This book belongs to the most rare of men. Perhaps not one of them is yet alive. It is possible that they may be among
those who understand my "Zarathustra": how could I confound myself with those who are now sprouting ears?—First the
day after tomorrow must come for me. Some men are born posthumously.
The conditions under which any one understands me, and necessarily understands me—I know them only too well.
Even to endure my seriousness, my passion, he must carry intellectual integrity to the verge of hardness. He must be
accustomed to living on mountain tops—and to looking upon the wretched gabble of politics and nationalism as beneath
him. He must have become indifferent; he must never ask of the truth whether it brings profit to him or a fatality to him…
He must have an inclination, born of strength, for questions that no one has the courage for; the courage for the
forbidden; predestination for the labyrinth. The experience of seven solitudes. New ears for new music. New eyes for
what is most distant. A new conscience for truths that have hitherto remained unheard. And the will to economize in the
grand manner—to hold together his strength, his enthusiasm… Reverence for self; love of self; absolute freedom of
self…
Very well, then! of that sort only are my readers, my true readers, my readers foreordained: of what account are the
rest?—The rest are merely humanity.—One must make one’s self superior to humanity, in power, in loftiness of soul,—in
contempt.
FRIEDRICH W. NIETZSCHE.
1.
—Let us look each other in the face. We are Hyperboreans—we know well enough how remote our place is. "Neither by
land nor by water will you find the road to the Hyperboreans": even Pindar,[ 1 i ]
n his day, knew that much about us.
Beyond the North, beyond the ice, beyond death—our life, our happiness… We have discovered that happiness; we
know the way; we got our knowledge of it from thousands of years in the labyrinth. Who else has found it?—The man of
today?—"I don’t know either the way out or the way in; I am whatever doesn’t know either the way out or the way in"—so
sighs the man of today… This is the sort of modernity that made us ill,—we sickened on lazy peace, cowardly
compromise, the whole virtuous dirtiness of the modern Yea and Nay. This tolerance and largeur of the heart that
"forgives" everything because it "understands" everything is a sirocco to us. Rather live amid the ice than among modern
virtues and other such south–winds!… We were brave enough; we spared neither ourselves nor others; but we were a
long time finding out where to direct our courage. We grew dismal; they called us fatalists. Our fate—it was the fulness,
the tension, the storing up of powers. We thirsted for the lightnings and great deeds; we kept as far as possible from the
happiness of the weakling, from "resignation"… There was thunder in our air; nature, as we embodied it, became
overcast—for we had not yet found the way. The formula of our happiness: a Yea, a Nay, a straight line, a goal…
2.
What is good?—Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in man.
What is evil?—Whatever springs from weakness.
What is happiness?—The feeling that power increases—that resistance is overcome.
Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the Renaissance
sense, virtu, virtue free of moral acid).
The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of our charity. And one should help them to it.
What is more harmful than any vice?—Practical sympathy for the botched and the weak—Christianity…
3.
The problem that I set here is not what shall replace mankind in the order of living creatures (—man is an end—): but
what type of man must be bred, must be willed, as being the most valuable, the most worthy of life, the most secure
guarantee of the future.
This more valuable type has appeared often enough in the past: but always as a happy accident, as an exception,
never as deliberately willed. Very often it has been precisely the most feared; hitherto it has been almost the terror of
terrors;—and out of that terror the contrary type has been willed, cultivated and attained: the domestic animal, the herd
animal, the sick brute–man—the Christian…
4.
Mankind surely does not represent an evolution toward a better or stronger or higher level, as progress is now
understood. This "progress" is merely a modern idea, which is to say, a false idea. The European of today, in his
essential worth, falls far below the European of the Renaissance; the process of evolution does not necessarily mean
elevation, enhancement, strengthening.
True enough, it succeeds in isolated and individual cases in various parts of the earth and under the most widely
different cultures, and in these cases a higher type certainly manifests itself; something which, compared to mankind in
the mass, appears as a sort of superman. Such happy strokes of high success have always been possible, and will
remain possible, perhaps, for all time to come. Even whole races, tribes and nations may occasionally represent such
lucky accidents.
5.
We should not deck out and embellish Christianity: it has waged a war to the death against this higher type of man, it has
put all the deepest instincts of this type under its ban, it has developed its concept of evil, of the Evil One himself, out of
these instincts—the strong man as the typical reprobate, the "outcast among men." Christianity has taken the part of all
the weak, the low, the botched; it has made an ideal out of antagonism to all the self–preservative instincts of sound life;
it has corrupted even the faculties of those natures that are intellectually most vigorous, by representing the highest
intellectual values as sinful, as misleading, as full of temptation. The most lamentable example: the corruption of Pascal,
who believed that his intellect had been destroyed by original sin, whereas it was actually destroyed by Christianity!—
6.
It is a painful and tragic spectacle that rises before me: I have drawn back the curtain from the rottenness of man. This
word, in my mouth, is at least free from one suspicion: that it involves a moral accusation against humanity. It is used—
and I wish to emphasize the fact again—without any moral significance: and this is so far true that the rottenness I speak
of is most apparent to me precisely in those quarters where there has been most aspiration, hitherto, toward "virtue" and
"godliness." As you probably surmise, I understand rottenness in the sense of décadence: my argument is that all the
values on which mankind now fixes its highest aspirations are décadence–values.
I call an animal, a species, an individual corrupt, when it loses its instincts, when it chooses, when it prefers, what is
injurious to it. A history of the "higher feelings," the "ideals of humanity"—and it is possible that I’ll have to write it—would
almost explain why man is so degenerate. Life itself appears to me as an instinct for growth, for survival, for the
accumulation of forces, for power: whenever the will to power fails there is disaster. My contention is that all the highest
values of humanity have been emptied of this will—that the values of décadence, of nihilism, now prevail under the
holiest names.
7.
Christianity is called the religion of pity.—Pity stands in opposition to all the tonic passions that augment the energy of
the feeling of aliveness: it is a depressant. A man loses power when he pities. Through pity that drain upon strength
which suffering works is multiplied a thousandfold. Suffering is made contagious by pity; under certain circumstances it
may lead to a total sacrifice of life and living energy—a loss out of all proportion to the magnitude of the cause (—the
case of the death of the Nazarene). This is the first view of it; there is, however, a still more important one. If one
measures the effects of pity by the gravity of the reactions it sets up, its character as a menace to life appears in a much
clearer light. Pity thwarts the whole law of evolution, which is the law of natural selection. It preserves whatever is ripe for
destruction; it fights on the side of those disinherited and condemned by life; by maintaining life in so many of the
botched of all kinds, it gives life itself a gloomy and dubious aspect. Mankind has ventured to call pity a virtue (—in every
superior moral system it appears as a weakness—); going still further, it has been called the virtue, the source and
foundation of all other virtues—but let us always bear in mind that this was from the standpoint of a philosophy that was
nihilistic, and upon whose shield the denial of life was inscribed. Schopenhauer was right in this: that by means of pity
life is denied, and made worthy of denial—pity is the technic of nihilism. Let me repeat: this depressing and contagious
instinct stands against all those instincts which work for the preservation and enhancement of life: in the rôle of protector
of the miserable, it is a prime agent in the promotion of décadence—pity persuades to extinction… Of course, one
doesn’t say "extinction": one says "the other world," or "God," or "the true life," or Nirvana, salvation, blessedness… This
innocent rhetoric, from the realm of religious–ethical balderdash, appears a good deal less innocent when one reflects
upon the tendency that it conceals beneath sublime words: the tendency to destroy life. Schopenhauer was hostile to
life: that is why pity appeared to him as a virtue… Aristotle, as every one knows, saw in pity a sickly and dangerous state
of mind, the remedy for which was an occasional purgative: he regarded tragedy as that purgative. The instinct of life
should prompt us to seek some means of puncturing any such pathological and dangerous accumulation of pity as that
appearing in Schopenhauer’s case (and also, alack, in that of our whole literary décadence, from St. Petersburg to Paris,
from Tolstoi to Wagner), that it may burst and be discharged… Nothing is more unhealthy, amid all our unhealthy
modernism, than Christian pity. To be the doctors here, to be unmerciful here, to wield the knife here—all this is our
business, all this is our sort of humanity, by this sign we are philosophers, we Hyperboreans!—
8.
It is necessary to say just whom we regard as our antagonists: theologians and all who have any theological blood in
their veins—this is our whole philosophy… One must have faced that menace at close hand, better still, one must have
had experience of it directly and almost succumbed to it, to realize that it is not to be taken lightly (—the alleged free–
thinking of our naturalists and physiologists seems to me to be a joke—they have no passion about such things; they
have not suffered—). This poisoning goes a great deal further than most people think: I find the arrogant habit of the
theologian among all who regard themselves as "idealists"—among all who, by virtue of a higher point of departure, claim
a right to rise above reality, and to look upon it with suspicion… The idealist, like the ecclesiastic, carries all sorts of lofty
concepts in his hand (—and not only in his hand!); he launches them with benevolent contempt against
"understanding,""the senses,""honor,""good living,""science"; he sees such things as beneath him, as pernicious and
seductive forces, on which "the soul" soars as a pure thing–in–itself—as if humility, chastity, poverty, in a word, holiness,
had not already done much more damage to life than all imaginable horrors and vices… The pure soul is a pure lie… So
long as the priest, that professional denier, calumniator and poisoner of life, is accepted as a higher variety of man, there
can be no answer to the question, What is truth? Truth has already been stood on its head when the obvious attorney of
mere emptiness is mistaken for its representative…
9.
Upon this theological instinct I make war: I find the tracks of it everywhere. Whoever has theological blood in his veins is
shifty and dishonourable in all things. The pathetic thing that grows out of this condition is called faith: in other words,
closing one’s eyes upon one’s self once for all, to avoid suffering the sight of incurable falsehood. People erect a
concept of morality, of virtue, of holiness upon this false view of all things; they ground good conscience upon faulty
vision; they argue that no other sort of vision has value any more, once they have made theirs sacrosanct with the
names of "God,""salvation" and "eternity." I unearth this theological instinct in all directions: it is the most widespread and
the most subterranean form of falsehood to be found on earth. Whatever a theologian regards as true must be false:
there you have almost a criterion of truth. His profound instinct of self–preservation stands against truth ever coming into
honour in any way, or even getting stated. Wherever the influence of theologians is felt there is a transvaluation of
values, and the concepts "true" and "false" are forced to change places: whatever is most damaging to life is there called
"true," and whatever exalts it, intensifies it, approves it, justifies it and makes it triumphant is there called "false."… When
theologians, working through the "consciences" of princes (or of peoples—), stretch out their hands for power, there is
never any doubt as to the fundamental issue: the will to make an end, the nihilistic will exerts that power…
10.
Among Germans I am immediately understood when I say that theological blood is the ruin of philosophy. The Protestant
pastor is the grandfather of German philosophy; Protestantism itself is its peccatum originale. Definition of Protestantism:
hemiplegic paralysis of Christianity—and of reason… One need only utter the words "Tübingen School" to get an
understanding of what German philosophy is at bottom—a very artful form of theology… The Suabians are the best liars
in Germany; they lie innocently… Why all the rejoicing over the appearance of Kant that went through the learned world
of Germany, three–fourths of which is made up of the sons of preachers and teachers—why the German conviction still
echoing, that with Kant came a change for the better? The theological instinct of German scholars made them see clearly
just what had become possible again… A backstairs leading to the old ideal stood open; the concept of the "true world,"
the concept of morality as the essence of the world (—the two most vicious errors that ever existed!), were once more,
thanks to a subtle and wily scepticism, if not actually demonstrable, then at least no longer refutable… Reason, the
prerogative of reason, does not go so far… Out of reality there had been made "appearance"; an absolutely false world,
that of being, had been turned into reality… The success of Kant is merely a theological success; he was, like Luther
and Leibnitz, but one more impediment to German integrity, already far from steady.—
11.
A word now against Kant as a moralist. A virtue must be our invention; it must spring out of our personal need and
defence. In every other case it is a source of danger. That which does not belong to our life menaces it; a virtue which
has its roots in mere respect for the concept of "virtue," as Kant would have it, is pernicious. "Virtue,""duty,""good for its
own sake," goodness grounded upon impersonality or a notion of universal validity—these are all chimeras, and in them
one finds only an expression of the decay, the last collapse of life, the Chinese spirit of Königsberg. Quite the contrary is
demanded by the most profound laws of self–preservation and of growth: to wit, that every man find his own virtue, his
own categorical imperative. A nation goes to pieces when it confounds its duty with the general concept of duty. Nothing
works a more complete and penetrating disaster than every "impersonal" duty, every sacrifice before the Moloch of
abstraction.—To think that no one has thought of Kant’s categorical imperative as dangerous to life!… The theological
instinct alone took it under protection!—An action prompted by the life–instinct proves that it is a right action by the
amount of pleasure that goes with it: and yet that Nihilist, with his bowels of Christian dogmatism, regarded pleasure as
an objection… What destroys a man more quickly than to work, think and feel without inner necessity, without any deep
personal desire, without pleasure—as a mere automaton of duty? That is the recipe for décadence, and no less for
idiocy… Kant became an idiot.—And such a man was the contemporary of Goethe! This calamitous spinner of cobwebs
passed for the German philosopher—still passes today!… I forbid myself to say what I think of the Germans… Didn’t
Kant see in the French Revolution the transformation of the state from the inorganic form to the organic? Didn’t he ask
himself if there was a single event that could be explained save on the assumption of a moral faculty in man, so that on
the basis of it, "the tendency of mankind toward the good" could be explained, once and for all time? Kant’s answer:
"That is revolution." Instinct at fault in everything and anything, instinct as a revolt against nature, German décadence as
a philosophy—that is Kant!—
12.
I put aside a few sceptics, the types of decency in the history of philosophy: the rest haven’t the slightest conception of
intellectual integrity. They behave like women, all these great enthusiasts and prodigies—they regard "beautiful feelings"
as arguments, the "heaving breast" as the bellows of divine inspiration, conviction as the criterion of truth. In the end,
with "German" innocence, Kant tried to give a scientific flavour to this form of corruption, this dearth of intellectual
conscience, by calling it "practical reason." He deliberately invented a variety of reasons for use on occasions when it
was desirable not to trouble with reason—that is, when morality, when the sublime command "thou shalt," was heard.
When one recalls the fact that, among all peoples, the philosopher is no more than a development from the old type of
priest, this inheritance from the priest, this fraud upon self, ceases to be remarkable. When a man feels that he has a
divine mission, say to lift up, to save or to liberate mankind—when a man feels the divine spark in his heart and believes
that he is the mouthpiece of supernatural imperatives—when such a mission inflames him, it is only natural that he
should stand beyond all merely reasonable standards of judgment. He feels that he is himself sanctified by this mission,
that he is himself a type of a higher order!… What has a priest to do with philosophy! He stands far above it!—And
hitherto the priest has ruled!—He has determined the meaning of "true" and "not true"!…
13.
Let us not underestimate this fact: that we ourselves, we free spirits, are already a "transvaluation of all values," a
visualized declaration of war and victory against all the old concepts of "true" and "not true." The most valuable intuitions
are the last to be attained; the most valuable of all are those which determine methods. All the methods, all the principles
of the scientific spirit of today, were the targets for thousands of years of the most profound contempt; if a man inclined to
them he was excluded from the society of "decent" people—he passed as "an enemy of God," as a scoffer at the truth, as
one "possessed." As a man of science, he belonged to the Chandala[ 2 ]
… We have had the whole pathetic stupidity of
mankind against us—their every notion of what the truth ought to be, of what the service of the truth ought to be—their
every "thou shalt" was launched against us… Our objectives, our methods, our quiet, cautious, distrustful manner—all
appeared to them as absolutely discreditable and contemptible.—Looking back, one may almost ask one’s self with
reason if it was not actually an aesthetic sense that kept men blind so long: what they demanded of the truth was
picturesque effectiveness, and of the learned a strong appeal to their senses. It was our modesty that stood out longest
against their taste… How well they guessed that, these turkey–cocks of God!
14.
We have unlearned something. We have become more modest in every way. We no longer derive man from the "spirit,"
from the "godhead"; we have dropped him back among the beasts. We regard him as the strongest of the beasts
because he is the craftiest; one of the results thereof is his intellectuality. On the other hand, we guard ourselves against
a conceit which would assert itself even here: that man is the great second thought in the process of organic evolution.
He is, in truth, anything but the crown of creation: beside him stand many other animals, all at similar stages of
development… And even when we say that we say a bit too much, for man, relatively speaking, is the most botched of all
the animals and the sickliest, and he has wandered the most dangerously from his instincts—though for all that, to be
sure, he remains the most interesting!—As regards the lower animals, it was Descartes who first had the really admirable
daring to describe them as machina; the whole of our physiology is directed toward proving the truth of this doctrine.
Moreover, it is illogical to set man apart, as Descartes did: what we know of man today is limited precisely by the extent
to which we have regarded him, too, as a machine. Formerly we accorded to man, as his inheritance from some higher
order of beings, what was called "free will"; now we have taken even this will from him, for the term no longer describes
anything that we can understand. The old word "will" now connotes only a sort of result, an individual reaction, that
follows inevitably upon a series of partly discordant and partly harmonious stimuli—the will no longer "acts," or
"moves."… Formerly it was thought that man’s consciousness, his "spirit," offered evidence of his high origin, his divinity.
That he might be perfected, he was advised, tortoise–like, to draw his senses in, to have no traffic with earthly things, to
shuffle off his mortal coil—then only the important part of him, the "pure spirit," would remain. Here again we have
thought out the thing better: to us consciousness, or "the spirit," appears as a symptom of a relative imperfection of the
organism, as an experiment, a groping, a misunderstanding, as an affliction which uses up nervous force unnecessarily
—we deny that anything can be done perfectly so long as it is done consciously. The "pure spirit" is a piece of pure
stupidity: take away the nervous system and the senses, the so–called "mortal shell," and the rest is miscalculation—
that is all!…
15.
Under Christianity neither morality nor religion has any point of contact with actuality. It offers purely imaginary causes
("God,""soul,""ego,""spirit,""free
will"—or
even
"unfree"),
and
purely
imaginary effects
("sin,""salvation,""grace,""punishment,""forgiveness
of
sins").
Intercourse
between
imaginary beings
("God,""spirits,""souls"); an imaginary natural history (anthropocentric; a total denial of the concept of natural causes); an
imaginary psychology (misunderstandings of self, misinterpretations of agreeable or disagreeable general feelings—for
example, of the states of the nervus sympathicus with the help of the sign–language of religio–ethical balderdash—,
"repentance,""pangs of conscience,""temptation by the devil,""the presence of God"); an imaginary teleology (the
"kingdom of God,""the last judgment,""eternal life").—This purely fictitious world, greatly to its disadvantage, is to be
differentiated from the world of dreams; the latter at least reflects reality, whereas the former falsifies it, cheapens it and
denies it. Once the concept of "nature" had been opposed to the concept of "God," the word "natural" necessarily took on
the meaning of "abominable"—the whole of that fictitious world has its sources in hatred of the natural (—the real!—),
and is no more than evidence of a profound uneasiness in the presence of reality… This explains everything. Who alone
has any reason for living his way out of reality? The man who suffers under it. But to suffer from reality one must be a
botched reality… The preponderance of pains over pleasures is the cause of this fictitious morality and religion: but such
a preponderance also supplies the formula for décadence…
16.
A criticism of the Christian concept of God leads inevitably to the same conclusion.—A nation that still believes in itself
holds fast to its own god. In him it does honour to the conditions which enable it to survive, to its virtues—it projects its
joy in itself, its feeling of power, into a being to whom one may offer thanks. He who is rich will give of his riches; a proud
people need a god to whom they can make sacrifices… Religion, within these limits, is a form of gratitude. A man is
grateful for his own existence: to that end he needs a god.—Such a god must be able to work both benefits and injuries;
he must be able to play either friend or foe—he is wondered at for the good he does as well as for the evil he does. But