Dawn of the Day/Book 2
SECOND BOOK
97
‘’We grow moral not because we are moral.’’—The submission to morals may be either slavish or vain, selfinterested, resigned, gloomily fantastic, thoughtless, or all act of despair, like the submission to a price: but it is nothing moral in itself.
98
‘’Transformation of morals.’’—There is a constant mending and moiling going on in morals—the result of successful crimes (to which, for instance, belong all innovations in moral thinking).
99
‘’Where we all are irrational.’—’We still draw conclusions from opinions which we consider erroneous, from doctrines in which we have lost faith through our feelings.
100
‘’Waking from a dream.’’—Noble and wise people once believed in the music of the spheres : noble and wise people still believe in the "moral significance of existence." But one day even this music of the spheres will cease to be audible to their ears! They will awake and perceive that their ears had been dreaming.
101
‘’Hazardous.’’—To adopt a belief merely because it is a custom means being dishonest, cowardly, lazy! Should then dishonesty, cowardice, and sloth be the premises of morality?
102
‘’The oldest moral judgments.’’—How do we behave with regard to a person's action in our surroundings? First and foremost, we consider what we may gain by it—we view it in this light only. This outcome we take as the intention of the action, and finish by imputing to the doer the cherishing of such purposes as lasting qualities, henceforth calling him "a dangerous man," for instance. Treble error! Treble and most ancient mistake! Possibly our inheritance from the animals and from their faculty of judgment. Is not the origin of all morality concealed in such paltry and petty conclusions as: “Everything that injures me is evil (something in itself injurious); everything that profits me is good in itself beneficent and useful); that which injures me once or several times is hostile of and in itself; that which profits me once or several times is friendly of and in itself." ‘’Oh pudenda origo!’’ (How humble the beginning!) Is not this like fancying that the miscrable, occasional, often accidental relation of another to ourselves is his inner and most essential quality; and like pretending that, with regard to all the world and his own self, he is only capable of relations similar to those we have experienced once or several times? And is there not behind this true folly the most immodest mental reservation lurking, namely that we ourselves must be the principle of all good things, because we are the standard of good and evil ?
103
There are two classes of deniers of morality.—”To deny morality" may mean, first, to deny that the moral motives which men adduce have really egged them on to their actions—hence it is like asserting that morality consists in words, and is part of the course and subtle deceit (especially self-deceit) of men, perhaps more especially of those who are most famed for their virtues. Secondly, we may deny that the moral judgments are based on truths. In this case we admit that they are real motives for action, but that errors, as foundations of all moral judgment, egg men on to their moral actions. This is my point of view: Yet I should be the last to deny that, in a great any cases, a nice suspicion in accordance with the former point of view, and therefore, in the spirit of La Rochefoucauld, is likewise justified, and certainly of the highest general advantage. Hence I deny morality as I deny alchemy, that is, I deny their premises—but not the fact that there have been alchemists who believed in these premises and acted up to them. I likewise deny immorality—not that countless people feel immoral, but that there is a foundation in the truth of their feeling so. Of course I shall not deny—except that I be a fool that many actions which are called immoral ought to be avoided and resisted; and that many which are called moral ought to be done and encouraged—but I am of opinion that both should take place from motives other than have hitherto prevailed. We shall have to change our views in order at last, perhaps very late, to attain even more: namely, a change in our feelings.
104
‘’Our valuations.’’—All actions may be referred to valuations, all valuations are either self-conceived or adopted—the Iatter being by far the more numerous. Why do we adopt them? From fear—that is, we deem it more advisable to feign as if they were our own— and accustom ourselves to this dissimulation, so that at last it comes to be our second nature. Our own valuation, which means measuring a thing in reference to its capability of causing pleasure or displeasure to us and to nobody else, is something extremely rare. But has not our valuation of the other, which is the motive for our generally availing ourselves of his valuation, to proceed from us, to be our own choice? Certainly, but we desire it in our childhood, and rarely change our conceptions; all our lifetime we are for the greater part the dupes of childish, habitual judgments in the mode of judging our fellow-creatures (their intellect, rank, morality, good example, reprehensibility), in yielding to the necessity of endorsing their views.
10
‘’Pseudo-egotism.’’—The great majority—whatever they my think and say about their "selfishness"—as long as they live, do nothing for their ego, but only for the phantom of this ego, which has grown up in the 'hcads of their friends and been transmitted to them; consequently they all live in a mist of impersonal, half-personal opinions, and of arbitrary, so to speak poetic valuations, the one for ever in the head of somebody else, and this one again in other heads: an odd world of phantasms, which knows how to give itself a matter-of-fact appearances! This mist of opinions and habits grows and lives on, almost independently from the people which it envelopes—its outcome is the extensive effect of the general judgments on “man"; all these people, un-known to themselves, believe in the bloodless abstract idea "man," that is, in a fiction; and every change which, through the judgments of some powerful men (such as princes and philosophers) occurs in this abstract idea, has an extraordinary and irrational effect on the great majority, for the sole reason that not single individual in this multitule is able to oppose a real ego, accessible to and sounded by himself, to the general pale fiction, and thereby to destroy it.
106
‘’Against the definitions of moral aims.’’—On all sides we hear the goal of morality defined in about the following way: it is the preserving and raising of humanity, but this only expresses a wish to possess a formula, and nothing else. Preserving wherein? Raising whereto? is the question whiclı at once rises on our lips. Is not the most essential part, the answer to this Wherein ? and Whereto? omitted in the formula?Is there anything we could thereby determine as to the theory of duty that is not already tacitly and instinctively understood? Can we clearly deduce therefrom whether we shall have to keep in view the longest possible existence of mankind, or a possible disanimalisation of mankind ? How different would the remedies,that is, the practical morals, have to be in the two cases! Suppose that the greatest possible rationality was to be given to mankind: this certainly would not warrant the longest possible existence for them. Or, suppose that their greatest happiness was thought to be the Whereto ? and Wherein?: do we thereby imply the highest stage which individuals may gradually attain, or an incalculable, finally attainable average bliss of all? And why should morality more especially be the way to reach it? Has it not, speaking generally, opened so many fountains of displeasure as to make us inclined to judge, up to the present, that man, with each new stage of moral refinement, has become more discontented with himself, his neighbour, and his existence ?Has not the hitherto most moral man believed that the only justifiable state of mankind in the face of morals is that of deepest misery?
107
‘’Our claim to our folly.’’—How are we to act? Why are we to act? The answer to these questions is easy enough with reference to the most immediate and most urgent pants of the individual ; but in proportion as our provinces of action grow more subtle, more extensive, and more important, the more certain and the more arbitrary will be the answer. But the arbitrariness of decision is the very thing to be excluded here—so commands the authority of morals: a vague anxiety and awe shall forthwith guide man in those very actions, the aims and means of which are not at once clear to him. This authority of morals undermines the thinking faculty in matters on which it might be dangerous to have wrong notions—thus its wonted justification before its accusers. Wrong here means “dangerous"—butdangerous to whom? Usually it is not so much the danger threatening the doer of an action which the adherents of authoritative morals live in view, but their own danger, the loss of power and authority which might cause if the right of arbitrary and foolish action in conformity with their own lesser or greater rationality were granted to all: they themselves unhesitatingly make use of the right of arbitrariness and folly—they even command where an answer to the question, "How amI to act? Why am I to act ?" is barely possible, or, at least, sufficiently difficult. And if the reason of mankind grows with such extraordinary slackness tlat this growth as regards the whole cause of human history, has often been denied: what is more blameworthy than this solemn presence, this ubiquity of moral commands, which does not even allow the mere utterance of the individual question about the Why? and the How?Have we not been educated in such wise as to feel pathetically and flee into darkness at the very time when our reason ought to judge as clearly and coolly as possible, that is, in all higher and more important affairs?
108
‘’A for theses.’’—We ought not to give to the individual, in as far as he wishes for his own happiness, any precepts for the road to happiness; for individual happiness springs from particular laws unknown to everybody, outside precepts could only prevent or check it. The precepts, which are called moral, are, in reality, directed against the individuals, and do not in the least tend to their happiness. Equally slight is the relationship of these precepts to the “happiness and welfare of mankind"; words with which it isaltogether impossible to associate definite notions ; much less could we use them as guiding stars on the dark ocean of moral aspirations. It is not true that morality, so says prejudice, is more favourably inclined towards the development of reason than immorality.It is not true that the unconscious goal in the development of every conscious being (animal, man, mankind, &c.), is his “greatest happiness." On the contrary, at every step of our development we may gain a special and incomparable happiness, one that is neither superior nor inferior, but indeed a peculiar happiness. Development does not aim at happiness, but at development and nothing else. Only if mankind possesseduniversally accepted goal, could we propose : “This or that ought to be our line of action"; for the present there is no such goal. Hence we ought not to bring the requirements of morals into any relation whatever to mankind, which would be irrational and childish.To recommend a goal to mankind is quite a different thing; in this case the goal is put as something which lies with us; suppose that mankind would agree to such a recommendation, they might then impose on themselves a moral law at their own free will. But, up to now, the moral law was to rise supreme above discretion; they did not really want to set up this law for themselves, but to take it from somewhere, or to find it somewhere, or have it ordered from somewhere.
109
Self-control and moderation, and their final motive.— I find only six essentially different methods for combatting the impetuosity of a craving. First, we may shun the opportunities for the gratification of the craving and, by long and ever-lengthening periods of non-gratification, weaken and mortify it. Secondly, we may make a strict regularity in our gratification, a law to ourselves; by this regulating the craving itself and encompassing its flux and reflux within fixed periods, we gain intervals, during which it ceases to disturb, us, and thence we may perhaps pass over into thefirst method. Thirdly, we may intentionally giveourselves over to a will and in moderate gratification of it craving in order to grow disgusted, and, by means of our distrust, to obtain a command over the craving: provided we do not act like the rider who races his horse to death and, in so doing, breaks his own neck, which, unfortunately, is the rule in this method.Fourthly, there is an intellectual trick, namely, so rigidly to connect a very painful idea with the gratification in general, that, after some practice, the very idea of the gratification is forthwith felt as a very painful one. So, for instance, if the Christian accustoms himself at every sexual enjoyment to think of the presence and the sneers of the devil; or of everlasting agonies in hell-fire as punishment for revenge by murder; or only of the contempt which rewards a money-theft in the eyes of the people he most respects; or if somebody has hundreds of times checked an intense longing for suicide by a counter-notion of the grief and self-reproaches of relations and friends, and thereby has balanced himself on the edge of life; now these ideas suceed each other in his mind, just as cause and effect do. Among cases of this kind we may class those of Lord Byron aud Napoleon, in whom human pride revolted and keenly felt as an offence the ascen-dancy of a single passion over the whole attitude and order of reason-whence arises the habit of all the delight in tyrannising over the craving, making it, so to speak, gnash its teeth. "I do not want to be the slave of any appetite," Byron wrote in his diary. Fifthly, we allow a dislocation of our abilities by imposing on ourselves some specially difficult and fatiguing task, or by intentionally submitting to some new charm and pleasure, and thus guiding our thoughts and physical powers into other channels. It comes to the sand if we temporarily favour another craving, giving it ample opportunity for gratification, and thus making it the lavisher of that power, which otherwise would be swayed over by the craving which has grown troublesome through its impetuosity. Some few perhaps will know how to restrain the individual craving, desirous of playing the tyrant, by giving all their other known cravings a temporary encouragement and festive time, and bidding them devour the food which the tyrant wanted for himself. Sixtlily and lastly, he who can endure it and who thinks it reasonable to weaken and suppress his whole plıysical and spiritual organisation, thereby, of course, likewise attains his purpose of weak-ening a single impetuous craving: as, for instance, those who, like unto the asceties, starve their sensuality but, at the same time, starve and degrade their physical strength and, not infrequently, their reason. Hence, slumning the opportunities, implanting order into the craving, producing surfeit and disgust thereat, and bringing about the association of an angnishing thought (as that of disgrace, of evil consequences, or of offended pride), the dislocation of forces, and, lastly, the general debilitation and exhaustion; these are the six methods. But it is not in our power to be willing to fight at all against the impetuosity of a craving, or to determine which method we should choose, or whether we succeed by this method. On the contrary, our intellect, during this whole process, is evidently nothing but the blind tool of another craving, a rival of that one which torments us with its impetuosity: be it the craving for rest, or the fear of disgrace and other evil consequences, or love. While we thus imagine that we are complaining of the impetuosity of a craving, it is really one craving complaining of another; that is, the perception of our groaning under such a yoke pre-supposes that there is another craving just as impetuous and even more impetuous, and that a struggle is imminent in which our intellect will have to range itself on one side or the other.
110
What is it that resists !—We may in ourselves observe the following process, and I wish we might often observe and confirm it :—There arises in as, though heretofore unknown, the scent of a kind of pleasure; hence a new craving springs up in us. Now the question is, what is it that opposes this craving? If things and considerations of a more vulgar nature, or people whom we little esteem—the goal of the new craving veils itself in the sensations: "noble, good, laudable, deserving of sacrifice," all the inherited moral dispositions henceforth adopt them, adding them to those goals which are supposed to be moral; and now we imagine that we are striving, not after pleasure, but after a morality, thus greatly enhancing the confidence in our aspirations.
111
To the admirers of objectiveness.—Everybody who, in his childhood, observed varied and strong feelings, but little nice discernment an attachment to intellectual fairness, in the relatives and friends amongst whom he grew up and, consequently, spent most of his strength and time on the imitation of feelings, will, as an adult, notice in himself that every new thing and person he comes across will at once stir up in him either affection or dislike, envy or contempt. Under the pressure of this experience, which he feels power-less to shake off, he admires the neutrality of sentiment, i.e., the "objectiveness," as something marvellous, some attribute of genius or of the rarest morality, and does not feel inclined to believe that even this is but the child of discipline and practice.
112
On the natural history of duty and right.—On duties are the claims which others have on us. By what means lid they acquire them? By assuming us capable of contract and retribution, by setting us down as like and similar unto them, by accordingly entrusting something to us, by educating, reproving, supporting us. We fulfil our duty,—that is, we justify that notion of our power for the sake of which all these things were bestowed on us, we return with the same measure with which they were meted out to us. Thus it is our pride which bids us do our duty, by re-establishing our self-glory in putting up in rivalry with that which others have done for us, something that we do for them, —for thereby they encroached upon the sphere of our power, and would for ever have a hand in it, did we not, by means of "duty," practise retaliation, and thus encroach upon their power. The rights of others can only relate to that which is in our power; it would be unreasonable if they wanted something from us that does not belong to us. To express it more accurately, their rights relate only to that which they deem in our power, provided it be the same which we deem in our power. The same error might easily occur on either sile: the sense of duty depends on our having the same belief as the others with regard to the extent of our power: namely, that we can promise and bind ourselves to undertake certain things (“Freedom of will"). My own rights are that portion of my power which others have not only attributed to me, but wherein they even wish to maintain How do these others proceed? First, with prudence, fear and caution : be it that, in return, they either expect something similar from is (protection of their rights), or that they consider & contest with us as dangerous or purposeless; or that, in every diminution of our power, they see a disadvantage to themselves, in so far as we should thus become unfit for all alliance with them in opposition to a hostile third power. Secondly, by donation and cession. In this case, the others have power enough, and more than enough, to be able to surrender a portion thereof, and to guarantee the surrendered portion to him to whom they gave it: in so acting they assume a feeble sense of power in him who allows himself to be made the recipient of their gift. Thus originate rights, as acknowledged and guaranteed stages of power. If the proportions of power are materially shifted, rights disappear and new ones are formed, as is shown by the right of nations, in its constant decay and re-formation. If our power materially decreases, the feelings of those who, hitherto, have guaranteed our rights, undergo a change: they weigh in their minds, whether they may again put us back into the former full possession of power—if they feel unable to do so, they, thenceforth, deny our "rights." If our power considerably increases, the feelings of those who hitherto recognised it and of whose recognition we stand no longer in need, likewise suffer a change: they will, indeed, try to reduce it to its former level, they will desire to interfere and, in so doing, refer to their duty,— but this is useless word-fencing. Wherever right pre-vails, a certain condition and degree of power will be maintained, while a decrease and increase will be warded off. The right of others is the surrender of our sense of power to the sense of power in these others. As soon as our power proves utterly shattered and broken down, our rights cease: conversely, when our power becomes largely extended, the rights of others, such as we hitherto admitted them to be, cease in our estimation. The “fair person" thus constantly requires the delicate tact of a balance for the stages of power and right which, considering the transitoriness of human affairs, will keep their equilibrium never for more than a short time, but, in most cases, cither sink or rise,—consequently it is difficult to "be fair” and requires much practice, the best intentions and a great deal of rare common sense.
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Our striving after distinction.—Our striving after distinction urges us to keep a constant watch on the neighbour and his feelings : but the sympathy and secrecy which are essentials for the gratification of this craving are far from being harmless, compassionate or kind. On the contrary, we want to notice or to divine how we can make our neighbour suffer either externally or internally, how he loses his self-control and gives way to the impression which our land or even our sight make on him; and even if the one who is striving after distinction makes, and wishes to make, a joyful, elevating or cheering impression, he yet enjoys this success not inasmuch as he thereby gives pleasure to, elevates or cheer's his neighbour, but inasmuch as he impresses himself on the stranger's soul, transforming its shape and ruling over it at his own free will. The striving after distinction is the striving after ascendancy over one's neighbour, be it only a very indirect one, or one only felt or dreamt of. There are many stages in this secretly-desired ascendancy, and a complete record of the same would be identical with a history of civilisation, from the first antics of barbarism up to the caricature of over-refinement and morbid idealism. The striving after distinction entails to the neighbour—to mention only a few rungs of this long ladder torture, blows, terror, anxious surprise, wonder, envy, admiration, elevation. joy, mirth, laughter, derision, mockery, sneers, scourging, and self-infliction of torture,—hero, at the top of the ladder, we find the ascetic and martyr, who feels supreme satisfaction, himself obtaining, as the result of his craving for distinction, the very thing which the barbarian, his antitype on the first rung of the ladder, makes others suffer, by whom and before whom he wishes to prove his excellency. The triumph of the asectic over himself, his inward glance, which beholds man split up into a sufferer and a spectator and never searches the outside world but to gather from it, so to speak, wood for his own stake; this final tragedy of the craving for distinction, which exhibits only one person who consumes himself, that is the conclusion worthy of the beginning: in both cases an unspeakable happiness at the sight of torture. Indeed, happiness, conceived as the most vivid sensation of power, perhaps nowhere on earth has reached a higher pitch than in the souls of superstitious ascetics. This finds expression in the Brahmin story of King Vievamitra, who derived such strength from thousand years' exercises of penance, that he ventured to construct a new heaven. I believe that, in this whole range of inward experiences, we people of our days are mere novices, trying to solve dark riddles; four thousand years ago these infamous refinements of self-enjoyment were much better known than they now arc. Take the creation of the world: perhaps some Indian dreamer may have looked on it as an ascetic operation which a god attempted with himself. Perhaps the god wanted to chain himself to a versatile nature as an instrument of torture, and, thereby, to feel his bliss and power doubled! And suppose it had been a God of Love even: what a delight for Him to create a suffering people, in order Himself to suffer most divinely and superhumanly at the sight of the mallayed torments, and, in so doing, to tyrannise Himself. And suppose He was not only a God of Love, but also a God of Holiness and Sinlessness : what ecstasies of the Divine ascetic, while creating sin and sinners and eternal doom, and below His heaven and throne a vast abode of eternal torment and eternal groans and sighs, may we picture to ourselves! It is not altogether impossible that the souls also of Paul, Dante, Calvin, and the like of them, nay for once have dived into the horrible secrets of such delight in power and in the face of such souls we may ask, Did the periodical striving after distinction really reach its final stage and its last representative in the ascetic? Could not this circle, from the very outset, be followed up once more, having for its fixed centre the fundamental moods of the ascetic and, with it, of the sympathising God, giving pain to others in order thereby to pain oneself and, thereby, again to triumph over oneself and one's sympathetics and to revel in the sensation of supreme power? Forgive me this extravagance in meditating on everything that may have been possible on this earth, through the spiritual extravagance of the thirst for power.
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On the sufferer's knowledge.—The condition of invalids who have been long and terribly tormented by their sufferings and whose reason, throughout, has not grown dim, is not without its value in the search after knowledge—quite irrespective of the intellectual benefits which every deep solitude, every sudden and justified freedom from all duties and habits entails. One who severely suffers looks forth from his condition upon the things without with terrible indifference: all those small mendacious spells wherein things usually float when the eye of the healthy looks upon them, have vanished from his view : nay, his own self, stripped of plumage and colour, lies pure before him. Suppose that, up to then, he had lived in some dangerous realm of fancy: this extreme sobering down by pain is the means—and perhaps the only means—of extricating him therefrom. (Possibly this is what befel the founder of Christianity on the cross : for the bitterest of all words, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me!" if understood in their fullest sense, contain the evidence of a general disappointment and enlightenment respecting the delusion of His life; at the moment of His most intense agony He gained a clear insight into Himself, just as did, in the poet's narrative, the poor dying Don Quixote.) The enormous tension of the intellect, which wants master pain, puts everything, which he now looks upon, in a new light: and the unspeakable charm of all new lights is often powerful enough to withstand all allurements to suicide, and to make the continuation of life appear as most desirable to the sufferer. Scornfully he reviews the comfortable, warm dream-world, wherein the healthy man moves unthinkingly; scornfully he reviews the noblest aud dearest of the illusions in which he formerly indulged; he feels a certain delight in conjuring this contempt out of the depth of hell, and thus causing his soul the bitterest grief; it is by this equipoise that he counterbalances physical pain, he fuels that this is the very time when such counterbalancing is needed! In an awful moment of clearsightedness lie says to himself, “For once let me be my own accuser and hangman; for once let me regard my sufferings as the punishment inflicted on me by myself! Let me enjoy my superiority as a judge; nay, more—my lordly pleasure, any tyrannical arbitrariness! May I rise above my life and sufferings, and look down into the unfathomable depths!” Our pride revolts as it never did before: it finds an unparalleled charm in advocating life against such a tyrant as pain and against all its insinuations, to give evidence against life, to advocate the cause of life itself against the tyrant. In this condition we make a desperate stand against any pessimism, lest it might appear as a consequence of our condition and humiliate us as conquered ollies. The charm also of exercising fairness of judgment was never greater than now, for now it is a victory over ourselves and the most irritable of all conditions which would excuse any unfairness of judgment; but we do not want to be excised, especially now we want to show that we can be "without fault." We are in regular convulsions of pride. And now comes the first ray of relief, of convalescence, and almost the first effect is that we revolt against the sovereignty of our pride: we call ourselves silly and vain, as if we had experienced something unique. Ungratefully we humble the all-powerful pride, with the very aid of which we endured the pain, and impetuously clamour for an antidote to pride: we want to be estranged from ourselves and impersonal, after pain has made us personal too forcibly and too long. "Avaunt, Avaunt, oh pride!" we exclaim, "it was another illness and another convulsion!" Again we cast longing glances at men and nature: with a sorrowful smile we remember that now we view many things concerning them in a new and different light, that a veil has been removed—but it is so invigorating, again to see the subdued lights of life and to step out of the terrible, sober daylight wherein we, as Sufferers, saw the things and through the things. We are not angry when the charms of health resume their sport; we look on, as if transformed, mildly and wearily. In this condition we cannot listen to music without weeping.
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The so-called "ego."—Language and the prejudices on which language is based are very much in our way in the exploration of in ward processes and cravings: as an instance we may cite the fact that worlds really exist only for the superlative degrees of these processes and cravings; but now we are accustomed, where we lack words, to give up close observation, because it is painful in this case to think accurately; nay, formerly the involuntary conclusion was, that where the province of words ceased, that of existence ceased likewise. Wrath, hatred, love, pity, desire, recognition, joy, pain, all are names for extreme conditions: the milder, middle stages, and more so. The over-active lower stages escape our attention, and yet it is they which weave the texture of our characters and fate. Those extreme outbursts— and even the most moderate conscious pleasure or displeasure which we may experience while partaking of a dish or hearing a sound is perhaps, if rightly estimated, nothing but an extreme outburst—very often destroy the texture, and then are violent exceptions, mostly in consequence of some congestion; and bow easily can they, as such, mislead the observer! just as easily as they misguide the person acting. We none of us are such as we appear to be according to the conditions for which alone we live consciousness and words, and consequently praise and blue; we misjudge ourselves after these stormier outbursts which become known to us alone; we draw a conclusion from a material, wherein the exceptions outweigh the rule; we mistake ourselves in reading these to all appearances most intelligible characters of our own. But our opinion of ourselves, the so-called “ego," which we discovered by this wrong method, henceforth becomes a fellow-architect of our character and faith.
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The unknown world of the subject.—What men from the remotest times down to the present clay have found so hard to understand is their ignorance of themselves; not only with regard to good and evil, but with regard to something much more essential. Still that most ancient of delusions lives on, that we know, precisely know in each case, how human action is brought about. Not only "God who looks into the heart," not only the door who premeditates his deed—no, not anybody else even entertains my doubt as to his grasping the essential part in the proceedings of another person's actions. I know what I want, what I have done; I am free and responsible for my action, I make the other responsible; I can mention by name all moral possibilities and all internal emotions preceding all action; you may act as you like in this matter—I understand myself and you all!"—so everybody of old used to think, so almost everybody thinks even now. Socrates and Plato, great doubters and admirable innovators on this head, yet were naïve believers in regard to that most fatal prejudice, that most profound mistake, that “the right knowledge must necessarily be followed up by the right action." With regard to this principle they still were the heirs of the universal madness and presumption which believes in the existence of knowledge and the essence of all action. It would, truly, be terrible if the insight into the essence of the right action were not to be followed up by the right action itself," is the only explanation which these great men deemed needful in proof of this idea ; to them the contrary seemed out of the question and harebrained, and yet this contrary is the bare truth itself which, from times immemorial, has been proved daily and hourly. Is it not a very :terrible" truth that, whatever we may know of all action in general, it never suffices for accomplishing it; that the bridge between knowledge and action has never yet been constructed in one single instance ? The actions are never such as they appear to us. We have been at such pains to learn that things external are not such as they appear to us—very well, the same may be asserted with regard to the things internal. The moral actions are in reality, something "different," we cannot say more, and all actions are essentially inscrutable. The contrary has been and is the general belief: we have the most ancient realism atrayed against us. Hitherto mankind were wont to think, "An action is such as it appears to us." (In re-reading these words, a very emphatic passage of Schopenhauer occurs to my mind, which I will aduce as a proof that even he, without any scruple whatever, adhered and continued to adhere to this moral realism : Each one of us is really a competent and perfect moral judge, with a thorough knowledge of good and evil, holy in loving the good and despising evil—all this applies to everybody, in as far as not his own actions but those of others have to be examined, and he has only to approve and disapprove, while the burden of the achievement is laid on other shoulders. Hence everybody is perfectly justified, as confessor, to take the place of God.)
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118
What then is our neighbour—What then do we conceive to be the limits of our neighbour, I mean that whereby he, so to speak, engraves and impresses himself on us? We know nothing of him but the changes wrought in us by him,—our knowledge of him is like a hollow, unmoulded space. We impute to him the sensations which his actions arouse in us, thus giving him a false, inverted positivity. According to our knowledge of our selves, we form him into a satellite of our own system, and if he shines or grows dark to us, and we are the ultimate cause in either case, we still believe the contrary! Oh world of phantoms, in which we live! Oh world, dreamt of as full and upright, yet so perverse, topsy-turvy and void!
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Experience and fiction.—However highly a person way develop his self-knowledge, nothing can be more imperfect than the picture embodying all the cravings that constitute his being. He can only just name the more important ones: their number and power, their flux and reflux, their mutual action and counter-action, and, above all, the laws of their subsistence will remain totally unknown to him. Hence this subsistence becomes a matter of chance: our daily experiences throw out it "but" now to the one, then to another of our cravings, and these greedily seize upon it, but the whole coming and going of these occurrences stands in no rational connection will the required means of subsistence of the total number of cravings: the outcome of which will ever be the starving and spoiling of some, and the surfeit of others. Every moment in the life of a human being causes some polypusarus of his character to grow, others to wither, in correspondence with the sustenance which the moment may or may not supply. Our experiences, as previously mentioned, are, in this sense, all means of subsistence, but scattered about with a reckless land, without discriminating between the hungry and the glutted ones. In consequence of this accidental sustenance of the parts, the whole full-grown polypus will be something just as accidental as its growth. To express it more clearly, suppose a craving has reached that stage at which it demands gratification,— or exercise of power, or a discharge of the same, or saturation of a vacuum, —all this is metaphorical language—then it examines every occurrence of the day with a view to its most profitable employment for its own purpose; whether we may be walking or resting, feeling annoyed or reading, speaking, fighting or exulting, the craving in its thirst watches, so to speak, every condition which we may enter upon and, as a rule, finds nothing for itself and has to wait and go on thirsting: after a little while it grows faint, and after a few more days or months of non-gratification, it withers like a plant without rain. Perhaps this cruelty of chance would even be more strikingly conspicuous if all cravings were as thorough-going as hunger, which does not content itself with imaginary dishes; but most of our cravings, especially the so-called moral ones, do if my supposition be permissible, that one dreams, to a certain extent, are able and intended to compensate for that accidental non-appearance of sustenance during the day. Why was yesterday's dream full of tenderness and tears, while that of the preceding day was facetious and wanton, and of a previous one adventurous and engaged in a continued gloomy search? Why do I, on one, enjoy indescribable raptures of music; on another, soar and fly up with the fierce delight of an eagle to most distant summits? These fictions, which give scope and utterance to our cravings for tenderness or merriment, or ad-venturousness, or to our longing after music or mountains, —and everybody will have striking instances at hand—are interpretations of our nervous irritation during sleep, very free and arbitrary interpretations of the motions of our blood and intestines, of the pressure of the arm and the coverings, of the sounds of the church bells, the weathercocks, the moths, or other things of the kind. The fact that this text, which, on the whole, remains very much the same for one night as for another, is so differently commented upon, that reason in its poetic efforts, on two successive days, imagines such different cases for the same nervous irritations, may be explained by the prompter of this reason being to-day another than yesterday: another craving requiring to be gratified, exemplified, practised, refreshed and uttered, — this very one, indeed, being at its flood-tide, while yesterday another had its turn! Real life has not this freedom of interpretation which dream-life has; it is less poetic, less licentious; but, need I emphasise it, that our cravings, when wake, likewise merely interpret the nervous irritations, and, in correspondence with their requirements, determine their “canses"; that there is no essential difference between waking and dreaming: that even when very different stages of culture are compared, the freedom of conscious interpretation of the one is in no way inferior to the freedom in dreams of the other; that even our moral judgments and valuations are only images and imaginations of a physiological incident unknown to us, a kind of customary language for the designation of certain nervous irritants; that all our so-called consciousness is a more or less fantastical commentary on an known text, one perhaps not unknowable, yet felt? Take some trifling incident. Suppose some day we noticed in the marketplace a person laughing at us while we are passing: according to the craving which just then predominates in us, this incident will have various meanings to us, —and, according as we are constituted, it will be an altogether different incident. One takes it like a drop of rain; another shakes it off like an insect; a third one will try to pick a quarrel; another examines his garment, whether it may have given rise to derision; another again, in consequence thereof, muses on the ridiculous itself; a third is delighted at having unconsciously added a ray of mirth and sunshine to the world ;—and in each case some craving is gratified, be it that of anger, combativeness, meditation or benevolence. This special craving seized upon the incident as upon its prey; why just this one? Because, pinched with hunger and thirst, it was lying in ambush. The other morning at eleven o'clock, a man suddenly fell down full length immediately in front of me, as if struck by lightning; all the women around shrieked aloud. I raised him to his feet and waited till he had recovered speech in the meantime not a muscle in my face moved, and no feeling, neither of terror nor of pity, was aroused: but I did the most urgent and reasonable thing, and coolly went my way. Suppose I had been told the previous day that on the following morning, at eleven o'clock, somebody would fall down in front of me in the aforementioned manner, —I should have suffered all sorts of agonies beforehand, not slept all night, and, at the decisive moment, perhaps, followed the man's example, instead of helping him. For in the meantime all possible cravings would have had time to imagine the incident and comment on it. What then are our experiences? Much more that which we transpose into, than that which is contained in them. Or should we say —Nothing in itself is contained therein, experience is a work of fancy?
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To case the mind of the sceptic.—"I do not in the least know what I am doing! I do not in the least know what l ought to do." You are right, but be sure of this: you are being done every moment! Mankind, at all times, mistook the active for the passive; it is their everlasting grammatical blunder.
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Cause and effect—On this mirror—for our intellect is a mirror—something is going on which shows regularity; a certain thing, each time, follows another certain thing. This, if we want to perceive it and give it a line, we call cause and effect. We fools! As if, in this, we understood or could understand anything! For we have seen nothing but the images of " cause and effect." And this very figurativeness makes the insight into a more substantial relation than that of sequence impossible.
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Reason.—How did reason come into the world? As is meet, in an irrational way, which we shall have to guess out like it riddle.
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What is volition.—We laugh at any one who, stepping out of his chamber the very same minute as the sun steps out of his, says, “I wish the sun to rise", or who, thought unable to stop a wheel, says, “I wish it to roll"; or who, when thrown in wrestling, says, "Here I lie; but here I wish to lie!" Yet, despite all mockery, do we not act exactly like these three whenever we utter the words "I wish"?
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Of the realm of freedom.—We can think a great many more things than act and experience—that is, our thinking faculty is superficial and contents itself with the surface; nay, it does not even notice it. If our intellect had been developed in strict proportion to our strength and our exercise of strength, the topmost principle of our thinking would be that we can only understand that which we can do—if there is any understanding at all. The thirsty man is deprived of water, but the creations of his fancy continually produce water before his sight, as if nothing could be more easily procured; the superficial and easily satisfied nature of the intellect cannot grasp the real distress, and in this it feels its superiority. It is proud of knowing more, of running faster, and of reaching the goal almost instantaneously, so the realm of thoughts in comparison with the realms of action, of volition, and experience, appears to be a realm of freedom, while, as previously stated, it is but a realm of superficiality and sufficiency
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Oblivion.—The existence of oblivion has never been proved. All that we know is that recollection is not within our power. Up to the present we have filled that gap in our power with the word "oblivion," just as if it were another addition to our list of faculties. But what is within our power? If that word fills up a gap in our power, might not then the other words fill up a gap in the knowledge of our power
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For a purpose.—Of all actions those for a purpose are apparently least understood, because they have always been considered as most intelligible and as most commonplace to our consciousness. The great problems are exposed to public view.
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Dream and responsibility.—You wish to be responsible in everything, except for your dreams. What wrestled weankness, what want of consistent courage! Nothing is so much your own its your dreams are! Nothing so much your own work ! Substance, form, duration, actor, spectator, all this you yourself are in these comedies! Yet in these you are afraid and ashamed of yourselves, and even Œdipus, wise Œdipus, derived comfort from the thought that we cannot be blamed for our dreams. Whence I infer that the great majority of mankind must feel conscious of abominable dreams. Otherwise, how much would these nightly fictions have been exploited in the interest of human arrogance! Need I add that wise Œdipus was right, that we are really not responsible for our dreams, no more than for our waking hours, and that the doctrine of the free will has for its father and mother human pride and sense of power? Perhaps I mention this too often, but it at least does not prove it an error.
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The alleged contest of motives.—We speak of the “contest of motives," but imply a contest which is not the contest of motives. That is, in our meditative consciousness the results of divers actions successively come to the front; we imagine ourselves capable of accomplishing them all, and compare these results. We imagine that we have decided upon an action, when we have convinced ourselves that its results will be generally auspicious; before we arrive at this final conclusion we often honestly worry about the great difficulty of guessing the consequences, of seeing them in their full importance, indeed, all of them, without omission; in which case the number obtained has still to be divided by chance. To mention the principal difficulty: All the results which, singly, call only he anticipated with great trouble, now have to be balanced on the same scales against one another; and it so often happens that for this casuistry of advantage, owing to the difference in quality of all these possible results, both scales and weights are found wanting. But suppose that even here we were able to get to a satisfactory issue, and that chance had placed in our scales results which admit mutual balancing, we now have indeed in the picture of the results of a certain action a motive for doing this very action—yea, one motive! But at the moment of our eventual action we are pretty frequently influenced by a set of motives other than those under discussion, that is those of the “pictorial group of results." The habitual play of our energy, or a slight encouragement on the part of a person whom we honour, fear, or love; or love of case, which prefers to do that which is nearest at hand; or some excitement of the imagination, caused at the decisive moment by some trivial occurrence; or physical influence, springing up quite unexpectedly; or caprice; or the outburst of some passion which, quite by accident, is ready to burst forth; in short, motives of which some are not known to us at all, some but very little, and which we can never counterbalance in advance, are the instigators. Probably even among them a contest takes place, a driving to and fro, a weighing up and down of parts—and this would be the real "contest of motives"—something quite invisible and unknown to us. I have calculated the results and successes, and in so doing placed a very essential motive into the battle-line of the motives, but I run as far from drawing up this battle-line as I am from seeing it ; the battle itself is hidden from me, and so is the victory as victory; for I certainly learn to know that which I eventually shall do, but I do not come to know which motive thereby has proved victorious. Yet we are certainly wont not to take all these unknown occurrences into account, and to imagine the preparatory stage of an action only in so far as it is conscious, and so we mistake the contest of the motives for the comparison of the possible results of divers actions a mistake of most important consequences, and most fatal to the development of morality.
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Purposes! Will!—We are wont to believe in two— realms in the realm of purposes and volition and that of accidents. In the latter things proceed absurdly, they move, stand, and fall without anybody being able to say why? wherefore? We dread this powerful realm of the great, cosmical stupidity, for, in most cases, we learn to know it as dropping down upon that other world of purposes and intentions, like a brick from the roof, destroying some beautiful purpose of ours. This belief in the two realms is a very ancient romance and myth: we clever dwarfs, for all our will and our purposes, are molested, run down, and often trampled to death by those stupid, extremely stupid giants, the accidents—but, despite all this, we should not like to be deprived of the awful poetry of this implied in their presence; for these monsters frequently appear when life, in the cobweb of purposes, has become too slow or too anxious, giving a sublime diversion by the fact that for once their hands tear the whole web—not as if these irrational beings had wished to do so or had even noticed it. But their coarse, bony hands run through our web as though it were thin air. The Greeks called this realm of incalculable recurrences and sublime, eternal weak-mindedness, Moira, and placed it round their gods as the horizon beyond which neither their actions or their eyes could reach: with that secret defiance of the gods which is met with among several nations, in so far as they are worshipped, whilst fate is kept in hand as a last trump against them; when, for instance, Indians and Persians imagine their gods dependent on the sacrifices of mortals, thus giving to mortals the power, if worse came to the worst, to let the gods hunger and starve; or when, as with the hard, melancholy Scandinavian a quiet revenge was enjoyed in the idea of a twilight of the gods to come in retribution of the constant dread which their evil gods caused them. For otherwise Christianity, with its neither Indian, Persian, Greek, nor Scandinavian feelings, worshipping in the dust the spirit of power and bidding its disciples kiss the very lust. It gave forth that the omnipotent "realm of stupidity" was not as stupid as it looked, that we, on the contrary, wore the stupid ones who did not notice that behind it stood God, who, though addicted to dark, devious and wonderful ways, yet, in the end, “brings everything to a glorious end." This new myth of God, who hitherto had been mistaken as a race of giants or Moira, and who Himself was the wearer of purposes and webs, finer even than those of our intelligence—so fine as to make them appear unintelligible, nay, unreasonable—this myth was so bold a subversion and so daring a paradox, that the overrefined ancient world could not resist it, however mad and contradictory the matter seemed; for, confidentially speaking, there was a contradiction in it: if our intelligence cannot divine the intelligence and purposes of God, whence did it divine this quality of its intelligence, and this quality of Gol's intelligence? In more modern times a doubt has, indeed, sprung up), whether the brick, which fell from the roof, was really thrown down by "divine love"—and men again begin to fall back upon the old romance of giants and dwarfs. Let us then learn, for it is high time, that even in our presumed separate realm of purposes and reason the giants are the rulers. And our purposes and reason are not dwarfs but giants. And our own webs are as often and as clumsily broken by ourselves as by the brick! And not everything is purpose which is so called, and much less is everything volition which is called volition! And if you arrive at the conclusion : "Then there is only one realm, that of accidents and stupidity!" we must add: well, perhaps there is but one realm, perhaps there is neither a volition nor purposes, we have only imagined them. Those iron hands of necessity, which shake the dice-box of chance, continue their game for all infinite period: there must be throws which appear perfectly similar to expediency and rationality of every grade. Perhaps our voluntary acts and purposes are but such throws, and we are only too narrow-minded and too vain to perceive our utter weakness of intellect : which makes us shake the dice-box with iron hands, and do nothing in our most intentional actions but play ourselves the game of necessity. Perhaps! To get over this "Perhaps we ought, indeed, to have been guests of the Nether-world and of those regions beyond all surfaces, playing at dice and betting with Persephone at the goddess' own board.
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The moral fashions.—How the general moral judgments have shifted! Those greatest marvels of ancient morality, Epictetus, for instance, knew nothing of the glorification, so usual now, of taking thought for others, of living for others; according to our moral fashion, we ought really to call them immoral, for with every means in their power, they fought for their ego and against all sympathy for others (especially for their sufferings and moral imperfections). Perhaps they would answer us: “If you feel yourselves such dull or plain objects, think of others more than of yourselves. You will do the right thing!”
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Christianity dying away in morality.—"On n'est bon que par la pitié: il fant done qu'il y ait quelque pitié dans tous nos sentiments"—so preaches morality in our days. And whence comes this? That sympathetic, disinterested, benevolent, social actions are now felt to be characteristics of the moral man—nay, perhaps be the most universal effect and change of tone which Christianity has brought about in Europe, though this has been neither its intention nor its doctrine. But it was the residuum of Christian moods, when the very contrary, utterly selfish faith in the "One thing is needful," that is, the absolute importance of the eternal, personal salvation, together with the dogmas on which it rested, had gradually receded, and the accompanying belief in "love" and "charity," in accordance with the enormous practice of the Church, was thereby pushed into the foreground. The further the dogmas were departed from, the more a justification for this departure was aimed at in a cult of philanthropy: not to fall short of the Christin ideal in this point, but, if possible, to excel it, was a secret stimulus to all French free-thinkers from Voltaire clown to Auguste Comte; and the latter, with his famous moral formula of "vivre pour autrui." has indeed outchristianed Christianity! The doctrine of sympathetic affections and of the pity or utility of others, as the principle of action, has gained its greatest fame in Germany through Schopenhauer, in England through John Stuart Mill: but they themselves were only echoes—from about the time of the French revolution, these doctrines have, with an enormous motor force, sprung up everywhere in the coarsest as well as the subtlest forms, and all socialistic principles involuntarily, as it were, took their stand on the common ground of this doctrine. Perhaps in our days no prejudice is more implicitly believed in than that we know what really constitutes morality. It seems that now everybody is pleased to hear that society is about adapt the individual to the general requirements, and that the happiness and, at the same time, the sacrifice of the individual consists in feeling himself as a useful member and instrument of the whole: we have only our lingering doubts as to where to look for this whole; whether in an existing State or in one yet to be founded, or in the nation, or in an international brotherhood, or in small, new, economic communities. A great deal of meditation, doubt, fighting, much excitement and passion, are just now being exhibited on this head; but wonderful and pleasant is the unanimity with which the "ego" is requested to practise self-denial, until, in form of adaptation to the whole, it again obtains its fixel sphere of rights and duties, until it has become something altogether new and different. Nothing less is aimed at—whether admitted or not—than thorough transformation, any, weakening and abrogation of the individual : there is an uncensing enumeration and accusing of all the wickedness and offensiveness, the lavishness, expense, and luxury of the traditional aspect of individual existence; it is hoped that everything may be managed in a cheaper, less dangerous, more uniform, and harmonious way, provided only that there are nothing but large bodies and their members. Everything which in any way corresponds to this all-productive craving and its subsidiary cravings, is considered as good—this is the moral ground-current of our age; sympathy and social feeling play into each other's hands. (Kant is still outside this movement: he expressly teaches that we ought to be callous to other people's suffering, if our beneficence is to have moral value—a precept which Schopenhauer, as may easily be understood, angrily calls Kant's absurdity.)
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In how far we hare to beware of pity.—Pity, in so far as it really eases suffering—and this shall here be our only point of view—is a weakness like every other indulgence in an injurious passion. It increases the world’s suffering: though now and then some suffering may be indirectly diminished or relieved in consequence of pity, we must not adduce these occasional and on the whole unimportant consequences to justify its nature, which, us already stated, is injurious, Suppose that it prevailed for only one day, would not humanity be brought to ruin by it? In itself it has no better character than any other craving; only where it is required and praised, and this happens when we do not understand its injurious side, but discover in it a source of delight, good conscience attaches itself to it; only then we gladly yield to it and are not afraid of its manifestation. Under other circumstances, where it is known to be hurtful, it is considered a weakness, or, as among the Greeks, a morbid, periodical impulse which we may deprive of its jeopardising nature by temporary and arbitrary discharges. Should a person just for once experimentally and intentionally make the occasions for pity in practical life for a while the object of his attention, and again and again picture to his mind all the misery he may meet with in his surroundings, he will assuredly grow ill and despondent. But should he wish to serve mankind in any sense of the word as a physician, he will have to be very cautious, else it might paralyse him in all critical moments, cramp his knowledge wind unnerve his helpful, delicate hand.
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Being pitied—Savages feel with a moral shudder when thinking of the possibility of becoming an object of pity, which is the same to them as being bare of all virtue. To bestow pity is tantamount to contempt, they do not want to see a contemptible being suffer, this affords no enjoyment. On the contrary, to see a foe suffer, who was acknowledged their peer in pride and who does not renounce his pride even amid tortures, and any being that refuses to stoop to appeals of mercy, in other words, to the most shameful and degrading abasement, is the enjoyment of enjoyments, which, in the soul of the savage, excites admiration. He finally kills such a brave, where it is in his power, and grants funeral honours to him, the dauntless one: had he wailed, had his countenance lost the expression of cold defiance, had he shown himself contemptible, well, he would have been allowed to live like a dog, he would no longer have stirred the pride of the spectator, and pity would have stepped in the place of admiration.
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Happiness in pity.—If, with the Indians, the knowledge of human misery be looked upon as the goal of the whole intellectual activity, and throughout —many intellectual generations such a terrible purpose be steadily adhered to: pity, in the eyes of such people of hereditary pessimism, at last assumes a new value us a life-preserving force, to make existence endurable, though it may seem worthy of being thrown away in disgust and horror. Pity becomes the antidote of suicide, as a sensation which causes pleasure, and makes us taste superiority in small doses: it diverts the minds, makes the heart full, banishes fear and torpor, prompts words, complaints and actions; it is, comparatively speaking, a bliss, measured by the misery of the knowledge which, on all sides, hampers and obscures the individual, taking his breath away. But bliss, of whatever kind it may be, affords air, light and free movement.
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Why double our “ego” ?—Viewing our own experiences in the same light in which we are wont to view the experiences of others, is very comforting and an advisable medicine to loot, Conversely, to look upon and take the experiences of others, as if they were our own, the requisition of a philosophy of compassion, would ruin us, and in a very short time too; let us but make an experiment instead of leaving everything to our imagination! Besides, the former maxim is certainly more in accordance with reason and goodwill towards rationality; for we judge more objectively the value and significance of an occurrence, which happens to others and not to ourselves ; the value, for instance, of a case of death, some money-loss, slander. Pity as the principle of acting, on the other hand, with its precept—Suffer by another's misfortune, as he himself suffers—would force the ego-point of view with its exaggeration and eccentricity to become the point of view of the other, that is, of the sympathiser as well ; so that we should have to suffer both from our own and the other's ego, and should thus voluntarily burden ourselves with a double irrationality instead of making the burden of our own as light as possible.
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Increase of tenderness.—Whenever we find out that a person whom we love, honour, and admire suffers, which invariably fills us with extreme astonishment, because we cannot but imagine that our happiness, as derived from him, must flow from a superabundant source of personal happiness—our sensations of love, reverence and admiration become essentially modified : they become more tender, that is: the gulf between him and ourselves seems to be bridged over, and an approach to equality to take place. Only then it seems possible that we may requite him the good done to us, whereas, previously, he lived in our imagination as one superior to our gratitude. This capability of requiting causes us great joy and elevation. We try to divine what may allay his pain, and give it to him: if he wants words of comfort, kind glances, attentions, services, presents, we give them; but above all, if he wishes to see us suffer through his suffering, we feign to be suffering ; yet, in all this, we feel the enjoyment of active gratitude: which, in short, is kind revenge. If he either wants nor accepts anything from us, we depart chilled and sad, almost grieved; it seems as though our gratitude were declined—on this point of honour even the kindest will be a stickler. From all this it follows that, even in the most favourable case, there is something degrading in suffering and something elevating and superior in sympathy; which fact, in all eternity, will separate the two sensations.
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Nominally lighter.—Yon assert that the moral of pity has a greater power than that of stoicism? Prove it! but mind, do not measure the “higher” and “ lower” standard in morality by moral yards: for there are no absolute morals. Hence take the yard measures from elsewhere and—be on your guard !
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{[italic|More beautiful, but less valuable,}}—Picturesque morality; such is the immorality of high-aspiring passions and abrupt transitions, of pathetic, impressive, awful, solemn gestures and sounds, It is the semi-savage stage of morality: let us not be induced by its aesthetic charms to assign it a higher rank.
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Sympathy.—In order to understand another person, that is, to reproduce his feeling in ourselves, we often, indeed, sound his feelings to their very depths, by asking ourselves, for instance: Why is he grieved ? and then, in our turn, feeling grieved for the same reason; but as a rule we abstain from so doing and produce in ourselves the feeling according to the effects which it exhibits in the other person, by copying in our own persons the expression of his eyes, his voice, gait, attitude (or even their image in words, picture, music) to a slight resemblance at least of the play of the muscles and the nerves. A. similar feeling will thereupon arise in us, in consequence of an old association of movement aud sentiment, which is trained to move backwards and forwards. We have very highly developed this art of fathoming the feelings of others, and, in the presence of a human being, are almost spontaneously and incessantly practising it: one need only watch the play of features in feminine faces, how they quiver with animation, through the constant imitation and reflection of all that is being experienced round them. But by music more than anything else are we shown what great masters we are in the quick and subtle divination of feelings and in sympathy; for though music be a mere copy of copied feelings, it yet, despite this distance and vagneuess, pretty frequently makes us share in these very feelings, so that we grow sad without the slightest occasion for sadness, perfect fools as we are, only because we hear sounds and rhythms which, in some way or other, remind us of the tone and the movement, or only the habits of sorrowful people. There is a tradition of a Danish king who, listening to a singer, was wrought up to such a pitch of warlike enthusiasm by the music that he started up to his sect and killed five persons of his assembled household: there was no war, no enemy; in fact, the very opposite prevailed; yet the force which refers from the feeling to the cause was so strong in the king as to overpower his observation and reason. But such is nearly always the effect of music (provided that it really produces an effect), and we have no need of such very paradoxical cases to become aware of this: the state of feeling into which music throws us, is nearly always contradictory to the appearance of our real state and of reason, which recognises this real state and its causes, If we ask how it has come about that the imitation of the feeling of others has become so familiar to us, the answer will not be wanting: man, as the most timid of all beings, owing to his subtle and fragile nature, has been tutored by his timidity in that sympathy and ready perception of the feelings of other persons and even animals. Throughout thousands of years, he accustomed himself to see a danger in everything strange and living: at such a sight he immediately copied the expression of the features and attitude, drawing his own conclusion as to the kind of evil intention concealed by them. Man has applied this interpretation of all movements and lineaments as intentions even to the nature of all inanimate things— in the delusion that there exists nothing inanimate: I believe that this is the origin of what we call enjoyment of nature at the sight of heaven, fields, rocks, forests, storm, stars, the sea, a landscape, spring; without the ancient habits of fear which made us view everything in the light of a second, remoter sense, we should now feel no delight in nature, any more than we should rejoice in man and beast without fear, that preceptor of our intellect. Joy and pleasant surprise, finally, the sense of the ridiculous, are the later-born children of sympathy and the much younger brothers and sisters of fear. The faculty of quick perception— which is based on that of quick dissembling—decreases in proud, vain-glorious men and nations, because they have less fear: on the other hand, all species of understanding and dissimulation are common among timid nations; this is also the true home of all imitative arts and the higher intelligence, If, starting from such a theory of sympathy as previously proposed, I turn my mind to the theory of a mystical process, just now so popular and sanctified, by means of which pity blends two beings into one, and thus enables the one immediately to understand the other; if I hear in mind that so clever a head us Schopenhauer's delighted in such fanciful and frivolous trash, and, in his tum, transferred this delight to clear and half-clear heads: I feel unbounded astonishment and pity. How great must be our delight in inconceivable nonsense! How closely akin to a madman must be a sane man, when he listens to his secret, intellectual desires ! Why then, really, did Schopenhauer feel so grateful, so deeply indebted to Kant? The following instance throws an mistakable light on this “ why?” Somebody had expressed an opinion as to how the categorical Imperative of Kant might be deprived of its occultness and be made conceivable, At which Schopenhauer burst into the following words: ‘ A conceivable categorical Imperative ! Preposterous idea! Egyptian darkness! Heaven for- bid that it should become conceivable! The very fact that there is something inconceivable, that this misery of understanding and its conceptions is limited, conditional, final, deceptive—this certainty is Kant’s great guilt.” Let us consider, whether anybody, who' from the very first feels comforted by the belief is the inconceivability of these things, is honestly bent on gaining an insight into moral things—one who still honestly believes in inspirations from above, in magic and ghostly apparitions and the metaphysical ugliness of the toad.
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Woe, if this craving should rage!—Suppose the craving for attachment and care for others (the “sympathetic affection”) had double the power it really has, life on earth would be unbearable. Only consider how many foolish things every one is apt to do, each day and hour, out of sheer attachment and cure for his own self, and how intolerable he appears in so doing: how, if we were to become to others objects of these same follies and intrusions, with which they have hitherto only pestered themselves. Should we not flee precipitously, as soon as a “neighbour’’ approached us? And should we not apply to the sympathetic affection as foul names as those which we now apply to selfishness?
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Closing the ears to misery.—If we allow the misery and sufferings of other mortals to cast a gloom upon us and to cloud our own sky—who then has to bear the consequences of this gloom? Surely those other same mortals, besides all their other burdens. We cannot afford them either aid or comfort by trying to be the echoes of their misery, my, if we only open our ears continuously to this misery—unless we had learnt the art of the Olympians, viz., instead of making ourselves unhappy, to feel edified by the misfortune of mankind. But this is somewhat too Olympian for us : though, through the enjoyment of tragedy, we have already taken a step towards this ideal, divine cannibalism.
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Unselfish.—One person may be empty and wanting to be sated; the other may be glutted and wishing to he unburthened—both are prompted to look for an individual that may serve their purposes. And this process, as understood in its highest sense, is, in both instances, denoted by the same word: Love—well? should love be something unselfish?
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Even across our neighbour.—How? Should the nature of true morality be this, that, after considering the most direct and immediate consequences which our actions would fare for another person, we bend our purpose accordingly? These are but narrow-minded and petty morals, though morals they may be: but it seems to me a loftier and more liberal view to glance aside from these immediate effects upon others and, under circumstances, to further even more distant purposes by the sorrow of others—so, for instance, when we promote knowledge, despite the certainty that first and immediately our freethinking will plunge them into doubt, grief and worse affliction. May we not at least deal with our neighbour just as we deal with ourselves ? And if, with regard to ourselves, we have no such narrow-minded and petty view on the immediate consequences and sufferings, why should we entertain it with regard to him? Suppose we had a mind to sacrifice ourselves: what would prevent us from sacrificing our neighbour along with ourselves ?—just as all along States and princes have sacrificed one citizen to the other “for the sake of the general interests,’’ they say. But we too have general, and perhaps more general interests; why then should a few individuals of the present generation not he sacrificed — for the good of future generations? Their grief, anxiety, despair, blunders, and distress may be deemed indispensable, while a new ploughshare breaks up the ground and makes it fertile for all. Finally: we communicate the same principles to our neighbour, in which he himself may feel as the victim; we persuade him to do the task for which we employ him. Are we then void of pity ? But though we may wish to conquer our pity in spite of ourselves, is not this a loftier and more liberal attitude and spirit than that one in which we feel safe after having fond out whether an action benefits or hurts our neighbour? On the contrary, by means of the sacrifice—in which both we and our neighbours are included—we should strengthen and raise the general feeling of human power, though we might not attain more. But even this would be a positive increase of happiness. Then, if this even—but no more! One glance suffices, you have understood.
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Future outlook.—If, as the current definition runs, only those actions are moral which have been done for the sake of others, and for their sakes only—there are no moral actions! If only those actions are moral—as another definition declares—which are done spontaneously, then again there are no moral actions! What then is it that we call by this name and which surely exists and needs explaining? They are the results of some intellectual blunders. Suppose we were to free ourselves from these mistakes, what then would become of “moral actions’? Owing to these blunders we were wont to attribute to some actions a higher value than they really possess: we separated them from the “selfish” and “involuntary” actions. If we again range them among the latter, as we shall have to do, we certainly reduce their value (their own estimate) below its proper level, because “selfish” and “involuntary” actions, owing to that alleged great and intrinsic difference, have hitherto been undervalued. Will then these very actions, in the future, be less frequently accomplished because they are henceforth to be less highly valued? Inevitably so! at least for a pretty long time, as long as the balance of valuation drops below the reaction of former mistakes. But in return we restore to men their cheerful courage for such actions as are reputed selfish, and re-establish their value—we relieve them of their evil consciences. And as up to our time these have been by far the most frequent, and will be so in all future, we deprive the whole conception of actions and life of its evil appear-ance. This is a very important result. If man would no longer think himself wicked, he would cease to be so.