spun the net of the most malignant conspiracy

spun the net of the most malignant conspiracy —the conspiracy of the sufferers against the sound and the victorious; here is the sight of the
victorious hated.
J And what lying so as not to acknowledge this hate as hate ! What a show
of big words and attitudes, what an art of
” righteous ” calumniation ! These abortions
!
what a noble eloquence gushes from their lips! Pwhat an amount of sugary, slimy, humble sub- mission oozes in their eyes ! What do they
really want ? At any rate to represent righteousness, love, wisdom, superiority, that is the ambition of these ” lowest ones,” these sick gnesjj And how clever does such an arnbition make
them! You cannot, in fact, but admire the counterfeiter dexterity with which the stamp of
virtue, even the ring, the golden ring of virtue,
is here imitated. They have taken a lease of virtue absolutely for themselves, have these weaklings and wretched invalids, there is no doubt of it ; ” We alone are the good, the righteous^^
so do they speak^’ we alone are the homines bona voluntatis’.’ pThey stalk about in our midst
as living reproaches, as warnings to us —as though health, fitness, strength, pride, the sensation of power, were really vicious things in themselves, for which one would have some day to do
penance, bitter penance. Oh, how they themselves
are ready in their hearts to exact penance, how
they thirst after being hangmen I j
I Among them is an abundance of revengeful ones disguised as judges, who ever mouth the word righteousness like a venomous spittle—withWHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS? 1 59
mouth, I say, always pursed, always ready to spit
at everything, which does not wear a discontented
look, but is of good cheer as it goes on its way. \ Among them, again, is that most loathsome species
of the vain, the lying abortions, who make a point
of representing ” beautiful souls,” and perchance
of bringing to the market as ” purity of heart
“
their distorted sensualism swathed in verses and – other bandages ; the species of ” self-comforters “
and masturbators of their own souls. iThe sick –
man’s will to represent some form or other of
superiority, his itiatit ieiribr crooked-paths-whiich
lead to a’ tj^anny over the healthy—wEere^ari it not be found, thfs’ will to_j)qwer of Xlie_very weakest ? I The sick woman especially : no one
“SBrpassSSTier in refinements for ruling, oppressing,
tyrannising. The sick woman, moreover, spares nothing living, nothing dead ; she grubs up again
the most buried things (the Bogos say, ” Woman
is a hyena “). Look into the background of every
family, of every body, of every community : every- where the fight of the sick against the healthy
—
a silent fight for the most part with minute poisoned
powfiers, with pin-pricks, with spiteful grimaces of
patience, but also at times with that diseased
Pharisaism of pure pantomime, which plays for choice the r61e of ” righteous indignation.” Right
into the hallowed chambers of knowledge can it make itself heard, can this hoarse yelping of sick hounds, this rabid lying and frenzy of such ” noble “
Pharisees (I remind readers, who have ears, once more of that Berlin apostle of revenge, Eugen
Duhring, who makes the most disreputable andl6o THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
revolting use in all present-day Germany of moral
refuse ; DUhring, the paramount moral blusterer that there is to-day, even among his own kidney, the Anti-Semites). TThey are all men of, resent- ment, are these physiological distortions and
worm-riddled objects, a whole quiverinig kingd^^
of burrowing revenge, indefatigable and insatiable” in its outbursts against the happy, and equallj^sq
in disguises for revenge, in pretexts for revenge^ when will they really reach their final, fondest, most sublime triumph of revenge ? \ At that time, doubtless, when they succeed in pushing their own
misery, in fact, all misery, inio the consciousmsspi
the happy ; so that the latter begin one day to be ashamed of their happiness, and perchance say to themselves when they meet, ” It is a shame to be happy ! there is too much misery .'”… But there could not possibly be a greater and more fatal misunderstanding than that of the happy, the fit, the strong in body and soul, beginning in this way
to doubt their right to happiness. Away with
this ” perverse world ” ! Away with this shameful soddenness of sentiment ! Preventing the sick making the healthy sick—for that is what such a soddenness comes to—this ought to be our supreme
object in the world—but for this it is above all essential that the healthy should remain separated from the sick, that they should even guard themselves from the look of the sick, that they should not even associate with the sick. Or may it, perchance, be their mission to be nurses or doctors ? But they could not mistake and disown their mission more grossly-|-the higher must notWHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS? l6l
degrade itself to be the tool of the lower, the
pathos of distance must to all eternity keep
their missions also separateJ The right of the happy to existence, the right of bells with a full tone over the discordant cracked bells, is verily a thousand times greater : they alone are the
sureties of the future, they alone are bound to man’s future. What they can, what they must do,
that can the sick never do, should never do ! but
if they are to be enabled to do what only they must
do, how can they possibly be free to play the doctor,
the comforter, the ” Saviour ” of the sick ? . . . And
therefore good air ! good air ! and away, at any
rate, from the neighbourhood of all the madhouses
and hospitals of civilisation ! And therefore good
company, our own company, or solitude, if it must
be so ! but away, at any rate, from the evil fumes
of internal corruption and the secret worm-eat|n
state of the sick ! that, forsooth, my friends,(we may defend ourselves, at any rate for still a time,
against the two worst plagues that could have
been reserved for us—against the great nausea
with man ! against the great pity for man ! \
ISIf you have understood in all their depths—and
I demand that you should grasp them profoundly and understand them profoundly—the reasons for the impossibility of its being the business of the
healthy to nurse the sick, to make the sick healthy,
it follows that you have grasped this further
necessity—the necessity of doctors and nurses L1 62 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
who themselves are sick. And now we have and
hold with both our hands the essence of the
ascetic priest. The ascetic priest must be accepted by us as the predestined saviour, herdsman, and champion of the sick herd: thereby do we first understand his awful historic mission. The lord- ship over sufferers is his kingdom, to that points
his instinct, in that he finds his own special art, his master-skill, his kind of happiness. He must
himself be sick, he must be kith and kin to the
sick and the abortions so as to understand them,
so as to arrive at an understanding with them
;
but he must also be strong, even more master of himself than of others, impregnable, forsooth, in his
will for power, so as to acquire the trust and the awe of the weak, so that he can be their hold, bulwark, prop, compulsion, overseer, tyrant, god. He has to protect them, protect his hsxAs—against whom ? Against the healthy, doubtless also against the envy towards the healthy. He must
be the natural adversary and scorner of every rough, stormy, reinless, hard, violently-predatory health and power. The priest is the first form of the more delicate animal that scorns more easily than
it hates. He will not be spared the waging of war
with the beasts of prey, a war of guile (of ” spirit “) rather than of force, as is self-evident—he will in certain cases find it necessary to conjure up out of himself, or at any rate to represent practically a new type of the beast of prey—a new animal
monstrosity in which the polar bear, the supple,
cold, crouching panther, and, not least important, the fox, are joined together in a trinity as fascinatingWHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 163
as it is fearsome. If necessity exacts it, then will he come on the scene with bearish seriousness,
venerable, wise, cold, full of treacherous superiority,
as the herald and mouthpiece of mysterious powers, sometimes going among even the other kind of
beasts of prey, determined as he is to sow on their
soil, wherever he can, suffering, discord, self-contradiction, and only too sure of his art, always to be
lord of sufferers at all times. He brings with him,
doubtless, salve and balsam ; but before he can
play the physician he must first wound ; so, while he soothes the pain which the wound makes, he at
the same time poisons the wound. (Well versed is he in this above all things, is this wizard and wild
beast tamer, in whose vicinity everything healthy must needs become ill, and everything ill must
needs become tam^ He protects, in sooth, his
sick herd well enough, does this strange herdsman ; he protects them also against themselves, against
the sparks (even in the centre of the herd) of
wickedness, knavery, malice, and all the other ills that the plaguey and the sick are heir to ; he fights with cunning, hardness, and stealth against anarchy
and against the ever imminent break-up inside the herd, where resentment, that most dangerous
brastihg-stuff and explosive, ever accumulates and
accumulates. Getting rid of this blasting-stuff in such a way that it does not blow up the herd and
the herdsman, that is his real feat, his supreme
utility ; if, you ^wish to comprise in the shortest formula the value of the priestl;>Mife, it would be
correct to say the priest Tslhie diverter of the course of resentment. Every sufferer,” in fa’cf,’ searchesl64 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
instinctively for a cause of his suffering ; to put it more exactly, a doer,—to put it still more precisely, a sentient responsible dber,—in brief, something
living, on which, either actually or in effigie, he can on any pretext vent his emotions. For the venting
of emotions is the sufferer’s greatest attempt at alleviation, that is to say, stupefaction, his mechanically desired narcotic against pain of any kind.
It is in this phenomenon alone that is found, according to my judgment, the real physiological cause of resentment, revenge, and their family is to be found—;-that is, in a . demand for i!&s.-deadmiag__ ofpain through emotion : this cause is generally, but
in my view very erroneously, looked for in the defensive parry of a bare protective principle of
reaction, of a ” reflex movement ” in the case of any sudden hurt and danger, after the manner
that a decapitated frog still moves in order to get away from a corrosive acid. But the difference
is fundamental. In one case the object is to prevent being hurt any more ; in the other case the object is to deaden a racking, insidious, nearly unbearable pain by a more violent emotion of any kind whatsoever, and at any rate for the time being to drive it out of the consciousness—for this purpose an emotion is needed, as wild an emotion as possible, and to excite that emotion some excuse or other is needed. ” It must be somebody’s fault that I feel bad”—this kind of reasoning is peculiar to all invalids, and
is but the more pronounced, the more ignorant they remain of the real cause of their feeling bad, the physiological cause (the cause may lie in aWHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? l6S
disease of the nervus sympathicus, or in an excessive secretion of bile, or in a want of sulphate and phosphate of potash in the blood, or in pressure
in the bowels which stops the circulation of the
blood, or in degeneration of the ovaries, and so
forth). Ail sufferers have an awful resourcefulness and ingenuity in finding excuses for painful emotions ; they even enjoy their jealousy, their broodings over base actions and apparent injuries, they burrow through the intestines of their past and present in their search for obscure mysteries, wherein they will be at liberty to wallow in a
torturing suspicion and get drunk on the venom
of their own malice—they tear open the oldest wounds, they make themselves bleed from the
scars which have long been healed, they make
evil-doers out of friends, wife, child, and everything which is nearest to them. ” I suffer : it must be somebody’s fault”—so thinks every sick
‘sheep. But his herdsman, the ascetic priest, says
to him, ” Quite so, my sheep, it must be the
fault of some one ; but thou thyself art that some
one, it is all the fault of thyself alone
—
it is the foMtt of thyself alone against thyself” : that is. bold
enough, false enough, but one thing is at least attained ; thereby, as I have said, the course of resentment is
—
diverted.
1 6. You can see now what the remedial instinct of
life has at least tried to effect, according to my
conception, through the ascetic priest, and the1 66 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
purpose for which he had to employ a temporary
, tyranny of such paradoxical and anomalous ideas as ” guilt,” ” sin,” ” sinfulness,” ” corruption,”
I ” damnation.” What was done was to make the
; sick harmless up to a certain point, to destroy the
‘.incurable by means of themselves, to turn the
‘•milder cases severely on to themselves, to give
t their resentment a backward direction (“man
needs but one thing”), and to exploit similarly the bad instincts of all sufferers with a view to
self-discipline, self-surveillance, self-mastery. It is obvious that there can be no question at all in the case of a ” medication ” of this kind, a mere
emotional medication, of any real healing of the
sick in the physiological sense ; it cannot even
for a moment be asserted that in this connection
the instinct of life has taken healing as its goal and purpose. tOn the one hand, a kind of con- gestion and organisation of the sick (the word
” Church” is the most popular name for it)jj on the
other, a kind of provisional safeguarding of the comparatively healthy, the more perfect specimens, the cleavage of a rift between healthy and sick
—
for a long time that was all ! and it was much ! it was very much !
I am proceeding, as you see, in this essay, from an hypothesis which, as far as such readers
as I want are concerned, does not require to be proved ; the hypothesis that ” sinfulness ” in man
is not an actual fact, but rather merely the inter- pretation of a fact, of a physiological discomfort, —a discomfort seen through a moral religious perspective which is no longer binding upon us.WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 167
The fact, therefore, that any one feels ” guilty,”
” sinful,” is certainly not yet any proof that he
is right in feeling so, any more than any one is healthy simply because he feels healthy Re- member the celebrated witch-ordeals : in those days the most acute and humane judges had no
doubt but that in these cases they were confronted
with guilt,—the ” witches ” themselves had no doubt
on the point,—and yet the guilt was lacking. Let me elaborate this hypothesis : I do not for a minute accept the very ” pain in the soul ” as a
real fact, but only as an explanation (a casual
explanation) of facts that could not hitherto be
precisely formulated; I regard it therefore as something as yet absolutely in the air and devoid
of scientific cogency—^just a nice fat word in the
place of a lean note of interrogation. When any
one fails to get rid of his ” pain in the soul,” the
cause is, speaking crudely, to be found not in his ” soul ” but more probably in his stomach (speaking
crudely, I repeat, but by no means wishing there- by that you should listen to me or understand me
in a crude spirit). A strong and well-constituted man digests his experiences (deeds and misdeeds
all included) just as he digests his meats, even when he has some tough morsels to swallow. If he fails to ” relieve himself” of an experience,
this kind of indigestion is quite as much physiological as the other indigestion—and indeed, in more ways than one, simply one of the results of the other. You can adopt such a theory, and yet
entre nous be nevertheless the strongest opponent
of all materialism.1 68 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
17.
But is he really 2. physician, this ascetic priest? We already understand why we are scarcely allowed to call him a physician, however much
he likes to feel a ” saviour ” and let himself be worshipped as a saviour.* It is only the actual
suffering, the discomfort of the sufferer, which he combats, not its cause, not the actual state of sick- ness—this needs must constitute our most radical objection to priestly medication. But just once put yourself into that point of view, of which the
priests have a monopoly, you will find it hard to exhaust your amazement, at what from that stand- point he has completely seen, sought, and found. The mitigation of suffering, every kind of ” consoling ” —all this manifests itself as his very genius : with what ingenuity has he interpreted his mission of consoler, with what aplomb and audacity has he chosen weapons necessary for the part. Christi- anity in particular should be dubbed a great treasure-chamber of ingenious consolations,—such
a store of refreshing, soothing, deadening drugs has it accumulated within itself; so many of the most dangerous and daring expedients has it hazarded ; with such subtlety, refinement, Oriental refinement, has it divined what emotional stimulants can conquer, at any rate for a time, the deep
depression, the leaden fatigue, the black melan- choly of physiological cripples — for, speaking
* In the German text ” Heiland.” This has the double meaning of ” healer ” and ” saviour.”—H. B. S.WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 1 69
generally, all religions are mainly concerned with
fighting a certain fatigue and heaviness that has
infected everything. You can regard it as prima
facie probable that in certain places in the world
there was almost bound to prevail from time to
time among large masses of the population a
sense of physiological depression, which, however, owing to their lack of physiological knowledge,
did not appear to their consciousness as such,
so that consequently its ” cause ” and its cure can only be sought and essayed in the science
of moral psychology (this, in fact, is my most
general formula for what is generally called a
“religion”^ Such a feeling of depression can
have the most diverse origins ; it may be the
result of the crossing of too heterogeneous races
(or of classes—genealogical and racial differences
are also brought out in the classes : the European
” Weltschmerz,” the ” Pessimism ” of the nineteenth
century, is really the result of an absurd and
sudden class-mixture) ; it may be brought about
by a mistaken emigration—a race falling into a climate for which its power of adaptation is insufficient (the case of the Indians in India) ; it may be the effect of old age and fatigue (the
Parisian pessimism from 1850 onwards); it may
be a wrong diet (the alcoholism of the Middle
Ages, the nonsense of vegetarianism —which,
however, have in their favour the authority of Sir Christopher in Shakespeare) ; it may be blooddeterioration, malaria, syphilis, and the like (German depression after the Thirty Years’ War,
which infected half Germany with evil diseases,I70 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
and thereby paved the way for German servility, for German pusillanimity). In such a case there
is invariably recourse to a war on a grand scale with the feeling of depression ; let us inform ourselves briefly on its most important practices and
phases (I leave on one side, as stands to reason, the actual philosophic war against the feeling of depression which is usually simultaneous—it is interesting enough, but too absurd, too practically
negligible, too full of cobwebs, too much of a hole-and-corner affair, especially when pain is proved to be a mistake, on the naif hypothesis
that pain must needs vanish when the mistake underlying it is recognised—but behold ! it does anything but vanish . . .). That dominant de- pression is primarily fought by weapons which
reduce the consciousness of life itself to the lowest degree. Wherever possible, no more wishes, no more wants ; shun everything which produces emotion, which produces ” blood ” (eating no salt, the fakir hygiene) ; no love ; no hate ; equanimity
;
no revenge ; no getting rich ; no work ; begging
;
as far as possible, no woman, or as little woman
as possible ; as far as the intellect is concerned,
Pascal’s principle, ” il faut s’abetir.” To put the
result in ethical and psychological language, ” self- annihilation,” ” sanctification “
; to put it in physiological language, ” hypnotism “—the attempt to find some approximate human equivalent for what
hibernation is for certain animals, for what cestiva- tion is for many tropical plants, a minimum of assimilation and metabolism in which life just manages to subsist without really coming into theWHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEAL,S ? 171
consciousness. An amazing amount of human
energy has been devoted to this object—perhaps
uselessly? There cannot be the slightest doubt
but that such sportsmen of ” saintliness,” in whom
at times nearly every nation has abounded, have
really found a genuine relief from that which
they have combated with such a rigorous training —in countless cases they really escaped by the
help of their system of hypnotism away from deep
physiological depression ; their method is consequently counted among the most universal ethnological facts. Similarly it is improper to consider
such a plan for starving the physical element and
the desires, as in itself a symptom of insanity (as a clumsy species of roast-beef-eating ” freethinkers ” and Sir Christophers are fain to do) ; all the more
certain is it that their method can and does pave
the way to all kinds of mental disturbances, for instance, ” inner lights ” (as far as the case of
the Hesychasts of Mount Athos), auditory and
visual hallucinations, voluptuous ecstasies and
effervescences of sensualism (the history of St. Theresa). The explanation of such events given by the victims is always the acme of fanatical falsehood ; this is self-evident. Note well, however,
the tone of implicit gratitude that rings in the
very will for an explanation of such a character. The supreme state, salvation itself, that.£nal. goal
of uriiversal hypnosis and peace, is always regarded by them as the mystery of mysteries, which even
the most supreme symbols are inadequate to express; it is regarded as an entry arid homecsining
to the essence of things, as a liberation from all172 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
illusions, as ” knowledge,” as ” truth,” as ” heing” as
t an escape from every end, every wish, every action,
i as something even beyond Good and Evil.
I ” Good and Evil,” quoth the Buddhists, ” both are
fetters. The perfect man is master of them both.”
” The done and the undone,” quoth the disciple of the Vedanta, ” do him no hurt ; the good and
the evil he shakes from off him, sage that he is; his kingdom suffers no more from any act ; good and evil, he goes beyond them both.”—An ab- solutely Indian conception, as much Brahmanist
as Buddhist. Neither in the Indian nor in the Christian doctrine is this ” Redemption ” regarded
as attainable by means of virtue and moral improve- ment, however high they may place the value of the hypnotic efficiency of virtue : keep clear on
this point—indeed it simply corresponds with the
facts. The fact that they remained irue on this point is perhaps to be regarded as the best speci- men of realism in the three great religions, absolutely soaked as they are with morality, with this one exception. ” For those who know, there is no duty.” ” Redemption is not attained by the
acquisition of virtues ; for redemption consists
in being one with Brahman, who is incapable of acquiring any perfection ; and equally little does
it consist in the giving up of faults, for the Brahman, unity with whom is what constitutes redemption, is eternally pure” (these passages
are from the Commentaries of the Cankara, quoted from the first real European expert of the Indian philosophy, my friend Paul Deussen). We wish, therefore, to pay honour to the idea of ” redemp-WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 173
tion ” in the great religions, but it is somewhat
hard to remain serious in view of the appreciation meted out to the deep sleep by these exhausted
pessimists who are too tired even to dream—to
the deep sleep considered, that is, as already a
fusing into Brahman, as the attainment of tn^
unio mystica with God. ” When he has completely gone to sleep,” says on this point the
oldest and most venerable ” script,” ” and come to
perfect rest, so that he sees no more any vision, then, oh dear one, is he united with Being, he has
entered into his own self—encircled by the Self
with its absolute knowledge, he has no more any
consciousness of that which is without or of that which is within. Day and night cross not these
bridges, nor age, nor death, nor suffering, nor
good deeds, nor evil deeds.” ” In deep sleep,” say similarly the believers in this deepest of the
three great religions, ” does the soul lift itself from
out this body of ours, enters the supreme light and
stands out therein in its true shape : therein is it the supreme spirit itself, which travels about, while
it jests and plays and enjoys itself, whether with women, or chariots, or friends ; there do its thoughts
turn no more back to this appanage of a body, to which the ‘ prana ‘ (the vital breath) is harnessed
like a beast of burden to the cart.” None the
less we will take care to realise (as we did when
discussing ” redemption “) that in spite of all its pomps of Oriental extravagance this simply expresses the same criticism on life as did the clear, cold, Greekly cold, but yet suffering Epicurus. jThe hypnotic sensation of nothingness, the peaceTHE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
of deepest sleep, anaesthesia in short—that is what
passes with the sufferers and the absolutely de- pressed for, forsooth, their suprenne good, their value of values ; that is what must be treasured by them as something positive, be felt by them as the essence of the Positive (according to the same
logic of the feelings, nothingness is in all pessi- mistic religions called God). j>
Such a hypnotic deadening of sensibility and
susceptibility to pain, which presupposes some- what rare powers, especially courage, contempt of opinion, intellectual stoicism, is less frequent than another and certainly easier training which is tried against states of depression. I mean
mechanical activity. It is indisputable that a
suffering existence can be thereby considerably
alleviated. This fact is called to-day by the somewhat ignoble title of the ” Blessing of work.” jTh The alleviation consists in the attention of the
sufferer being absolutely diverted from suffering, in
‘ the incessant monopoly of the consciousness by
action, so that~”consequently there is little Toom ^
iieftrfbr suffering—for narrow is it, this chamber of^
“human conscTousness ! | Mechanical__actiYily_aod
its corollaries, such as~absolute regularityjpunctili- ous iinreasoning obedience^jthe _chroiiic^routijie^
life, ^Ee^Tomplete occupation of time,_acertain
iTBerty to be ijmpersonal, nay, a jrainingjn ” fm-“
pefsorialitYj^jelfjiorgetfulness. ” incuria sui
“—with
~whaLt thoroughness and expert subtlety have allWHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS? 17S
these methods been exploited by the ascetic priest
in his war with pain ! When he has to tackle sufferers of the lower
orders, slaves, or prisoners (or women, who for the most part are a compound of labour-slave and
prisoner), all he has to do is to juggle a little with the names, and to rechristen, so as to make
them see henceforth a benefit, a comparative
happiness, in objects which they hated—the slave’s discontent with his lot was at any rate not invented by the priests. An even more popular means of
fighting depression is the ordaining of a little joy, which is easily accessible and can be made into a
rule; this medication is frequently used in conjunction with the former ones. The most frequent] form in vjiich joy is prescribed as a cure is the
joy in producing joy (such as doing good, giving
presents, alleviating, helping, exhorting, comforting,
praising, treating with distinction) ; together with
the prescription of ” love your neighbour.”
| The
ascetic priest prescribes, though in the most
cautious doses, what is practically a stimulation
of the strongest and most life-assertive impulse
—
the Will for Power. The happiness involved in the ” smallest superiority ” which is the concomitant of all benefiting, helping, extolling, making one’s self useful, is the most ample consolation, of which, if they are well-advised, physiological distortions avail themselves : in other
cases they hurt each other, and naturally in obedience to the same radical instinct. An investigation of the origin of Christianity in the Roman