
 notion of the ' useful servant of the State,' as a 
 regulating scheme, thinks that it can get it accom- 
 plished merely with instruction and the training of 
 the brain. It does not even grasp the notion that 
 there is something else which is far more important 
 than all the rest, that is the education of the force 
 of the will.^ Examinations are instituted for all 
 matters, with the exception of the essential one: to 
 know whether one can will, whether one can prom- 
 ise. The young man completes his education with- 
 out having even a doubt or any curiosity touching 
 the superior problems of his nature." Asceticism 
 shall be one of the practices of the superior kind, 
 
 1 The result thereof is the touching political docility of 
 the otherwise perfectly able minds of those able and cul- 
 tured Germans who are satisfied with serving the earthly 
 ends of their leaders. They have no will with which they 
 could resist the notion of the State-Master instead of the 
 State-Servant or of the State-Enemy.— (Translator's 
 Note.)
 
 224 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 provided it is considered, not as an expiation and 
 a punishment exercised against one's self, but as an 
 education, a training of the will to power. 
 
 "Fasting: It is to be commended from ever)' 
 point of view and also (artistic and dilettantist view 
 points) as a means to maintain the subtle faculty 
 for enjoying all good things ; for instance, to re- 
 frain from reading, from hearing music, from being 
 pleasant to others. One must have also fasting 
 days for one's virtues." The fast shall be practiced 
 in this wide, broadened way, in this ingenious way, 
 by the superior kind, if it wants to be artistic — 
 and that it must needs want to be. The Cloister 
 Life, if well understood, is temporary but never 
 eternal, for, in the latter case, it is but suicide ; and 
 even suicide were better. Again, this is an excellent 
 thing for the education of the will and of the in- 
 tellectual activity : " temporary isolation, by refus- 
 ing severely, for instance, to attend to one's corre- 
 spondence. It is a sort of deep meditation and of 
 return upon one's self with desires to avoid not 
 temptations but outside influences. A voluntary 
 exit from the circle, from the middle. A placing 
 apart, far from the tyranny of the excitations, which 
 condemns us to spend our forces in reactions only 
 and which does not allow the latter to accumulate 
 as far as spontaneous activity. Take a close look 
 at our savants : they only think now by means of 
 reactives; that is to say, they must need read first 
 before they can think." 
 
 On the other hand, and in inverse sense, come 
 the Festivities : " In feast, one must understand
 
 DISTANT PERSPECTIVES OF THE DOCTRINE 22$ 
 
 pride, impetuousness and exuberance; the contempt 
 of every kind of seriousness and bourgeois spirit; 
 a divine assertion of the self because of the pleni- 
 tude thereof and of the animal perfection. . . , The 
 feast, it is paganism par excellence." Christianity 
 had partly repulsed it, partly accepted and partly 
 suffered it. The superior kind shall turn life, by 
 means of art, into an eternal feast ; but it will 
 practice also accidental feast, when the will unbends 
 and does after all but assert again the desire for 
 expansion, heartiness and powerful rapture in that 
 broadening and that joy. 
 
 Thus can be formed a race of superior men of 
 whom one does not know \\hat may come, with the 
 help of heredity. We must go up the current of 
 plebeianism, stem the tide of the redoubtable pam- 
 beotia of which Renan spoke. We must return to 
 the Greco-Roman antiquity; but beyond that an- 
 tiquity itself, by the same means it only used out of 
 instinct, but utilizing them in a methodical and sci- 
 entific way, and with all the resources afforded us 
 by modern science, we can, and it is even our duty, 
 create a race superior not only to present day 
 humanity but to all known humanity, an unexpected 
 and unforeseen race, a race of supermen, ever more 
 or less dreamt of by mankind, sometimes half- 
 realized, and which no man can afhrm to be unre- 
 alizable. To create the superhuman, that is the 
 present, as it is the eternal, duty of mankind. 
 
 We should not be too prompt in asserting that 
 we are precisely turning our backs to this ideal. 
 That there is an appearance of tiiis can hardly be
 
 22(i ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 contested. The materials seem to be lacking. 
 Whatever may be said by " the most blustering, 
 perhaps the most honest, at least the most short- 
 sighted kind of men that exist to-day, that is to say, 
 Messieurs the Socialists," man having no social 
 value unless he is " solid " and a " stone for a mighty 
 building," the actual inferior man being nothing at 
 all and the actual superior man being most of the 
 time but a mere comedian — it really seems that 
 " what shall not be erected henceforth, is a society in 
 the ancient and true meaning of the word." It does 
 seem that "we all, are no longer materials for a 
 society." 
 
 Nevertheless, even of this may something come 
 out, and precisely that of which we are dreaming; 
 not as good comes out of the excess of evil, for there 
 is no sense whatsoever in that notion, but as reaction 
 comes out of action and especially as, in the whole 
 domain of natural history, a groping but deep desire 
 for liberation and ascent emerges out of stagnation. 
 
 To begin with, we must well realize that deca- 
 dence, may be, of course, more or less strong and 
 that it is certainly when it is strong that it is called 
 decadence, but that it is eternal in itself and 
 also necessary. There is always decadence, even 
 throughout progress itself, and decadence is, like 
 progress, a form and a condition of life : " Defec- 
 tion, decomposition and waste offer nothing that is 
 condemnable in itself. They are but the necessary 
 condition of life, of the vital increase. The phe- 
 nomenon of decadence is necessary as the blowing 
 and the progress of life : we lack the means to sup-
 
 DISTANT PERSPECTIVES OF THE DOCTRINE 22/ 
 
 press that phenomenon and even should we possess 
 it " reason would insist that we preserve its rights. 
 It is shameful to have all the theorists of socialism 
 admit that there may be circumstances and social 
 combinations where vice, sickness, crime, prostitu- 
 tion and misery would cease to be developed. That 
 is to condemn life. No society is free to remain 
 young. Even at the moment of its finest develop- 
 ment it leaves waste and detritus. The more it 
 progresses in audacity and energy, the more it be- 
 comes rich in mistakes and deformities. . . . Not 
 by means of institutions can decay be suppressed, 
 nor vice either. 
 
 We must also face the fact that we are always 
 falling in an error or rather a double error concern- 
 ing degeneracy. What are usually held to cause 
 degeneracy are but the consequences thereof. And 
 what we consider to be the remedies of degeneracy 
 are but palliatives, and powerless ones at that. De- 
 cadence is the predominance of the lower species 
 over the noble species and of the morality of the 
 lower over the instincts of the noble. The con- 
 sequences are " vice, vicious character, sickness, 
 sickly state, crime, criminality, celibacy, sterility, 
 hysteria, weakness of will, alcoholism, pessimism 
 and anarchism." Now meditation is no remedy 
 against vice, sickness, crime, et cetera ; it is preser- 
 vation of what remains valid and pure in humanity. 
 " The whole moral struggle against vice, luxury, 
 crime and even against sickness stands as a naivete 
 and as something utterly superfluous. There is no 
 matter for amendment in them. Decadence itself,"
 
 228 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 to take it as a whole, " is not something that we 
 should fight. It is absolutely necessary and proper 
 to each period and to each century. What we must 
 fight with all our forces is the importation of the 
 contagion into the sane parts of the organism." 
 
 Therefore we should not despair in presence of 
 the decadence that we are witnessing. First of 
 all that decadence is a normal phenomenon. Then 
 if we do not rein it up it is because we are mistaken 
 concerning the remedies to be used, and it is pos- 
 sible that this error may cease to be indulged in. 
 
 Moreover, in the midst of this decadence, among 
 that waste and detritus, there are symptoms of a 
 possible return to the normal life of humanity, to 
 the rough and rugged life, to life in strength, to a 
 life guided and led by the will to power. Humani- 
 tarian philosophers bemoan the fact that the 19th 
 century, the century of lights, is after all that in 
 which more, or at least as much, as in any other, 
 the doctrine of the Right of Might was asserted and 
 exasperated. No doubt this might be evil; for, 
 without the instinct of greatness and beauty, the in- 
 stinct of force itself is evil in this that it is incom- 
 plete, that it does not produce by itself a great civi- 
 lization ; nevertheless it is not such a bad symptom. 
 One could reasonably draw from it a motive for 
 " faith in the civilization of Europe " ; perhaps it 
 is our duty to draw it. Think of this : " to Na- 
 poleon, and not at all to the French Revolution 
 which was seeking fraternity among the nations and 
 universal flowery effusions, do we owe that we are 
 able to-day to foresee a sequence of a few warlike
 
 DISTANT PliRSPECTlVES OF THE DOCTRINE 229 
 
 centuries. This coming period will not have its 
 equal in history. In short, we owe to Napoleon that 
 we have entered (re-entered) the classical age of 
 warfare, scientific warfare, and at the same time of 
 popular warfare ; war on a large scale owing to the 
 means, the talents and the discipline that will be used 
 in that end. All the centuries to come shall look 
 with envy and respect upon this age of perfection; 
 because the movement of nations of which this war- 
 like glory is but the repercussion began through Na- 
 poleon's effort, and could not have come but for 
 Napoleon. It is, therefore, to Napoleon that the 
 honor shall one day be given of having made over a 
 world in which the man, the warrior, shall outweigh 
 once more in Europe the tradesman and the Philis- 
 tine, perhaps even women, since the latter has been 
 wheedled by Christianity and by the enthusiastic 
 spirit of the i8th century more even than by ' mod- 
 em ideas.' Napoleon, who saw in modern ideas 
 and in civilization in general something like a per- 
 sonal enemy, proved by his hostility that he was one 
 of the chief continuers of the Renaissance. He set 
 up again a whole face of the antique world, per- 
 haps the most definite of them, the granite face. 
 Who knows if thanks to the latter the antique hero- 
 ism may not end some day by triumphing over the 
 nationalist movement, if that heroism may not make 
 itself necessarily the heir and continuer of Na- 
 poleon — of Napoleon who wished, as we know, 
 Europe united so that she could become mistress 
 of the world ^" 
 
 Finally, take care that it is possible that the
 
 230 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 democratic lowering itself may be both a condition 
 and a cause of the formation of a noble race des- 
 tined to rule in the future. " In order that a strong 
 and noble race be established it is necessary that 
 there should be a general level of the crowd, of the 
 masses, of the human mob, and that this level be 
 very low (slaves with slaves' instincts in the antique 
 nations). That is precisely the levelling which is 
 taking place in present day Europe by means of a 
 kind of ' dropping ' of the middle classes into the 
 plebe proper and by means of a demoralization of 
 that same plebe (alcoholism, libertinism, anarchism, 
 etc.). The European masses make slaves of them- 
 selves ; and the existence of a large slave race, slave 
 in essence, and by its own proper complexion, is 
 the very condition of the birth of a noble race. 
 The progressive diminution of man is precisely the 
 active force (this is not the proper word ; we should 
 read * movement ' or * evolution '), which permits us 
 to believe in the culture of a stronger race, a race 
 that would precisely find its surplus in the amount 
 by which the diminished kind would become weaker : 
 will, responsibility and the faculty to set an aim to 
 one's self." 
 
 I can say more and add that this levelling may be 
 the very cause of the perhaps near creation of a 
 superior race. The elements of the superior race 
 are always existing; I firmly believe it. In order 
 that they may release and disentangle themselves, 
 and emerge, it is necessary that the plebeian 
 levelHng should have taken place; then and be- 
 cause of this levelling and of the disgust that it
 
 DISTANT PERSPECTIVES OF THE DOCTRINE 23 1 
 
 inspires in the noble elements and also because of 
 the necessity that imposes itself on these elements 
 " to deepen the distance, to open a gulf and to re- 
 establish an hierarchy " — it is because of all this 
 that the elements of the noble race disentangle and 
 release themselves, and that they emerge. What is 
 taking place then in our own present time, through 
 the levelling in sordidness which others may term 
 the triumph of plebeianism " is a substruction " 
 which may very well serve for the building up of 
 stronger race. Far from deploring actual plebeian- 
 ism and its progressive flattening, it is reasonable 
 enough to say that we should congratulate ourselves 
 upon it and perhaps even accelerate it. " The level- 
 ling of the European man is the great processus 
 which could not be delayed : we should speed it on its 
 way. . . . Even the only aim which we should con- 
 sider for yet a long time to come is the diminution 
 of man ; because it is necessary first of all to create 
 a broad foundation upon which the race of the 
 strong men can be erected." 
 
 This race will constitute itself at a given time. 
 It will isolate itself because of disgust. It will 
 straighten itself up by means of the natural affinity 
 among its elements. It will organize itself out of 
 its sheer need of order and discipline for a common 
 action. It will dominate and enslave the other spe- 
 cies by the one well known phenomenon of the pre- 
 dominance of quality over numbers, and by the very 
 fact that the other kind will not need to be enslaved, 
 since it has enslaved itself by giving itself the tem- 
 perament of slaves. As a matter of fact there is no
 
 232 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 Other slave but the man that enslaved himself, not 
 the man that has been eslaved, the man that prac- 
 tices slavery not the one that suffers it. 
 
 Thus will be born the race of the masters whence 
 may come out the race of the supermen. " It will 
 not be merely a race of masters whose task would 
 simply consist in ruling; but a race with its own 
 vital sphere, with a surplus of strength for beauty, 
 bravery, culture and manners, and this right unto 
 the most intellectual domain. It will be an as- 
 sertive race that can allow itself every kind of 
 'grand luxe': a race strong enough not to need an 
 imperative of virtue, rich enough to be able to do 
 without economy and pedantism, finding itself be- 
 yond good and evil, a hot-house for peculiar and 
 selected plants. . . ." This race. Spartan by its 
 will and its endurance, Athenian by its sense of the 
 beautiful, Roman by its grit and its unlimited will 
 to power, shall exist: the elements thereof exist 
 now. We can see samples of them at every turn, 
 be it in the world of science or in those of inven- 
 tors, of explorers, or of artists. The democratic 
 movement delays as we have seen but, presently, 
 will hasten its hatching. The democratic move- 
 ment shall find its " justification " in that birth, 
 with the proof that it can serve some purpose. 
 That race shall exist, if it be true, as history seems 
 to prove, that humanity never disorganizes itself un- 
 less it be to reorganize itself anew, and if it be true 
 that plebeianism, the precise form of social dis- 
 organization, can but foretell new conditions and 
 even produce a new reorganization.
 
 DISTANT PERSPECTIVES OF THE DOCTRINE 233 
 
 Having reached this affirwation, Nietzsche per- 
 ceived that from the moment when he affirmed 
 something he was perhaps no longer the immorahst 
 he had fancied himself to be, nor the anarchist, nor 
 even the anti-religious man that he had fancied 
 himself to be. He perceived that perhaps he was 
 but like others, dreaming a morality, a sociology, 
 and even a theodicy, but of course a special morality, 
 a sociology that was his own, and an original 
 theodicy. Somewhat too proud to admit it, he set 
 his wits to the placing of the question somewhat 
 differently, in giving the thing another name and in 
 admitting that he was a moralist, a sociologist and 
 a theologist without admitting it. He did not wish 
 to say : " yes, I admit it. I have a morality, a 
 sociology' and a theodicy in my fashion," so he said 
 instead : " I have a morality beyond morality, a 
 sociolog}' beyond sociology, and a theodicy beyond 
 theodicy." It was at bottom very much the same 
 thing but his face was saved. 
 
 It is certain that Nietzsche was seduced by his 
 own invention of the beyonds ^ and that he wished to 
 make thereof a whole theory that would crown his 
 work by embracing and harmonizing it, perhaps by 
 conciliating the contradictions and by establishing a 
 connected system. Unfortunately he was not al- 
 lowed time for adjusting that theory which would 
 have been a sort of method of conciliation by 
 "super-elevation," a sort of method of conciliation 
 by the sublime. That would have amounted to say- 
 
 * Jenseits.
 
 234 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 ing : " seen from very far above, the contraries do 
 not conciliate themselves but they disappear, or if 
 you like, they conciliate themselves in annihilation. 
 Beyond and above optimism and pessimism there is 
 no longer any optimism or pessimism; . . , Beyond 
 and above morality and immoralism there is no 
 longer any morality nor immorality; these names 
 disappear . . ." And so on. 
 
 There was Nietzsche's last thought, his supreme 
 dream, not that chronologically speaking he had 
 it after the others, for it seems that he was pre- 
 occupied very early by it and that the thing was, as 
 it were, one of the bends of his mind; but I mean 
 that it was what he had already reserved himself 
 to establish and systematically to expose in order 
 to end and close his work. 
 
 This remained confused, merely sketched here 
 and there, and I can but give its wavering lines such 
 as they may be found scattered throughout the 
 various works of our author. 
 
 For instance, examining two categories of " ne- 
 gators of morality " Nietzsche says this: "there 
 are two kinds of negators of morality. To deny 
 morality may mean (i) to deny that the ethical 
 motives that men give as pretexts do really 
 prompt their actions. It is as if one were saying 
 that morality is a matter of words and is part of 
 those coarse or subtle impositions (more often im- 
 position upon himself) which are proper to man 
 especially perhaps to men who are famous for 
 their virtues. (2) to deny morality may also 
 mean to deny that moral decisions rest upon truths.
 
 DISTANT PERSPECTIVES OF THE DOCTRINE 235 
 
 In that case, one grants that these judgments are 
 truly the motives of the actions ; but that they are 
 errors, bases of all moral decisions which lead men 
 to moral actions. This last point of view is my 
 own. Yet I do not deny that, in many cases, a 
 subtle mistnist in the way of the former, that 
 is to say in the spirit of La Rochefoucauld, is war- 
 ranted and of a high general usefulness. But 1 
 deny morality as I deny alchemy ; and if I deny the 
 hypothesis, yet I do not deny that there were al- 
 chemists that did believe in those hypotheses, and 
 based themselves upon them. In the same way do 
 I deny immorality ; not that I deny the e.xistence 
 of an infinity of men who feel themselves immoral 
 but I deny that there is in truth a reason for them 
 to feel this. I do not deny, as it goes without 
 saying if one admits that I am not a madman, 
 that one should avoid and resist many actions which 
 are said to be immoral, and also that we should exe- 
 cute and encourage many of those that are said 
 to be moral ; but I believe that the one and the 
 other actions must be done for reasont different 
 from those so far accepted. It is necessary that -we 
 should change our way of seeing in order to arrive 
 at last perhaps very late to change our zvay of 
 feeling." — to change our way of seeing and then 
 our way of feeling. For instance, there are three 
 degrees in the action called heroic or simply gener- 
 ous : (i) impulsion: to throw one's self in the 
 water, without the slightest reflection, to save some 
 one: (2) decision accompanied by extreme pleas- 
 ure: to do the same thing very deliberately, after
 
 236 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 deliberation and consideration of the subject; but to 
 do it out of will, with a heroic joy, coming from the 
 consciousness that one has of this sovereign will. 
 (3) Decision unaccompanied by pleasure: to do the 
 same thing after deliberation and consideration of 
 the danger, and to do it out of will, but without 
 feeling a pleasure which is, at the same time, also 
 impulsion and reward. This third degree is the 
 highest. It is the one that we must reach ; is what 
 we call changing our way of seeing and even our 
 way of feeling. 
 
 " One gives way to a generous feeling, placing 
 one's life in danger, under a momentary impulsion. 
 That is of little value, and does not even represent a 
 characteristic action. In their capacity for thus 
 acting, all men are equal, and, as to the decision 
 which is necessary thereto, the criminal, the bandit, 
 the Corsican, certainly surpass an honest man. The 
 superior degree would be reached if one could over- 
 power that impulse within one's self not to execute 
 the heroic deed as a sequel to impulsions, but coldly, 
 in a reasonable fashion, without there being a tem- 
 pestuous overflowing of feelings of pleasure. It is 
 likewise the case with compassion: it should be 
 habitually passed first of all through the sieve of 
 reason. Otherwise it would be as dangerous as 
 any other sentiment. The blind obedience to a 
 passion, be the latter generous or commiserating 
 or hostile, that matters little — that is always the 
 cause of the greatest calamities. Greatness of 
 character does not consist in not having those pas- 
 sions ; on the contrary one should possess them in
 
 DISTANT PERSPECTIVES OF THE IXKTRIXE 2^ 
 
 the highest degree. It consists in holding them on 
 leash — and again this witliout such a constraint 
 causing even a particle of joy, but simply. . . . We 
 must dominate the passions and not weaken or ex- 
 tirpate them. And the greater the mastery of the 
 will the more freedom one may grant to the pas- 
 sions." 
 
 In other words, Nietzsche simply tends toward 
 a morality, and it seems to me, a perfectly " uni- 
 versal " one. Only it is a new morality, a new as- 
 sessment of the " zahies," be they the moral values 
 or the others. These should be even, chronologi- 
 cally, his last preoccupation. 
 
 In the same way he was very visibly preoccu- 
 pied, if not in reconstructing a religion, at least in 
 re-establishing God. It seems to mc that in his last 
 works Nietzsche felt that he had only wished to de- 
 stroy God because of morality, that he had destroyed 
 but the moral God, and consequently, that the 
 non-moral God may still remain, and that nothing 
 is opposed to his existence. He says again : " the 
 world is not at all an organism ; it is chaos . . ." 
 but he says also: " do we suppress the idea of aim 
 in the processus and do we nevertheless affirm the 
 processus? " That may be. " Such would be the 
 case if, in the circle of that processus and at every 
 moment thereof, something were reached, — and that 
 always the same thing. Spinoza conquered an 
 affirmative position of this kind, in this sense, that 
 for him, every moment has a logical necessity : and 
 he triumphs in such a confirmation of the world by 
 means of his fundamental logical instinct." Again
 
 238 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 Nietzsche says and with great depth: "because 
 one has considered conscience as measure, as supe- 
 rior value of life, instead of seeing therein an in- 
 strument and a particular case in the general life, 
 because one has fallen into the false reasoning of 
 the a parte ad totum, all the philosophers instinc- 
 tively seek to imagine a conscious participation in 
 everything that happens, a spirit, a God. But they 
 should be made to understand that it is precisely in 
 this wise that the existence becomes a monstrosity; 
 that a God and a universal sensibility would be 
 something that should cause life to be absolutely 
 condemned. We have eliminated the universal con- 
 science . . . and that is the very thing which 
 brought us a great relief. As it is we are no longer 
 compelled to be pessimists. The greatest reproach 
 that we addressed to life was the existence of 
 God." This was clearly atheistic, but Nietzsche 
 said also, with loyalty and finesse : Yes, but " after 
 all it is only the moral God that has been over- 
 come. Is there any meaning (or: might not there 
 be a meaning) in imagining a God beyond good and 
 evil? Would (or, might not) a pan-theism di- 
 rected towards this be imaginable ? " Elsewhere he 
 answers ; " yes, yes, that would be imaginable and 
 it would have a meaning. Let us discard the 
 greatest beauty of the idea of God. It is un- 
 worthy of God. Let us discard also the highest 
 wisdom. It is the vanity of the philosophers, upon 
 whose conscience lay the folly of that monster of 
 wisdom who would be God: they pretend that 
 God resembles them as much as possible. No!
 
 DISTANT PERSPECTIVES OF THE DOCTRINE 239 
 
 Cod, the highest pozver, that is enough. Hence re- 
 sults everything that results : the World." And 
 there are no more theistic words nor any more re- 
 ligious ones than this energetic affirmation of the 
 All Mighty, thrown in some way beyond good and 
 evil, beyond goodness and wisdom, beyond all the 
 contingencies, and beyond all the human things 
 that piety, and also the vanity and short-sight of 
 humanity have perhaps imprudently mixed in the 
 divine essence. 
 
 It is therefore established that Nietzsche, per- 
 suaded that man is a being that must overcome him- 
 self, has often, perhaps always, dreamt of himself, 
 and beyond his immoralism and his atheism, sought 
 to find again a superior morality and a superior the- 
 ism and perhaps a superior religion. 
 
 But this back-plan of his conceptions and this 
 thought in the back of his head remained, I must 
 repeat, confused. The passages of his works in 
 which they appear, and in some way, insinuate them- 
 selves are scarce enough. The expression which he 
 gives them, sometimes luminous enough as we have 
 seen, is more often hesitating and obscure. We 
 have here a Nietzsche who zvould hare been, if " the 
 highest power" had given him a longer life. He 
 did not come into being. He could but announce 
 himself, make himself foreseen, and foresee him- 
 self. A general judgment upon Nietzsche must 
 bear upon all we have seen of him without taking 
 any further notice than that which we have just 
 given it of this last phasis, or in better words, of 
 this last degree.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 DIGRESSION: 
 LITERARY IDEAS OF NIETZSCHE. 
 
 Although the literary and artistic ideas of 
 Nietzsche do not always bear close relation to his 
 philosophy, and although we naturally recorded 
 where they were in their place those among his 
 artistic ideas which are related to his philosophy, 
 and even stand at the basis of it, it is seemly that 
 •we should not leave the philosopher without a 
 glance at the most curious of his innumerable, 
 aesthetic, free and independent considerations, which 
 came forth according to the day and the hour. 
 They were his digressions. This also will be a 
 digression, after which we shall come back to the 
 philosopher to cover him up in a whole gathering 
 judgment. 
 
 Let us recall to mind that Nietzsche is first of all 
 a classic, an Apollonian and a Dionysian, a neo- 
 Greek, an Hellenist who would be an Hellene. The 
 influence of Goethe must have been strong here, 
 and somewhat also that of Renan. I fancy that, 
 with Goethe and Renan, without taking Schopen- 
 hauer much into account, we could reconstruct the 
 whole fundamental Nietzsche. Nevertheless, one 
 may say that Nietzsche is neo-Greek almost from 
 
 240
 
 digression: literary ideas of NIETZSCHE 241 
 
 birth. At the age of twenty he was that as much 
 as ever, more than ever, and with more indiscreet 
 fire, than at any other period of his hfe. That is 
 his very foundation. Hence his passion for Wag- 
 ner's drama in which he thought — rightly, 1 be- 
 lieve, — that he had again found the Greek tragedy. 
 Hence also (without taking into consideration the 
 private reasons with which, I admit, we should 
 reckon) his anger later against this same drama of 
 Wagner after he had fancied that he recognized in 
 it the sickly and unhealthy autumn flower of roman- 
 ticism. 
 
 Hence his passion for the whole French literature 
 of the 17th and i8th centuries (we should add 
 MontaigJie) in which he thought he saw, and that 
 may be argued, an heir of the Greeks much more 
 than of the Romans. Hence all his taste, which 
 goes for a very simple, very neat and very clear 
 forcefulness, to the constant union of simplicity and 
 strength. It is true that the artist is to Nietzsche 
 a *' sick man " because Nietzsche always loves to 
 give first of all an exaggerated and paradoxical 
 form to his thought in order to secure attention, 
 even if he has to readjust his thought later; but a 
 sick man, full of active force and of superanun"^ 
 dance, and who creates and gives out beauty in a 
 precise, just and sane form. The artist is excep- 
 tional and lives in a peculiar state that may be 
 termed the malady of super-excitation : " The 
 artist is created by exceptional conditions, by all 
 the states that are intimately bound to the phe- 
 nomena of sickness, with the result that it does
 
 242 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 not seem possible for one to be an artist without 
 being a sick man. These physiological states be- 
 come, in the artist, almost a second personality. 
 They are (i) intoxication: the increase of the feel- 
 ing of power, and the inner necessity to make of 
 things a reflection of one's plenitude and of one's 
 proper perfection; — (2) the extreme acuteness of 
 certain senses ... a need to rid one's self of one's 
 self in a way by means of signs and attitudes, an 
 explosive state. We must imagine, first of all, this 
 state as an excessive desire that prompts us to rid 
 ourselves by means of muscular work and a mobil- 
 ity of all kinds, of this exuberance of exterior ten- 
 sion; then as an involuntary co-ordination of that 
 movement with the inner phenomena (images, 
 thoughts or desires); — (3) the forced imitation; 
 an extreme instability that compels us in a con- 
 tagious way to communicate a given image, ... an 
 image that is born within, and acts by putting the 
 limbs into movement ; a sort of suspension of the 
 will; a sort of blindness and deafness towards 
 everything that is happening outside." This par- 
 ticular state of super-excitation and acting power, 
 a fever of a special kind, " is what distinguishes the 
 artist from the profane, from the receptive man. 
 The latter reaches the culminating points of his 
 irritability by receiving; the artist does so by giving. 
 The result is that an antagonism between these two 
 predispositions is not only natural but even desir- 
 able. Each of these two states possesses an optic 
 which is contrary to the other. To ask that an art- 
 ist exercise himself with the optic of the spectator
 
 DIGRESSIOX : LITERARY IDEAS OF NIETZSCHE 243 
 
 or the critic is to insist that he should weaken his 
 creative power. It is the same thing as the differ- 
 ence of the sexes. We must not ask the artist who 
 gives to feminise himself, that is to receive. To 
 this day our aesthetics have been feminine, in this 
 sense, that it was only the men that were receptive 
 to art that formulated their experiences touching 
 what was beautiful . . . this and what precedes in- 
 dicate a necessary error because the artist that 
 would begin to understand, would misunderstand. 
 It is not for him to look back, not for him to look 
 at all. His but to give. This is to the honor of 
 the artist that he is incapable of criticism. If he 
 were capable of criticism he would be neither fish 
 nor fowl ; he would be . . . modern." 
 
 Consequently the artist is as impersonal as possi- 
 ble. He is also, and, consequently, as personal as 
 possible. Beyond personal art and impersonal art 
 there lies true art. The artist is impersonal in his 
 sense, that his voluntary personality does not enter 
 and must not enter into his work, and because, as 
 Nietzsche admirably put it, " the author must be 
 silent when his work begins to speak." He is per- 
 sonal precisely because, if his voluntary personality 
 does not interv^ene, his sensible personality, his tem- 
 peramental personality fills his work. 
 
 Thus gifted, the artist shall be most naturally one 
 and simple, very much one and very simple. Do you 
 know what the mixed, the artificially complex, arts 
 mean and what they reveal ? 
 
 They reveal the impotence, the conscious, or 
 at least the half-conscious, impotence of the ar-
 
 244 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 tist : " The mixed styles in the arts stand as wit- 
 nesses of the mistrust that their authors felt to- 
 wards their own forces. They sought allied pow- 
 ers, intercessors and cloaks — such is the poet that 
 calls philosophy to his help, the musician that has 
 recourse to drama (that was for Wagner) and the 
 thinker that allies himself to rhetoric (that was, 
 consciously or unconsciously, very much for 
 Nietzsche). In the same way, the overloaded style 
 in art is a sign of weakness, or of a weakening either 
 in an author, or in a school, or in a period, or in a 
 civilization. A simple art is always art at its 
 apogee; classical art is always simple: "an over- 
 loaded style in art is the consequence of an impover- 
 ishment of the organizing power, accompanied by 
 an extreme prodigality in the intentions and the 
 means. At the beginnings of an art, one finds some- 
 times precisely the extreme opposite to this fact." 
 
 Effectively classical art, the art of beautiful and 
 simple ordnance, cannot be born straight out. Art 
 is at first, it seems, nothing but an exercise of the 
 intelligence, and only, little by little, does it become 
 one of the sensibility, then, perhaps later, of the sen- 
 sibility united to the intelligence, and lastly, of the 
 whole being. 
 
 We might venture the following hypotheses upon 
 the processes of the aesthetic sense : " if one thinks 
 of the primitive germs of the artistic sense, and if 
 one inquires what are the different kinds of pleas- 
 ure generated by the first manifestations of art, as 
 for instance among the savage tribes, we find first 
 of all the pleasure of understanding what another
 
 DIGRESSION : LITERARY IDEAS OF NIETZSCHE 245 
 
 ntan zcisJies to say. Art is here a sort of riddle, 
 which procures to the man that finds its solution 
 the pleasure of establishing the quickness and nim- 
 bleness of his own mind. Then one remembers, at 
 the sight of even the coarsest work of art, what one 
 knows by experience to have been a pleasant thing, 
 and one rejoices, for instance, when the artist has 
 indicated haunting memories or remembrances of 
 victories or of nuptial festivities (intervention of the 
 sensibility). Again one may feel one's self moved, 
 touched and inflamed at the sight, on the other 
 hand, of glorifications, of vengeance and danger. 
 Here we find the enjoyment to lie in the agitation 
 itself, in the victory over weariness. The mem- 
 ory of an unpleasant thing, if it is overcome, or even 
 if it makes us appear ourselves before the audience 
 as being interesting in the same degree as an art 
 production (as, for instance, when the minstrel de- 
 scribes the adventures of a bold sailor) — that mem- 
 ory may provoke a great pleasure, which is then 
 attributed to art." 
 
 Of a more subtle kind (intervention of the intel- 
 lect uniting itself to the sensibility) is the joy that 
 is born from the sight of all that is regular, sym- 
 Dietrical in the lines, the points or the rhythm. Be- 
 cause through a certain similitude one awakens the 
 sentiment of all that is orderly and regular in life, 
 to which alone is due every manner of comfort, we 
 venerate therefore unconsciously in the cult of sym- 
 metry the rule and the fine proportion as sources 
 of all the happiness that came to us. This joy is 
 a manner of thanksgiving.
 
 246 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 " It is only when we have derived a certain sat- 
 isfaction from this last joy that there is born yet a 
 more subtle sentiment, that of an enjoyment, ob- 
 tained from the breaking of what is symmetrical and 
 regulated: if this sentiment incites, for instance, to 
 seek the reason in an apparent unreason. From 
 which there appears then some sort of an aesthetic 
 enigma. This is a superior category of the artistic 
 joy mentioned in the first instance. (It means very 
 likely that here we have a return of the intelligence 
 no longer uniting itself to the sensibility, but being 
 pleasantly contrary to it, teasing it. The game is 
 piquant in a certain measure, but, if exaggerated, it 
 perverts and ruins the taste in the same way as the 
 teasing, become wickedness, is no longer a social 
 charm but destroys sociability.) Those that may 
 further pursue this consideration will know what 
 kind of hypotheses for the explanation of the aesthe- 
 tic phenomenon one renounces here out of princi- 
 ple." 
 
 This last line contains also a sort of "riddle" 
 Vi^hich I give up, or rather, which I renounce to give 
 the explanation which I fancy thereof — not being 
 at all sure of it. I open a referendum upon this 
 enigma. I shall receive with gratitude the solutions 
 that my readers may be good enough to communi- 
 cate.^ 
 
 Although it is always simple and always one in 
 its manifestation, nevertheless it should not be be- 
 
 ^The late Mr. Faguet being now in a position to under- 
 stand all riddles propounded by Nietzsche, his translator 
 makes a similar appeal on his own behalf.
 
 digression: literary ideas of NIETZSCHE 247 
 
 lieved of course that classical art is always the 
 same, and that there is but one classical art. There 
 are at least two manners ; they are very different 
 and opposed to each other ; they are not at all con- 
 trary, but they are opposed. There are two great 
 kinds of classical art. " There is that of the great 
 calm and that of the great movement." (Doubt- 
 less Virgil and Homer; Goethe and Shakespeare.) 
 And these two kinds are legitimate and admirable. 
 And then there are the " bastard kinds of art." Be- 
 sides, and beyond the art of the great movement, 
 there is the " frantic art." Besides and beyond the 
 art of great calm, there is the " art that is blase and 
 anxious for rest." These two kinds of art " want 
 their weakness to be taken for strength, and mis- 
 taken for the true kinds of art." 
 
 It is with the art that is blase and anxious for 
 rest that we should link German romanticism. It 
 is rather with the frantic art that we should link 
 French romanticism. French romanticism (except 
 perhaps some portions of elegiac art due to Ger- 
 man influence and to the influence of the English 
 novel, and prompted especially by the desire to 
 please the mob which sees nothing but mawkishness 
 in art), French romanticism was an affectation of 
 strength, audacity, movement, frenzy and clashing 
 noise. It was the frantic art by excellence — and 
 a very weak art at bottom. It was a sort of ape- 
 ing of the first Empire, or rather it was a stretching 
 out in literature of the imperial activity. The Em- 
 pire left in the French literature not its strength 
 but the trepidation that follows a sudden stop.
 
 248 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 German romanticism, which has much less con- 
 nection with French romanticism than has been 
 credited, is, properly speaking, the art that is blase 
 and anxious for rest and insipid sweetness : " When 
 the Germans began to prove interesting to the other 
 peoples of Europe — that was not so long ago — it 
 was due to a culture that they no longer possess 
 today, that they have shaken off with a blind 
 ardor, as if it had been a disease; and yet all they 
 could find to put in its stead was the political and 
 national folly. It is true that they have succeeded 
 thereby in becoming even more * interesting ' for the 
 other nations than they were before on account of 
 their culture. Let that satisfaction be left to them ! 
 Nevertheless it is undeniable that this German cul- 
 ture has imposed upon the Europeans, and that it 
 was neither worthy of imitation nor of the interest 
 that followed it or even less of the borrowing 
 that others vied among themselves to make. Let 
 men seek information today about Schiller, Wil- 
 helm von Humboldt, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Schell- 
 ing and the others. Let them read the corre- 
 spondence of those men, and be introduced, as it 
 were, to the large circle of their followers. What 
 is it that they have in common ? What is it that, in 
 them, impresses us men of today; what is it that 
 makes them sometimes unbearable to us, and some- 
 times so touching and pitiful? On the one hand, it 
 is their rage to appear morally moved at any cost ; 
 on the other hand, it is their desire for a brilliant 
 universality without consistency, such as their set 
 intention to see everything in a beautiful light, —
 
 DIGRESSION : LITERARY IDE.\S OF NIETZSCHE 249 
 
 characters, passions, periods and habits. Unfortu- 
 nately this ' beautiful ' corresponded to a vague 
 bad taste which boasted nevertheless of an al- 
 leged Greek origin. It was a sweet, goody idealism, 
 with silvery reflections, that wanted, above all 
 things, to strike nobly disguised attitudes and ac- 
 cents, something as pretentious as it was harmless, 
 animated by a cordial aversion to ' cold ' or * dry ' 
 reality, and especially to the knowledge of nature 
 whenever it could not be twisted to serve a re- 
 ligious symbolism. Goethe witnessed in his own 
 fashion these frenzies of German culture, placing 
 himself outside them, gently resisting, silent, as- 
 serting himself always more and more upon his own 
 path ... a better one. A little later, Schopenhauer 
 also was a witness. . . . What was it after all that 
 seduced the foreigners — that made them fail to be- 
 have as Goethe and Schopenhauer, or merely fail to 
 look elsewhere? It was that pale luster that milky- 
 way-like enigmatic light that shone above that 
 culture — that caused foreigners to say : ' here 
 is something that is very, very far from us ; we 
 lose therein our senses of sight, of hearing, and 
 of understanding, our senses of enjoyment and of 
 valuation ; but nevertheless it might be true that 
 they are stars. Have then the Germans quietly 
 discovered a corner of Heaven and settled them- 
 selves in it? We must seek to get nearer to those 
 Germans.' . . . And they did come nearer. Mean- 
 while, these same Germans began, a little later, to 
 take much pains to rid themselves of that milky- 
 way-like luster. They themselves were well aware
 
 250 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 that they had not been dwelHng in Heaven, but in a 
 cloud." 
 
 However, romanticism of frenzy or romanticism 
 of milky sweetness, we term romanticism, as Goethe 
 expressed it very well, that art which is not quite 
 healthy. Romanticism always proceeds from a 
 weakness, be it a nervous or a neurasthenic one. 
 One might say that classical art and romantic art 
 are both dreams, since they are arts, but that one 
 is a strong man's dream and the other a weak man's 
 dream. " The minds, in the classical sense, as much 
 as the minds in a romantic sense, — both kinds will 
 ever exist — carry with them a vision of the future ; 
 but the first category causes that vision to spring 
 from the strength of its time, and the second from 
 the weakness thereof." 
 
 This strong art is of course, first of all realistic. 
 It clings to reality as much as the properly and ex- 
 clusively dreamy art shuns it as if it were repulsive. 
 But it must not forget that every art is a choice, 
 and take great care not to love all that is real, or 
 to wish to seize, imitate and reproduce all that 
 is real. Style, which itself is an art, shows us here 
 the measure in which art must be realistic and ap- 
 propriate the real : " In the same manner as the 
 good prose writer only uses words pertaining to 
 conversation but is careful not to use all the words 
 thereof — and thus precisely is the select style 
 formed — in that manner shall the good poet of the 
 future represent nothing but the real things, alto- 
 gether neglecting all the vague and obsolete objects, 
 which are made up of superstitions and half-sin-
 
 digression: literary ideas of nietzsche 251 
 
 cerities — in which the ancient poets showed their 
 virtuosity. Nothing but reahty; yet not at all the 
 whole of reality! Much rather a selected reality." 
 This true art, strong and sincere, does not exclude 
 flexibility. Better, it should be flexibility itself, as 
 much as the other art, sensing its own weakness, 
 whatever its nature, will always starch itself and 
 will always show something stiff, or somewhat stif- 
 fened, and, even in sweetness, something grimacing. 
 . . . Do you wish to know in what consists flexibil- 
 ity? Flexibility is freedom. The most flexible 
 writer is the freest. Take Laurence Sterne for in- 
 stance: " How could I, in a hook for men of free 
 minds, fail to mention Sterne, whom Goethe re- 
 vered as the freest mind of his century? Let him 
 receive here the honor of being called the freest 
 writer of all times. Compared to him, all the others 
 appear starched, devoid of finesse, intolerant and of 
 a truly peasant-like gait. . . . Sterne is the great 
 master of the equivocal. That word is, of course, 
 taken here in a far broader sense than one is ac- 
 customed to do when one is merely thinking of 
 sexual relations. The reader is at a loss, when he 
 wishes to ascertain, with any certainty, Sterne's own 
 opinion, and to know whether the author is assuming 
 a smiling or saddened air, because he knows how 
 to give both expressions to the same lines of his 
 face. lie knows also, and it is his aim, how to be, 
 at the same time, right and wrong, how to inter- 
 mingle depth and buffoonery. His digressions arc. 
 at the same time, continuations of his narrative and 
 developments of the subject. His sentences con-
 
 252 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 tain, at the same time, an irony of all that is senten- 
 tious. His aversion for all that is serious is linked 
 to a desire to be able to consider everything flat and 
 from the outside. In that v^ay he does produce 
 upon the genuine reader a sensation of uncertainty. 
 One knows no longer if one is walking, standing or 
 lying down. This shows itself in a vague impres- 
 sion of planing (applicable to Renan and also to 
 Nietzsche himself). He, the most flexible writer, 
 transmits to the reader also something of that flex- 
 ibility. Sterne goes so far as to change parts un- 
 wittingly. He is, at times, reader as well as author ; 
 his work resembles a play within a play, a theater 
 audience in presence of another theater audience. 
 ... Is it necessary to add that, of all the great 
 writers, Sterne is the worst possible model, the 
 writer who should, least of all, be taken as a model, 
 and that Diderot himself must have paid the penalty 
 for his servility? . . . Unfortunately, Sterne the 
 man seems to have been too near a relation of Sterne 
 the writer. His squirrel-like soul was always 
 bounding from branch to branch with an unre- 
 strained vivaciousness. He was ignorant of noth- 
 ing that could exist between the sublime and the 
 rascally. He had perched everywhere, ever making 
 saucy and tear-veiled eyes, and ever assuming his 
 sensible air. Were it not that the tongue balks at 
 such an association of words, one could assert that 
 he was possessed of a * good hard heart ' and, in 
 his method of enjoyment, of a baroque and corrupt 
 imagination that was almost the gracefulness of 
 innocence. Such a sense of the equivocal, settled
 
 digression: literary ideas of NIETZSCHE 253 
 
 in the soul and blood, such a freedom of the mind, 
 filling all the fibers and muscles of the body — per- 
 haps no one has possessed these qualities as he did." 
 
 This flexibility of the strong art bears very fre- 
 quently the hall-mark of what has been aptly teniied 
 the gracefulness of carelessness. This carelessness 
 must not be an affected one. It must exist in the 
 natural movement of a being that does not put into 
 an action of his all the strength at his disposal : " A 
 work that is intended to produce an impression of 
 health must be executed with tio more than three 
 quarters of the strength of its author. If the author 
 has given his extreme measure, the work will agi- 
 tate the audience and frighten by its tension. All 
 good things allow a certain laisser-aller to be appar- 
 ent, and spread themselves before our eyes like cows 
 in pasture." In art there must be something akin 
 to bread : " Bread neutralizes the taste of the other 
 foods ; it tones them down ; that is why bread is an 
 item of all our meals. In all works of art there 
 must be something like bread, in order that it may 
 link different effects, effects that would, if they 
 followed each other immediately, without one of 
 those spontaneous pauses and stops, rapidly exhaust 
 and provoke repugnance ; — that would make a 
 long ' meal of art ' impossible." 
 
 It is even a question, but a more personal one, 
 peculiar to philosophers and even more particular 
 to Nietzsche, to what length one must be clear, or 
 rather in what way one must be clear, and in what 
 matters one must be more or less clear. In this, 
 Nietzsche is not suspected. He worshiped the Greek
 
 254 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 clearness, and the French clearness. He considered 
 clearness to be the honesty of the philosopher. He 
 was himself, most of the time, sovereignly clear be- 
 cause he enjoyed a high intellectual probity. He 
 exclaimed with ravishment, thinking of Schopen- 
 hauer, and especially of himself : " At last we are 
 becoming clear ! " But Nietzsche knows also the 
 shades, the measures and the varieties, and he knows 
 that there was a deceptive clearness and a clear- 
 obscure suggestiveness, that there existed cases 
 when a little penumbra was suitable and others when 
 a flash of sharp but rapid light was seemly. The 
 page in which he wrote all this, which pertains at 
 the same time to the philosopher, the artist and the 
 humorist, and which Renan and also Sterne might 
 have written, is one of the truest and also one of the 
 prettiest he ever wrote. It shows but a grain of 
 paradox, and even that was in the fair measure: 
 " When one writes one wishes not only to be un- 
 derstood but also not to be understood. It is no 
 objection against a book that some one finds it 
 incomprehensible. It may have been part of the 
 author's intentions not to be understood by every- 
 body. Every man of distinguished mind, with a dis- 
 tinguished taste, thus selects his audience when he 
 wishes to communicate himself. In selecting those 
 he sets himself out of the way of the others. All 
 the subtle rules of a style have their origin in this. 
 They remove at the same time, they create a dis- 
 tance, they forbid entrance, while they open the 
 ears of those that are our kinsmen by the ear. Be- 
 tween ourselves, in my own particular case, I do
 
 DIGRESSION : LITERARY IDEAS OF NIETZSCHE 255 
 
 not wish to be prevented by my ignorance, nor the 
 vivacity of my temperament, from being compre- 
 hensible to you, my friends, albeit my vivacity com- 
 pels me rapidly to approach a thing if 1 want 
 to be able to get near it. Because I tackle deep 
 problems as I would a cold bath — in quickly and 
 quickly out. To think that, in this wise, one does 
 not reach the depths, that one does not get deep 
 enough, is the superstition of those that fear water, 
 of the enemies of cold water. They speak with- 
 out experience. Great cold makes one prompt. 
 And, by the way, does a thing remain incompre- 
 hensible and unknown because it is but touched 
 flying, caught with one glance or a flash? Is it 
 really necessary to begin by firmly silting on it, to 
 hatch it like an egg} At least there are certain 
 truths that have special modesty and susceptibility, 
 that can only be possessed in an unexpected man- 
 ner, that one must seize unaware or else leave 
 alone. . . . My brevity is based upon yet an- 
 other reason. I have to explain many of the 
 questions that engross my mind in a few words 
 in order to be ambiguously understood. For one 
 should avoid, as immoralist, to pervert innocence; 
 I am referring to the donkeys and the old maids 
 of both sexes whose one life profit is their inno- 
 cence. It were much better that my works should 
 arouse enthusiasm in them, uplift them and urge 
 them towards virtue. I know nothing on earth that 
 is more joyful than the spectacle of old donkeys 
 and old maids moved by the sweet sentiment of vir- 
 tue, and ' I have seen that,' as Zarathustra said.
 
 256 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 This much concerning brevity. It becomes more 
 serious when it is a matter of my own ignorance, 
 which I do not wish to hide from myself. There 
 are hours when I am ashamed of it; yet it is true 
 enough that there are hours when I am -ashamed of 
 that shame. It may be that we philosophers are 
 today in an unpleasant attitude towards human 
 knowledge. Science grows, and the most savant 
 among us are ready to perceive that they know but 
 little. True, it were even worse otherwise, if they 
 knew too many things. Our duty above all others is 
 to avoid creating confusion with ourselves. We are 
 something else besides being savants ; although it is 
 unavoidable that, among other things, we be also 
 savants. We have other needs, another growth, and 
 another digestion ; we need more ; we also need less. 
 There is no formula to define the quantity of food 
 required by a mind. If however, its taste is pre- 
 disposed to independence, to sudden arrivals and 
 rapid departures, to travels, perhaps to the adven- 
 tures that alone are suitable to the quickest, it 
 will prefer to live free on a frugal diet than choke 
 full and in constraint. Not fat, but a greater nim- 
 bleness and a greater vigor does a dancer seek in 
 his food, and I know of no more suitable desire for 
 a philosopher's mind than that of being a good 
 dancer. Because dance is its ideal, its particular 
 art and finally also its only piety, its cult. . . ." 
 
 Yes, Sterne would have said the same thing, with 
 more carelessness, Renan more discreetly, and Hein- 
 rich Heine almost in the same words, even though 
 with more dash. There is here nevertheless a sort
 
 digression: literary ideas of NIETZSCHE 257 
 
 of parlor wherein Sterne, Renan, Heine and 
 Nietzsche are smihngly chatting. 
 
 After all, Nietzsche is of that race — an inter- 
 national one — fine, lively, huinoristic and ironical. 
 In spite of his passion for " force," he is also a 
 sworn enemy of brutality, which is not at all tlie same 
 thing. In his dream of a superhuman elite which 
 would be deliberately conquering and oppressive, he 
 always includes the refined manners. The vulgar- 
 ity and the violence of a part of present day art 
 inspired him with horror. Yet it also caused him 
 pleasure in this, that it might well have its reper- 
 cussion upon the very foundation, upon manners 
 themselves, and gradually create a people of savages 
 over whom a strong and polished elite would rule. 
 He compared the three centuries in this light, as he 
 did in so many others, and he acknowledged a 
 decadence which, for the reasons I have stated, both 
 repel and tickle him: "If one ceaselessly forbids 
 one's self the expression of the passions, as some- 
 thing that must be left to the vulgar, the coarser 
 ones, the bourgeois and the peasant-like natures; if 
 one, then, wishes to restrain, not the passions them- 
 selves but their language and gestures, one reaches 
 nevertheless, at the same time, that which one did not 
 dream of attaining, that is the repression of the 
 passions themselves, or, at least, their weakening and 
 their transformation — as happened (an instructive 
 example) with the Court of Louis XIV and all 
 that depended from it. The following period, 
 brought up to use restraint with regard to the exte- 
 rior forms, had lost the passions themselves, and as-
 
 258 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 sumed, on the other hand, an elegant, superficial 
 and playful gait. That period was so incapable of 
 * ungentlemanliness ' that even an offence was never 
 received and returned without courteous words. 
 Perhaps our own epoch offers a strange counter- 
 part to that. Everywhere, in real life or on the 
 stage, and, not least of all, in everything that is 
 written, I see the feeling of comfort caused by all 
 the coarse irruptions and all the vulgar gestures of 
 passion. People insist nowadays upon a certain 
 convention of the passionate character; but, at no 
 price, would they accept passion itself. Neverthe- 
 less, it will be reached in time, and our descendants 
 will possess a true savagery, and not merely the 
 savagery and coarseness of manners." 
 
 These matters of good deportment and of allure 
 were extremely engrossing to Nietzsche. He 
 rightly recognized the born artists or writers, for in- 
 stance in this, that they know how to " find the end- 
 ing," to stop just where they should, with precision, 
 surety and gracefulness (it was not often that 
 Nietzsche could do that himself): "The masters 
 of the first quality are to be known by this. In 
 great as in small things, they know how perfectly 
 to find the ending, be it the end of a melody or of a 
 thought, be it the fifth act of a tragedy or a Gov- 
 ernment's Act. The second rate masters always 
 become nervous towards the end. They do not in- 
 cline towards the sea, with a simple and quiet 
 rhythm, as does for instance the mountain near 
 Porto-Fino, over there where the bay of Genoa 
 sings the concluding song of its melody."
 
 digression: literary ideas of nietzsche 259 
 
 Manners and gait are matters of race and heredity 
 almost as much as of culture, and that comes to say- 
 ing that they are matters of very long culture: 
 "There exist manners of the mind through which 
 even men of great minds lead one to surmise that 
 they came from the populace or the semi-populace. 
 . , . They do not know how to walk. . . . Napo- 
 leon did not know how to walk in public ceremonies. 
 . . . People will certainly laugh when looking at 
 those writers that make the ample clothing of the 
 period rustle about them — they wish to hide their 
 feet." 
 
 Nietzsche gave as little attention to the modern 
 theater as he gave much to the antique theater, 
 wherein he saw, rightly perhaps, so many things. 
 Nevertheless, we must record his theory of the 
 theater, considered as the starting point of literary 
 decadence and as symptom of incipient social de- 
 cadence. His is a theory of the amorality of the 
 theater. We must record also deep remarks of his 
 upon the Cornelian genius which he marvelously 
 penetrated, and which he analyzed — that can be well 
 enough understood — with a sort of loving passion. 
 
 Nietzsche thought that " the theater has its own 
 time " which already ceases to be that of the full 
 imaginative vigor of a people. The time of the 
 full imaginative vigor of a race is the period of the 
 Epopee. But so soon as the people needs to have 
 materially represented its heroes and its legends, 
 that means that the people imagines, thinks and 
 represents to itself things in a much less energetic 
 fashion : " When the imagination of a people is
 
 26o ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 relaxed, there is born in it an inclination to have its 
 legends re-presented on the stage. It bears, it can 
 bear the coarse substitutes for the imagination. But 
 in the epoch to which the epical rhapsody belongs, 
 the theater and the comedian, disguised as a hero, 
 would prove a fetter instead of an aid to the imagin- 
 ation. They are too near, too definite, too heavy, 
 too little dream and bird-flight like." This, in my 
 opinion, is absolutely just, and it explains how litera- 
 tures, I would not say, end in the theater, but in a 
 way have their culminating point in the theater. 
 First of all comes the epopee that affords satisfac- 
 tion to a still lively and strong popular imagination. 
 It collaborates with the poet, and has a neat and 
 powerful vision of what the poet narrates. Then 
 comes the theater, when the crowd, now less imagin- 
 ative, is more passive, needs no longer to collaborate 
 and fails to be shocked at the coarse materialization 
 of its dreams. Finally, the theater itself declines, 
 becomes still more material, and turns into an exhi- 
 bition, a museum, a furniture and drapery shop- 
 window. Literature applies itself elsewhere, but is 
 itself no more than a recreation for an elite and for 
 dilettantes, and popular literature simply ceases to 
 exist. 
 
 As to the morality or the amorality of the theater, 
 Nietzsche is convinced that the great dramatists 
 have no care whatsoever for morality and only 
 think of depicting life. It is we ourselves, people or 
 bourgeois public, without unrestrainable tendency, 
 to wish that morality invade everything and that all 
 art consist in asserting morality and in tending to
 
 DIGRESSION : LITERARY IDEAS OF NIETZSCHE 26 1 
 
 it as its last goal — we it is that introduce a moral 
 character and a moral meaning into the masterpieces 
 of the stage with much show of nonsense. " Con- 
 cerning the morality of the foot-lights. He is mis- 
 taken who thinks that the effect produced by the 
 theater of Shakespeare is moral and that the sight 
 of Macbeth deters for ever from the evil of ambi- 
 tion. He is again mistaken when he fancies that 
 Shakespeare had the same feeling about it that he 
 has himself. The man that is truly possessed with 
 a furious ambition contemplates with joy that image 
 of himself, and when the hero perishes through his 
 passion, that constitutes precisely the most biting 
 spice in the warm drink of his joy. Has the poet 
 then felt any other sentiment? His ambitious char- 
 acter royally rushes to his goal, and without any- 
 thing of the rogue about him, as soon as the crime 
 is accomplished. It is only from that moment that 
 he exercises a diabolical attraction and urges to imi- 
 tation natures similar to his own. Diabolical — 
 that means this: revolt against advantage and life 
 to the benefit of an idea and of an instinct. Do you 
 think that Tristan and Isolde act as witnesses against 
 adultery because of the fact that adultery causes 
 both their deaths? That would be making the 
 poets stand on their heads. Poets, especially those 
 like Shakespeare, are in love with passion in it- 
 self, and not at all with the disposition to death 
 that it generates. The heart does not cling to life 
 in that disposition any more than a drop of water 
 clings to a glass. Xot the fault and its unpleasant 
 consequences interest them — Shakespeare any more
 
 262 
 
 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 than Sophocles (Ajax, Philoctetes, CEdipus). Al- 
 beit it would have been easy in the cases indicated, 
 to make of the fault the lever of the drama, that 
 was expressly avoided. Thus the tragic port, with 
 his images of life, does not wish to warn against 
 life. On the contrary he exclaims : ** It is the 
 charm of all charms, this agitated, changing, dan- 
 gerous, dark and often ardently sunny life. To 
 live is an adventure. Take this or that decision, it 
 will always preserve this character. Thus does 
 he speak in a restless and vigorous period, almost 
 intoxicated and stupefied by the superabundance of 
 blood and energy, in a period much worse than our 
 own. That is why we need, commodiously, to ac- 
 commodate ourselves to the purpose of one of 
 Shakespeare's dramas, as we might say, not to un- 
 derstand it." 
 
 The theater does not cause one to hate the faults it 
 represents. It causes them to be loved by those 
 that are inclined to them, by idealizing them even 
 through misfortune, even through death. It only 
 causes them to be hated by those that already hate 
 them and that can only derive a moral lesson from 
 the great poem on condition that they are not moved 
 by it. The theater therefore moralizes only for 
 those whom it bores. 
 
 Coming to Corneille, one can well imagine that 
 Nietzsche would adore him. He found his " super- 
 human " or his " superman " at every page, and if 
 he had been of a jealous disposition, he would have 
 hated Corneille, exclaiming : " How many ideas this 
 man has stolen from me ! " A hundred passages of
 
 DIGRESSION : LITERARY IDEAS OF NIETZSCHE 263 
 
 Nietzsche allude to Corneille's drama. Vice versa, 
 and this does honor to both, one could make an ex- 
 cellent steady commentary upon Corneille with some 
 of Nietzsche's texts. I shall give here but the two 
 essential passages of Nietzsche on Corneille, one that 
 characterizes the Cornelian genius in general, and 
 the other evidently inspired by a reading of Cinna, 
 showing what a profound psychologist of the great 
 souls and what a historian of the " superior race " 
 Corneille was : 
 
 " I am told that our art appeals to the men of to- 
 day, greedy, insatiable, weary and tormented, and 
 that it offers them an image of beatitude, eleva- 
 tion and sublimity by the side of the image of their 
 ugliness, in order to make it possible for them to 
 forget, for a time, and freely to breathe, perhaps 
 even to bring back from this forgetfulness an incite- 
 ment to flight and conversion. Poor artists, who 
 have such a public ! With such by-thoughts, which 
 pertain to the priest and the alienist ! How much 
 happier was Corneille, ' our great Corneille, as 
 Madame de Sevigne exclaimed in the accents of a 
 zvoman in the presence of a complete man, how far 
 superior was Corneille's public, to which he could 
 do good with images of chivalresque virtue, stern 
 duty, generous sacrifice and heroic self discipline! 
 How differently they both loved existence, not as 
 one created by a blind and unpolished will that one 
 curses because one does not know how to destroy 
 it! They loved existence as a place where great- 
 ness and humanity are possible at the same time, 
 and where even the severest constraint of the forms,
 
 264 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 the submission to a princely or ecclesiastical pleas- 
 ure can stifle neither the pride nor the chivalresque 
 sentiment, nor the gracefulness nor the minds of all 
 individuals, where they are rather considered as an 
 added charm and a spur for one to create a con- 
 trast to hereditary sovereignty and nobility, to the 
 hereditary power of will and power of passion ! " 
 Here is now a portrait of Augustus, after Cor- 
 neille, a singularly sharp and subtle analysis, of 
 which one might contest a few points, but an 
 extremely right one in its essence and ensemble, one, 
 moreover, which is applicable to a good half of the 
 Cornelian drama, and which gives us something like 
 Corneille commented upon by La Rochefoucauld: 
 " Generosity and the like. Paradoxical phenomena 
 as sudden coldness in the attitude of a sentimental 
 man, such as the melancholy humor, such, above all 
 things, as generosity, taken as a sudden renounce- 
 ment to vengeance or the satisfaction of envy, are 
 presented by men that possess a great centrifugal 
 force, by men that are taken with a sudden satiety 
 and a sudden disgust. Their satisfactions are so 
 rapid and violent that they are immediately followed 
 by antipathy, repugnance and escape into the op- 
 posite taste. In these contrasts the crises of senti- 
 ment are solved, in one man through a sudden cold- 
 ness, in another, through an access of hilarity, in a 
 third one, through tears and the sacrifice of self. 
 To me the generous man — at least that kind of gen- 
 erous men that have always most impressed us — 
 seems to be a man with an extreme thirst for re- 
 venge, who sees quite close by, the possibility of
 
 DIGRESSION : LITERARY IDEAS OF NIETZSCHE 265 
 
 quenching it, and who, emptying the cup to the last 
 drop, is already satisfied i;i his tniaijination, so that a 
 rapid and enormous disgust follows that debauch.^ 
 He then rises above himself, as one says; he for- 
 gives his enemy. He even blesses him and respects 
 him. In that violation of his own self, with that 
 mockery of his instinct for vengeance, a minute ago 
 still so powerful, he does but give way to a new in- 
 stinct that has powerfully manifested itself in him 
 (disgust), and this with the same impatient debauch 
 he had previously experienced in drinking before- 
 hand in his imagination, in exhausting, in a way, the 
 joy of vengeance.* There is, in generosity, the same 
 degree of egotism as in vengeance, but this egotism 
 is of another quality.^ 
 
 The literary and artistic ideas of Nietzsche are 
 not connected. He did not make a system of them, 
 nor a general theory. Yet they are very original, as 
 
 * Cinna. V. i. 
 
 «Cinna. V. 3. 
 
 ■Let us add this also (and one could go on quoting) 
 obviously inspired by the Cid, or Nicomcde or by 
 Sertorius: " It is the women that pale at the idea that 
 their lover might not be worthy of them; it is the 
 men that pale at the idea that they might be unworthy 
 of their mistresses I am speaking of complete men and 
 women. Such men, who usually possess self -confidence 
 and the feeling of power, feel a state of passion of 
 timidity and a sort of doubt of themselves. Such women, 
 on the other hand, always consider themselves as weak 
 creatures, ready for the abandon ; but in the sublime 
 exception of passion, they have their pride and their 
 feeling of power and they ask: 'Who then is worthy of 
 me?'"
 
 266 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 he often is, very penetrating, as most oPhis ideas 
 are, and they all pertain, as is natural with this 
 great aristocrat, to the conception or the dream of a 
 sane, virile, strong and noble art. They are ener- 
 getically contemptuous of the sensibility of romance, 
 of the sickly and consumptive elegiac art, also of 
 the art that is overburdened, complicated, violent, 
 tortured and vehement through a sentiment of its 
 intimate weakness, and again of the art that is basely 
 comic and trivial, in fine of all the forms of the 
 popular and bourgeois art.^ They uplift mind and 
 soul towards the vision of an art made by a superior 
 kind for a superior kind. They express in their 
 fashion the great master-idea of the author : " Man 
 is a being who is made to overcome himself." 
 
 1 This is illustrated in almost every volume of Nietzsche 
 but it is especially interesting to recall at the present time 
 his views on French, English and German literature 
 scattered throughout disconnected chapters of Beyond 
 Good and Evil. Nietzsche always taxed his own country- 
 men with the lack of many things, especially of that 
 presto which is the hall-mark of the French. — (Trans- 
 lator's Note.)
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 Nietzsche is certainly not a very original philoso- 
 pher. He could be easily enough reconstituted 
 wholly out of La Rochefoucauld, Goethe and Re- 
 nan. The originality of his talent is, on one side, 
 very beautiful and inspires an admiring jealousy. 
 On the other side, it is vulgar and breeds a desire 
 to scorn it ; it is shown in his exaggeration, his 
 insolent impudence and his cynicism. He has so 
 little discretion there, and so little taste that he be- 
 comes ridiculous, as in his analysis of the coition, 
 which is of a rare unconscious burlesque, or in 
 his heavy paradoxes of the last manner : " In every 
 great action there is a crime." — " Superiority of Pe- 
 tronius over the New Testament. Spiritual super- 
 iority of Petronius. Not a buffoonery in the Gos- 
 pels. That alone refutes a book." Had Renan 
 fallen into a second childhood he might have reached 
 this point ; but that would not have made it more 
 bearable. 
 
 To come back to Nietzsche, minus his talent and 
 minus his foolish ways, he was not very original. 
 But he was intelligent, sharp, subtle ; he dislocated 
 and dissolved his matter in a masterly fashion, set 
 it up again with no little audaciousness, and with an 
 ardor in his violent and dark convictions that com-
 
 268 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 pels one to think and that, at least that far, there- 
 fore, is efficacious and fecund. 
 
 He is crammed with contradictions. M. Fouillee 
 has pointed them out with much finesse, but he has 
 admitted also that these contradictions are all 
 soluble. They are and all of them, more or less pre- 
 cisely, but all of them, were solved in Nietzsche's 
 own mind. 
 
 Nietzsche said that all things had an equal value, 
 and yet he ended with an authority, a hierarchy 
 for men. First of all, he very rarely said that all 
 things had equal value ; his efifort consisted espe- 
 cially in the establishment of a new classification 
 of values. Then, in Nietzsche's mind, all things 
 have an equal value in themselves and there is 
 neither good nor evil; but things are very far from 
 having the same value in relation to the aim and 
 as means to that aim, the latter being a greater, 
 nobler and more beautiful humanity, or, to use 
 Kenan's words, realization of the divine. 
 
 Nietzsche said that there was no purpose and 
 no sense in things, and yet he wanted his Superman 
 to be or to make himself the " sense of the Earth." 
 As a matter of fact, things have no meaning what- 
 soever but the man that overcomes himself gives one 
 to them. They have no purpose (which would 
 seem elementarily evident) but the man that gets 
 beyond them and beyond himself, suddenly endows 
 them with one. 
 
 Nietzsche said that nothing was true and that we 
 must, nevertheless, find or invent true valuations. 
 It is precisely because nothing is true that we should
 
 CONCLUSION 269 
 
 give things some valuations, not true ones but beau- 
 tiful ones, valuations according to beauty. That is 
 the very reason why no one can impose valuations 
 of truth on the man who has created — not discov- 
 ered but created aesthetic valuations, valuations ac- 
 cording to the beautiful. 
 
 Nietzsche said that everything was necessary, that 
 everything passed away and also returned, and that 
 we should, nevertheless, create something that has 
 not been. It did not seem to me that he said quite 
 that. He said that everything was determined but 
 that eternal determination had it that all things pass 
 away and return ; he said that some men created 
 anew states of society and of humanity that have 
 once existed, that will be new only in the sense of 
 being renewed, perhaps more beautiful in their lat- 
 est form, which is possible and therefore to be 
 wished. 
 
 Nietzsche said that Egotism was the foundation 
 of life, and tliat we should, nevertheless, practice the 
 great love which is that of complete life — that is 
 to say, he gave egotism its true definition : to put 
 one's love for one's self into the love for all things. 
 That is the true way to satisfy the love of self in a 
 royal, integral and thorough fashion. It is a truth 
 of common sense and almost of common place. 
 
 According to \ietzsche, hardness was the law and 
 we should, nevertheless, have the " great pity." — 
 That was not quite what he said and pity was not his 
 fault. P.ut if he did say it somewhere, he must 
 have merely meant that the hardness that saves 
 the species is the true pity, a total and not a sottishly
 
 270 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 individual pity. However I do not know that he 
 says it ; although it is his general tendency. 
 
 Nietzsche said that desire was the spring of the 
 vital instinct but that we should nevertheless desire 
 pain. He meant that man can but want his own 
 good, and that he is right in wanting it, but that he 
 learns or should learn that the good, even the ma- 
 terial good, can be acquired and bought only with 
 accepted pain, even with pain that has been sought 
 out and that, therefore, we must desire pain. 
 
 Nietzsche said that all passions are beneficial and 
 that we must nevertheless know how to curb them 
 and submit them to a severe discipline. He meant 
 that the passions, which are the various forms of 
 our egotism, are as good as egotism itself but that 
 they are good (i) if we govern them, if we direct 
 them. In the same way are all natural and me- 
 chanical forces good. (2) They are good especially 
 owing to the occasion they offer us to fight them in 
 order to tame them, since the finest thing in man is 
 the will — and that is all in Descartes. 
 
 Nietzsche said that there was no ideal, and yet 
 that we must sacrifice everything to it, that we must 
 sacrifice ourselves to the life that is highest, fullest, 
 richest and most . . . idealistic. This word must 
 be used since it sums up the others. — He said it 
 with truth because, for any man who does not be- 
 lieve in a revelation, it is tautologically evident that 
 there is no ideal. But it is also almost evident that 
 it is because there is no ideal that we should know 
 how to create one in order to have an aim, and that 
 an aim is necessary to us is practically established.
 
 CONCLUSION 271 
 
 Nietzsche also said that this sacrifice itself was 
 vain because we can never change things. If he 
 did say this, he was uttering a sublime thought be- 
 cause it amounted to saying that man, in sacrificing 
 himself for the sake of an unrealizable ideal, was but 
 fulfilling his function which was to despise things 
 and to persist in changing them even when they were 
 immutable and when he knew them to be immutable. 
 Man derives, nevertheless, a great profit from this, 
 that of having changed himself and of having made 
 a man out of himself instead of the thing which he 
 was. 
 
 Thus could all the contradictions of Nietzsche be 
 solved, without much trouble. If there were any 
 left, we have long since given up the notion that we 
 could reproach for his contradictions a man who 
 has been thinking for twenty years, and whose office 
 is to make us think, by setting forth to us his suc- 
 cessive ideas, a man who, if he had always thought 
 the same thing, would probably be a fool and who, 
 had he one day attempted to wipe out all his con- 
 tradictions, would have only been trying to appear 
 like the fool that he was not. 
 
 Let us give up this somewhat futile dispute and 
 seek Nietzsche in the two or three general ideas 
 to which he clung and upon which he left his mark, 
 and let us examine them with impartiality and 
 coolness. 
 
 Leaving aside a few evasions on his part, he has 
 instituted two moralities, one vulgar and unfruitful, 
 given up to the mob, the other superior and pro- 
 ductive of great things, immoral in appearance,
 
 2^2 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 contrary-wise to the first and reserved for the elite. 
 This contradicts the idea, held dear by humanity 
 for so long a time, of a universal morality. Let us 
 examine this point first. Is morality then not uni- 
 versal ; is it not the same for all men and all coun- 
 tries, etc. ... as Cicero said long ago? I do not 
 think that it is. People easily think that morality 
 is universal because they see that all men have it, 
 and the latter fact I hold to be correct. But the 
 conclusion derived is erroneous. All men have a 
 morality in this sense, that all feel themselves com- 
 pelled to something. They feel themselves com- 
 pelled to something because they are all " geared " 
 to a society (association, aggregation or company) 
 and this gear constitutes, of itself, an ensemble of 
 duties. A brigand's association has a morality, and 
 a very strict one. A pirate's association has a 
 morality, and a very severe one. A pimp's asso- 
 ciation — this has been unearthed in Paris — has 
 a morality, even a legislation and even a tribunal 
 judging the conflicts. An association of conquerors, 
 a feudality or an aristocracy has a morality and a 
 very harsh one. And so on. Now, considering 
 this that all men have a morality and that there is no 
 man but has one, people conclude that they have the 
 same one. Therein lay the error. The fact that 
 all men have a morality does not constitute a uni- 
 versal morality. It merely establishes the fact that 
 there is morality everywhere and that is not at all the 
 same thing. The universality of the moral fact is 
 not the same thing as identity of morality. It would 
 amount to saying that, because all men are religious,
 
 CONCLUSION 273 
 
 there is but one religion in the world. From the 
 fact that there is perhaps no man who feels himself 
 compelled, we should never conclude that there is 
 but one obligation under different fonns. In grant- 
 ing me these last words " under different forms " 
 you would be already granting me much, almost 
 everything, to wit, that there is no identity of morali- 
 ties. But I say even this, that there are feelings of 
 obligation which are so different, so contrary, that 
 one cannot, even by spending very much time over 
 it, bring them back to a common foundation. There 
 are moralities that command to kill and others that 
 forbid it. There are moralities that command to re- 
 spect one's parents and others that command to sup- 
 press them when they reach a certain age. There 
 are moralities for the foreigner and against the for- 
 eigner. There is no identity whatsoever of human 
 moralities. 
 
 There remains, nevertheles,s, this fact, that all men 
 have a morality. What does it prove? Simply that 
 all men are associated, some to one group, others 
 to another group. What does it prove? Simply 
 that all men are sociable. 
 
 — But even an isolated man would have a moral- 
 ity- 
 
 — Yes, or at least, he would have a self-discipline ; 
 but he would not have any sense of obligation. He 
 would not at all feel compelled to practice the dis- 
 cipline he made for himself. (Unless he had pre- 
 viously belonged to an association and remembered 
 it, in which case we are back to the common case. 
 The man in question does not consider himself as
 
 274 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 being isolated but as separated for a time from the 
 association that compels him.) 
 
 Therefore we must not conclude, from the 
 ubiquity of morality, that it is universal. There is 
 one everywhere, but it is not everywhere; it is not 
 at all the same for all men. Every man feels him- 
 self compelled ; yet there is no moral obligation of 
 any kind which be the law of humanity. 
 
 Nietzsche was then right when he imagined his 
 two moralities? 
 
 — Yes, but he was, nevertheless, also wrong. 
 There are not two moralities ; there is an undeter- 
 mined number of them. A morality for the elite, 
 another one for the crowd ; there you have what is 
 quite arbitrary, capricious, rash and as little scien- 
 tific as possible. Where does the mob end ? Where 
 does the elite begin? That is what cannot possibly 
 be determined. What man among us may say: 
 " The morality of the noble men is meant for me 
 and not for this other man " ? I do not need to 
 point out that if the morality of the great ones ad- 
 mits or excuses certain vices or violent actions, it 
 will always be the most abject of " slaves " who will 
 declare themselves elected for the morality of the 
 " masters." The words of a friend of mine, who is 
 a humorist, will be right : " Nietzsche, is the 
 morality of Tropmann." ^ The conception of a 
 
 1 A diligent search for more explicit particulars con- 
 cerning Tropmann which I could place before the readers 
 led me nowhere but to a faint recollection of a series 
 of crimes by some German anarchist in France. Faguet 
 was not given to riddles and the humour seems to be on
 
 CONCLUSION 275 
 
 masters' morality and a slaves' is a truly coarse one, 
 I mean one that is without shades, primitive, recall- 
 ing the caste regime and blind to the multiple dif- 
 ferences of degree between men. 
 
 The truth is that there are very many, multiple 
 and multiplied moralities and that they are all un- 
 like each other. As one goes up from the lowest 
 to the highest of humanity, one demands, quite 
 naturally, things which one had not previously in- 
 sisted upon, and also, I am willing to admit it, one 
 ceases to demand certain things upon which one 
 had previously insisted. 
 
 We are stern towards the man who, rendering to 
 his kind the mere minimum of services, is yet hard 
 upon those upon whom he can bring his hardness to 
 bear, or is dissolute, etc. 
 
 If a man is intelligent, gifted and active we de- 
 mand of him that he render services to the com- 
 munity ; first of all that he remain not idle, then that 
 he be not satisfied either with earning a living or 
 making money. We want him to do something 
 for the common good; we consider that to be his 
 duty, and he himself is conscious of it. On the other 
 hand, we shall be indulgent for a few sensual weak- 
 nesses on his part ; we shall bear him no malice if he 
 treats himself to a good dinner or a pretty girl, in 
 moderation.^ You can very well see that here is 
 
 the humorist. But then did not Mrs. Gamp insist that 
 there was a Mrs. Harris? — (Translator's Note.) 
 
 ^ Is not this an illustration of Faguet's insistence upon 
 the fact that there are many codes of morality? Many 
 Anglo-Saxons will consider him an "immoralist" after
 
 2"]^ ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 a man, who yet is " average," and who has not at 
 all the same morality, and to whom you do not apply 
 the same morality that you did to the minus habens 
 and the minus potens of a moment ago. One shows 
 him more exacting on the one side and more indul- 
 gent on the other. 
 
 If, finally, a man has rendered eminent services 
 to his country or to humanity, the whole of man- 
 kind exacts enormously from him, does not admit 
 that he abdicate, or relax or even almost rest; on 
 the other hand people freely forgive him some 
 vices. Especially do they instinctively forgive him 
 for being autocratic, imperious, harsh, and for 
 causing his grasp and weight to be felt. 
 
 Have you noticed that, as we come, I would not 
 say to the most deserving, but to the most useful 
 man, to the man who rightly or wrongly is con- 
 sidered the most useful and (for one has to use the 
 word) the strongest, we give him more money and 
 we unanimously believe — exception made for the 
 Socialists — that he should in fact receive more? 
 Why is that? Does he need more? We must ac- 
 knowledge that it is because we admit his right to 
 more satisfactions, either sensual, or of luxury or 
 vanity. 
 
 — But, wretched man ! you are helping his vices ! 
 
 — Not quite. Nevertheless we must admit that 
 we do excuse him for having those vices if they 
 be not too grave, more than we would another man, 
 
 this, and many Slavs begin to think that he was after all, 
 human, all-too-human. — CTranslator's Note.)
 
 CONCLUSION 277 
 
 to compensate or to balance the immense services we 
 think he has rendered us. 
 
 Thus has humanity reasoned more or less con- 
 sciously up to now. It may be that it shall not 
 always reason in this way. That, however, human- 
 ity has persisted in this frame of mind for what is 
 surely an appreciable period, proves that more or 
 less confusedly and, in truth, clearly enough, it has 
 admitted several moralities. 
 
 Do you not see that it admits professional moral- 
 ities? It admits a soldier's morality, which is not 
 that of the judge, a priest's morality, which is not 
 that of the workingman, and a savant's morality, 
 which is not that of the ignorant man. Docs 
 humanity allow me to cut a live dog into little 
 pieces? Yet it allows my colleague of the Faculte 
 des Sciences to do it ; it encourages him to do it, and 
 rightly too, in my opinion. 
 
 It admits a morality for women, one which is, 
 come to think of it. essentially different from that 
 of the men. It asks chastity from women as an 
 essential virtue, and it has never thought of holding 
 chastity to be an essential or even an important 
 virtue in men. Women themselves share, most of 
 them, this double opinion. They despise the liber- 
 tine woman, while it is perhaps somewhat the con- 
 trary with regard to men. Why is this? Because it 
 is most certain that society rests upon the chastity 
 of its women, and evinces much less interest in the 
 chastity of men, or rather, it is more concerned over 
 the energy, courage, loyalty and honesty of the men
 
 278 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 than over their chastity. It is quite true that if so- 
 ciety wants the women to remain chaste, it should, in 
 consequence, demand chastity from the men also, 
 since it is uncontestable that the two are connected. 
 To be sure ; yet also, because of this very connection, 
 if society were sure of the chastity of women, it 
 would be sure also of that of the men. For this very 
 reason, knowing man to be naturally polygamous, 
 and being interested in man not practicing polygamy, 
 knowing woman to be at least much more monogam- 
 ous than man, it is woman upon whom society relies 
 for the maintenance of the general chastity as much 
 as it is possible to maintain it. Because society relies 
 mostly on woman, and this with some reason, it 
 endows feminine chastity with an extreme value. 
 With ardor and authority it urges woman to pre- 
 serve chastity. It makes a superior and essential 
 virtue of chastity for woman and a duty of the 
 first order. That is reasonable enough. Mean- 
 while society institutes a morality special to women 
 and very different from that imposed upon men. 
 
 Mankind admits, therefore, diverse moralities, 
 the severeness and indulgence of which compensate 
 each other. 
 
 There we have the truth at the bottom of 
 Nietzsche's theories or, at least, there we find that 
 part of his ideas which is in agreement with the 
 consensus communis of humanity such as, rightly 
 or wrongly. It has persisted to this day. 
 
 But this is nothing like the conception of the two 
 moralities; nothing even is more contrary to it. 
 [The conception of two moralities arbitrarily divides
 
 CONCLUSION 279 
 
 mankind into two classes, while there are of course, 
 not two kinds, but a hundred degrees. The con- 
 ception of the two moralities is not exactly com- 
 pensating. True, it exacts more from the great 
 ones and allows them more; it exacts less from the 
 small and allows them less ; but in creating a sharp 
 abyss between great and small, it paralyzes the good 
 force that might exist in a certain degree among the 
 small, and allows useful strength only in the great 
 men of whom it is not sure and to whom too much 
 license is granted. 
 
 I have been very careful not to state that the 
 general idea admitted by mankind is true, but it is 
 at least fairer. It says and believes that " there is 
 a general and universal morality. All of you must 
 abide by it. Nevertheless, those who will do much 
 more than their duty on one side will be tacitly 
 allowed to do a little less than their duty on the 
 other.^ Those who do but their duty to the letter 
 
 1 It is difficult to follow Faguet upon this ground. The 
 
 notion of mankind or society allowing anything seems 
 
 preposterous when one remembers the long list of names 
 
 of great men, whose work the whole world is ever pleased 
 
 to enjoy, who were allowed no sympathy or support or 
 
 indulgence or even the possibility of enjoying life, from 
 
 Socrates to Dante and Shelley, from Archimedes to 
 
 Copernicus, from Dr. John Dee to Turpin, from 
 
 Coriolanus to Sir Charles Dilke, without counting the 
 
 numberless lights of the English literature who had to 
 
 witness the fulsome and absurd praise showered upon 
 
 unworthy rivals and whose every lapse was eagerly 
 
 awaited and pounced upon by the public. The greater 
 
 the real lasting services as a rule the less has a great 
 
 man been allowed by his contemporaries. There have
 
 28o ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 must not expect to find people blind to their weak- 
 nesses. There are privileges in the domain of mor- 
 ality. There are privileges but they are distributed 
 in such a way that they balance each other and that, 
 after all, every one enjoys some of them. There 
 is a mass of different applications of the moral law 
 according to the degree of power for good which 
 each man possesses, and with compensations so that 
 no one suffer too much or be too much deluded." 
 
 This has truly been humanity's moral law so far. 
 It is an elastic morality. At heart, I verily believe 
 that it is an error and that the superior man merely 
 has more duties than the others, without compensa- 
 tion, unless it be — and an immense one it is — that 
 he can tell himself, with a deep gratification of his 
 
 been very few men whose names were blessed 200 years 
 after their death who would have given any care for 
 public morality when it came to a matter of tliat which 
 made them great. Again there is proof every day that 
 it is not the breaking of its mortal laws that society 
 minds in a man but the flouting of these breaks. There 
 are moral immoral men and women all around us and 
 also immoral moral men. The greater men are child-like 
 and do not attempt to cover their tracks. Therein lies 
 their offence to society. It were absurd to seek in this 
 remark a criticism of society's view on sexual problems. 
 The matter is a very much wider one. Why was Napoleon 
 not allowed to complete his task, for instance, the unifi- 
 cation of Europe? Or Joan of Arc? A great man is 
 great because he cannot help being great; an inventor 
 cannot help inventing nor a poet avoid singing. What 
 has Society got to do with them except to fuss over their 
 rivals and go a muckraking into their private lives? 
 Faguet's remark may be true of Latin or Slav nations; I 
 doubt if it applies to any other. — (Translator's Note.)
 
 CONCLUSION 281 
 
 pride, that he has more duties than the others with- 
 out compensation. Such, however, is the moraUty 
 of mankind. It is an elastic morality. 
 
 That of Xietzsche is rigid and arbitrarily so. Be- 
 tween great and small men, which it would be very 
 much put to if it had to classify and define them, it 
 digs a profound chasm. For those on the right it 
 establishes a strict morality, and for those on the left 
 it sets up a morality that is also strict and rigorous, 
 with appearance of immorality. It rests entirely 
 upon a fancy of the imagination, and has no solid 
 foundation, either in the psychology of men or in 
 that of nations. It is hardly more than a poet's bril- 
 liant revery. 
 
 I much prefer what Nietzsche said of the en- 
 croachments of morality and of the legitimate limits 
 within which it is as necessary to confine it as it is to 
 confine any other thing. That is true and that is 
 right in its consequences. Morality has always 
 had or at least has had, for a very long spell — since 
 Socrates if you like — the pretension to gather to 
 itself as the ultimate, or rather as being the 
 only end, all human actions and even all human 
 occupations. That " Philosophers' Circe " has been 
 and has wanted to be a Circe to all men, for their 
 own good. It has implanted in mankind the idea 
 that it alone is respectable, that it alone is a " value," 
 and that all the other values are valuable only as a 
 function of morality, and so long only as they con- 
 tribute towards its establishment or the confirma- 
 tion of its empire.
 
 282 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 This is really excessive, and truly an error. To 
 enslave to itself savant, artist and politician is, on 
 the part of morality, an encroachment, bad in itself 
 and one which, like all other encroachments, 
 ends by turning against the one that makes them. 
 To tell the savant, " Science must only serve to the 
 establishment of a rational morality and to the in- 
 crease of men's morality " — to tell the artist, 
 " Art must serve only to making men more moral." 
 To tell the Statesman ; " Politics are morality and 
 nothing but morality." — That is to paralyze human 
 forces that have a right to existence and that have 
 their own independent utiHty; it is to steriHze and 
 freeze the savant, the artist and the politician. 
 
 The savant will ever be saying to himself : " Is 
 this truth virtuous ; is not that truth a demoralizing 
 one ? " — and he will no longer seek the truth. 
 
 The artist will be telling himself : " Is not such 
 an art immoral? Art itself, as Tolstoy said, is it 
 not immoral in itself? " And he will think that his 
 duty consists in reducing art, as Tolstoy wished it 
 to be reduced, to Uncle Tom's Cabin. 
 
 The Statesman will always be asking himself, 
 " Do I stand within strict morality ? Must I take 
 life, have I a right to take life when it has been said ; 
 * Thou shalt not kill ' ? Must I punish, since it has 
 been said; 'Thou shalt not judge others'; and 
 since, even according to the simple morality of com- 
 mon-sense, it is obvious that to assume the right to 
 judge others when one is fallible, amounts to an 
 enormity ? " 
 
 And so on. The enslaving of the quest of truth
 
 CONCLUSION 283 
 
 to morality, the enslaving of the quest of the beauti- 
 ful to morality; the enslaving of the quest of the 
 public good to morality, are all suppressions of the 
 quest of the beautiful, of the quest of truth and of 
 the quest of the public good. The absolute and 
 superstitious enslaving of humanity to morality — 
 for morality has its superstitions like religion, from 
 which it differs but little — would cut short the very 
 life of humanity. 
 
 All this comes back to saying that, there also, are 
 particular moralities : a morality particular to art, 
 one to science and one to politics. These divers 
 efforts of mankind bear some relations to morality 
 but are not its dependents. They are indirectly re- 
 lated to morality but not as its servants or agents. 
 They do not have to be moral ; they do not have to 
 be immoral. The savant is guilty when he sets 
 out to discover alleged truths to demoralize his 
 fellow men. The artist is guilty when he causes 
 art to be used towards corrupting men. Politicians 
 are guilty, if under the guise of the public good, they 
 commit immoral acts which have not the public good 
 as an aim, but merely their own or that of their 
 party. 
 
 The morality of the savant, the artist or the poli- 
 tician, as a savant, an artist and a politician, consists 
 in not being immoral but it does not consist in enter- 
 ing the service of morality and producing morality 
 in the world. If they succeed in doing that, as 
 moreover often happens, all the better, but they do 
 not have to seek it. The word of Goethe is true: 
 " I never bothered myself with the effects of my
 
 284 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 works of art. I am inclined to think that they have 
 been rather useful, but it was not from that point of 
 view that I had to set out." The artist creates 
 something beautiful, the savant discovers something 
 true, and the politician does something for the pub- 
 lic good. It is likely, although I do not know it but 
 merely believe it, that all this, in the long run, bene- 
 fits morality; but it is not in itself morality. If 
 they wanted their work to be a piece of morality the 
 artist, the savant and the politician would paralyze, 
 sterilize and freeze themselves, and their work 
 would be worthless. On the other hand, if they 
 were possessed with the contrary idea and allowed 
 themselves to be prompted by a secret and intimate 
 immorality — and here we have identity of the con- 
 tradictories — they would also be doing ignoble and 
 pitiful work. Not the artist, the savant, nor the 
 statesman is the servant of morality. They serve 
 beauty, truth and the public good. If that also leads 
 to morality it is not part of their intention. 
 
 But morality will not have it thus. It wants to 
 find in all men servants ad niitum and pretends to 
 give to all human actions a value proportionate to 
 the place which it occupies therein. In other words, 
 morality pretends to be the only value. There lies 
 its error and it is this error with which Nietzsche re- 
 proaches morality furiously but rightly. 
 
 As I said, morality hurts its own cause through 
 these encroachments because, in the end, people turn 
 against it. That is what happened to Nietzsche, 
 who lost patience and finally said ; " We do not 
 want this tyrant any more "; and he wanted to sup-
 
 CONCLUSION 285 
 
 press morality itself, and the whole of it, too. And 
 if, in the matter of talent, there is but one Nietzsche, 
 there are many under-Xietzsches who do not admit 
 this universal despotism of morality, who challenge 
 it and integrally eliminate it. If you want to be 
 everything, there is always the danger for you that 
 your wish will be contested, and that you will be 
 denied even the right to be anything at all. 
 
 The matter is — it is not a reproach — that mor- 
 ality becomes a passion with civilized people and 
 assumes the whole character, and I would say, almost 
 the tyrannical temperament of a passion. Mo- 
 rality was with primitive peoples very likely nothing 
 more than the deeply felt necessity to sacrifice per- 
 sonal interest to common interest. That was a right 
 idea, then a sentiment, then a passion. The idea 
 of necessity became an idea of obligation. Man felt 
 himself compelled. All men felt themselves com- 
 pelled. Hence an intimate union between religion 
 and morality, whether it be morality that derives 
 from religion or religion that derives from moral- 
 ity. Little by little, while doing his duty, man felt 
 himself compelled to do something which had no 
 longer a very precise object, since the necessities 
 of the daily defense and the daily sacrifice were 
 less present and less obvious. He took to wor- 
 shiping that something which commanded without 
 giving its reasons, and which said ; " Thou shalt : 
 thou must." lie worshiped it respectfully and 
 superstitiously, either as a commandment from some 
 mysterious being above or as a commandment from 
 some mysterious voice within himself. And that
 
 286 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 was the mystical foundation of morality. As soon 
 as morality had a mystical foundation, it became a 
 passion, and that with extraordinary energy, because 
 man is only moved by the mysterious and is only 
 devoted with ardor and fanaticism to the things 
 that he does not understand. 
 
 Hence that religious character of morality which 
 causes morality, which has the result that morality, 
 if it survives religion, becomes itself a religion and 
 inspires true religious passions in those that love it. 
 
 Add to this, to keep this passion indefinitely burn- 
 ing in the heart of man — and far from me to com- 
 plain of it — add this motive, which is eternal. Man 
 was at first an animal for whom the struggle against 
 wild beasts and men was a daily necessity. Man is 
 therefore born bellicose, or if you like — I do not 
 want to argue over it — he has been disposed and 
 trained for fighting by thousands of prehistoric 
 centuries. This character he has retained. Once 
 the civilizations became firmly established, man lost 
 the need to fight every day, either wild beasts or 
 men, but he has preserved the taste for fighting ; and 
 he has every day some occasion to exercise it. He 
 has his passions, which are his inner beasts, and he 
 feels and shall feel every day the need to fight those 
 beasts. Therefore, man will effectively fight every 
 day against himself. He finds, in conquering him- 
 self, as much pleasure as his distant ancestor felt 
 in downing a bear. And it is the most lively, pro- 
 found and intense pleasure that man can yet devise. 
 
 Along this path also did morality become a pas- 
 sion. It is a passion against the passions. It
 
 CONCLUSION 287 
 
 amounts to the same thing, whether it is a matter of 
 annihilating them as being diseases and good for 
 nothing at all, which is the opinion of some people 
 and my own, or whether a matter of regulating, 
 disciplining, directing, damming, canalizing and pur- 
 ifying them, — so long as it is a matter of fighting 
 them. In his quality of fighting animal, man there- 
 fore worships the passion against the passions, the 
 passion against himself, the cgophobe passion, which 
 affords him such delectable victories and such an 
 exquisite loot — the loot of himself. At the root of 
 the victories of that passion, it is of course well un- 
 derstood, he finds again a marvelous sweetness of 
 egotism, a transcendental triumph of the self since 
 it is a triumph of the pure self over the self. 
 
 By all the roads, therefore, morality becomes a 
 passion. In it, man venerates what in its principle 
 and at the beginning of things most truly created 
 civilization and humanity. It is perfectly correct 
 that if man had been merely a passionate egotist hu- 
 manity would have disappeared a very short time 
 after its birth. He worships, in morality, something 
 mysterious — something that has become mysterious 
 — something that commands without giving its 
 reasons, like a god, and either he confounds it with 
 religion and absorbs it therein, or when he makes a 
 distinction between them, he promotes morality itself 
 to the dignity and the mysterious majesty of a re- 
 ligion. Finally, he worships in it a form of his 
 fighting instinct, of which he feels the need, and of 
 which he feels that he will always be in need, and 
 the victories and triumphs of which afford him the
 
 288 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 most profoundly voluptuous and exquisite satisfac- 
 tion. 
 
 What is there surprising now in the fact that mo- 
 rality has in the eyes of man as great an importance 
 as anything else? Did art, did science or politics 
 make the civilizations, did they make humanity? 
 They have contributed thereto but they did not make 
 it. Do science, art and politics command with a 
 sort of sacred authority, and do they compel? Is 
 there a voice in the innermost part of our being that 
 tells us ; " Thou shalt seek knowledge, thou shalt 
 write poetry, thou shalt be a statesman " ? There is 
 not, or if something says that to us, it is precisely 
 morality, or anything else but speaking through 
 morality's voice, saying: "Thou shalt know in or- 
 der to enlighten men upon the truths and to make 
 them happier ; thou shalt be an artist in order to link 
 men by means of disinterested enjoyment and ren- 
 der them through this concord happier; thou shalt 
 devote thyself to the State to ensure the happiness 
 of thy fellow-citizens." 
 
 Neither science, nor art, nor politics has, in itself, 
 this voice of commandment and this imperative ac- 
 cept. Whether or not morality has this character of 
 high authority only because it took it by encroach- 
 ments and usurpation, the fact is that it has had that 
 character for a very long time, and with a sort of in- 
 fallibility that has almost passed into our very na- 
 ture. It is only to the words ; " Thou shalt be an 
 honest man " that we find no retort, but the words, 
 " thou shalt be a great man " move us to laughter,
 
 CONCLUSION 289 
 
 and without our feeling the sHghtest remorse for 
 our merriment. 
 
 Do science, art or pohtics, in fine, no matter what 
 pleasures they give us, and how great, afford us an 
 enjoyment that can be compared to the unalloyed 
 and absolute joy that brings us out of ourselves 
 and above ourselves, the joy we relish when we con- 
 quer ourselves? Of course not. 
 
 Man has therefore concluded that morality was 
 his king and he turned it into an idol. He was at 
 bottom not wrong. But like any other passion, the 
 passion of morality itself has its dangers. To mo- 
 rality itself must we still give its share, making that 
 share the larger and more beautiful one. That is 
 what Nietzsche said, and had he said nothing but 
 that it would be necessary to give him the most seri- 
 ous approval. 
 
 His political ideas, which are very closely related 
 to his ideas on morality, are most worthy of discus- 
 sion, but also very much open to discussion. His 
 unbounded aristocratism does not displease one any 
 more than does that of Renan. Like Nietzsche, like 
 Renan, like Plato and so many others, I am thor- 
 oughly convinced that everything great and good 
 ever done by humanity is the work of an aristocracy. 
 I think however that the question is wrongly set 
 forth by Nietzsche and also by a few others ; but let 
 us confine outselves to Nietzsche. 
 
 This is how Nietzsche understands aristocracy: a 
 cultivated caste, hereditarily energetic, having culti-
 
 290 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 vated in itself and still cultivating energy. It con- 
 ceives and executes, by itself, very fine things. It 
 conceives and executes, by itself, and constrains the 
 lower caste to help it, great things: conquests, ex- 
 plorations, colonies, new cities and empires founded, 
 etc. Under that caste there is a vile caste which 
 loves neither the artistic life nor the dangerous life, 
 which is allowed to understand of art nothing at 
 all, or to have for itself a pitiful and ridiculous art, 
 and which is allowed to understand of life danger- 
 ous nothing at all, but which is associated with that 
 life by means of force. Some societies have lived 
 thus; they have been the greatest of humanity and 
 they have caused humanity to advance : Athens, the 
 Greece of Alexander, Rome, and the France of 
 Louis XIV. They are the models. 
 
 I hold this idea to be utterly false. The great 
 and beautiful human societies were headed by an 
 aristocracy, that is true, but they had an inferior 
 caste which was not at all vile and which was as 
 aristocratic and more aristocratic than their aristoc- 
 racy. They were aristocratic from top to bottom 
 or very nearly, and had an inferior caste been vile 
 and had a society failed to be aristocratic from top 
 to bottom, those societies would not have been in 
 the least great. 
 
 Athens was great, I grant that it was so because 
 governed by its aristocracy, but it was governed by 
 the aristocracy only in so far as the mass was 
 enough aristocratic itself to want to be governed 
 aristocratically and intimately to associate itself to 
 its aristocracy in an essentially aristocratic thought.
 
 CONCLUSION 291 
 
 Otherwise I would like to know what the aristocracy 
 could have accomplished. It would have erected 
 statues. It would have neither made conquests nor 
 achieved hegemony nor the Archa'e. When the city 
 fell it was because the people ceased to be aristo- 
 cratic and left its aristocracy alone ; it was when the 
 people said : " to be governed by Philip or by a 
 distinguished Athenian it is all the same to me." At 
 that time the plebe did not care about its aristoc- 
 racy, about the aristocratic constitution of the city 
 of Athens. It was willing to serve anybody. It 
 was willing no longer to draw from its own folds a 
 government of its own race and tradition ; it was no 
 longer aristocratic and productive of aristocracy. 
 That is what it had ceased to be. 
 
 The same reasoning or rather a similar establish- 
 ment of facts would exactly apply to Rome. The 
 Roman plebe discussed and was in dispute with its 
 aristocracy. To be sure, but until the establish- 
 ment of the Empire it remained attached to its aris- 
 tocracy since it did not overthrow it. That is such 
 an easy task for a plebe since it consists merely in 
 denying support. The plebe remained attached to 
 the aristocracy and to all aristocratic conceptions, to 
 all the dreams of conquest and greatness, and to the 
 dangerous life of its aristocracy. Like Napoleon's 
 grenadiers they were " always grumbling but always 
 marching " for no great national profit, for no per- 
 sonal profit at all, for almost none, which is an es- 
 sentially aristocratic feature. When they accepted 
 the Empire, when they gave up the Senate, it was 
 because the aristocratic sentiment had weakened
 
 292 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 among them. It was because it had become a mat- 
 ter of indifference with them to be governed, no 
 longer by an aristocracy that emanated from them, 
 sprung from the soil and bound together with the 
 old roots of the race and representing the slow and 
 regular ascent of the best that was in plebe towards 
 the superior spheres; but by chance sovereigns, 
 come from the four corners of the world, Ligurians, 
 Spaniards, Africans, Syrians, Dalmatians and 
 Arabs, who had nothing of the Roman, who cared 
 not a whit for Roman history, who did not represent 
 anything but success in warfare and were but the 
 chosen ones of a few mutinied soldiers. End of a 
 race; mentality of a race which is no longer con- 
 scious of itself, which knows no longer how to make 
 itself ruled by the best of itself approximately se- 
 lected, either by birth which is not at all a hazard or 
 by election, or by a combination of election and 
 birth; mentality of a race in short which has lost 
 the aristocratic sense. 
 
 And the reign of Louis XIV — what was it? It 
 shows us an absolute monarch, a military aristoc- 
 racy, an administrative bourgeoisie, a people devoted 
 to its king and its aristocracy, and consequently 
 essentially aristocratic. This people does not vote 
 nor elect ; it does not govern itself, neither by 
 plebiscites nor by means of a representation. But 
 it collaborates, and actively to be sure, with the aris- 
 tocratic government in this, that it obeys that gov- 
 ernment with ardor, dash and passion. What did 
 it want when it fought as it did, when it worked as 
 it did? It wanted the King to be great, the Prince
 
 CONCLUSION 293 
 
 of Conde to be victorious, the Marechal de Turenne 
 to be marechal, and tliat \'ersailles be an enchant- 
 ment. It wanted that, since it served so well 
 and with enthusiasm. It had no means better to 
 show its will. If it did not want that most pre- 
 cisely it could by means of a simple force of inertia 
 or of drowsiness have it that none of these things 
 come to pass. It would let France be conquered 
 by Spaniard. German or Englishman, saying 
 " How can this matter to me ? " An aristocratic 
 nation, it is a nation in which the aristocracy and 
 the people are both equally aristocratic. 
 
 And not equally aristocratic either, but rather the 
 people much more aristocratic than the aristocracy 
 itself. Because in the aristocrat, aristocratism may 
 be but a matter of interest, but in the people, it has 
 to be a passionate affair. What has the aristocrat 
 to gain by an aristocratic constitution, an aristo- 
 cratic regime, by an aristocratic life and by a bril- 
 liant and dangerous life? \^ery much: riches, hon- 
 ors, glory and satisfied pride. What does the ple- 
 beian stand to gain ? Nothing at all. "ATany blows, 
 little pleasure and death at every comer." In order 
 to be aristocratic the people must have the aristo- 
 cratic passion. Strange ways of passion but which 
 do not surprise the psychologist, it is necessary that 
 the plebeian should enjoy his aristocratic sense in 
 the success of others, that he be happy of Conde's 
 victories and of the triumphs of Turenne. that he 
 be made happy by the glorious life in which he does 
 not participate unless it be by his sufferings and of 
 which he has but the labors and the pain. It is
 
 294 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 necessary that he should proudly exclaim when he 
 sees the fine carriages passing before him, these 
 words heard by Taine : " How rich are our lords ! " 
 To be in this frame of mind it is necessary that he 
 should be a hundred times more aristocratic than 
 the aristocrats themselves. An aristocratic nation 
 is a nation in which the aristocracy is aristocratic 
 but the plebe even much more so. 
 
 — But this is a sophism ! You are mixing aris- 
 tocratism and patriotism. 
 
 — Nothing of the kind. They are mixing them- 
 selves. Aristocratism is a form of patriotism and 
 nothing else. If you like, aristocratism is a form 
 of the instinct of hierarchy and the instinct of hier- 
 archy is patriotism itself. A people has the hierar- 
 chic sentiment so long as it considers itself as a 
 camp. So long as it considers itself as an army in 
 a fortified camp it understands or it feels (and so 
 far as the result is concerned it is one and the same 
 thing, to feel is even much stronger than to under- 
 stand it) that the only means to grow or even to sub- 
 sist is to maintain with energy the hierarchy, that is 
 to say the national frame and the national organism. 
 Hence the energetic tendency strongly to gather 
 around chiefs who are designated by birth, which is 
 not at all a hazard, or by election with aristocratic 
 instinct, that is to say, one which always seeks the 
 chiefs in the higher class. Rome was for a long 
 time most remarkable in this connection. When the 
 aristocratic sentiment weakens, patriotism weakens 
 also. Rather it is because patriotism has weakened 
 that the aristocratic sentiment is lowering. Or bet-
 
 CONCLUSION 295 
 
 ter still, these two tendencies which are but different 
 forms of the same sentiment always go on a par 
 and keep more or less to the same pace. 
 
 An example against my own view : the ardent pa- 
 triotism of the 1792 "patriots" who were ardent 
 equalitarians. Think a while and you will see this. 
 Outside a motive of fact which is that those men 
 wished to repel " the kings " whom they suspected 
 of wishing to bring back over them masters of 
 whom they intended to remain rid of, there was a 
 sentimental reason. The patriots of 1792 intended 
 to replace the masters whom they were dismissing, 
 to prove, and to prove to themselves, that they also 
 could fill the office of masters, and to do it better 
 than the former ones. They wished to show, in 
 dazzling manner, that the people of France knew 
 how spontaneously to extract from its own midst an 
 hierarchy as good as the one it had destroyed. This 
 sentiment is natural to the man tvho replaces an- 
 other, to the new owner of an historical castle, to 
 the newly made noble man or to the atheist whose 
 virtue sometimes rivals that of the believer. It is 
 a sentiment however which does not last. Once the 
 democracy is installed and sure of its own positions 
 it loses the memory of what it has replaced, be- 
 comes, quite naturally, as indifferent to the patriotic 
 idea as it is hostile to the aristocratic idea, and does 
 not see the necessity for defending a country in 
 which it would remain what it is, whether it belongs 
 to that democracy or to some one else, and especially 
 a country in which the democracy in order to de- 
 fend itself to reconstitute an heirarchy which would
 
 296 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 very much resemble an aristocracy, and, to tell the 
 truth, would be one. 
 
 The patriotic nations are therefore always aris- 
 tocratic nations, and the aristocratic nations are 
 countries where the aristocracy is aristocratic but 
 the people much more so. 
 
 The question is therefore very badly set forth by 
 Nietzsche. We should not say that everything that 
 was good and great in humanity has been accom- 
 plished by aristocracies. We should say everything 
 that was good and great in humanity has been ac- 
 complished by nations, by nations and not by frac- 
 tions of nations, which were aristocratic from top 
 to bottom. 
 
 Thus vanishes here also, in politics as in morality, 
 this fundamental distinction, this rigid and strict 
 distinction between those at the top and those at the 
 bottom. Thus vanishes Nietzsche's aristocratic sys- 
 tem. To borrow one of his own procedures and 
 imitate for once his customary way, I will say this : 
 Let us blot out words of Aristocracy and of De- 
 mocracy. Beyond aristocracy and democracy there 
 exists something which is, if you like, Sociocracy. 
 There are nations that have a very strong social 
 instinct. With these peoples individualism is very 
 weak and individual egotism much inclined to self- 
 sacrifice and reduced to a sort of minimum. The 
 citizen loves to do great common things, to do great 
 things by means of association. According to the 
 different ethical temperaments, or rather according 
 to the times he does those great common things by 
 uniting strongly with the State, by absorbing itself
 
 CONCLUSION 297 
 
 in the State ; or he does them by forming corpora- 
 tions or associations of citizens, all of them moreover 
 deeply and passionately attached to the State and 
 becoming the firm limbs and the strong and *' well- 
 geared " bones of the State. In one or the other 
 way, and in one and the other way most often, these 
 nations practice sociocracy. They have the sense of 
 association, the sense of the State, in a word the 
 social sense and the sense of the people strong. 
 They are great nations and they do great things. 
 They conquer others or disdain to conquer them. 
 They are the makers of the great civilizations. The 
 others are the excrements of humanity, or rather 
 perhaps they are the mold thereof, and, as such, they 
 have their use, but that is not important to the man 
 whose study is civilization and the history of civi- 
 lization. 
 
 In short, there must precisely be neither aristoc- 
 racy nor democracy. The ideal nation is that in 
 which the people is aristocratic and the aristocracy 
 demophile. 
 
 That was not the way in which Nietzsche under- 
 stood things. Here lay Nietzsche's capital error, an 
 error which like all his others, either contained much 
 truth or was on the road to truth but which never- 
 theless it was necessary to straighten out. 
 
 Let us end with another general and essential 
 idea of Nietzsche. This I should call his idea of 
 dilettantism. After all he began with it and he 
 ended w ith it, and it is fitting that, with it, we should 
 close our study.
 
 298 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 If Nietzsche is an aristocrat, if Nietzsche is an im- 
 moralist, and if Nietzsche is everything that he is, it 
 is because he is an artist. It is because the pith of 
 his thought is that humanity exists in order to create 
 beauty. Every artist's philosophy depends upon his 
 aesthetics. That of Nietzsche depends absolutely and 
 altogether upon his aesthetics. He began by saying 
 all that we have seen in his Origin of the Greek 
 Tragedy, and he ended by saying in his Will to 
 Power, in the Chapter of the Criticism of the Supe- 
 rior Values : " Is it desirable to create conditions in 
 which all the advantage would be on the side of the 
 ' just ' men so that the opposed natures and instincts 
 be discouraged and slowly perish? This is after 
 
 ALL A MATTER OF TASTE AND ESTHETICS. Is it de- 
 sirable from the aesthetic point of view that the 
 most * honorable,' that is the most wearisome, spe- 
 cies of men should subsist alone, the square people, 
 the virtuous people, the straightforward people, the 
 horned animals ? . . . Perhaps it were the contrary 
 which should be desired; to create conditions in 
 which the * just man * should be lowered to the hum- 
 ble condition of useful instrument, of ideal herd- 
 animal, or at best of shepherd." 
 
 It is a matter of aesthetics. Humanity must be 
 led by aristocracies which are not much weakened 
 by morality, or which have and practice a particular 
 morality because humanity is made to create beauty. 
 
 I am not at all sure of it. Humanity does 
 not know at all why it was made but it is likely 
 enough that it was meant to live here below as little 
 badly as possible in order to increase and multiply,
 
 CONCLUSION 299 
 
 to subject the earth to itself and to lead thereon a 
 life that be somewhat bearable. " Go forth, live on 
 and fill the earth " is reasonable enough a sentence. 
 I fail to see what there is that could very neatly indi- 
 cate that its mission is to do things that are meant 
 to " ravish with ease " the poets, the artists and the 
 dilettantes, " res frucndas oculis." Beauty is an ad- 
 mirable thing. But I cannot succeed in being alto- 
 gether persuaded that beauty could be the only 
 thing that we should seek, that we should find and 
 that we should realize through eflFort, through sor- 
 row, through tears and blood. 
 
 Is it not, as seems quite natural and that which it 
 were foolish to evince surprise, is it not that 
 Nietzsche felt himself in the same error or in the 
 same excess as the moralists in their own way? I 
 have made him say : " Morality pretends to be the 
 only legitimate and permissible aim of human activ- 
 ity. Does science pretend to be the only end of 
 human activity? Does art have the pretension to 
 be the only end of human activity? They would 
 be wrong and so would morality." Well, Nietzsche 
 says precisely very often and is always thinking 
 that art should be considered as the supreme end of 
 humanity, and that all things should be sacrificed to 
 it. It seems to me that his error is here as great at 
 least as that with which he taxes the moralist with 
 so much harshness, bitterness and haughtiness. Art 
 is a great thing. It is one of the objects to which 
 humanity is right in applying itself when it has 
 nothing else to do. It were very much to be re- 
 gretted if mankind had no leisure to apply to
 
 300 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 this noble exercise. It was to have leisure that 
 could be devoted to art, I mean to make or to en- 
 joy art, that humanity used its wits to diminish by 
 discoveries and inventions the amount of time neces- 
 sary to secure its subsistence. All that is true. But 
 it does not result therefrom that every human action 
 should tend towards creating beauty and that every 
 human action which does not tend to that be despic- 
 able, nor that every human thought be disgusting 
 which does not have that aim. 
 
 Humanity must be led and governed by an elite; 
 I agree perfectly. But it is not my opinion that it 
 should be governed and roughly enslaved by an 
 elite of thinkers, artists and energetic men — those 
 artists in action — because those men create beauty 
 for which the crowd does not care and which the 
 crowd only creates when it is compelled to do so. 
 If the elite does not set itself as its first aim to 
 render services to the crowd, to make it more intel- 
 ligent, wiser, saner, and finally happier, I no longer 
 see of what use is the elite and whence it derives its 
 right. That the elite does not bring about the hap- 
 piness of the people by the same means which the 
 people would choose, very well. That it make the 
 people clear the bush, dry up swamps, build a Ver- 
 sailles, carry on defensive warfare or even wars of 
 conquests, that it profit either of the force it has 
 been able to concentrate in itself or of the instinc- 
 tive or hereditary confidence that the people 
 placed in it, very well. It is precisely the mission 
 of an elite to see further, to foresee and to know 
 that which after all, at the cost of transitory hard-
 
 CONCLUSION 301 
 
 ships, shall make for the greatness, the strength, 
 the security and withal the happiness of the people. 
 But I am not sufficiently artist to believe that the 
 end is worth the employment of those means if the 
 elite were to fancy itself compelled to nothing else 
 but to the creation of beauty through its own efforts 
 and those of the people. 
 
 Homer has said, perhaps without knowing very 
 well all the things that he was saying, in that sen- 
 tence : " The gods dispose of the human destinies 
 and decide the fall of men in order that the future 
 generations could make songs." Nietzsche quotes 
 that somewhere and finds it appalling: "Is there 
 anything more audacious, more frightful, anything 
 that lights up the human destinies like a winter 
 sun as much as this thought? So, we suflfer and we 
 perish in order that poets should not be lacking in 
 subjects! And it is the gods of Homer who settle 
 all this in that way as if the pleasures of some fu- 
 ture generations seem to matter very much to them 
 but the fate of us contemporaries were altogether a 
 matter of indifference to them. How could such 
 ideas enter the brains of a Greek? " 
 
 — But, if you please, this idea is quite Olympian, 
 and Dionysian enough, and excellent, made for the 
 brain of Greeks such as you have always understood 
 and represented them. It is also by excellence a 
 Nietzschean idea, and it is the Nietzschean idea 
 itself. At the cost of the greatest sufferings hu- 
 manity must produce beauty and be an admirable 
 material for epic poems. This is what we find if we 
 dig into Nietzsche; and if one does not find that in
 
 302 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 Nietzsche one finds nothing at all except talent. 
 That is the thing, which albeit very Olympian, fairly 
 Dionysian, Homeric enough and perhaps Greek, 
 seems very contestable to me. For a great good 
 much suffering, very well. But an immense and 
 perpetual martyrdom of humanity for the sake of 
 the " beauty of the thing," not at all. A little less 
 beauty and a little more happiness. 
 
 This Nietzsche is, to say the least, somewhat 
 Neronian. To express the whole of my thought he 
 is quite Neronian. What surprises me most since 
 Nietzsche is paradoxical, shameless and somewhat 
 cynical, is that I did not meet in his books an eulogy 
 of Nero. It must be there somewhere ; my attention 
 must have been at fault. Yes, Nietzsche is Nero- 
 nian, and that is the very secret of his influence 
 upon a section, to tell the truth, upon the most gro- 
 tesque section, of his public, upon the " aesthetes," 
 the pseudo-artists, the mountebanks, and as I am 
 told, upon a few women. His artistic conception of 
 the life of humanity is the enormous exaggeration 
 of a half-truth, or even a quarter-truth. Humanity 
 must produce beauty ; it must live in sane strength 
 and in beauty as much as it can. But to sacrifice 
 itself, or to allow itself to be sacrificed for the sake 
 of a beautiful vision of art, that is another thing. 
 Humanity must sacrifice itself to humanity alone. 
 
 Do not let us leave Nietzsche, after having so 
 much fought him, without acknowledging that his 
 was a very high intelligence served by an admirable 
 imagination. Had he possessed but talent I would
 
 CONCLUSION 303 
 
 Still hold him as a man who rendered services to 
 mankind. Talent even unwholesome is always to 
 my mind more beneficial than unwholesome. It be- 
 comes beneficial in the long run, when the venom 
 has volatized and the perfume remains. But even 
 in himself, if we consider nothing but his ideas, I 
 found some use in Nietzsche. 
 
 As I do not know what believer said : " There 
 must be heretics " I would feel inclined to say that 
 there should be sophists. That wakes one up, 
 shakes one out of slumber; it whips one up like an 
 angry north wind, it brings movement and a " sharp 
 and joyful breeze " into the intellectual life. It 
 gives tone. There should be sophists. By reaction 
 they end in restoring the commonplaces, and in im- 
 parting to them a new luster and a new freshness. 
 I am more of a moralist since I read Nietzsche, the 
 immoralist, and since I found out that Nietzsche, 
 after having furiously repulsed every kind of mo- 
 rality, was unwittingly led to establishing one and 
 even two, which leads me to believe that there are a 
 hundred of them which, superposed to each other, 
 connecting themselves together and establishing an 
 hierarchy among themselves, end in establishing 
 one. 
 
 Then it is very good, it is of prime importance, 
 that every now and then, that often, somebody 
 should make a complete, absolute, integral and radi- 
 cal revision of human opinions, of human beliefs, 
 and of the most imposing and the most deep-rooted 
 of them all. It is very good that often some one 
 should say, as Nietzsche did: "To accept a belief
 
 304 ON READING NIETZSCHE 
 
 simply because it is customary to accept it — is that 
 not to evince bad faith, is it not cowardly arid lazy ? 
 Do we want bad faith, laziness and cowardice to be 
 the prime conditions of morality?" Nietzsche has 
 precisely and especially rendered the world the im- 
 mense service of being honest and brave, of bowing 
 before no prejudice, nor even before any venerable 
 doctrine, of never balking before any idea of his, 
 however scandalous it might appear, of querying 
 anew everything dauntlessly like Descartes, and 
 even more so, in my opinion, more thoroughly than 
 Descartes himself, of having had an imperturbable 
 intellectual courage, which he carried sometimes to 
 bragging ; and that is the fault of that quality which 
 we must always be expecting and with which we 
 should always be prepared to put up. 
 
 The gist of Nietzsche is that we must every one 
 of us, make our own morality, our own aesthetics, 
 our own politics, our own science, and that educa- 
 tion is very good provided it gives us the strength to 
 get rid of it in order to make one for ourselves. 
 
 The gist of Nietzsche is that there is no good 
 truth but that which we have discovered ourselves, 
 nor any good rule of life but that which honestly 
 and with an effort we have created for ourselves. 
 
 The gist of Nietzsche is this : " There are no 
 educators. A thinker should never speak but of 
 self-education. The education of youth directed by 
 others is either an experience attempted upon some- 
 thing unknown and unknowable (very exagger- 
 ated), or a levelling out of principle to make the 
 new human being, no matter which, conform to the
 
 CONCLUSION 305 
 
 ruling habits and customs. In both cases it is some- 
 thing unworthy of the thinker, it is the work of 
 the parents and the pedagogues whom an honest 
 and daring man called our natural enemies (Stend- 
 hal). When one has been brought up for a long 
 time according to the opinions of the world one 
 always ends in discovering one's self. Then begins 
 the task of the thinker. 
 
 The gist of Nietzsche is that man has the right to 
 form personal ideas because only the personal ideas 
 have the consistency which we need to support our- 
 selves, and because one can lean strongly and firmly 
 upon no one but one's self. 
 
 He is right in this and the lesson he teaches is 
 good and even his example is good. For that rea- 
 son — besides the often exquisite and sometimes 
 perverse pleasure that one enjoys in reading hiiri — 
 one derives also a strange profit from the temporary 
 acquaintance of this " Don Juan of Knowledge " 
 and this adventurer of the mind.
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 THE WORKS OF FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE 
 
 Beyond Good and Evil 
 
 The Birth of Tragedy 
 
 The Case of Wagner 
 
 The Dawn of Day 
 
 The Genealogy of Morals 
 
 Human, All-Too-Human 
 
 The Joyful Wisdom 
 
 On the Future of our Educational 
 
 Institutions 
 Thoughts Out of Season 
 Thus Spake Zarathustra 
 The Will to Potver 
 Early Greek Philosophy 
 Ecce Homo 
 The Tzvilight of the Idols 
 
 THE END 
 
 I 
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 I 
 
 306
 
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