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HUMAN,
ALL TOO HUMAN
A BOOK FOR FREE SPIRITS
BY
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
TRANSLATED BY ALEXANDER HARVEY
CHICAGO
CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY
1908
ellertackalichen, azly to iden
liche
Copyright 1908
By Charles H. Kerr & Company
Olinotes.
CONTENTS
Page
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
5
19
OF THE FIRST AND LAST THINGS .....
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS
67
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE
136
PREFACE.
It is often enough, and always with great sur-
prise, intimated to me that there is something
both ordinary and unusual in all my writings,
from the "Birth of Tragedy" to the recently
published "Prelude to a Philosophy of the Fu-
ture": they all contain, I have been told, snares
and nets for short sighted birds, and something
that is almost a constant, subtle, incitement to
an overturning of habitual opinions and of ap-
proved customs. What!? Everything is merely
-human-all too human? With this exclama-
tion my writings are gone through, not without
a certain dread and mistrust of ethic itself and
not without a disposition to ask the exponent of
evil things if those things be not simply mis-
represented. My writings have been termed a
school of distrust, still more of disdain: also, and
more happily, of courage, audacity even. And in
fact, I myself do not believe that anybody ever
looked into the world with a distrust as deep
as mine, seeming, as I do, not simply the timely
advocate of the devil, but, to employ theological
terms, an enemy and challenger of God; and who-
soever has experienced any of the consequences
of such deep distrust, anything of the ch
5
6
PREFACE
and the agonies of isolation to which such an
unqualified difference of standpoint condemns
him endowed with it, will also understand how
often I must have sought relief and self-forget-
fulness from any source—through any object of
veneration or enmity, of scientific seriousness or
wanton lightness; also why I, when I could not
find what I was in need of, had to fashion it for
myself, counterfeiting it or imagining it (and
what poet or writer has ever done anything else,
and what other purpose can all the art in the
world possibly have?) That which I always
stood most in need of in order to effect my cure
and self-recovery was faith, faith enough not tɔ
be thus isolated, not to look at life from so sin-
gular a point of view—a magic apprehension (in
eye and mind) of relationship and equality, a
calm confidence in friendship, a blindness, free
from suspicion and questioning, to two sided-
ness; a pleasure in externals, superficialities, the
near, the accessible, in all things possessed of
color, skin and seeming. Perhaps I could be
fairly reproached with much "art" in this regard,
many fine counterfeitings; for example, that,
wisely or wilfully, I had shut my eyes to Scho-
penhauer's blind will towards ethic, at a time
when I was already clear sighted enough on the
subject of ethic; likewise that I had deceived my-
self concerning Richard Wagner's incurable ro-
PREFACE
manticism, as if it were a beginning and not an
end; likewise concerning the Greeks, likewise
concerning the Germans and their future—and
there may be, perhaps, a long list of such like-
wises. Granted, however, that all this were true,
and with justice urged against me, what does it
signify, what can it signify in regard to how
much of the self-sustaining capacity, how much
of reason and higher protection are embraced in
such self-deception ?-and how much more fals-
ity is still necessary to me that I may therewith
always reassure myself regarding the luxury of
my truth. Enough, I still live; and life is not
considered now apart from ethic; it will [have)
deception; it thrives (lebt) on deception......
but am I not beginning to do all over again
what I have always done, I, the old immoralist,
and bird snarer-talk unmorally, ultramorally,
“beyond good and evil”?
2
Thus, then, have I evolved for myself the
“free spirits” to whom this discouraging-encour-
aging work, under the general title “Human, All
Too Human," is dedicated. Such "free spirits"
do not really exist and never did exist. But I
stood in need of them, as I have pointed out, in
order that some good might be mixed with my
8
PREFACE
evils (illness, loneliness, strangeness, acedia, in-
capacity): to serve as gay spirits and comrades,
with whom one may talk and laugh when one
is disposed to talk and laugh, and whom one
may send to the devil when they grow weari-
some. They are some compensation for the lack
of friends. That such free spirits can possibly
exist, that our Europe will yet number among
her sons of to-morrow or of the day after to-
morrow, such a brilliant and enthusiastic com-
pany, alive and palpable and not merely, as in
my case, fantasms and imaginary shades, I, my-
self, can by no means doubt. I see them already
coming, slowly, slowly. May it not be that I
am doing a little something to expedite their
coming when I describe in advance the influ-
ences under which I see them evolving and the
ways along which they travel ?
3
It may be conjectured that a soul in which
the type of "free spirit” can attain maturity and
completeness had its decisive and deciding event
in the form of a great emancipation or unbind-
ing, and that prior to that event it seemed only,
the more firmly and forever chained to its place
and pillar. What binds strongest? What cords
seem almost unbreakable? In the case of mor-
PREFACE
tals of a choice and lofty nature they will be
those of duty: that reverence, which in youth is
most typical, that timidity and tenderness in the
presence of the traditionally honored and the
worthy, that gratitude to the soil from which we
sprung, for the hand that guided us, for the
relic before which we were taught to pray-
their sublimest moments will themselves bind
these souls most strongly. The great liberation
comes suddenly to such prisoners, like an earth-
quake: the young soul is all at once shaken, torn
apart, cast forth—it comprehends not itself what
is taking place. An involuntary onward impulse
rules them with the mastery of command; a will,
a wish are developed to go forward, anywhere,
at any price; a strong, dangerous curiosity re-
garding an undiscovered world flames and flashes
in all their being. “Better to die than live here"-
so sounds the tempting voice: and this "here,”
this "at home” constitutes all they have hitherto
loved. A sudden dread and distrust of that which
they loved, a flash of contempt for that which is
called their "duty," a mutinous, wilful, volcanic-
like longing for a far away journey, strange
scenes and people, annihilation, petrifaction, a
hatred surmounting love, perhaps a sacrilegious
impulse and look backwards, to where they so
long prayed and loved, perhaps a flush of shame
for what they did and at the same time an exul-
10
PREFACE
$
tation at having done it, an inner, intoxicating,
delightful tremor in which is betrayed the sense
of victory-a victory? over what? over whom?
a riddle-like victory, fruitful in questioning and
well worth questioning, but the first victory, for
all—such things of pain and ill belong to the
history of the great liberation. And it is at the
same time a malady that can destroy a man, this
first outbreak of strength and will for self-
destination, self-valuation, this will for free will:
and how much illness is forced to the surface
in the frantic strivings and singularities with
which the freedman, the liberated seeks hence-
forth to attest his mastery over things! He roves
fiercely around, with an unsatisfied longing and
whatever objects he may encounter must suffer
from the perilous expectancy of his pride; he tears
to pieces whatever attracts him. With a sardonic
laugh he overturns whatever he finds veiled or
protected by any reverential awe: he would see
what these things look like when they are over-
turned. It is wilfulness and delight in the wil-
fulness of it, if he now, perhaps, gives his ap-
proval to that which has heretofore been in ill
reputeif, in curiosity and experiment, he pene-
trates stealthily to the most forbidden things. In
the background during all his plunging and
roaming—for he is as restless and aimless in his
course as if lost in a wilderness—is the interro-
PREFACE
11
gation mark of a curiosity growing ever more
dangerous. "Can we not upset every standard ?
and is good perhaps evil? and God only an in-
vention and a subtlety of the devil? Is everything,
in the last resort, false? And if we are dupes
are we not on that very account dupers also ?
must we not be dupers also ?” Such reflections
lead and mislead him, ever further on, ever
further away. Solitude, that dread goddess and
mater saeva cupidinum, encircles and besets him,
ever more threatening, more violent, more heart
breaking—but who to-day knows what solitude
is ?
4
From this morbid solitude, from the deserts
of such trial years, the way is yet far to that
great, overflowing certainty and healthiness
which cannot dispense even with sickness as a
means and a grappling hook of knowledge; to
that matured freedom of the spirit which is, in
an equal degree, self mastery and discipline of
the heart, and gives access to the path of much
and various reflection to that inner compre-
hensiveness and self satisfaction of over-richness
which precludes all danger that the spirit has
gone astray even in its own path and is sitting
intoxicated in some corner or other; to that over-
12
PREFACE
plus of plastic, healing, imitative and restorative
power which is the very sign of vigorous health,
that overplus which confers upon the free spirit
the perilous prerogative of spending a life in ex-
periment and of running adventurous risks: the
past-master-privilege of the free spirit. In the
interval there may be long years of convales-
cence, years filled with many hued painfully-
bewitching transformations, dominated and led
to the goal by a tenacious will for health that is
often emboldened to assume the guise and the
disguise of health. There is a middle ground to
this, which a man of such destiny can not sub-
sequently recall without emotion; he basks in a
special fine sun of his own, with a feeling of
birdlike freedom, birdlike visual power, birdlike
irrepressibleness, a something extraneous (Drit-
tes) in which curiosity and delicate disdain have
united. A "free spirit”—this refreshing term is
grateful in any mood, it almost sets one aglow.
• One lives—no longer in the bonds of love and
hate, without a yes or no, here or there indiffer-
ently, best pleased to evade, to avoid, to beat
about, neither advancing nor retreating. One is
habituated to the bad, like a person who all at
once sees a fearful hurly-burly beneath him-
and one was the counterpart of him who bothers
himself with things that do not concern him.
As a matter of fact the free spirit is bothered
PREFACE
18
with mere things—and how many things—which
no longer concern him.
5
A step further in recovery: and the free spirit
draws near to life again, slowly indeed, almost
refractorily, almost distrustfully. There is again
warmth and mellowness: feeling and fellow feel-
ing acquire depth, lambent airs stir all about
him. He almost feels: it seems as if now for
the first time his eyes are open to things near. «
He is in amaze and sits hushed : for where had
he been? These near and immediate things : how
changed they seem to him! He looks gratefully
back-grateful for his wandering, his self exile
and severity, his lookings afar and his bird flights
in the cold heights. How fortunate that he has
not, like a sensitive, dull home body, remained
always “in the house” and “at home!" He had
been beside himself, beyond a doubt. Now for
the first time he really sees himself
and what
surprises in the process. What hitherto unfelt
tremors! Yet what joy in the exhaustion, the
old sickness, the relapses of the convalescent!
How it delights him, suffering, to sit still, to
exercise patience, to lie in the sun! Who so well
as he appreciates the fact that there comes balmy
weather even in winter, who delights more in the
14
PREFACE
sunshine athwart the wall? They are the most
appreciative creatures in the world, and also the
most humble, these convalescents and lizards,
crawling back towards life: there are some
among them who can let no day slip past
them without addressing some song of praise
to its retreating light. And speaking seri-
ously, it is a fundamental cure for all pessimismi
(the cankerous vice, as is well known, of all
idealists and humbugs), to become ill in the
manner of these free spirits, to remain ill quite
a while and then bit by bit grow healthy-I mean
healthier. It is wisdom, worldly wisdom, to ad-
minister even health to oneself for a long time
in small doses.
6
About this time it becomes at last possible,
amid the flash lights of a still unestablished, still
precarious health, for the free, the ever freer
spirit to begin to read the riddle of that great
liberation, a riddle which has hitherto lingered,
obscure, well worth questioning, almost impalp-
able, in his memory. If once he hardly dared to
ask "why so apart? so alone? renouncing all I
loved ? renouncing respect itself? why this cold-
ness, this suspicion, this hate for one's very vir-
tues?”—now he dares, and asks it loudly, already
PREFACE
16
hearing the answer, "you had to become master 7
over yourself, master of your own good quali-
ties. Formerly they were your masters: but they
should be merely your tools along with other
tools. You had to acquire power over your aye
and no and learn to hold and withhold them in
accordance with your higher aims. You had to
grasp the perspective of every representation
(Werthschätzung) the dislocation, distortion
and the apparent end or teleology of the horizon,
besides whatever else appertains to the perspec-
tive: also the element of demerit in its relation
to opposing merit, and the whole intellectual
cost of every affirmative, every negative. You
had to find out the inevitable error* in every Yes
and in every No, error as inseparable from life,
life itself as conditioned by the perspective and
its inaccuracy.* Above all, you had to see with
your own eyes where the error* is always great-
est : there, namely, where life is littlest, narrow-
est, meanest, least developed and yet cannot help
looking upon itself as the goal and standard of
things, and smugly and ignobly and incessantly
tearing to tatters all that is highest and great-
est and richest, and putting the shreds into the
form of questions from the standpoint of its own
well being. You had to see with your own eyes
* Ungerechtigkeit, literally wrongfulness, injustice,
unrighteousness.
16
PREFACE
the problem of classification, (Rangordnung, re-
gulation concerning rank and station) and how
strength and sweep and reach of perspective wax
upward together: You had”-enough, the free
spirit knows henceforward which "you had" it
has obeyed and also what it now can do and what
it now, for the first time, dare.
7
Accordingly, the free spirit works out for it-
self an answer to that riddle of its liberation and
concludes by generalizing upon its experience in
the following fashion: “What I went through
everyone must go through in whom any problem
is germinated and strives to body itself forth.
The inner power and inevitability of this prob-
lem will assert themselves in due course, as in
the case of any unsuspected pregnancy-long be-
fore the spirit has seen this problem in its true
aspect and learned to call it by its right name.
Our destiny exercises its influence over us even
when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it
is our future that lays down the law to our to-
day. Granted, that it is the problem of classifica-
tion* of which we free spirits may say, this is
our problem, yet it is only now, in the midday
* Rangordnung: the meaning is "the problem of
grasping the relative importance of things.”
PREFACE
17
of our life, that we fully appreciate what prepa-
rations, shifts, trials, ordeals, stages, were es-
sential to that problem before it could emerge
to our view, and why we had to go through the
various and contradictory longings and satisfac-
tions of body and soul, as circumnavigators and
adventurers of that inner world called "man";
as surveyors of that "higher" and of that "pro-
gression"* that is also called "man"-crowding
in everywhere, almost without fear, disdaining
nothing, missing nothing, testing everything,
sifting everything and eliminating the chance
impurities—until at last we could say, we free
spirits: "Here-a new problem! Here, a long
ladder on the rungs of which we ourselves have
rested and risen, which we have actually been at
times. Here is a something higher, a something
deeper, a something below us, a vastly extensive
order, (Ordnung) a comparative classification
(Rangordnung), that we perceive: here — Our
problem!”
8.
To what stage in the development just out-
lined the present book belongs (or is assigned) is
something that will be hidden from no augur or
* Uebereinander: one over another.
18
PREFACE
psychologist for an instant. But where are there
psychologists to-day? In France, certainly; in
Russia, perhaps ; certainly not in Germany.
Grounds are not wanting, to be sure, upon which
the Germans of to-day may adduce this fact to
their credit: unhappily for one who in this mat-
ter is fashioned and mentored in an un-German
school! This German book, which has found its
readers in a wide circle of lands and peoples-
it has been some ten years on its rounds-and
which must make its way by means of any mu-
sical art and tune that will captivate the foreign
ear as well as the native—this book has been read
most indifferently in Germany itself and little
heeded there: to what is that due? “It requires
too much," I have been told, "it addresses itself
to men free from the press of petty obligations,
it demands fine and trained perceptions, it re-
quires a surplus, a surplus of time, of the light-
ness of heaven and of the heart, of otium in the
most unrestricted sense: mere good things that
we Germans of to-day have not got and there-
fore cannot give.” After so graceful a retort,
my philosophy bids me be silent and ask no
more questions: at times, as the proverb says,
one remains a philosopher only because one says
-nothing!
Nice, Spring, 1886.
OF THE FIRST AND LAST
THINGS.
1
Chemistry of the Notions and the Feelings.
– Philosophical problems, in almost all their
aspects, present themselves in the same inter-
rogative formula now that they did two thousand
years ago: how can a thing develop out of its •
antithesis ? for example, the reasonable from the
non-reasonable, the animate from the inanimate,
the logical from the illogical, altruism from ego-
ism, disinterestedness from greed, truth from er-
ror? The metaphysical philosophy formerly steer-
ed itself clear of this difficulty to such extent as
to repudiate the evolution of one thing from an-
other and to assign a miraculous origin to what
it deemed highest and best, due to the very na-
ture and being of the "thing-in-itself.” The his-
torical philosophy, on the other hand, which can
no longer be viewed apart from physical science,
the youngest of all philosophical methods, dis-
covered experimentally (and its results will prob-
ably always be the same) that there is no anti-
thesis whatever, except in the usual exaggera-
tions of popular or metaphysical comprehension,
19
20
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
and that an error of the reason is at the bottom
of such contradiction. According to its explana-
tion, there is, strictly speaking, neither unselfish
conduct, nor a wholly disinterested point of view.
Both are simply sublimations in which the basic
element seems almost evaporated and betrays its
presence only to the keenest observation. All that
we need and that could possibly be given us in
the present state of development of the sciences,
is a chemistry of the moral, religious, aesthetic
conceptions and feeling, as well as of those emo-
tions which we experience in the affairs, great
and small, of society and civilization, and which
we are sensible of even in solitude. But what if
this chemistry established the fact that, even in
its domain, the most magnificent results were at-
tained with the basest and most despised ingredi-
ents? Would many feel disposed to continue
such investigations ? Mankind loves to put by
the questions of its origin and beginning: must
one not be almost inhuman in order to follow
the opposite course ?
2
The Traditional Error of Philosophers.-
All philosophers make the common mistake of
taking contemporary man as their starting point
and of trying, through an analysis of him, to
FIRST AND LAST THINGS
21
reach a conclusion. "Man" involuntarily presents
himself to them as an aeterna veritas as a pas-
sive element in every hurly-burly, as a fixed
standard of things. Yet everything uttered by
the philosopher on the subject of man is, in the
last resort, nothing more than a piece of testi-
mony concerning man during a very limited pe-
riod of time. Lack of the historical sense is the
traditional defect in all philosophers. Many in-
nocently take man in his most childish state as
fashioned through the influence of certain religi-
ous and even of certain political developments,
as the permanent form under which man must
be viewed. They will not learn that man has
evolved,* that the intellectual faculty itself is an
evolution, whereas some philosophers make the
whole cosmos out of this intellectual faculty.
But everything essential in human evolution took
place aeons ago, long before the four thousand
years or so of which we know anything: during
these man may not have changed very much.
However, the philosopher ascribes "instinct” to
contemporary man and assumes that this is one
of the unalterable facts regarding man himself,
and hence affords a clue to the understanding of
the universe in general. The whole teleology is
so planned that man during the last four thou-
sand years shall be spoken of as a being existing
* geworden.
2
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
from all eternity, and with reference to whom
everything in the cosmos from its very inception
is naturally ordered. Yet everything evolved:
there are no eternal facts as there are no absolute
truths. Accordingly, historical philosophising is
henceforth indispensable, and with it honesty of
judgment.
3
Appreciation of Simple Truths. — It is the
characteristic of an advanced civilization to set
a higher value upon little, simple truths, ascer-
tained by scientific method, than upon the pleas-
ing and magnificent errors originating in meta-
physical and ästhetical epochs and peoples. To
begin with, the former are spoken of with con-
tempt as if there could be no question of com-
parison respecting them, so rigid, homely, pro-
saic and even discouraging is the aspect of the
first, while so beautiful, decorative, intoxicating
and perhaps beatific appear the last named. Nev-
ertheless, the hardwon, the certain, the lasting
and, therefore, the fertile in new knowledge, is
the higher; to hold fast to it is manly and evinces
courage, directness, endurance. And not only in-
dividual men but all mankind will by degrees be
uplifted to this manliness when they are finally
habituated to the proper appreciation of tenable,
FIRST AND LAST THINGS
28
enduring knowledge and have lost all faith in
inspiration and in the miraculous revelation of
truth. The reverers of forms, indeed, with their
standards of beauty and taste, may have good
reason to laugh when the appreciation of little
truths and the scientific spirit begin to prevail,
but that will be only because their eyes are not
yet opened to the charm of the utmost simplicity
of form or because men though reared in the
rightly appreciative spirit, will still not be fully
permeated by it, so that they continue unwit-
tingly imitating ancient forms (and that ill
enough, as anybody does who no longer feels
any interest in a thing). Formerly the mind was
not brought into play through the medium of ex-
act thought. Its serious business lay in the work-
ing out of forms and symbols. That has now .
changed. Any seriousness in symbolism is at
present the indication of a deficient education.
As our very acts become more intellectual, our
tendencies more rational, and our judgment, for
example, as to what seems reasonable, is very
different from what it was a hundred years ago :
so the forms of our lives grow ever more intel-
lectual and, to the old fashioned eye, perhaps,
uglier, but only because it cannot see that the
richness of inner, rational beauty always spreads
and deepens, and that the inner, rational aspect
of all things should now be of more consequence
24
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
to us than the most beautiful externality and the
most exquisite limning.
4
Astrology and the Like. It is presumable
that the objects of the religious, moral, aesthetic
and logical notions pertain simply to the super-
ficialities of things, although man flatters him-
self with the thought that here at least he is
getting to the heart of the cosmos. He deceives
himself because these things have power to make
him so happy, and so wretched, and so he evinces,
in this respect, the same conceit that character-
ises astrology, Astrology pre-supposes that the
heavenly bodies are regulated in their movements
in harmony with the destiny of mortals: the
moral man presupposes that that which con-
cerns himself most nearly must also be the heart
and soul of things.
5
Misconception of Dreams.-In the dream,
mankind, in epochs of crude primitive civiliza-
tion, thought they were introduced to a second,
substantial world: here we have the source of
all metaphysic. Without the dream, men would
never have been incited to an analysis of the
FIRST AND LAST THINGS
25
world. Even the distinction between soul and
body is wholly due to the primitive conception
of the dream, as also the hypothesis of the em-
bodied soul, whence the development of all su-
perstition, and also, probably, the belief in god.
“The dead still live: for they appear to the liv-
ing in dreams." So reasoned mankind at one
time, and through many thousands of years.
6
The Scientific Spirit Prevails only Parti-
ally, not Wholly.The specialized, minutest
departments of science are dealt with purely
objectively. But the general universal sciences,
considered as a great, basic unity, posit the ques-
tion—truly a very living question-: to what
purpose? what is the use? Because of this refer-
ence to utility they are, as a whole, less imper-
sonal than when looked at in their specialized
aspects. Now in the case of philosophy, as form-
ing the apex of the scientific pyramid, this ques-
tion of the utility of knowledge is necessarily
brought very conspicuously forward, so that
every philosophy has, unconsciously, the air of
ascribing the highest utility to itself. It is for
this reason that all philosophies contain such a
great amount of high flying metaphysic, and such
a shrinking from the seeming insignificance of
86
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
the deliverances of physical science: for the
significance of knowledge in relation to life must
be made to appear as great as possible. This
constitutes the antagonism between the special-
ties of science and philosophy. The latter aims,
as art aims, at imparting to life and conduct the
utmost depth and significance: in the former
mere knowledge is sought and nothing else-
whatever else be incidentally obtained. Hereto-
fore there has never been a philosophical system
in which philosophy itself was not made the
apologist of knowledge [in the abstract]. On
this point, at least, each is optimistic and insists
that to knowledge the
highest utility must be
ascribed. They are all under the tyranny of
logic, which is, from its very nature, optimism,
ng
The Discordant Element in Science.-Phi-
losophy severed itself from science when it
put the question : what is that knowledge of the
world and of life through which mankind may
be made happiest? This happened when the So-
cratic school arose: with the standpoint of hap-
piness the arteries of investigating science were
compressed too tightly to permit of any circula-
tion of the blood-and are so compressed to-day.
FIRST AND LAST THINGS
27
8
Pneumatic Explanation of Nature.* -Me-
taphysic reads the message of nature as if it
were written purely pneumatically, as the church
and its learned ones formerly did where the bible
was concerned. It requires a great deal of ex-
pertness to apply to nature the same strict sci-
ence of interpretation that the philologists have
devised for all literature, and to apply it for the
purpose of a simple, direct interpretation of the
message, and at the same time, not bring out a
double meaning. But, as in the case of books
and literature, errors of exposition are far from
being completely eliminated, and vestiges of al-
legorical and mystical interpretations are still
to be met with in the most cultivated circles, so
where nature is concerned the case is—actually
much worse.
9
Metaphysical World.-It is true, there may
de a metaphysical world; the absolute possibility
of it can scarcely be disputed. We see all things
through the medium of the human head and we
cannot well cut off this head: although there
* Pneumatic is here used in the sense of spiritual,
Pneuma being the Greek word in the New Testament
for the Holy Spirit.-Ed.
28
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
remains the question what part of the world
would be left after it had been cut off. But that
is a purely abstract scientific problem and one
not much calculated to give men uneasiness: yet
everything that has heretofore made metaphys-
ical assumptions valuable, fearful or delightful
to men, all that gave rise to them is passion, er-
ror and self deception: the worst systems of
knowledge, not the best, pin their tenets of be-
lief thereto. When such methods are once brought
to view as the basis of all existing religions and
metaphysics, they, are already discredited. There
always remains, however, the possibility already
conceded : but nothing at all can be made out of
that, to say not a word about letting happiness,
salvation and life hang upon the threads spun
from such a possibility. Accordingly, nothing
could be predicated of the metaphysical world
beyond the fact that it is an elsewhere,* another
sphere, inaccessible and incomprehensible to us:
it would become a thing of negative properties,
Even were the existence of such a world abso-
lutely established, it would nevertheless remain
incontrovertible that of all kinds of knowledge,
knowledge of such a world would be of least
consequence of even less consequence than
knowledge of the chemical analysis of water
would be to a storm tossed mariner.
-
* Anderssein.
FIRST AND LAST THINGS
29
10
The Harmlessness of Metaphysic in the
Future.—As soon as religion, art and ethics are
so understood that a full comprehension of thein
can be gained without taking refuge in the pos-
tulates of metaphysical claptrap at any point in
the line of reasoning, there will be a complete
cessation of interest in the purely theoretical prob-
lem of the "thing in itself” and the “phenome-
non.” For here, too, the same truth applies: in
religion, art and ethics we are not concerned
with the "essence of the cosmos".* We are in
the sphere of pure conception. No presentiment
[or intuition] can carry us any further. With
perfect tranquility the question of how our con-
ception of the world could differ so sharply from
the actual world as it is manifest to us, will be
relegated to the physiological sciences and to
the history of the evolution of ideas and organ-
isms.
11
Language as a Presumptive Science.—The
importance of language in the development of
civilization consists in the fact that by means of
it man placed one world, his own, alongside an-
* "Wesen der Welt an sich."
80
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
other, a place of leverage that he thought so firm
as to admit of his turning the rest of the cosmos
on a pivot that he might master it. In so far as
man for ages looked upon mere ideas and names
of things as upon aeternae veritates, he evinced
the very pride with which he raised himself above
the brute. He really supposed that in language
he possessed a knowledge of the cosmos. The
language builder was not so modest as to believe
that he was only giving names to things. On the
contrary he thought he embodied the highest
wisdom concerning things in (mere) words; and,
in truth, language is the first movement in all
strivings for wisdom. Here, too, it is faith in
ascertained truth* from which the mightiest foun-
tains of strength have flowed. Very tardily-only
now-it dawns upon men that they have propa-
gated a monstrous error in their belief in lan-
guage. Fortunately, it is too late now to arrest
and turn back the evolutionary process of the
reason, which had its inception in this belief.
Logic itself rests upon assumptions to which no-
thing in the world of reality corresponds. For
example, the correspondence of certain things to
one another and the identity of those things at
different periods of time are assumptions pure
* Glaube
an die gefundene Wahrheit, as dis-
tinguished from faith in what is taken on trust as
truth.
FIRST AND LAST THINGS
31
and simple, but the science of logic originated)
in the positive belief that they were not assump-
tions at all but established facts. It is the same
with the science of mathematics which certainly
would never have come into existence if mankind
had known from the beginning that in all nature
there is no perfectly straight line, no true circle,
no standard of measurement.
12
Dream and Civilization.—The function of
the brain which is most encroached upon in slum-
ber is the memory; not that it is wholly suspend-
ed, but it is reduced to a state of imperfection
as, in primitive ages of mankind, was probably
the case with everyone, whether waking or sleep-
ing. Uncontrolled and entangled as it is, it per-
petually confuses things as a result of the most
trifling similarities, yet in the same mental con-
fusion and lack of control the nations invented
their mythologies, while nowadays travelers hab-
itually observe how prone the savage is to for-
getfulness, how his mind, after the least exer-
tion of memory, begins to wander and lose it-
self until finally he utters falsehood and non-
sense from sheer exhaustion. Yet, in dreams, we
all resemble this savage. Inadequacy of distinc-
tion and error of comparison are the basis of
82
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
the preposterous things we do and say in dreams,
so that when we clearly recall a dream we are
startled that so much idiocy lurks within us. The
absolute distinctness of all dream-images, due
to implicit faith in their substantial reality, re-
calls the conditions in which earlier mankind
were placed, for whom hallucinations had
extraordinary vividness, entire communities
and even entire nations laboring simultaneous-
ly under them. Therefore: in' sleep and in
dream we make the pilgrimage of early man-
kind over again.
13
Logic of the Dream.-During sleep the nerv-
ous system, through various inner provocatives,
is in constant agitation. Almost all the organs
act independently and vigorously. The blood
circulates rapidly. The posture of the sleeper
compresses some portions of the body. The cov.
erlets influence the sensations in different ways.
The stomach carries on the digestive process and
acts upon other organs thereby. The intestines
are in motion. The position of the head induces
unaccustomed action. The feet, shoeless, no
longer pressing the ground, are the occasion of
other sensations of novelty, as is, indeed, the
changed garb of the entire body. All these
things, following the bustle and change of the
FIRST AND LAST THINGS
33
day, result, through their novelty, in a movement
throughout the entire system that extends even
to the brain functions. Thus there are a hundred
circumstances to induce perplexity in the mind,
a questioning as to the cause of this excitation.
Now, the dream is a seeking and presenting of
reasons for these excitations of feeling, of the
supposed reasons, that is to say. Thus, for ex-
ample, whoever has his feet bound with two
threads will probably dream that a pair of ser-
pents are coiled about his feet. This is at first
a hypothesis, then a belief with an accompanying
imaginative picture and the argument: "these
snakes must be the causa of those sensations
which I, the sleeper, now have.” So reasons the
mind of the sleeper. The conditions precedent,
as thus conjectured, become, owing to the ex-
citation of the fancy, present realities. Everyone
knows from experience how a dreamer will trans-
form one piercing sound, for example, that of
a bell, into another of quite a different nature,
say, the report of cannon. In his dream he be-
comes aware first of the effects, which he ex-
plains by a subsequent hypothesis and becomes
persuaded of the purely conjectural nature of the
sound. But how comes it that the mind of the
dreamer goes so far astray when the same mind,
awake, is habitually cautious, careful, and so
conservative in its dealings with hypotheses? why
34
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
does the first plausible hypothesis of the cause
of a sensation gain credit in the dreaming state?
(For in a dream we look upon that dream as
reality, that is, we accept our hypotheses as fully
established). I have no doubt that as men argue
in their dreams to-day, mankind argued, even in
their waking moments, for thousands of years :
the first causa, that occurred to the mind with
reference to anything that stood in need of ex-
planation, was accepted as the true explanation
and served as such. (Savages show the same
tendency in operation, as the reports of travelers
agree). In the dream this atavistic relic of hu-
manity manifests its existence within us, for it
is the foundation upon which the higher rational
faculty developed itself and still develops itself
in every individual. Dreams carry us back to the
earlier stages of human culture and afford us a
means of understanding it more clearly. Dream
thought comes so easily to us now because we
are so thoroughly trained to it through the in-
terminable stages of evolution during which this
fanciful and facile form of theorising has pre-
vailed. To a certain extent the dream is a re-
storative for the brain, which, during the day,
is called upon to meet the many demands for
trained thought made upon it by the conditions
of a higher civilization.—We may, if we please,
become sensible, even in our waking moments,
FIRST AND LAST THINGS
36
of a condition that is as a door and vestibule to
dreaming. If we close our eyes the brain imme-
diately conjures up a medley of impressions of
light and color, apparently a sort of imitation
and echo of the impressions forced in upon the
brain during its waking moments. And now the
mind, in co-operation with the imagination, trans-
forms this formless play of light and color into
definite figures, moving groups, landscapes, What
really takes place is a sort of reasoning from ef-
fect back to cause. As the brain inquires : whence
these impressions of light and color? it posits as
the inducing causes of such lights and colors,
those shapes and figures. They serve the brain
as the occasions of those lights and colors be-
cause the brain, when the eyes are open and the
senses awake, is accustomed to perceiving the
cause of every impression of light and color
made upon it. Here again the imagination is
continually interposing its images inasmuch as
it participates in the production of the impres-
sions made through the senses day by day: and
the dream-fancy does exactly the same thing-
that is, the presumed cause is determined from
the effect and after the effect: all this, too, with
extraordinary rapidity, so that in this matter, as
in a matter of jugglery or sleight-of-hand, a con-
fusion of the mind is produced and an after ef-
fect is made to appear a simultaneous action, an
36
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
inverted succession of events, even.-From these
considerations we can see how late strict, logical
thought, the true notion of cause and effect must
have been in developing, since our intellectual
and rational faculties to this very day revert to
these primitive processes of deduction, while
practically half our lifetime is spent in the super-
inducing conditions.—Even the poet, the artist,
ascribes to his sentimental and emotional states
causes which are not the true ones. To that ex-
tent he is a reminder of early mankind and can
aid us in its comprehension.
14
Association.*-All strong feelings are asso-
ciated with a variety of allied sentiments and
emotions. They stir up the memory at the same
time. When we are under their influence we are
reminded of similar states and we feel a renewal
of them within us. Thus are formed habitual
successions of feelings and notions, which, at
last, when they follow one another with light-
ning rapidity are no longer felt as complexities
but as unities. In this sense we hear of moral
feelings, of religious feelings, as if they were
absolute unities. In reality they are streams with
a hundred sources and tributaries. Here again,
* Miterklingen: to sound simultaneously with.
FIRST AND LAST THINGS
37
the unity of the word speaks nothing for the
unity of the thing.
15
No Within and Without in the World.*.
As Democritus transferred the notions above and
below to limitless space, where they are destitute
of meaning, so the philosophers do generally
with the idea "within and without,” as regards
the form and substance (Wesen und Erschei-
nung) of the world. What they claim is that
through the medium of profound feelings one
can penetrate deep into the soul of things (Inn-
re), draw close to the heart of nature. But these
feelings are deep only in so far as with them are
simultaneously aroused, although almost imper-
ceptibly, certain complicated groups of thoughts
(Gedankengruppen) which we call deep: a feel-
ing is deep because we deem the thoughts accom-
panying it deep. But deep thought can neverthe-
less be very widely sundered from truth, as for
instance every metaphysical thought. Take from
deep feeling the element of thought blended with
it and all that remains is strength of feeling
which is no voucher for the validity of knowl-
* Kein Innen und Aussen in der Welt: the above
translation may seem too literal but some dispute has
arisen concerning the recise idea the author means
to convey.
88
TOO HUMAN
HUMAN,
ALL
edge, as intense faith is evidence only of its own
intensity and not of the truth of that in which
the faith is felt.
16
Phenomenon and Thing-in-Itself. — The
philosophers are in the habit of placing them-
selves in front of life and experience—that which
they call the world of phenomena—as if they
were standing before a picture that is unrolled
before them in its final completeness. This pan-
orama, they think, must be studied in every de-
tail in order to reach some conclusion regarding
the object represented by the picture. From ef-
fect, accordingly is deduced cause and from
cause is deduced the unconditioned. This process
is generally looked upon as affording the all suf-
ficient explanation of the world of phenomena.
On the other hand one must, (while putting the
conception of the metaphysical distinctly forward
as that of the unconditioned, and consequently
of the unconditioning) absolutely deny any con-
nection between the unconditioned (of the meta-
physical world) and the world known to us : so
that throughout phenomena there is no mani-
festation of the thing-in-itself, and getting from
one to the other is out of the question. Thus is
left quite ignored the circumstance that the pics
FIRST AND LAST THINGS
39
ture—that which we now call life and experi-
ence—is a gradual evolution, is, indeed, still in
process of evolution and for that reason should
not be regarded as an enduring whole from
which any conclusion as to its author (the all-
suffcient reason) could be arrived at, or even
pronounced out of the question. It is because
we have for thousands of years looked into the
world with moral, aesthetic, religious predispo-
sitions, with blind prejudice, passion or fear,
and surfeited ourselves with indulgence in the
follies of illogical thought, that the world has
gradually become so wondrously motley, fright-
ful, significant, soulful: it has taken on tints,
but we have been the colorists: the human in-
tellect, upon the foundation of human needs, of
human passions, has reared all these “phenom-
ena” and injected its own erroneous funda-
mental conceptions into things. Late, very late,
the human intellect checks itself: and now the
world of experience and the thing-in-itself seem
to it so severed and so antithetical that it denies
the possibility of one's hinging upon the other
or else summons us to surrender our intel-
lect, our personal will, to the secret and the awe-
inspiring in order that thereby we may attain
certainty of certainty hereafter. Again, there
are those who have combined all the character-
istic features of our world of phenomena-that
40
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
is, the conception of the world which has been
formed and inherited through a series of intel-
lectual vagaries and instead of holding the in-
tellect responsible for it all, have pronounced the
very nature of things accountable for the present
very sinister aspect of the world, and preached
annihilation of existence. Through all these
views and opinions the toilsome, steady process
of science (which now for the first time begins
to celebrate its greatest triumph in the genesis
of thought) will definitely work itself out, the
result, being, perhaps, to the following effect :
That which we now call the world is the result
of a crowd of errors and fancies which gradu-
ally developed in the general evolution of or-
ganic nature, have grown together and been
transmitted to us as the accumulated treasure
of all the past-as the treasure, for whatever is
worth anything in our humanity rests upon it.
From this world of conception it is in the power
of science to release us only to a slight extent
—and this is all that could be wished_inasmuch
as it cannot eradicate the influence of hereditary
habits of feeling, but it can light up by degrees
the stages of the development of that world of
conception, and lift us, at least for a time, above
the whole spectacle. Perhaps we may then per-
ceive that the thing-in-itself is a meet subject for
Homeric laughter: that it seemed so much, eve-
FIRST AND LAST THINGS
41
rything, indeed, and is really a void—void, that
is to say, of meaning.
1
17
Metaphysical Explanation.—Man, when he
is young, prizes metaphysical explanations, be-
cause they make him see matters of the highest
import in things he found disagreeable or con-
temptible: and if he is not satisfied with himself,
this feeling of dissatisfaction is soothed when he
sees the most hidden world-problem or world-
pain in that which he finds so displeasing in him-
self. To feel himself more unresponsible and
at the same time to find things (Dinge) more
interesting—that is to him the double benefit he
owes to metaphysics. Later, indeed, he acquires
distrust of the whole metaphysical method of
explaining things: he then perceives, perhaps,
that those effects could have been attained just
as well and more scientifically by another meth-
od: that physical and historical explanations
would, at least, have given that feeling of free-
dom from personal responsibility just as well,
while interest in life and its problems would be
stimulated, perhaps, even more.
18
The Fundamental Problems of Metaphysics.
-If a history of the development of thought
42
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
is ever written, the following proposition, ad-
vanced by a distinguished logician, will be illum-
inated with a new light: “The universal, prim-
ordial law of the apprehending subject consists
in the inner necessity of cognizing every object
by itself, as in its essence a thing unto itself,
therefore as self-existing and unchanging, in
short, as a substance.” Even this law, which is
here called "primordial,” is an evolution: it has
yet to be shown how gradually this evolution
takes place in lower organizations: how the dim,
mole eyes of such organizations see, at first, no-
thing but a blank sameness: how later, when the
various excitations of desire and aversion mani-
fest themselves, various substances are gradu-
ally distinguished, but each with an attribute,
that is, a special relationship to such an organi-
zation. The first step towards the logical is
judgment, the essence of which, according to
the best logicians, is belief. At the foundation
of all beliefs lie sensations of pleasure or pain
in relation to the apprehending subject. A third
feeling, as the result of two prior, single, separ-
ate feelings, is judgment in its crudest form.
We organic beings are primordially interested
by nothing whatever in any thing (Ding) ex-
cept its relation to ourselves with reference to
pleasure and pain. Between the moments in
which we are conscious of this relation, (the
FIRST AND LAST THINGS
43
states of feeling) lie the moments of rest, of
not-feeling: then the world and every thing
(Ding) have no interest for us: we observe no
change in them (as at present a person absorbed
in something does not notice anyone passing by).
To plants all things are, as a rule, at rest, eternal,
every object like itself. From the period of lower
organisms has been handed down to man the
belief that there are like things (gleiche Dinge):
only the trained experience attained through the
most advanced science contradicts this postulate.
The primordial belief of all organisms is, per-
haps, that all the rest of the world is one thing
and motionless.-Furthest away from this first
step towards the logical is the notion of causa-
tion: even to-day we think that all our feelings
and doings are, at bottom, acts of the free will;
when the sentient individual contemplates him-
self he deems every feeling, every change, a
something isolated, disconnected, that is to say,
unqualified by any thing; it comes suddenly to
the surface, independent of anything that went
before or came after. We are hungry, but ori-
ginally we do not know that the organism must
be nourished: on the contrary that feeling seems
to manifest itself without reason or purpose; it
stands out by itself and seems quite independ-
ent. Therefore: the belief in the freedom of
the will is a primordial error of everything or-
44
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
ganic as old as the very earliest inward prompt-
ing of the logical faculty ; belief in unconditioned
substances and in like things (gleiche Dinge)
is also a primordial and equally ancient error of
everything organic. Inasmuch as all metaphysic
has concerned itself particularly with substance
and with freedom of the will, it should be des-
ignated as the science that deals with the funda-
mental errors of mankind as if they were funda-
mental truths.
19
Number.-The invention of the laws of num-
ber has as its basis the primordial and prior-
prevailing delusion that many like things exist
(although in point of fact there is no such thing
is a duplicate), or that, at least, there are things
(but there is no "thing”). The assumption of
plurality always presupposes that something ex-
ists which manifests itself repeatedly, but just
here is where the delusion prevails; in this very
matter we feign realities, unities, that have no
existence. Our feelings, notions, of space and
time are false for they lead, when duly tested,
to logical contradictions. In all scientific dem-
onstrations we always unavoidably base our
calculation upon some false standards (of dur-
ation or measurement] but as these standards
FIRST AND LAST THINGS
45
are at least constant, as, for example, our no-
tions of time and space, the results arrived at by
science possess absolute accuracy and certainty
in their relationship to one another: one can
keep on building upon them—until is reached
that final limit at which the erroneous funda-
mental conceptions, (the invariable breakdown)
come into conflict with the results established
as, for example, in the case of the atomic the-
ory. Here we always find ourselves obliged to
give credence to a “thing" or material “substra-
tum" that is set in motion, although, at the same
time, the whole scientific programme has had as
its aim the resolving of everything material into
motions [themselves] : here again we distinguish
with our feeling [that which does the] moving
and [that which is] moved,* and we never get
out of this circle, because the belief in thingst
has been from time immemorial rooted in our
nature.—When Kant says "the intellect does not
derive its laws from nature, but dictates them
to her” he states the full truth as regards the
idea of, nature which we form (nature world,
as notion, that is, as error) but which is merely
the synthesis of a host of errors of the intellect.
To a world not (the outcome of] our concep-
mit
* Wir
unserer
scheiden auch hier noch
Empfindung B egendes und Bewegtes.
f Glaube an Dinge.
46
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
tion, the laws of number are wholly inapplicable:
such laws are valid only in the world of man-
kind.
20
Some Backward Steps.-One very forward
step in education is taken when man emerges
from his superstitious and religious ideas and
fears and, for instance, no longer believes in the
dear little angels or in original sin, and has
stopped talking about the salvation of the soul:
when he has taken this step to freedom he has,
nevertheless, through the utmost exertion of his
mental power, to overcome metaphysics. Then
a backward movement is necessary: he must ap-
preciate the historical justification, and to an
equal extent the psychological considerations, in
such a movement. He must understand that the
greatest advances made by mankind have re-
sulted from such a course and that without this
very backward movement the highest achieve-
ments of man hitherto would have been impos-
sible.-With regard to philosophical metaphysics
I see ever more and more who have arrived at
the negative goal (that all positive metaphysic
is a delusion) but as yet very few who go a few
steps backward: one should look out over the
last rungs of the ladder, but not try to stand on
FIRST AND LAST THINGS
47
them, that is to say. The most advanced as yet
go only far enough to free themselves from meta-
physic and look back at it with an air of super-
iority: whereas here, no less than in the hippo-
drome, it is necessary to turn around in order
to reach the end of the course.
21
Presumable (Nature of the] Victory of
Doubt.—Let us assume for a moment the valid-
ity of the skeptical standpoint: granted that there
is no metaphysical world, and that all the meta-
physical explanations of the only world we know
are useless to us, how would we then contem-
plate men and things? [Menschen und Dinge].
This can be thought out and it is worth while
doing so, even if the question whether anything
metaphysical has ever been demonstrated by or
through Kant and Schopenhauer, be put alto-
gether aside. For it is, to all appearances, highly
probable that men, on this point, will be, in the
mass, skeptical. The question thus becomes :
what sort of a notion will human society, under
the influence of such a state of mind, form of
itself? Perhaps the scientific demonstration of
any metaphysical world is now so difficult that
mankind will never be free from a distrust of
it. And when there is formed a feeling of dis-
48
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
trust of metaphysics, the results are, in the mass,
the same as if metaphysics were refuted alto-
gether and could no longer be believed. In both
cases the historical question, with regard to an
unmetaphysical disposition in mankind, remains
the same.
22
Disbelief in the "monumentum aere peren-
nius".* - A decided disadvantage, attending
the termination of metaphysical modes of
thought, is that the individual fixes his mind
too attentively upon his own brief lifetime and
feels no strong inducement to aid in the founda-
tion of institutions capable of enduring for cen-
turies: he wishes himself to gather the fruit
from the tree that he plants and consequently
he no longer plants those trees which require
centuries of constant cultivation and are destined
to afford shade to generation after generation in
the future. For metaphysical views inspire the
belief that in them is afforded the final sure
foundation upon which henceforth the whole
future of mankind may rest and be built up: the
individual promotes his own salvation; when,
for example, he builds a church or a mon-
* Monument more enduring than brass: Horace,
Odes III:XXX.
FIRST AND LAST THINGS
49
astery he is of opinion that he is doing something
for the salvation of his immortal soul: Can
science, as well, inspire such faith in the effic-
acy of her results? In actual fact, science re-
quires doubt and distrust as her surest auxili-
aries; nevertheless, the sum of the irresistible
(that is all the onslaughts of skepticism, all the
disintegrating effects of surviving truths) can
easily become so great (as, for instance, in the
case of hygienic science) as to inspire the de-
termination to build “eternal” works upon it.
At present the contrast between our excitated
ephemeral existence and the tranquil repose of
metaphysical epochs is too great because both
are as yet in too close juxtaposition. The indi-
vidual man himself now goes through too many
stages of inner and outer evolution for him to
venture to make a plan even for his life time
alone. A perfectly modern man, indeed, who
wants to build himself a house feels as if he
were walling himself up alive in a mausoleum.
23
Age of Comparison.-The less men are bound
by tradition, the greater is the inner activity of
motives, the greater, correspondingly, the outer
restlessness, the promiscuous flow of humanity,
the polyphony of strivings. Who now feels any
50
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
great impulse to establish himself and his pos-
terity in a particular place? For whom, more-
over, does there exist, at present, any strong tie?
As all the methods of the arts were copied from
one another, so were all the methods and ad-
vancements of moral codes, of manners, of civili-
zations. Such an age derives its significance
from the fact that in it the various ideas, codes,
manners and civilizations can be compared and
experienced side by side; which was impossible
at an earlier period in view of the localised na-
ture of the rule of every civilization, correspond-
ing to the limitation of all artistic effects by time
and place. To-day the growth of the aesthetic
feeling is decided, owing to the great number
of [artistic] forms which offer themselves for
comparison. The majority—those that are con-
demned by the method of comparison—will be
allowed to die out. In the same way there is
to-day taking place a selection of the forms and
customs of the higher morality which can result
only in the extinction of the vulgar moralities.
This is the age of comparison! That is its glo-
ry—but also its pain. Let us not, however shrink
from this pain. Rather would we comprehend
the nature of the task imposed upon us by our
age as adequately as we can: posterity will bless
us for doing so—a posterity that knows itself to
be [developed] through and above the narrow,
FIRST AND LAST THINGS
51
early race-civilizations as well as the culture-
civilization of comparison, but yet looks grate-
fully back upon both as venerable monuments of
antiquity.
24
Possibility of Progress. When a master of
the old civilization (den alten Cultur) vows to
hold no more discussion with men who believe
in progress, he is quite right. For the old civili-
zation* has its greatness and its advantages be-
hind it, and historic training forces one to ac-
knowledge that it can never again acquire vigor :
only intolerable stupidity or equally intolerable
fanaticism could fail to perceive this fact. But
men may consciously determine to evolve to a
new civilization where formerly they evolved un-
consciously and accidentally. They can now de-
vise better conditions for the advancement of
mankind, for their nourishment, training and
education, they can administer the earth as an
economic power, and, particularly, compare the
capacities of men and select them accordingly.
This new, conscious civilization is killing the
other which, on the whole, has led but an un-
reflective animal and plant life: it is also destroy-
* Cultur, culture, civilisation etc., but there is no
exact English equivalent.
52
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
ing the doubt of progress itself—progress is
possible. I mean: it is hasty and almost unre-
flective to assume that progress must necessarily
take place: but how can it be doubted that prog-
ress is possible? On the other hand, progress in
the sense and along the lines of the old civili-
zation is not even conceivable. If romantic fan-
tasy employs the word progress in connection
with certain aims and ends identical with those
of the circumscribed primitive national civiliza-
tions, the picture presented of progress is always
borrowed from the past. The idea and the image
of progress thus formed are quite without ori-
ginality.
25
Private Ethics and World Ethics. Since
the extinction of the belief that a god guides
the general destiny of the world and, notwith-
standing all the contortions and windings of the
path of mankind, leads it gloriously forward,
men must shape oecumenical, world-embracing
ends for themselves. The older ethics, namely
Kant's, required of the individual such a course
of conduct as he wishes all men to follow. This
evinces much simplicity-as if any individual
could determine off hand what course of conduct
would conduce to the welfare of humanity, and
what course of conduct is preëminently desir-
FIRST AND LAST THINGS
53
able! This is a theory like that of freedom of
competition, which takes it for granted that the
general harmony [of things] must prevail of
itself in accordance with some inherent law of
betterment or amelioration. It may be that a
later contemplation of the needs of mankind will
reveal that it is by no means desirable that all
men should regulate their conduct according to
the same principle; it may be best, from the
standpoint of certain ends yet to be attained,
that men, during long periods should regulate
their conduct with reference to special, and even,
in certain circumstances, evil, objects. At any
rate, if mankind is not to be led astray by such
a universal rule of conduct, it behooves it to
attain a knowledge of the condition of culture
that will serve as a scientific standard of com-
parison in connection with cosmical ends. Here-
in is comprised the tremendous mission of the
great spirits of the next century.
26
Reaction as Progress.-Occasionally harsh,
powerful, impetuous, yet nevertheless backward
spirits, appear, who try to conjure back some
past era in the history of mankind: they serve
as evidence that the new tendencies which they
oppose, are not yet potent enough, that there
54
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
is something lacking in them: otherwise they (the
tendencies] would better withstand the effects
of this conjuring back process. Thus Luther's
reformation shows that in his century all the
impulses to freedom of the spirit were still un-
certain, lacking in vigor, and immature. Science
could not yet rear her head. Indeed the whole
Renaissance appears but as an early spring smoth-
ered in snow. But even in the present century
Schopenhauer's metaphysic shows that the scien-
tific spirit is not yet powerful enough: for the
whole mediaeval Christian
Christian world-standpoint
(Weltbetrachtung) and conception of man
(Mensch-Empfindung)* once again, notwith-
standing the slowly wrought destruction of all
Christian dogma, celebrated a resurrection in
Schopenhauer's doctrine. There is much science
in his teaching although the science does not
dominate, but, instead of it, the old, trite "meta-
physical necessity.” It is one of the greatest and
most priceless advantages of Schopenhauer's
teaching that by it our feelings are temporarily
forced back to those old human and cosmical
standpoints to which no other path could con-
duct us so easily. The gain for history and jus-
tice is very great. I believe that without Scho-
penhauer's aid it would be no easy matter for
* Literally man-feeling or human outlook,
FIRST AND LAST THINGS
55
anyone now to do justice to Christianity and its
Asiatic relatives—a thing impossible as regards
the christianity that still survives. After accord-
ing this great triumph to justice, after we have
corrected in so essential a respect the historical
point of view which the age of learning brought
with it, we may begin to bear still farther on-
ward the banner of enlightenment—a banner
bearing the three names: Petrarch, Erasmus,
Voltaire. We have taken a forward step out of
reaction.
27
A Substitute for Religion.-It is supposed
to be a recommendation for philosophy to say of
it that it provides the people with a substitute
for religion. And in fact, the training of the in-
tellect does necessitate the convenient laying out
of the track of thought, since the transition from
religion by way of science entails a powerful,
perilous leap -something that should be advised
against. With this qualification, the recommen-
dation referred to is a just one. At the same
time, it should be further explained that the
needs which religion satisfies and which science
must now satisfy, are not immutable. Even they
can be diminished and uprooted. Think, for in-
stance, of the christian soul-need, the sighs over
56
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
one's inner corruption, the anxiety regarding
salvation-all notions that arise simply out of
errors of the reason and require no satisfaction
at all, but annihilation. A philosophy can either
so affect these needs as to appease them or else
put them aside altogether, for they are acquired,
circumscribed needs, based upon hypotheses
which those of science explode. Here, for the
purpose of affording the means of transition, for
the sake of lightening the spirit overburdened
with feeling, art can be employed to far better
purpose, as these hypotheses receive far less
support from art than from a metaphysical phi-
losophy. Then from art it is easier to go over
to a really emancipating philosophical science.
28
Discredited Words.-Away with the disgust-
ingly over-used words optimism and pessimism!
For the occasion for using them grows daily
less; only drivelers now find them indispensably
necessary. What earthly reason could anyone
have for being an optimist unless he had a god
to defend who must have created the best of all
possible worlds, since he is himself all goodness
and perfection ?-but what thinking man has
now any need for the hypothesis that there is
a god ?-There is also no occasion whatever for
FIRST AND LAST THINGS
57
a pessimistic confession of faith, unless one has
a personal interest in denouncing the advocate
of god, the theologian or the theological philos-
opher, and maintaining the counter proposition
that evil reigns, that wretchedness is more po-
tent than joy, that the world is a piece of botch
work, that phenomenon (Erscheinung) is but
the manifestation of some evil spirit. But who
bothers his head about the theologians any more
-except the theologians themselves? Apart
from all theology and its antagonism, it is mani-
fest that the world is neither good nor bad, (to
say nothing about its being the best or the worst)
and that these ideas of "good" and "bad” have
significance only in relation to men, indeed, are
without significance at all, in view of the sense
in which they are usually employed. The con-
temptuous and the eulogistic point of view must,
in every case, be repudiated.
29
Intoxicated by the Perfume of Flowers.
The ship of humanity, it is thought, acquires
an ever deeper draught the more it is laden. It
is believed that the more profoundly man thinks,
the more exquisitely he feels, the higher the
standard he sets for himself, the greater his
distance from the other animals—the more he
58
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
appears as a genius (Genie) among animals-
the nearer he gets to the true nature of the
world and to comprehension thereof: this, in-
deed, he really does through science, but he
thinks he does it far more adequately through
his religions and arts. These are, certainly, a
blossoming of the world, but not, therefore,
nearer the roots of the world than is the stalk.
One cannot learn best from it the nature of the
world, although nearly everyone thinks so. Er-
ror has made men so deep, sensitive and imagin-
ative in order to bring forth such flowers as
religions and arts. Pure apprehension would be
unable to do that. Whoever should disclose to
us the essence of the world would be undeceiv-
ing us most cruelly. Not the world as thing-in-
itself but the world as idea* (as error) is rich
in portent, deep, wonderful, carrying happiness
and unhappiness in its womb. This result leads
to a philosophy of world negation: which, at any
rate, can be as well combined with a practical
world affirmation as with its opposite.
30
Evil Habits in Reaching Conclusions.—The
most usual erroneous conclusions of men
* Vorstellung: this word sometimes corresponds to
the English word "idea", at others to “conception" or
"notion."
FIRST AND LAST THINGS
69
are these: a thing* exists, therefore it is right:
Here from capacity to live is deduced fitness,
from fitness, is deduced justification. So also:
an opinion gives happiness, therefore it is the
true one, its effect is good, therefore it is itself
good and true. Here is predicated of the effect
that it gives happiness, that it is good in the
sense of utility, and there is likewise predicated
of the cause that it is good, but good in the
sense of logical validity. Conversely, the propo-
sition would run: a thing* cannot attain success,
cannot maintain itself, therefore it is evil: a be-
lief troubles [the believer), occasions pain,
therefore it is false. The free spirit, who is sens-
ible of the defect in this method of reaching
conclusions and has had to suffer its conse-
quences, often succumbs to the temptation to
come to the very opposite conclusions (which, in
general, are, of course, equally erroneous): a
thing cannot maintain itself: therefore it is
good; a belief is troublesome, therefore it is
true.
31
The Illogical is Necessary.-Among the
things which can bring a thinker to distraction
is the knowledge that the illogical is necessary
* Sache, thing but not in the sense of Ding. Sach.
is of very indefinite application (res).
GO
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
to mankind and that from the illogical springs
much that is good. The illogical is so imbedded
in the passions, in language, in art, in religion
and, above all, in everything that imparts value
to life that it cannot be taken away without ir-
reparably injuring those beautiful things. Only
men of the utmost simplicity can believe that
the nature man knows can be changed into a
purely logical nature. Yet were there steps af-
fording approach to this goal, how utterly eve-
rything would be lost on the way! Even the
most rational man needs nature again, from time
to time, that is, his illogical fundamental rela-
tion (Grundstellung) to all things.
32
Being Unjust is Essential.-A11 judgments
of the value of life are illogically developed and
therefore unjust. The vice of the judgment con-
sists, first, in the way in which the subject mat-
ter comes under observation, that is, very in-
completely; secondly in the way in which the
total is summed up; and, thirdly, in the fact that
each single item in the totality of the subject
matter is itself the result of defective percep-
tion, and this from absolute necessity. No prac-
tical knowledge of a man, for example, stood
he never so near to us, can be complete--so that
FIRST AND LAST THINGS
61
we could have a logical right to form a total
estimate of him; all estimates are summary and
must be so. Then the standard by which we
measure, (our being) is not an immutable quan-
tity; we have moods and variations, and yet we
should know ourselves as an invariable standard
before we undertake to establish the nature of
the relation of any thing (Sache) to ourselves.
Perhaps it will follow from all this that one
should form no judgments whatever; if one could
but merely live without having to form estimates,
without aversion and without partiality!—for
everything most abhorred is closely connected
with an estimate, as well as every strongest parti-
ality. An inclination towards a thing, or from a
thing, without an accompanying feeling that the
beneficial is desired and the pernicious contemned,
an inclination without a sort of experiential
estimation of the desirability of an end, does not
exist in man. We are primordially illogical and
hence unjust beings and can recognize this fact:
this is one of the greatest and most baffling dis-
cords of existence.
33
Error Respecting Living for the Sake of
Living Essential.-Every belief in the value
and worthiness of life rests upon defective think-
62
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
ing; it is for this reason aione possible that
sympathy with the general life and suffering of
mankind is so imperfectly developed in the in-
dividual. Even exceptional men, who can think
beyond their own personalities, do not have this
general life in view, but isolated portions of it.
If one is capable of fixing his observation upon
exceptional cases, I mean upon highly endowed
individuals and pure souled beings, if their de-
velopment is taken as the true end of world-evo-
lution and if joy be felt in their existence, then
it is possible to believe in the value of life, be-
cause in that case the rest of humanity is over-
looked: hence we have here defective thinking.
So, too, it is even if all mankind be taken into
consideration, and one species only of impulses
(the less egoistic) brought under review and
those, in consideration of the other impulses, ex-
alted: then something could still be hoped of
mankind in the mass and to that extent there
could exist belief in the value of life: here, again,
as a result of defective thinking. Whatever at-
titude, thus, one may assume, one is, as a re-
sult of this attitude, an exception among man-
kind. Now, the great majority of mankind en-
dure life without any great protest, and believe,
to this extent, in the value of existence, but that
is because each individual decides and determines
alone, and never comes out of his own personal-
FIRST AND LAST THINGS
63
ity like these exceptions: everything outside of
the personal has no existence for them or at the
utmost is observed as but a faint shadow. Conse-
quently the value of life for the generality of
mankind consists simply in the fact that the in-
dividual attaches more importance to himself
than he does to the world. The great lack of
imagination from which he suffers is responsible
for his inability to enter into the feelings of be-
ings other than himself, and hence his sympathy
with their fate and suffering is of the slightest
possible description. On the other hand, whoso-
ever really could sympathise, necessarily doubts
the value of life; were it possible for him to
sum up and to feel in himself the total consci-
ousness of mankind, he would collapse with a
malediction against existence,—for mankind is,
in the mass, without a goal, and hence man
cannot find, in the contemplation of his whole
course, anything to serve him as a mainstay and
a comfort, but rather a reason to despair. If he
looks beyond the things that immediately en-
gage him to the final aimlessness of humanity,
his own conduct assumes in his eyes the char-
acter of a frittering away. To feel oneself, how-
ever, as humanity (not alone as an individual)
frittered away exactly as we see the stray leaves
frittered away by nature, is a feeling transcend-
ing all feeling. But who is capable of it? Only
64
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
a poet, certainly: and poets always know how to
console themselves.
34
For Tranquility.—But will not our philos-
ophy become thus a tragedy? Will not truth
prove the enemy of life, of betterment? A ques
tíon seems to weigh upon our tongue and yet
will not put itself into words: whether one can
knowingly remain in the domain of the untruth-
ful? or, if one must, whether, then, death would
not be preferable? For there is no longer any
ought (Sollen), morality; so far as it is involved
"ought,” is, through our point of view, as utterly
annihilated as religion. Our knowledge can per-
mit only pleasure and pain, benefit and injury,
to subsist as motives. But how can these mo-
tives be distinguished from the desire for truth?
Even they rest upon error (in so far, as already
stated, partiality and dislike and their very in-
accurate estimates palpably modify our pleasure
and our pain). The whole of human life is
deeply involved in untruth. The individual can-
not extricate it from this pit without thereby
fundamentally clashing with his whole past,
without finding his present motives of conduct,
(as that of honor) illegitimate, and without op-
posing scorn and contempt to the ambitions
FIRST AND LAST THINGS
65
which prompt one to have regard for the future
and for one's happiness in the future. Is it true,
does there, then, remain but one way of thinking,
which, as a personal consequence brings in its
train despair, and as a theoretical [consequence
brings in its train] a philosophy of decay, dis-
integration, self annihilation ? I believe the de-
ciding influence, as regards the after effect of
knowledge, will be the temperament of a man;
I can, in addition to this after-effect just men-
tioned, suppose another, by means of which a
much simpler life, and one freer from disturb-
ances than the present, could be lived; so that
at first the old motives of vehement passion might
still have strength, owing to hereditary habit,
but they would gradually grow weaker under
the influence of purifying knowledge. A man
would live, at last, both among men and unto
himself, as in the natural state, without praise,
reproach, competition, feasting one's eyes, as if
it were a play, upon much that formerly inspired
dread. One would be rid of the strenuous ele-
ment, and would no longer feel the goad of the
reflection that man is not even [as much as]
nature, nor more than nature. To be sure, this
requires, as already stated, a good temperament,
a fortified, gentle and naturally cheerful soul,
a disposition that has no need to be on its guard
against its own eccentricities and sudden out-
66
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
breaks and that in its utterances manifests
neither sullenness nor a snarling tone—those
familiar, disagreeable characteristics of old dogs
and old men that have been a long time chained
up. Rather must a man, from whom the ordi-
nary bondages of life have fallen away to so
great an extent, so do that he only lives on in
order to grow continually in knowledge, and to
learn to resign, without envy and without dis-
appointment, much, yes nearly everything, that
has value in the eyes of men. He must be con-
tent with such a free, fearless soaring above men,
manners, laws and traditional estimates of things,
as the most desirable of all situations. He will
freely share the joy of being in such a situation,
and he has, perhaps, nothing else to share-in
which' renunciation and self-denial really most
consist. But if more is asked of him, he will,
with a benevolent shake of the head, refer to his
brother, the free man of fact, and will, perhaps,
not dissemble a little contempt: for, as regards
his “freedom,” thereby hangs a tale.*
* den mit dessen "Freiheit" hat es eine eigene Be-
wandtniss.
HISTORY OF THE MORAL
FEELINGS.
35
Advantages of Psychological Observation.
-That reflection regarding the human, all-too-
human-or as the learned jargon is: psycholog-
ical observation-is among the means whereby
the burden of life can be made lighter, that prac-
tice in this art affords presence of mind in dif-
ficult situations and entertainment amid a weari-
some environment, aye, that maxims may be
culled in the thorniest and least pleasing paths
of life and invigoration thereby obtained: this
much was believed, was known-in former cer:-
turies. Why was this forgotten in our own cen-
tury, during which, at least in Germany, yes in
Europe, poverty as regards psychological ob-
servation would have been manifest in many
ways had there been anyone to whom this pov-
erty could have manifested itself. Not only in
the novel, in the romance, in philosophical
standpoints, these are the works of exceptional
men; still more in the state of opinion regard-
ing public events and personages; above all in
general society, which says much about men but
67
68
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
nothing whatever about man, there is totally
lacking the art of psychological analysis and
synthesis. But why is the richest and most harm-
less source of entertainment thus allowed to run
to waste? Why is the greatest master of the
psychological maxim no longer read ?-for, with
no exaggeration whatever be it said: the edu-
cated person in Europe who has read La Roche-
foucauld and his intellectual and artistic affini-
ties is very hard to find; still harder, the person
who knows them and does not disparage them.
Apparently, too, this unusual reader takes far
less pleasure in them than the form adopted by
these artists should afford him: for the subtlest
mind cannot adequately appreciate the art of
maxim-making unless it has had training in it,
unless it has competed in it. Without such prac-
tical acquaintance, one is apt to look upon this
making and forming as a much easier thing than
it really is; one is not keenly enough alive to
the felicity and the charm of success. Hence
present day readers of maxins have but a mo-
derate, tempered pleasure in them, scarcely, in-
deed, a true perception of their merit, so that
their experiences are about the same as those
of the average beholder of cameos : people who
praise because they cannot appreciate, and are
very ready to admire and still readier to turn
away.
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS
63
36
Objection.-Or is there a counter-proposition
to the dictum that psychological observation is
one of the means of consoling, lightening,
charming existence? Have enough of the un-
pleasant effects of this art been experienced to
justify the person striving for culture in turn-
ing his regard away from it? In all truth, a
certain blind faith in the goodness of human na-
ture, an implanted distaste for any disparagement
of human concerns, a sort of shamefacedness at
the nakedness of the soul, may be far more de-
sirable things in the general happiness of a man,
than this only occasionally advantageous quality
of psychological sharpsightedness; and perhaps
belief in the good, in virtuous men and actions,
in a plenitude of disinterested benevolence has
been more productive of good in the world of
men in so far as it has made men less distrust-
ful. If Plutarch's heroes are enthusiastically
imitated and a reluctance is experienced to look-
ing too critically into the motives of their ac-
tions, not the knowledge but the welfare of hu-
man society is promoted thereby: psychological
error and above all obtuseness in regard to it,
help human nature forward, whereas knowledge
of the truth is more promoted by means of the
stimulating strength of a hypothesis; as La Ro-
IIUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
chefoucauld in the first edition of his "Sentences
and Moral Maxims” has expressed it: “What
the world calls virtue is ordinarily but a phan-
tom created by the passions, and to which we
give a good name in order to do whatever we
please with impunity.” La Rochefoucauld and
those other French masters of soul-searching
(to the number of whom has lately been added
a German, the author of "Psychological Observ-
ations") are like expert marksmen who again
and again hit the black spot—but it is the black
spot in human nature. Their art inspires amaze-
ment, but finally some spectator, inspired, not
by the scientific spirit but by a humanitarian
feeling, execrates an art that seems to implant
in the soul a taste for belittling and impeaching
mankind.
37
#
Nevertheless.—The matter therefore, as re-
gards pro and con, stands thus: in the present
state of philosophy an awakening of the moral
observation is essential. The repulsive aspect of
psychological dissection, with the knife and
tweezers entailed by the process, can no longer
be spared humanity. Such is the imperative
duty of any science that investigates the origini
and history of the so-called moral feelings and
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS
71
which, in its progress, is called upon to posit and
to solve advanced social problems :—The older
philosophy does not recognize the newer at all
and, through paltry evasions, has always gone
astray in the investigation of the origin and
history of human estimates (Werthschätzungen).
With what results may now be very clearly per-
ceived, since it has been shown by many ex-
amples, how the errors of the greatest philosoph-
ers have their origin in a false explanation of
certain human actions and feelings; how upon
the foundation of an erroneous analysis (for
example, of the so called disinterested actions),
a false ethic is reared, to support which religion
and like mythological monstrosities are called
in, until finally the shades of these troubled
spirits collapse in physics and in the comprehen-
sive world point of view. But if it be establish-
ed that superficiality of psychological observa-
tion has heretofore set the most dangerous snares
for human judgment and deduction, and will
continue to do so, all the greater need is there
of that steady continuance of labor that never
wearies putting stone upon stone, little stone
upon little stone; all the greater need is there
of a courage that is not ashamed of such humble
labor and that will oppose persistence to all
contempt. It is, finally, also true that countless
single observations concerning the human, all-
72
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
too-human, have been first made and uttered in
circles accustomed, not to furnish matter for
scientific knowledge, but for intellectual pleasure-
seeking; and the original home atmospherema
very seductive atmosphere—of the moral max-
im has almost inextricably interpenetrated the
entire species, so that the scientific man involun-
tarily manifests a sort of mistrust of this species
and of its seriousness. But it is sufficient to point
to the consequences: for already it is becom-
ing evident that events of the most portentous
nature are developing in the domain of psycho-
logical observation. What is the leading conclu-
sion arrived at by one of the subtlest and calm-
est of thinkers, the author of the work "Con-
cerning the Origin of the Moral Feelings”, as a
result of his thorough and incisive analysis of
human conduct? “The moral man,” he says,
"stands no nearer the knowable (metaphysical)
world than the physical man."* This dictum,
grown hard and cutting beneath the hammer-
blow of historical knowledge, can some day,
perhaps, in some future or other, serve as the
axe that will be laid to the root of the "meta-
physical necessities” of men—whether more to
the blessing than to the banning of universal well
"Der moralische Mensch, sagt er, steht der in-
telligiblen (metaphysischen) Welt nicht näher, als der
physische Mensch."
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS
73
being who can say ?—but in any event a dictum
fraught with the most momentous consequences,
fruitful and fearful at once, and confronting
the world in the two faced way characteristic of
all great facts.
38
To What Extent Useful. — Therefore,
whether psychological observation is more an
advantage than a disadvantage to mankind may
always remain undetermined: but there is no
doubt that it is necessary, because science can
no longer dispense with it. Science, however,
recognizes no considerations of ultimate goals
or ends any more than nature does; but as the
latter duly matures things of the highest fitness
for certain ends without any intention of doing
it, so will true science, doing with ideas what
nature does with matter,* promote the purposes
and the welfare of humanity, (as occasion may
afford, and in many ways) and attain fitness [to
ends]—but likewise without having intended it.
He to whom the atmospheric conditions of
such a prospect are too wintry, has too little
fire in him: let him look about him, and he will
als die Nachahmung der Natur in Begriffen,
literally: "as the counterfeit of nature in (regard to)
ideas."
74
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
become sensible of maladies requiring an icy
air, and of people who are so "kneaded together"
out of ardor and intellect that they can scarcely
find anywhere an atmosphere too cold and cut-
ting for them. Moreover: as too serious indi-
viduals and nations stand in need of trivial re-
laxations; as others, too volatile and excitable
require onerous, weighty ordeals to render them
entirely healthy: should not we, the more in-
tellectual men of this age, which is swept more
and more by conflagrations, catch up every cool-
ing and extinguishing appliance we can find that
we may always remain as self contained, steady
and calm as we are now, and thereby perhaps
serve this age as its mirror and self reflector,
when the occasion arises ?
39
The Fable of Discretionary Freedom.-
The history of the feelings, on the basis of
which we make everyone responsible, hence, the
socalled moral feelings, is traceable in the fol-
lowing leading phases. At first single actions
are termed good or bad without any reference to
their motive, but solely because of the utilitarian
or prejudicial consequences they have for the
community. In time, however, the origin of
these designations is forgotten [but] it is imag-
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS
75
ined that action in itself, without reference to
its consequences, contains the property "good"
or "bad”: with the same error according to
which language designates the stone itself as
hard [ness] the tree itself as green(ness]-for
the reason, therefore, that what is a consequ-
ence is comprehended as a cause. Accordingly,
the good[ness] or bad [ness) is incorporated into
the motive and [any] deed by itself is regarded
as morally ambiguous. A step further is taken,
and the predication good or bad is no longer
made of the particular motives but of the entire
nature of a man, out of which motive grows as
grow the plants out of the soil. Thus man is
successively made responsible for his [particu-
lar] acts, then for his [course of] conduct, then
for his motives and finally for his nature. Now,
at last, is it discovered that this nature, even,
cannot be responsible, inasmuch as it is only
and wholly a necessary consequence and is syn-
thesised out of the elements and influence of
past and present things: therefore, that man is
to be made responsible for nothing, neither for
his nature, nor his motives, nor his [course of]
conduct nor his [particular] acts. By this (pro-
cess] is gained the knowledge that the history of
moral estimates is the history of error, of the
error of responsibility: as is whatever rests upon
the error of the freedom of the will. Schopen-
76
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
hauer concluded just the other way, thus : since
certain actions bring depression ("consciousness
of guilt") in their train, there must, then, exist
responsibility, for there would be no basis for
this depression at hand if all man's affairs did
not follow their course of necessity-as they do,
indeed, according to the opinion of this philoso-
pher, follow their course—but man himself, sub-
ject to the same necessity, would be just the
man that he is—which Schopenhauer denies.
From the fact of such depression Schopenhauer
believes himself able to prove a freedom which
man in some way must have had, not indeed
in regard to his actions but in regard to his na-
ture: freedom, therefore, to be thus and so, not
to act thus and so. Out of the esse, the sphere
of freedom and responsibility, follows, accord-
ing to his opinion, the operari, the spheres of
invariable causation, necessity and irresponsi-
bility. This depression, indeed, is due apparently
to the operari—in so far as it be delusive-but
in truth to whatever esse be the deed of a free
will, the basic cause of the existence of an in-
dividual: [in order to] let man become what-
· ever he wills to become, his [to] will (Wollen)
must precede his existence.-Here, apart from
the absurdity of the statement just made, there
is drawn the wrong inference that the fact of the
depression explains its character, the rational
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS
admissibility of it: from such a wrong inference
does Schopenhauer first come to his fantastic
consequent of the so called discretionary free-
dom (intelligibeln Freiheit). (For the origin of
this fabulous entity Plato and Kant are equally
responsible). But depression after the act does
not need to be rational : indeed, it is certainly
not so at all, for it rests upon the erroneous as-
sumption that the act need not necessarily have
come to pass. Therefore: only because man
· deems himself free, but not because he is free,
does he experience remorse and the stings of
conscience.-Moreover, this depression is some-
thing that can be grown out of; in many men
it is not present at all as a consequence of acts
which inspire it in many other men. It is a very
varying thing and one closely connected with
the development of custom and civilization, and
perhaps manifest only during a relatively brief
period of the world's history.—No one is re-
sponsible for his acts, no one for his nature; to
judge is tantamount to being unjust. This ap-
plies as well when the individual judges himself.
The proposition is as clear as sunlight, and yet
here everyone prefers to go back to darkness
and untruth: for fear of the consequences.
40
Above Animal. The beast in us must be
78
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
wheedled : ethic is necessary, that we may not
be torn to pieces. Without the errors involved
in the assumptions of ethics, man would have
remained an animal. Thus has he taken him-
self as something higher and imposed rigid laws
upon himself. He feels hatred, consequently, for
states approximating the animal: whence the for-
mer contempt for the slave as a not-yet-man, as
a thing, is to be explained.
41
Unalterable Character. That character is
unalterable is not, in the strict sense, true; rather
is this favorite proposition valid only to the
extent that during the brief life period of a man
the potent new motives can not, usually, press
down hard enough to obliterate the lines im-
printed by ages. Could we conceive of a man
eighty thousand years old, we should have in
him an absolutely alterable character; so that
the maturities of successive, varying individuals
would develop in him. The shortness of human
life leads to many erroneous assertions concern-
ing the qualities of man.
42
Classification of Enjoyments and Ethic.--
The once accepted comparative classification
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS
70
of enjoyments, according to which an inferior,
higher, highest egoism may crave one or an-
other enjoyment, now decides as to ethical status
or unethical status. A lower enjoyment (for ex-
ample, sensual pleasure) preferred to a more
highly esteemed one (for example, health) rates
as unethical, as does welfare preferred to free-
dom. The comparative classification of enjoy-
ments is not, however, alike or the same at all
periods; when anyone demands satisfaction of
the law, he is, from the point of view of an ear-
lier civilization, moral, from that of the present,
non-moral. “Unethical" indicates, therefore, that
a man is not sufficiently sensible to the higher,
finer impulses which the present civilization has
brought with it, or is not sensible to them at all;
it indicates backwardness, but only from the
point of view of the contemporary degree of
distinction. — The comparative classification of
enjoyments itself is not determined according to
absolute ethics; but after each new ethical ad-
justment, it is then decided whether conduct be
ethical or the revese.
43
Inhuman Men as Survivals.—Men who are
now inhuman must serve us as surviving speci-
mens of earlier civilizations. The mountain height
80
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
of humanity here reveals its lower formations,
which might otherwise remain hidden from view.
There are surviving specimens of humanity
whose brains through the vicissitudes of heredity,
have escaped proper development. They show
us what we all were and thus appal us; but they
are as little responsible on this account as is a
piece of granite for being granite. In our own
brains there must be courses and windings cor-
responding to such characters, just as in the
forms of some human organs there survive traces
of fishhood. But these courses and windings are
no longer the bed in which flows the stream of
our feeling.
44
Gratitude and Revenge.-The reason the
powerful man is grateful is this. His benefactor
has, through his benefaction, invaded the domain
of the powerful man and established himself on
an equal footing: the powerful man in turn in-
vades the domain of the benefactor and gets
satisfaction through the act of gratitude. It is
a mild form of revenge. By not obtaining the
satisfaction of gratitude the powerful would have
shown himself powerless and have ranked as
such thenceforward. Hence every society of the
good, that is to say, of the powerful originally,
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS
81
places gratitude among the first of duties.-
Swift has added the dictum that man is grateful
in the same degree that he is revengeful.
45
Two-fold Historical Origin of Good and Evil.
- The notion of good and bad has a two-
fold historical origin : namely, first, in the spirit
of ruling races and castes. Whoever has power
to requite good with good and evil with evil and
actually brings requital, (that is, is grateful and
revengeful) acquires the name of being good;
whoever is powerless and cannot requite is called
bad. A man belongs, as a good individual, to the
"good" of a community, who have a feeling in
common, because all the individuals are allied
with one another through the requiting senti-
ment. A man belongs, as a bad individual, to the
“bad,” to a mass of subjugated, powerless men
who have no feeling in common. The good are a
caste, the bad are a quantity, like dust. Good
and bad is, for a considerable period, tantamount
to noble and servile, master and slave. On the
other hand an enemy is not looked upon as bad:
he can requite. The Trojan and the Greek are
in Homer both good. Not he, who does no harm,
but he who is despised, is deemed bad. In the
community of the good individuals (the quality
of] good[ness] is inherited; it is impossible for
82
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
a bad individual to grow from such a rich soil.
If, notwithstanding, one of the good individuals
does something unworthy of his goodness, re-
course is had to exorcism; thus the guilt is
ascribed to a deity, the while it is declared that
this deity bewitched the good man into madness
and blindness. Second, in the spirit of the sub-
jugated, the powerless. Here every other man is,
to the individual, hostile, inconsiderate, greedy,
inhuman, avaricious, be he noble or servile; bad
is the characteristic term for man, for every liv-
ing being, indeed, that is recognized at all, even
for a god : human, divine, these notions are tan-
tamount to devilish, bad. Manifestations of
goodness, sympathy, helpfulness, are regarded
with anxiety as trickiness, preludes to an evil
end, deception, subtlety, in short, as refined bad-
ness. With such a predisposition in individuals,
a feeling in common can scarcely arise at all, at
most only the rudest form of it: so that every-
where that this conception of good and evil pre-
vails, the destruction of the individuals, their
race and nation, is imminent.-Our existing mo-
rality has developed upon the foundation laid
by ruling races and castes.
46
Sympathy Greater than Suffering.-There
are circumstances in which sympathy is stronger
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS
83
than the suffering itself. We feel more pain,
for instance, when one of our friends becomes
guilty of a reprehensible action than if we had
done the deed ourselves. We once, that is, had
more faith in the purity of his character than
he had himself. Hence our love for him, (ap-
parently because of this very faith) is stronger
than is his own love for himself. If, indeed, his
egoism really suffers more, as a result, than our
egoism, inasmuch as he must take the conse-
quences of his fault to a greater extent than our-
selves, nevertheless, the unegoistic—this word is
not to be taken too strictly, but simply as a modi-
fied form of expression—in us is more affected
by his guilt than the unegoistic in him.
47
Hypochondria.—There are people who, from
sympathy and anxiety for others become hypo-
chondriacal. The resulting form of compassion
is nothing else than sickness. So, also, is there a
Christian hypochondria, from which those singu-
lar, religiously agitated people suffer who place
always before their eyes the suffering and death
of Christ.
48
Economy of Blessings.-The advantageous
and the pleasing, as the healthiest growths and
84
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
powers in the intercourse of men, are such pre-
cious treasures that it is much to be wished the
use made of these balsamic means were as eco-
nomical as possible: but this is impossible. Eco-
nomy in the use of blessings is the dream of the
craziest of Utopians.
49
Well-Wishing.--Among the small, but in-
finitely plentiful and therefore very potent things
to which science must pay more attention than
to the great, uncommon things, well-wishing*
must be reckoned; I mean those manifestations of
friendly disposition in intercourse, that laughter
of the eye, every hand pressure, every courtesy
from which, in general, every human act gets
its quality. Every teacher, every functionary
adds this element as a gratuity to whatever he
does as a duty; it is the perpetual well spring of
humanity, like the waves of light in which eve-
rything grows; thus, in the narrowest circles,
within the family, life blooms and flowers only
through this kind feeling. The cheerfulness,
friendliness and kindness of a heart are unfail-
* Wohlwollen, kind feeling. It stands here for
benevolence but not benevolence in the restricted
sense of the word now prevailing.
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS
85
ing sources of unegoistic impulse and have made
far more for civilization than those other more
noised manifestations of it that are styled sym-
pathy, benevolence and sacrifice. But it is cus-
tomary to depreciate these little tokens of kindly
feeling, and, indeed, there is not much of the
unegoistic in them. The sum of these little doses
is very great, nevertheless; their combined
strength is of the greatest of strengths.—Thus,
too, much more happiness is to be found in the
world than gloomy eyes discover: that is, if the
calculation be just, and all these pleasing mo-
ments in which every day, even the meanest hu-
man life, is rich, be not forgotten.
50
The Desire to Inspire Compassion.--La Ro-
chefoucauld, in the most notable part of his self
portraiture (first printed 1658) reaches the vital
spot of truth when he warns all those endowed
with reason to be on their guard against com-
passion, when he advises that this sentiment be
left to men of the masses who stand in need of
the promptings of the emotions (since they are
not guided by reason) to induce them to give aid
to the suffering and to be of service in misfor-
86
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
tune: whereas compassion, in his (and Plato's)
view, deprives the heart of strength. To be sure,
sympathy should be manifested but men should
take care not to feel it; for the unfortunate are
rendered so dull that the manifestation of sym-
pathy affords them the greatest happiness in
the world.—Perhaps a more effectual warning
against this compassion can be given if this need
of the unfortunate be considered not simply as
stupidity and intellectual weakness, not as a sort
of distraction of the spirit entailed by misfor-
tune itself (and thus, indeed, does La Roche-
foucauld seem to view it) but as something quite
different and more momentous. Let note be
taken of children who cry and scream in order
to be compassionated and who, therefore, await
the moment when their condition will be ob-
served ; come into contact with the sick and the
oppressed in spirit and try to ascertain if the
wailing and sighing, the posturing and posing
of misfortune do not have as end and aim the
causing of pain to the beholder: the sympathy
which each beholder manifests is a consolation
to the weak and suffering only in as much as
they are made to perceive that at least they have
the power, notwithstanding all their weakness,
to inflict pain. The unfortunate experiences a spe-
cies of joy in the sense of superiority which the
manifestation of sympathy entails; his imagin-
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS
87
ation is exalted; he is always strong enough, then,
to cause the world pain. Thus is the thirst for
sympathy a thirst for self enjoyment and at the
expense of one's fellow creatures: it shows man
in the whole ruthlessness of his own dear self:
not in his mere "dullness” as La Rochefoucauld
thinks.-In social conversation three fourths of
all the questions are asked, and three fourths of
all the replies are made in order to inflict some
little pain; that is why so many people crave so-
cial intercourse: it gives them a sense of their
power. In these countless but very small doses
in which the quality of badness is administered
it proves a potent stimulant of life: to the same
extent that well wishing—(Wohl-wollen) distri-
buted through the world in like manner, is one
of the ever ready restoratives.-But will many
honorable people be found to admit that there
is any pleasure in administering pain? that en-
tertainment and rare entertainment
- is not
seldom found in causing others, at least in
thought, some pain, and in raking them with the
small shot of wickedness? The majority are too
ignoble and a few are too good to know any-
thing of this pudendum: the latter may, conse-
quently, be prompt to deny that Prosper Mérimée
is right when he says: "Know, also, that nothing
is more common than to do wrong for the pleas-
ure of doing it."
-
88
HUMAN. ALL TOO HUMAN
51
How Appearance Becomes Reality. The
actor cannot, at last, refrain, even in moments
of the deepest pain, from thinking of the effect
produced by his deportment and by his surround-
ings—for example, even at the funeral of his own
child: he will weep at his own sorrow and its
manifestations as though he were his own audi-
ence. The hypocrite who always plays one and
the same part, finally ceases to be a hypocrite;
as in the case of priests who, when young men,
are always, either consciously or unconsciously,
hypocrites, and finally become naturally and then
really, without affectation, mere priests: or if
the father does not carry it to this extent, the
son, who inherits his father's calling and gets
the advantage of the paternal progress, does.
When anyone, during a long period, and per-
sistently, wishes to appear something, it will at
last prove difficult for him to be anything else.
The calling of almost every man, even of the
artist, begins with hypocrisy, with an imitation
of deportment, with a copying of the effective
in manner. He who always wears the mask of
a friendly man must at last gain a power over
friendliness of disposition, without which the
expression itself of friendliness is not to be
gained-and finally friendliness of disposition
gains the ascendancy over him/he is benevolent.
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS
89
52
The Point of Honor in Deception. In all
great deceivers one characteristic is prominent,
to which they owe their power. In the very act
of deception, amid all the accompaniments, the
agitation in the voice, the expression, the bear-
ing, in the crisis of the scene, there comes over
them a belief in themselves; this it is that acts so
effectively and irresistibly upon the beholders.
Founders of religions differ from such great de-
ceivers in that they never come out of this state
of self deception, or else they have, very rarely,
a few moments of enlightenment in which they
are overcome by doubt; generally, however, they
soothe themselves by ascribing such moments of
enlightenment to the evil adversary. Self decep-
tion must exist that both classes of deceivers may
attain far reaching results. For men believe in
the truth of all that is manifestly believed with
due implicitness by others.
53
Presumed Degrees of Truth.-One of the
most usual errors of deduction is : because some-
one truly and openly is against us, therefore he
speaks the truth. Hence the child has faith in
the judgments of its elders, the Christian in the
90
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
assertions of the founder of the church. So, too,
it will not be admitted that all for which men
sacrificed life and happiness in former centuries
was nothing but delusion: perhaps it is alleged
these things were degrees of truth. But what is
really meant is that, if a person sincerely believes
a thing and has fought and died for his faith, it
would be too unjust if only delusion had inspired
him. Such a state of affairs seems to contradict
eternal justice. For that reason the heart of a
sensitive man pronounces against his head the
judgment: between moral conduct and intellect-
ual insight there must always exist an inherent
connection. It is, unfortunately, otherwise: for
there is no eternal justice.
54
Falsehood.-Why do men, as a rule, speak
the truth in the ordinary affairs of life? Cer-
tainly not for the reason that a god has forbid-
den lying. But because first: it is more conveni-
ent, as falsehood entails invention, make-believe
and recollection (wherefore Swift says that who-
ever invents a lie seldom realises the heavy bur-
den he takes up: he must, namely, for every lie
that he tells, insert twenty more). Therefore,
because in plain ordinary relations of life it is
expedient to say without circumlocution: I want
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS
91
this, I have done this, and the like; therefore,
because the way of freedom and certainty is
surer than that of ruse. But if it happens that
a child is brought up in sinister domestic cir-
cumstances, it will then indulge in falsehood as
matter of course, and involuntarily say any-
thing its own interests may prompt: an inclina-
tion for truth, an aversion to falsehood, is quite
foreign and uncongenial to it, and hence it lies
in all innocence.
55
Ethic Discredited for Faith's Sake.
No
power can sustain itself when it is represented
by mere humbugs: the Catholic Church may pos-
sess ever so many "worldly" sources of strength,
but its true might is comprised in those still
numberless priestly natures who make their lives
stern and strenuous and whose looks and emaci-
ated bodies are eloquent of night vigils, fasts,
ardent prayer, perhaps even of whip lashes: these
things make men tremble and cause them anxi-
ety: what, if it be really imperative to live thus ?
This is the dreadful question which their aspect
occasions. As they spread this doubt, they lay
anew the prop of their power: even the free
thinkers dare not oppose such disinterestedness
with severe truth and cry: “Thou deceived one,
92
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
deceive not!"-Only the difference of stand-
point separates them from him: no difference in
goodness or badness. But things we cannot ac-
complish ourselves, we are apt to criticise un-
fairly. Thus we are told of the cunning and per-
verted acts of the Jesuits, but we overlook the
self mastery that each Jesuit imposes upon him-
self and also the fact that the easy life which
the Jesuit manuals advocate is for the benefit,
not of the Jesuits but the laity. Indeed, it may
be questioned whether we enlightened ones would
become equally competent workers as the result
of similar tactics and organization, and equally
worthy of admiration as the result of self mas-
tery, indefatigable industry and devotion.
56
Victory of Knowledge over Radical Evil.
-It proves a material gain to him who would
attain knowledge to have had during a consider-
able period the idea that mankind is a radically
bad and perverted thing: it is a false idea, as is
its opposite, but it long held sway and its roots
have reached down even to ourselves and our
present world. In order to understand ourselves
we must understand it; but in order to attain a
loftier height we must step above it. We then
perceive that there is no such thing as sin in the
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS
93
metaphysical sense : but also, in the same sense,
no such thing as virtue; that this whole domain
of ethical notions is one of constant variation;
that there are higher and deeper conceptions of
good and evil, moral and immoral. Whoever de-
sires no more of things than knowledge of them
attains speedily to peace of mind and will at
most err through lack of knowledge, but scarcely
through eagerness for knowledge (or through
sin, as the world calls it). He will not ask that
eagerness for knowledge be interdicted and root-
ed out; but his single, all powerful ambition to
know as thoroughly and as fully as possible, will
soothe him and moderate all that is strenuous in
his circumstances. Moreover, he is now rid of a
number of disturbing notions; he is no longer
beguiled by such words as hell-pain, sinfulness,
unworthiness: he sees in them merely the flitting
shadow pictures of false views of life and of
the world.
57
Ethicas Man's Self-Analysis. -A good
author, whose heart is really in his work, wishes
that someone would arise and wholly refute him
if only thereby his subject be wholly clarified and
made plain. The maid in love wishes that she
could attest the fidelity of her own passion
94
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
through the faithlessness of her beloved. The
soldier wishes to sacrifice his life on the field
of his fatherland's victory: for in the victory of
his fatherland his highest end is attained. The
mother gives her child what she deprives her-
self of-sleep, the best nourishment and, in cer-
tain circumstances, her health, her self.-But
are all these acts unegoistic? Are these moral
deeds miracles because they are, in Schopen-
hauer's phrase "impossible and yet accomplish-
ed”? Is it not evident that in all four cases man
loves one part of himself, (a thought, a longing,
an experience) more than he loves another part
of himself? that he thus analyses his being and
sacrifices one part of it to another part? Is this
essentially different from the behavior of the
obstinate man who says “I would rather be shot
than go a step out of my way for this fellow"?
-Preference for something (wish, impulse, long-
ing) is present in all four instances: to yield
to it, with all its consequences, is not "unego-
istic.”—In the domain of the ethical man con-
ducts himself not as individuum but as dividuum.
58
What can be Promised.-Actions can be
promised, but not feelings, for these are invo-
luntary. Whoever promises somebody to love
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS
95
him always, or to hate him always, or to be
ever true to him, promises something that it is
out of his power to bestow. But he really can
promise such courses of conduct as are the ordi-
nary accompaniments of love, of hate, of fidel-
ity, but which may also have their source in
motives quite different: for various ways and
motives lead to the same conduct. The promise
to love someone always, means, consequently: as
long as I love you, I will manifest the deport-
ment of love; but if I cease to love you my de-
portment, although from some other motive,
will be just the same, so that to the people about
us it will seem as if my love remained unchanged.
-Hence it is the continuance of the deportment
of love that is promised in every instance in
which eternal love (provided no element of self
deception be involved) is sworn.
59
Intellect and Ethic.-One must have a
good memory to be able to keep the promises
one makes. One must have a strong imagina-
tion in order to feel sympathy. So closely is
ethics connected with intellectual capacity.
60
Desire for Vengeance and Vengeance Itself.
-To meditate revenge and attain it is tan-
96
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
tamount to an attack of fever, that passes away:
but to meditate revenge without possessing the
strength or courage to attain it is tantamount to
suffering from a chronic malady, or poisoning
of body and soul. Ethics, which takes only the
motive into account, rates both cases alike: peo-
ple generally estimate the first case as the worst
(because of the consequences which the deed of
vengeance may entail). Both views are short
sighted.
61
Ability to Wait.-Ability to wait is so hard
to acquire that great poets have not disdained
to make inability to wait the central motive of
their poems. So Shakespeare in Othello, So-
phocles in Ajax, whose suicide would not have
seemed to him so imperative had he only been
able to cool his ardor for a day, as the oracle
foreboded : apparently he would then have re-
pulsed somewhat the fearful whispers of dis-
tracted thought and have said to himself: Who
has not already, in my situation, mistaken a sheep
for a hero? is it so extraordinary a thing? On
the contrary it is something universally human:
Ajax should thus have soothed himself. Passion
will not wait: the tragic element in the lives of
great men does not generally consist in their
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS
97
conflict with time and the inferiority of their
fellowmen but in their inability to put off their
work a year or two: they cannot wait.-In all
duels, the friends who advise have but to ascer-
tain if the principals can wait: if this be not
possible, a duel is rational inasmuch as each of
the combatants may say: "either I continue to
live and the other dies instantly, or vice versa."
To wait in such circumstances would be equival-
ent to the frightful martyrdom of enduring dis-
honor in the presence of him responsible for the
dishonor: and this can easily cost more anguish
than life is worth.
62
Glutting Revenge.-Coarse men, who feel a
sense of injury, are in the habit of rating the
extent of their injury as high as possible and
of stating the occasion of it in greatly exagge-
rated language, in order to be able to feast them-
selves on the sentiments of hatred and revenge
thus aroused.
63
Value of Disparagement.-Not a few, per-
haps the majority of men, find it necessary, in
order to retain their self esteem and a certain
98
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
uprightness in conduct, to mentally disparage
and belittle all the people they know. But as the
inferior natures are in the majority and as a
great deal depends upon whether they retain or
lose this uprightness, so-
64
The Man in a Rage.-We should be on our
guard against the man who is enraged against
us, as against one who has attempted our life,
for the fact that we still live consists solely in
the inability to kill: were looks sufficient, it
would have been all up with us long since. To
reduce anyone to silence by physical manifesta-
tions of savagery or by a terrorizing process is a
relic of under civilization. So, too, that cold
look which great personages cast upon their
servitors is a remnant of the caste distinction
between man and man; a specimen of rude anti-
quity : women, the conservers of the old, have
maintained this survival, too, more perfectly
than men.
65
Whither Honesty May Lead. — Someone
once had the bad habit of expressing himself
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS
99
upon occasion, and with perfect honesty, on the
subject of the motives of his conduct, which were
as good or as bad as the motives of all men.
He aroused first disfavor, then suspicion, became
gradually of ill repute and was pronounced a
person of whom society should beware, until at
last the law took note of such a perverted being
for reasons which usually have no weight with
it or to which it closes its eyes. Lack of taci-
turnity concerning what is universally held se-
cret, and an irresponsible predisposition to see
what no one wants to see—oneself-brought hin
to prison and to early death.
66
Punishable, not Punished.- Our crime
against criminals consists in the fact that we
treat them as rascals.
67
Sancta simplicitas of Virtue.—Every vir-
tue has its privilege: for example, that of con-
tributing its own little bundle of wood to the
funeral pyre of one condemned.
DO
100
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
68
Morality and Consequence.-Not alone the
beholders of an act generally estimate the ethical
or unethical element in it by the result: no, the
one who performed the act does the same. For
the motives and the intentions are seldom suf-
ficiently apparent, and amid them the memory
itself seems to become clouded by the results of
the act, so that a man often ascribes the wrong
motives to his acts or regards the remote mo-
tives as the direct ones. Success often imparts
to an action all the brilliance and honor of good
intention, while failure throws the shadow of
conscience over the most estimable deeds. Hence
arises the familiar maxim of the politician: "Give
me only success: with it I can win all the noble
souls over to my side—and make myself noble
even
in my own eyes.”—In like manner will suc-
cess prove an excellent substitute for a better
argument. To this very day many well educated
men think the triumph of Christianity over Greek
philosophy is a proof of the superior truth of the
former-although in this case it was simply the
coarser and more powerful that triumphed over
the more delicate and intellectual. As regards
superiority of truth, it is evident that because of
it the reviving sciences have connected them-
selves, point for point, with the philosophy of
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS
101
Epicurus, while Christianity has, point for point,
recoiled from it.
69
Love and Justice. Why is love so highly
prized at the expense of justice and why are
such beautiful things spoken of the former as if
it were a far higher entity than the latter? Is
the former not palpably a far more stupid thing
than the latter?-Certainly, and on that very ac-
count so much the more agreeable to everybody:
it is blind and has a rich horn of plenty out of
which it distributes its gifts to everyone, even
when they are unmerited, even when no thanks
are returned. It is impartial like the rain, which
according to the bible and experience, wets not
alone the unjust but, in certain circumstances,
the just as well, and to their skins at that.
70
Execution.—How comes it that every execu-
tion causes us more pain than a murder? It is
the coolness of the executioner, the painful pre-
paration, the perception that here a man is being
used as an instrument for the intimidation of
others. For the guilt is not punished even if
there be any: this is ascribable to the teachers,
102
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
the parents, the environment, in ourselves, not
in the murderer-I mean the predisposing cir-
cumstances.
71
Hope.-Pandora brought the box containing
evils and opened it. It was the gift of the gods
to men, a gift of most enticing appearance ex-
ternally and called the "box of happiness.”
Thereupon all the evils, (living, moving things)
flew out: from that time to the present they fly
about and do ill to men by day and night. One
evil only did not fly out of the box: Pandora
shut the lid at the behest of Zeus and it remained
inside. Now man has this box of happiness per-
petually in the house and congratulates himself
upon the treasure inside of it; it is at his service:
he grasps it whenever he is so disposed, for he
knows not that the box which Pandora brought
was a box of evils. Hence he looks upon the one
evil still remaining as the greatest source of hap-
piness—it is hope.- Zeus intended that man, not-
withstanding the evils oppressing him, should
continue to live and not rid himself of life, but
keep on making hintself miserable. For this pur-
pose he bestowed hope upon man: it is, in truth,
the greatest of evils for it lengthens the ordeal
of man.
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS
103
72
Degree of Moral Susceptibility Unknown.
-The fact that one has or has not had certain
profoundly moving impressions and insights into
things—for example, an unjustly executed, slain
or martyred father, a faithless wife, a shattering,
serious accident,- is the factor upon which the
excitation of our passions to white heat prin-
cipally depends, as well as the course of our
whole lives. No one knows to what lengths cir-
cumstances (sympathy, emotion) may lead him.
He does not know the full extent of his own
susceptibility. Wretched environment makes him
wretched. It is as a rule not the quality of our
experience but its quantity upon which depends
the development of our superiority or inferiority,
from the point of view of good and evil.
73
The Martyr. Against His Will.-In a cer-
tain movement there was a man who was too
cowardly and vacillating ever to contradict his
comrades. He was made use of in each emer-
gency, every sacrifice was demanded of him be-
cause he feared the disfavor of his comrades
more than he feared death: he was a petty, ab-
ject spirit. They perceived this and upon the
foundation of the qualities just mentioned they
104
TOO HUMAN
HUMAN,
ALL
elevated him to the altitude of a hero, and fin-
ally even of a martyr. Although the cowardly
creature always inwardly said No, he always
said. Yes with his lips, even upon the scaffold,
where he died for the tenets of his party : for
beside him stood one of his old associates who
so domineered him with look and word that he
actually went to his death with the utmost for-
titude and has ever since been celebrated as a
martyr and exalted character.
74
General Standard. One will rarely err if
extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary
actions to habit and mean actions to fear.
75
Misunderstanding of Virtue.—Whoever has
obtained his experience of vice in connection
with pleasure as in the case of one with a youth
of wild oats behind him, comes to the conclu-
sion that virtue must be connected with self de-
nial. Whoever, on the other hand, has been very
much plagued by his passions and vices, longs
to find in virtue the rest and peace of the soul.
That is why it is possible for two virtuous peo-
ple to misunderstand one another wholly.
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS
100
76
The Ascetic. The ascetic makes out of vir-
tue a slavery.
77
Honor Transferred from Persons to Things.
-Actions prompted by love or by the spirit
of self sacrifice for others are universally
honored wherever they are manifest. Hence is
magnified the value set upon whatever things
may be loved or whatever things conduce to self
sacrifice: although in themselves they may be
worth nothing much. A valiant army is evidence
of the value of the thing it fights for.
78
Ambition a Substitute for Moral Feeling.
-Moral feeling should never become extinct in
natures that are destitute of ambition. The am-
bitious can get along without moral feeling just
as well as with it.—Hence the sons of retired,
ambitionless families, generally become by a
series of rapid gradations, when they lose moral
feeling, the most absolute lunkheads.
79
Vanity Enriches.—How poor the human
mind would be without vanity! As it is, it re-
106
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
sembles a well stacked and ever renewed ware-
emporium that attracts buyers of every class:
they can find almost everything, have almost eve-
rything, provided they bring with them the right
kind of money-admiration.
80
Senility and Death.-Apart from the de-
mands made by religion, it may well be asked why
it is more
honorable in an aged man, who feels the
decline of his powers, to await his slow extinc-
tion than to fix a term to his existence himself?
Suicide in such a case is a quite natural and due
proceeding that ought to command respect as a
triumph of reason: and did in fact command
respect during the times of the masters of Greek
philosophy and the bravest Roman patriots, who
usually died by their own hand. Eagerness, on
the other hand, to keep alive from day to day
with the anxious counsel of physicians, without
capacity to attain any nearer to one's ideal of
life, is far less worthy of respect.—Religions are
very rich in refuges from the mandate of sui-
cide: hence they ingratiate themselves with those
who cling to life.
81
Delusions Regarding Victim and Regard-
ing Evil Doer.—When the rich man takes a
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS
107
possession away from the poor man (for exam-
ple, a prince who deprives a plebeian of his be-
loved) there arises in the mind of the poor man
a delusion: 'he thinks the rich man must be wholly
perverted to take from him the little that he
has. But the rich man appreciates the value of
a single possession much less because he is ac-
customed to many possessions, so that he cannot
put himself in the place of the poor man and
does not act by any means as ill as the latter
supposes. Both have a totally false idea of each
other. The iniquities of the mighty which bulk
most largely in history are not nearly so mon-
strous as they seem. The hereditary conscious-
ness of being a superior being with superior en-
vironment renders one very callous and lulls the
conscience to rest. We all feel, when the differ-
ence between ourselves and some other being is
exceedingly great, that no element of injustice
can be involved, and we kill a fly with no qualms
of conscience whatever. So, too, it is no indica-
tion of wickedness in Xerxes (whom even the
Greeks represent as exceptionally noble) that he
deprived a father of his son and had him drawn
and quartered because the latter had manifested
a troublesome, ominous distrust of an entire ex-
pedition: the individual was in this case brushed
aside as a pestiferous insect. He was too low
and mean to justify continued sentiments of
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HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
compunction in the ruler of the world. Indeed
no cruel man is ever as cruel, in the main, as
his victim thinks. The idea of pain is never the
same as the sensation. The rule is precisely ana-
logous in the case of the unjust judge, and of
the journalist who by means of devious rhetor-
ical methods, leads public opinion astray. Cause
and effect are in all these instances entwined with
totally different series of feelings and thoughts,
whereas it is unconsciously assumed that prin-
cipal and victim feel and think exactly alike, and
because of this assumption the guilt of the one
is based upon the pain of the other. -
82
The Soul's Skin.--As the bones, flesh, en-
trails and blood vessels are enclosed by a skin
that renders the aspect of men endurable, so the
impulses and passions of the soul are enclosed
by vanity: it is the skin of the soul.
83
Sleep of Virtue.—If virtue goes to sleep, it
will be more vigorous when it awakes.
84
Subtlety of Shame.—Men are not ashamed
of obscene thoughts, but they are ashamed when
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS
109
they suspect that obscene thoughts are attributed
to them.
85
Naughtiness Is Rare.—Most people are too
much absorbed in themselves to be bad.
86
The Mite in the Balance.We are praised
or blamed, as the one or the other may be ex-
pedient, for displaying to advantage our power
of discernment.
87
Luke 18, 14 Improved. He that humbleth
himself wishech to be exalted.
88
Prevention of Suicide. There is a justice
according to which we may deprive a man of
life, but none that permits us to deprive him of
death: this is merely cruelty.
89
Vanity.-We set store by the good opinion
of men, first because it is of use to us and next
110
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
because we wish to give them pleasure (children
their parents, pupils their teacher, and well dis-
posed persons all others generally). Only when
the good opinion of men is important to some-
body, apart from personal advantage or the de-
sire to give pleasure, do we speak of vanity. In
this last case, a man wants to give himself pleas-
ure, but at the expense of his fellow creatures,
inasmuch as he inspires them with a false opin-
ion of himself or else inspires "good opinion” in
such a way that it is a source of pain to others
(by arousing envy). The individual generally
seeks, through the opinion of others, to attest
and fortify the opinion he has of himself; but
the potent influence of authority-an influence
as old as man himself-leads many, also, to
strengthen their own opinion of themselves by
means of authority, that is, to borrow from
others the expedient of relying more upon the
judgment of their fellow men than upon their
own.-Interest in oneself, the wish to please
oneself attains, with the vain man, such propor-
tions that he first misleads others into a false,
unduly exalted estimate of himself and then re-
lies upon the authority of others for his self
estimate: he thus creates the delusion that he pins
his faith to.-It must, however, be admitted that
the vain man does not desire to please others so
much as himself and he will often go so far,
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS
111
on this account, as to overlook his own inter-
ests: for he often inspires his fellow creatures
with malicious envy and renders them ill dis-
posed in order that he may thus increase his
own delight in himself.
90
Limits of the Love of Mankind. Every
man who has declared that some other man is
an ass or a scoundrel, gets angry when the other
man conclusively shows that the assertion was
erroneous.
91
Weeping Morality.-How much delight mo-
rality occasions! Think of the ocean of pleasing
tears that has flowed from the narration of no-
ble, great-hearted deeds!— This charm of life
would disappear if the belief in complete irres-
ponsibility gained the upper hand.
92
Origin of Justice.- Justice (reasonableness)
has its origin among approximate equals in
power, as Thucydides (in the dreadful confer-
ences of the Athenian and Melian envoys) has
112
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
rightly conceived. Thus, where there exists no
demonstrable supremacy and a struggle leads
but to mutual, useless damage, the reflection
arises that an understanding would best be ar-
rived at and some compromise entered into. The
reciprocal nature is hence the first nature of
justice. Each party makes the other content in-
asmuch as each receives what it prizes more
highly than the other. Each surrenders to the
other what the other wants and receives in re-
turn its own desire. Justice is therefore reprisal
and exchange upon the basis of an approximate
equality of power. Thus revenge pertains origi-
nally to the domain of justice as it is a sort of
reciprocity. Equally so, gratitude.- Justice re-
verts naturally to the standpoint of self preserva-
tion, therefore to the egoism of this considera-
tion: "why should I injure myself to no purpose
and perhaps never attain my end?”—So much for
the origin of justice. Only because men, through
mental habits, have forgotten the original motive
of so called just and rational acts, and also be-
cause for thousands of years children have been
brought to admire and imitate such acts, have
they gradually assumed the appearance of being
unegotistical. Upon this appearance is founded
the high estimate of them, which, moreover, like
all estimates, is continually developing, for what-
ever is highly esteemed is striven for, imitated,
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS
113
made the object of self sacrifice, while the merit
of the pain and emulation thus expended is, by
each individual, ascribed to the thing esteemed.
-How slightly moral would the world appear
without forgetfulness! A poet could say that
God had posted forgetfulness as a sentinel at
the portal of the temple of human merit!
93
Concerning the Law of the Weaker.-
Whenever any party, for instance, a besieged
city, yields to a stronger party, under stipulated
conditions, the counter stipulation is that there
be a reduction to insignificance, a burning and
destruction of the city and thus a great damage
inflicted upon the stronger party. Thus arises a
sort of equalization principle upon the basis of
which a law can be established. The enemy has
an advantage to gain by its maintenance. - To
this extent there is also a law between slaves and
masters, limited only by the extent to which the
slave may be useful to his master. The law goes
originally only so far as the one party may ap-
pear to the other potent, invincible, stable, and
the like. To such an extent, then, the weaker
has rights, but very limited ones. Hence the fam-
ous dictum that each has as much law on his
side as his power extends (or more accurately,
as his power is believed to extend).
114
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
94
The Three Phases of Morality Hitherto.-
It is the first evidence that the animal has
become human when his conduct ceases to be
based upon the immediately expedient, but upon
the permanently useful; when he has, therefore,
grown utilitarian, capable of purpose. Thus is
manifested the first rule of reason. A still higher
stage is attained when he regulates his conduct
upon the basis of honor, by means of which he
gains mastery of himself and surrenders his de-
sires to principles; this lifts him far above the
phase in which he was actuated only by consi-
derations of personal advantage as he under-
stood it. He respects and wishes to be respected.
This means that he comprehends utility as a
thing dependent upon what his opinion of others
is and their opinion of him. Finally he regu-
lates his conduct (the highest phase of morality
hitherto attained) by his own standard of men
and things. He himself decides, for himself and
for others, what is honorable and what is use-
ful. He has become a law giver to opinion, upon
the basis of his ever higher developing concep-
tion of the utilitarian and the honorable. Knowl.
edge makes him capable of placing the highest
utility, (that is, the universal, enduring utility)
before merely personal utility,-of placing en-
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS
115
nobling recognition of the enduring and univer-
sal before the merely temporary: he lives and
acts as a collective individuality.
95
Ethic of the Developed Individual.-Hith-
erto the altruistic has been looked upon as the
distinctive characteristic of moral conduct, and
it is manifest that it was the consideration of
universal utility that prompted praise and recog-
nition of altruistic conduct. Must not a radical
departure from this point of view be imminent,
now that it is being ever more clearly perceived
that in the most personal considerations the most
general welfare is attained: so that conduct in
spired by the most personal considerations of ad-
vantage is just the sort which has its origin in
the present conception of morality (as a univer-
sal utilitarianism)? To contemplate oneself as
a complete personality and bear the welfare of
that personality in mind in all that one does-
this is productive of better results than any
sympathetic susceptibility and conduct in be-
half of others. Indeed we all suffer from such
disparagement of our own personalities, which
are at present made to deteriorate from neglect.
Capacity is, in fact, divorced from our person-
ality in most cases, and sacrificed to the state, to
116
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
science, to the needy, as if it were the bad which
deserved to be made a sacrifice. Now, we are
willing to labor for our fellowmen but only to
the extent that we find our own highest advan-
tage in so doing, no more, no less. The whole
matter depends upon what may be understood
as one's advantage: the crude, undeveloped,
rough individualities will be the very ones to
estimate it most inadequately.
96
Usage and Ethic.—To be moral, virtuous,
praiseworthy means to yield obedience to anci-
ent law and hereditary usage.
Whether this
obedience be rendered readily or with difficulty
is long immaterial. Enough that it be rendered.
“Good” finally comes to mean him who acts in
the traditional manner, as a result of heredity
or natural disposition, that is to say does what
is customary with scarcely an effort, whatever
that may be (for example revenges injuries when
revenge, as with the ancient Greeks, was part
of good morals). He is called good because he
is good “to some purpose," and as benevolence,
sympathy, considerateness, moderation and the
like come, in the general course of conduct, to
be finally recognized as “good to some purpose"
(as utilitarian) the benevolent man, the helpful
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS
117
man, is duly styled "good". (At first other and
more important kinds of utilitarian qualities
stand in the foreground.) Bad is "not habitual"
(unusual), to do things not in accordance with
usage, to oppose the traditional, however rational
or the reverse the traditional may be. To do
injury to one's social group or community (and
to one's neighbor as thus understood) is looked
upon, through all the variations of moral laws,
in different ages, as the peculiarly “immoral”
act, so that to-day we associate the word "bad"
with deliberate injury to one's neighbor or com-
munity. "Egoistic” and “non-egoistic” do not
constitute the fundamental opposites that have
brought mankind to make a distinction between
moral and immoral, good and bad; but adherence
to traditional custom, and emancipation from it.
How the traditional had its origin is quite imma-
terial; in any event it had no reference to good
and bad or any categorical imperative but to the
all important end of maintaining and sustaining
the community, the race, the confederation, the
nation. Every superstitious custom that origin-
ated in a misinterpreted event or casualty en-
tailed some tradition, to adhere to which is moral.
To break loose from it is dangerous, more pre-
judicial to the community than to the individual
(because divinity visits the consequences of im-
piety and sacrilege upon the community rather
118
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
than upon the individual). Now every tradition
grows ever more venerable—the more remote is
its origin, the more confused that origin is. The
reverence due to it increases from generation to
generation. The tradition finally becomes holy
and inspires awe. Thus it is that the precept of
piety is a far loftier morality than that inculcated
by altruistic conduct.
97
Delight in the Moral.-A potent species of
joy (and thereby the source of morality) is
custom. The customary is done more easily, bet-
ter, therefore preferably. A pleasure is felt in
it and experience thus shows that since this
practice has held its own it must be good. A
manner or moral that lives and lets live is thus
demonstrated advantageous, necessary, in con-
tradistinction to all new and not yet adopted
practices. The custom is therefore the blending
of the agreeable and the useful. Moreover it
does not require deliberation. As soon as man
can exercise compulsion, he exercises it to en-
force and establish his customs, for they are to
him attested lifewisdom. So, too, a community
of individuals constrains each one of their num-
ber to adopt the same moral or custom. The
error herein is this: Because a certain custom
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS
119
has been agreeable to the feelings or at least be-
cause it proves a means of maintenance, this cus-
tom must be imperative, for it is regarded as the
only thing that can possibly be consistent with
well being. The well being of life seems to spring
from it alone. This conception of the customary
as a condition of existence is carried into the
slightest detail of morality. Inasmuch as insight
into true causation is quite restricted in all in-
ferior peoples, a superstitious anxiety is felt that
everything be done in due routine. Even when
a custom is exceedingly burdensome it is pre-
served because of its supposed vital utility. It
is not known that the same degree of satisfaction
can be experienced through some other custom
and even higher degrees of satisfaction, too.
But it is fully appreciated that all customs do be-
come more agreeable with the lapse of time, no
matter how difficult they may have been found
in the beginning, and that even the severest way
of life may be rendered a matter of habit and
therefore a pleasure.
98
Pleasure and Social Instinct. — Through
his relations with other men, man derives a new
species of delight in those pleasurable emotions
which his own personality affords him; whereby
120
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
the domain of pleasurable emotions is made in-
finitely more comprehensive. No doubt he has
inherited many of these feelings from the brutes,
which palpably feel delight when they sport with
one another, as mothers with their young. So,
too, the sexual relations must be taken into ac-
count: they make every young woman interest-
ing to every young man from the standpoint of
pleasure, and conversely. The feeling of pleasure
originating in human relationships makes men in
general better. The delight in common, the
pleasures enjoyed together heighten one another.
The individual feels a sense of security. He be-
comes better natured. Distrust and malice dis-
solve. For the man feels the sense of benefit and
observes the same feeling in others. Mutual
manifestations of pleasure inspire mutual sym-
pathy, the sentiment of homogeneity. The same
effect is felt also at mutual sufferings, in a com-
mon danger, in stormy weather. Upon such a
foundation are built the earliest alliances: the
object of which is the mutual protection and
safety from threatening misfortunes, and the
welfare of each individual. And thus the social
instinct develops from pleasure.
99
The Guiltless Nature of So-Called Bad Acts.
-All "bad" acts are inspired by the impulse
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS
121
to self preservation or, more accurately,
by the desire for pleasure and for the avoidance
of pain in the individual. Thus are they occa-
sioned, but they are not, therefore, bad. "Pain
self prepared” does not exist, except in the brains
of the philosophers, any more than "pleasure
self prepared” (sympathy in the Schopenhauer
sense). In the condition anterior to the state
we kill the creature, be it man or ape, that at-
tempts to pluck the fruit of a tree before we
pluck it ourselves should we happen to be hun-
gry at the time and making for that tree: as we
would do to-day, so far as the brute is concern-
ed, if we were wandering in savage regions.-
The bad acts which most disturb us at present
do so because of the erroneous supposition that
the one who is guilty of them towards us has
a free will in the matter and that it was within
his discretion not to have done these evil things.
This belief in discretionary power inspires hate,
thirst for revenge, malice, the entire perversion
of the mental processes, whereas we would feel
in no way incensed against the brute, as we hold
it irresponsible. To inflict pain not from the in-
stinct of self preservation but in requital—this is
the consequence of false judgment and is equally
a guiltless course of conduct. The individual can,
in that condition which is anterior to the state,
act with fierceness nd violence for the intimi-
122
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
dation of another creature, in order to render his
own power more secure as a result of such acts
of intimidation. Thus acts the powerful, the su-
perior, the original state founder, who subju-
gates the weaker. He has the right to do so, as
the state nowadays assumes the same right, or,
to be more accurate, there is no right that can
conflict with this. A foundation for all morality
can first be laid only when a stronger individu-
ality or a collective individuality, for example
society, the state, subjects the single personali-
ties, hence builds upon their unification and es-
tablishes a bond of union. Morality results from
compulsion, it is indeed itself one long compul-
sion to which obedience is rendered in order
that pain may be avoided. At first it is but cus-
tom, later free obedience and finally almost in-
stinct. At last it is (like everything habitual and
natural) associated with pleasure and is then
called virtue.
100
Shame.-Shame exists wherever a "mystery"
exists: but this is a religious notion which in the
earlier period of human civilization had great
vogue. Everywhere there were circumscribed
spots to which access was denied on account of
some divine law, except in special circumstances.
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS
123
At first these spots were quite extensive, inas-
much as stipulated areas could not be trod by
the uninitiated, who, when near them, felt tremors
and anxieties. This sentiment was frequently
transferred to other relationships, for example
to sexual relations, which, as the privilege and
gateway of mature age, must be withdrawn from
the contemplation of youth for its own advan-
tage: relations which many divinities were busy
in preserving and sanctifying, images of which
divinities were duly placed in marital chambers
as guardians. (In Turkish such an apartment is
termed a harem or holy thing, the same word
also designating the vestibule of a mosque). So,
too, Kingship is regarded as a centre from which
power and brilliance stream forth, as a mystery
to the subjects, impregnated with secrecy and
shame, sentiments still quite operative among
peoples who in other respects are without any
shame at all. So, too, is the whole world of in-
ward states, the so-called "soul,” even now, for
all non-philosophical persons, a “mystery," and
during countless ages it was looked upon as a
something of divine origin, in direct communion
with deity. It is, therefore, an adytum and oc-
casions shame.
101
Judge Not.-Care must be taken, in the con-
templation of earlier ages, that there be no fall-
184
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
ing into unjust scornfulness. The injustice in
slavery, the cruelty in the subjugation of per-
sons and peoples must not be estimated by our
standard. For in that period the instinct of jus-
tice was not so highly developed. Who dare re-
proach the Genoese Calvin for burning the phy-
sician Servetus at the stake? It was a proceeding
growing out of his convictions. And the Inquisi-
tion, too, had its justification. The only thing
is that the prevailing views were false and led
to those proceedings which seem so cruel to us,
simply because such views have become foreign
to us. Besides, what is the burning alive of one
individual compared with eternal hell pains for
everybody else? And yet this idea then had hold
of all the world without in the least vitiating,
with its frightfulness, the other idea of a god.
Even we nowadays are hard and merciless to
political revolutionists, but that is because we
are in the habit of believing the state a necessity,
and hence the cruelty of the proceeding is not
so much understood as in the other cases where
the points of view are repudiated. The cruelty
to animals shown by children and Italians is due
to the same misunderstanding. The animal, ow-
ing to the exigencies of the church catechism, is
placed too far below the level of mankind.-
Much, too, that is frightful and inhuman in his-
tory, and which is almost incredible, is ren-
HISTORY OF THE MCRAL FEELINGS
125
dered less atrocious by the reflection that the
one who commands and the one who executes
are different persons. The former does not wit-
ness the performance and hence it makes no
strong impression on him. The latter obeys a
superior and hence feels no responsibility. Most
princes and military chieftains appear, through
lack of true perception, cruel and hard without
really being so.- Egoism is not bad because the
idea of the "neighbor”—the word is of Christian
origin and does not correspond to truth—is very
weak in us, and we feel ourselves, in regard to
him, as free from responsibility as if plants and
stones were involved. That ancther is in suffer-
ing must be learned and it can never be wholly
learned.
102
“Man Always Does Right.”—We do not
blame nature when she sends a thunder storm
and makes us wet: why then do we term the
man who inflicts injury immoral? Because in
the latter case we assume a voluntary, ruling,
free will, and in the former necessity. But this
distinction is a delusion. Moreover, even the in-
tentional infliction of injury is not, in all circum-
stances termed immoral. Thus, we kill a fly in-
126
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
tentionally without thinking very much about it,
simply because its buzzing about is disagreeable;
and we punish a criminal and inflict pain upon
him in order to protect ourselves and society.
In the first case it is the individual who, for the
sake of preserving himself or in order to spare
himself pain, does injury with design: in the
second case, it is the state. All ethic deems in-
tentional infliction of injury justified by neces-
sity; that is when it is a matter of self preserva-
tion. But these two points of view are sufficient
to explain all bad acts done by man to men. It
is desired to obtain pleasure or avoid pain. In
any sense, it is a question, always, of self pre-
servation. Socrates and Plato are right: what-
ever man does he always does right: that is, does
what seems to him good (advantageous) accord-
ing to the degree of advancement his intellect
has attained, which is always the measure of his
rational capacity.
103
The Inoffensive in Badness.-Badness has
not for its object the infliction of pain upon
others but simply our own satisfaction as, for
instance, in the case of thirst for vengeance or
of nerve excitation. Every act of teasing shows
what pleasure is caused by the display of our
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS
127
power over others and what feelings of delight
are experienced in the sense of domination. Is
there, then, anything immoral in feeling pleasure
in the pain of others? Is malicious joy devilish,
as Schopenhauer says? In the realm of nature
we feel joy in breaking boughs, shattering rocks,
fighting with wild beasts, simply to attest our
strength thereby. Should not the knowledge that
another suffers on our account here, in this case,
make the same kind of act, (which, by the way,
arouses no qualms of conscience in us) immoral
also? But if we had not this knowledge there
would be ne pleasure in one's own superiority
or power, for this. pleasure is experienced only
in the suffering of another, as in the case of
teasing. All pleasure is, in itself, neither good
nor bad. Whence comes the conviction that one
should not cause pain in others in order to feel
pleasure oneself? Simply from the standpoint
of utility, that is, in consideration of the conse-
quences, of ultimate pain, since the injured party
or state will demand satisfaction and revenge.
This consideration alone can have led to the de-
termination to renounce such pleasure. Sym-
pathy has the satisfaction of others in view no
more than, as already stated, badness has the
pain of others in view. For there are at least
two (perhaps many more) elementary ingredi-
ents in personal gratification which enter largely
128
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
into our self satisfaction: one of them being the
pleasure of the emotion, of which species is sym-
pathy with tragedy, and another, when the im-
pulse is to action, being the pleasure of exer-
cising one's power. Should a sufferer be very
dear to us, we divest ourselves of pain by the
performance of acts of sympathy. — With the
exception of some few philosophers, men have
placed sympathy very low in the rank of moral
feelings: and rightly.
104
Self Defence. If self defence is in general
held a valid justification, then nearly every man-
ifestation of so called immoral egoism must be
justified, too. Pain is inflicted, robbery or killing
done in order to maintain life or to protect one-
self and ward off harm. A man lies when cun-
ning and delusion are valid means of self pre-
servation. To injure intentionally when our
safety and our existence are involved, or the
continuance of our well being, is conceded to be
moral. The state itself injures from this motive
when it hangs criminals. In unintentional injury
the immoral, of course, can not be present, as
accident alone is involved. But is there any sort
of intentional injury in which our existence and
the maintenance of our well being be not in.
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS
129
volved? Is there such a thing as injuring from
absolute badness, for example, in the case of
cruelty ? If a man does not know what pain an
act occasions, that act is not one of wickedness.
Thus the child is not bad to the animal, not evil.
It disturbs and rends it as if it were one of its
playthings. Does a man ever fully know how
much pain an act may cause another? As far as
our nervous system extends, we shield ourselves
from pain. If it extended further, that is, to our
fellow men, we would never cause anyone else
any pain (except in such cases as we cause it
to ourselves, when we cut ourselves, surgically,
to heal our ills, or strive and trouble ourselves
to gain health). We conclude from analogy that
something pains somebody and can in conse-
quence, through recollection and the power of
imagination, feel pain also. But what a differ-
ence there always is between the tooth ache and
the pain (sympathy) that the spectacle of tooth
ache occasions! Therefore when injury is in-
flicted from so called badness the degree of pain
thereby experienced is always unknown to us:
in so far, however, as pleasure is felt in the act
'(a sense of one's own power, of one's own ex-
citation) the act is committed to maintain the
well being of the individual and hence comes
under the purview of self defence and lying for
self preservation. Without pleasure, there is no
130
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
life; the struggle for pleasure is the struggle for
life. Whether the individual shall carry on this
struggle in such a way that he be called good or
in such a way that he be called bad is something
that the standard and the capacity of his own
intellect must determine for hlm.
105
Justice that Rewards.-Whoever has fully
jinderstood the doctrine of absolute irresponsi-
bility can no longer include the so called re-
warding and punishing justice in the idea of
justice, if the latter be taken to mean that to
each be given his due. For he who is punished
does not deserve the punishment. He is used
simply as a means to intimidate others from cer-
tain acts. Equally, he who is rewarded does not
merit the reward. He could not act any differ-
ently than he did act. Hence the reward has
only the significance of an encouragement to him
and others as a motive for subsequent acts. The
praise is called out only to him who is running
in the race and not to him who has arrived at
the goal. Something that comes to someone as
his own is neither a punishment nor a reward.
It is given to him from utiliarian considerations,
without his having any claim to it in justice.
Hence one must say "the wise man praises not
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS
131
because a good act has been done” precisely as
was once said: “the wise man punishes not be-
cause a bad act has been done but in order that
a bad act may not be done.” If punishment and
reward ceased, there would cease with them the
most powerful incentives to certain acts and
away from other acts. The purposes of men de-
mand their continuance [of punishment and re-
ward] and inasmuch as punishment and re-
ward, blame and praise operate most potently
upon vanity, these same purposes of men im-
peratively require the continuance of vanity.
>
106
The Water Fall.–At the sight of a water
fall we may opine that in the countless curves,
spirations and dashes of the waves we behold
freedom of the will and of the impulses. But
everything is compulsory, everything can be
mathematically calculated. Thus it is, too, with
human acts. We would be able to calculate in
advance every single action if we were all know-
ing, as well as every advance in knowledge, every
delusion, every bad deed. The acting individual
himself is held fast in the illusion of volition.
If, on a sudden, the entire movement of the
world stopped short, and an all knowing and
reasoning intelligence were there to take advan-
132
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
tage of this pause, he could foretell the future
of every being to the remotest ages and indicate
the path that would be taken in the world's
further course. The deception of the acting in-
dividual as regards himself, the assumption of
the freedom of the will, is a part of this com-
putable mechanism.
107
Non-Responsibility and Non-Guilt. — The
absolute irresponsibility of man for his acts and
his nature is the bitterest drop in the cup of him
who has knowledge, if he be accustomed to be-
hold in responsibility and duty the patent of
nobility of his human nature. All his estimates,
preferences, dislikes are thus made worthless
and false. His deepest sentiment, with which
he honored the sufferer, the hero, sprang from
an error. He may no longer praise, no longer
blame, for it is irrational to blame and praise
nature and necessity. Just as he cherishes the
beautiful work of art, but does not praise it (as
it is incapable of doing anything for itself), just
as he stands in the presence of plants, he must
stand in the presence of human conduct, his own
included. He may admire strength, beauty, cap-
acity, therein, but he can discern no merit. The
chemical process and the conflict of the elements,
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS
133
the ordeal of the invalid who strives for con-
valescence, are no more merits than the soul-
struggles and extremities in which one is torn
this way and that by contending motives until
one finally decides in favor of the strongest
as the phrase has it, although, in fact, it is the
strongest motive that decides for us. All these
motives, however, whatever fine names we may
give them, have grown from the same roots in
which we believe the baneful poisons lurk. Be-
tween good and bad actions there is no differ-
ence in kind but, at most, in degree. Good acts
are sublimated evil. Bad acts are degraded, im-
bruted good. The very longing of the indi-
vidual for self gratification (together with the
fear of being deprived of it) obtains satisfaction
in all circumstances, let the individual act as he
may, that is, as he must: be it in deeds of van-
ity, revenge, pleasure, utility, badness, cunning,
be it in deeds of self sacrifice, sympathy or
knowledge. The degrees of rational capacity de-
termine the direction in which this longing im-
pels : every society, every individual has cont-
stantly present a comparative classification of
benefits in accordance with which conduct is de-
termined and others are judged. But this stand-
ard perpetually changes. Many acts are called
bad that are only stupid, because the degree of
intelligence that decided for them was low. In.
134
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
deed, in a certain sense, all acts now are stupid,
for the highest degree of human intelligence
that has yet been attained will in time most cer-
tainly be surpassed and then, in retrospection,
all our present conduct and opinion will appear
as narrow and petty as we now deem the con-
duct and opinion of savage peoples and ages.-
To perceive all these things may occasion pro-
found pain but there is, nevertheless, a consola-
tion. Such pains are birth pains. The butterfly
insists upon breaking through the cocoon, he
presses through it, tears it to pieces, only to be
blinded and confused by the strange light, by
the realm of liberty. By such men as are cap-
able of this sadness-how few there are ! --will
the first attempt be made to see if humanity may
convert itself from a thing of morality to a thing
of wisdom. The sun of a new gospel sheds its
first ray upon the loftiest height in the souls of
those few: but the clouds are massed there, too,
thicker than ever, and not far apart are the
brightest sunlight and the deepest gloom. Eve-
rything is necessity--so says the new knowledge:
and this knowledge is itself necessity. All is
guiltlessness, and · knowledge is the way to in-
sight into this guiltlessness. If pleasure, egoism,
vanity be necessary to attest the moral phenom-
ena and their richest blooms, the instinct for
truth and accuracy of knowledge; if delusion
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS
135
and confusion of the imagination were the only
means whereby mankind could gradually lift it-
self up to this degree of self enlightenment and
self emancipation—who would venture to dis-
parage the means? Who would have the right
to feel sad if made aware of the goal to which
those paths lead? Everything in the domain of
ethic is evolved, changeable, tottering; all things
flow, it is true-but all things are also in the
stream: to their goal. Though within us the
hereditary habit of erroneous judgment, love,
hate, may 196 ever dominant, yet under the in-
fluence of awaking knowledge it will ever be-
come weaker: a new habit, that of understand-
ing, not-loving, not-hating, looking from above,
grows up within us gradually and in the same
soil, and may, perhaps, in thousands of years be
powerful enough to endow mankind with capa-
city to develop the wise, guiltless man (consci-
ous of guiltlessness) as unfailingly as it now
developes the unwise, irrational, guilt-conscious
man—that is to say, the necessary higher step,
not the opposite of it.
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE.
108
The Double Contest Against Evil.-If an
evil afflicts us we can either so deal with it as to
remove its cause or else so deal with it that its
effect upon our feeling is changed: hence look
upon
the evil as a benefit of which the uses will
perhaps first become evident in some subsequent
period. Religion and art (and also the meta-
physical philosophy) strive to effect an alteration
of the feeling, partly by an alteration of our
judgment respecting the experience (for exam-
ple, with the aid of the dictum "whom God
loves, he chastizes”) partly by the awakening of
a joy in pain, in emotion especially (whence the
art of tragedy had its origin). The more one is
disposed to interpret away and justify, the less
likely he is to look directly at the causes of evil
and eliminate them. An instant alleviation and
narcotizing of pain, as is usual in the case of
tooth ache, is sufficient for him even in the se-
verest suffering. The more the domination of
religions and of all narcotic arts declines, the
more searchingly do men look to the elimination
136
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE
137
of evil itself, which is a rather bad thing for the
tragic poets--for there is ever less and less ma-
terial for tragedy, since the domain of unsparing,
immutable destiny grows constantly more cir-
cumscribed - and a still worse thing for the
priests, for these last have lived heretofore upon
the narcoticizing of human ill.
109
Sorrow is Knowledge.—How willingly would
not one exchange the false assertions of the
homines religiosi that there is a god who com-
mands us to be good, who is the sentinel and
witness of every act, every moment, every
thought, who loves us, who plans our welfare
in every misfortune-how willingly would not
one exchange these for truths as healing, bene-
ficial and grateful as those delusions! But there
are no such truths. Philosophy can at most set
up in opposition to them other metaphysical
plausibilities (fundamental untruths as well).
The tragedy of it all is that, although one can-
not believe these dogmas of religion and me-
taphysics if one adopts in heart and head the
potent methods of truth, one has yet become,
through human evolution, so tender, susceptible,
sensitive, as to stand in need of the most effec-
tive means of rest and consolation. From this
138
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
state of things arises the danger that, through
the perception of truth or, more accurately,
seeing through delusion, one may bleed to death.
Byron has put this into deathless verse:
"Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most
Must mourn the deepest o'er the fatal truth,
The tree of knowledge is not that of life.”
Against such cares there is no better protec-
tive than the light fancy of Horace, (at any rate
during the darkest hours and sun eclipses of the
soul) expressed in the words
"quid aeternis minorem
consiliis animum fatigas?
cur non sub alta vel platano vel hac
pinu jacentes." *
At any rate, light fancy or heavy heartedness
of any degree must be better than a romantic
retrogression and desertion of one's flag, an ap-
proach to Christianity in any form: for with it,
in the present state of knowledge, one can have
nothing to do without hopelessly defiling one's
intellectual integrity and surrendering it uncon-
ditionally. These woes may be painful enough,
but without pain one cannot become a leader and
guide of humanity: and woe to him who would
be such and lacks this pure integrity of the in-
tellect!
* Then wherefore should you, who are mortal, outwear
Your soul with a profitless burden of care
Say, why should we not, flung at ease neath this pine,
Or a plane-tree's broad umbrage, quaff gaily our wine?
(Translation of Sir Theodore Martin.)
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE
189
110
The Truth in Religion.-In the ages of en-
lightenment justice was not done to the import-
ance of religion, of this there can be no doubt.
It is also equally certain that in the ensuing re-
action of enlightenment, the demands of justice
were far exceeded inasmuch as religion was
treated with love, even with infatuation and
proclaimed as a profound, indeed the most pro-
found knowledge of the world, which science had
but to divest of its dogmatic garb in order to
possess 'truth” in its unmythical form. Religions
must therefore this was the contention of all
foes of enlightenment — sensu allegorico, with
regard for the comprehension of the masses,
give expression to that ancient truth which is
wisdom in itself, inasmuch as all science of mod-
ern times has led up to it instead of away from
it. So that between the most ancient wisdom of
man and all later wisdom there prevails harmo-
ny, even similarity of viewpoint; and the ad-
vancement of knowledge-if one be disposed to
concede such a thing has to do not with its
nature but with its propagation. This whole
conception of religion and science is through and
through erroneous, and none would to-day be
hardy enough to countenance it had not Scho-
penhauer's rhetoric taken it under protection,
this high sounding rhetoric which now gains
140
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
auditors after the lapse of a generation. Much
as may be gained from Schopenhauer's religio-
ethical human and cosmical oracle as regards
the comprehension of Christianity and other re-
ligions, it is nevertheless certain that he erred
regarding the value of religion to knowledge. He
himself was in this but a servile pupil of the
scientific teachers of his time who had all taken
romanticism under their protection and renoun-
ced the spirit of enlightenment. Had he been
born in our own time it would have been im-
possible for him to have spoken of the sensus
allegoricus of religion. He would instead have
done truth the justice to say: never has a re-
ligion, directly or indirectly, either as dogma or
as allegory, contained a truth. For all religions
grew out of dread or necessity, and came into
existence through an error of the reason. They
have, perhaps, in times of danger from science,
incorporated some philosophical doctrine or
other into their systems in order to make it pos-
sible to continue one's existence within them.
But this is but a theological work of art dating
from the time in which a religion began to doubt
of itself. These theological feats of art, which
are most common in Christianity as the religion
of a learned age, impregnated with philosophy,
have led to this superstition of the sensus allego-
ricus, as has, even more, the habit of the philoso-
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE
141
phers (namely those half-natures, the poet-
ical philosophers and the philosophising artists)
of dealing with their own feelings as if they con-
stituted the fundamental nature of humanity and
hence of giving their own religious feelings a
predominant influence over the structure of their
systems. As the philosophers mostly philoso-
phised under the influence of hereditary religious
habits, or at least under the traditional influence
of this "metaphysical necessity," they naturally
arrived at conclusions closely resembling the
Judaic or Christian or Indian religious tenets-
resembling, in the way that children are apt to
look like their mothers: only in this case the
fathers were not certain as to the maternity, as
easily happens—but in the innocence of their
admiration, they fabled regarding the family
likeness of all religion and science. In reality,
there exists between religion and true science
neither relationship nor friendship, not even en-
mity: they dwell in different spheres. Every
philosophy that lets the religious comet gleam
through the darkness of its last outposts renders
everything within it that purports to be science,
suspicious. It is all probably religion, although
it may assume the guise of science.-Moreover,
though all the peoples agree concerning certain
religious things, for example, the existence of a
god (which, by the way, as regards this point,
142
HUMAN, ALL TOO HJMAN
is not the case) this fact would constitute an
argument against the thing agreed upon, for ex-
ample the very existence of a god. The con-
sensus gentium and especially hominum can
probably amount only to an absurdity. Against
'it there is no consensus omnium sapientium
whatever, on any point, with the exception of
which Goethe's verse speaks:
"All greatest sages to all latest ages
Will smile, wink and slily agree
'Tis folly to wait till a fool's empty pate
Has learned to be knowing and free.
So children of wisdom must look upon fools
As creatures who're never the better for schools."
Stated without rhyme or metre and adapted
ito our case: the consensus sapientium is to the
effect that the consensus gentium amounts to an
absurdity.
l
111
Origin of Religious Worship.—Let us trans-
port ourselves back to the times in which religi-
ous life flourished most vigorously and we will
find a fundamental conviction prevalent which
we no longer share and which has resulted in
the closing of the door to religious life once for
all so far as we are concerned: this conviction
has to do with nature and intercourse with her.
In those times nothing is yet known of nature's
laws. Neither for earth nor for heaven is there
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE
143
a must. A season, sunshine, rain can come or
stay away as it pleases. There is wanting, in
particular, all idea of natural causation. If a
man rows, it is not the oar that moves the boat,
but rowing is a magical ceremony whereby a de-
mon is constrained to move the boat. All illness,
death itself, is a consequence of magical influ-
ences. In sickness and death nothing natural is
conceived. The whole idea of "natural course'
is wanting. The idea dawns first upon the an-
cient Greeks, that is to say in a very late period
of humanity, in the conception of a Moira (fate]
ruling over the gods. If any person shoots off
a bow, there is always an irrational strength and
agency in the act. If the wells suddenly run dry,
the first thought is of subterranean demons and
their pranks. It must have been the dart of a
god beneath whose invisible influence a human
being suddenly collapses. In India, the carpent-
er (according to Lubbock) is in the habit of
making devout offerings to his hammer and
hatchet. A Brahmin treats the plume with which
he writes, a soldier the weapon that he takes into
the field, a mason his trowel, a laborer his plow,
in the same way. All nature is, in the opinion
of religious people, a sum total of the doings of
conscious and willing beings, an immense mass
of complex volitions. In regard to all that takes
place outside of us no conclusion is permissible
144
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
that anything will result thus and so, must result
thus and so, that we are comparatively calcul-
able and certain in our experiences, that man is
the rule, nature the ruleless. This view forms
the fundamental conviction that dominates crude,
religion-producing, early civilizations. We con-
temporary men feel exactly the opposite: the
richer man now feels himself inwardly, the more
polyphone the music and the sounding of his
soul, the more powerfully does the uniformity
of nature impress him. We all, with Goethe,
recognize in nature the great means of repose
for the soul. We listen to the pendulum stroke
of this great clock with longing for rest, for ab-
solute calm and quiescence, as if we could drink
in the uniformity of nature and thereby arrive
first at an enjoyment of oneself. Formerly it was
the reverse: if we carry ourselves back to the
periods of crude civilization, or if we contem-
plate contemporary savages, we will find them
most strongly influenced by rule, by tradition.
The individual is almost automatically bound to
rule and tradition and moves with the uniformity
of a pendulum. To him nature—the uncompre-
hended, fearful, mysterious nature—must seem
the domain of freedom, of volition, of higher
power, indeed as an ultra-human degree of des-
tiny, as god. Every individual in such periods
and circumstances feels that his existence, his
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE
146
happiness, the existence and happiness of the
family, the state, the success or failure of every
undertaking, must depend upon these disposi-
tions of nature. Certain natural events must
occur at the proper time and certain others must
not occur. How can influence be exercised over
this fearful unknown, how can this domain of
freedom be brought under subjection ? thus he
asks himself, thus he worries : Is there no means
to render these powers of nature as subject to
rule and tradition as you are yourself?-The
cogitation of the superstitious and magic-delu-
ded man is upon the theme of imposing a law
upon nature: and to put it briefly, religious wor-
ship is the result of such cogitation. The pro-
blem which is present to every man is closely
connected with this one: how can the weaker
party dictate laws to the stronger, control its
acts in reference to the weaker? At first the most
harmless form of influence is recollected, that
influence which is acquired when the partiality
of anyone has been won. Through beseeching
and prayer, through abject humiliation, through
obligations to regular gifts and propitiations,
through flattering homages, it is possible, there-
fore, to impose some guidance upon the forces
of nature, to the extent that their partiality be
won: love binds and is bound. Then agreements
can be entered into by means of which certain
146
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
courses of conduct are mutually concluded, vows
are made and authorities prescribed. But far
more potent is that species of power exercised
by means of magic and incantation. As a man
is able to injure a powerful enemy by means of
the magician and render him helpless with fear,
as the love potion operates at a distance, so can
the mighty forces of nature, in the opinion of
weaker mankind, be controlled by similar means.
The principal means of effecting incantations is
to acquire control of something belonging to the
party to be influenced, hair, finger nails, food
from his table, even his picture or his name.
With such apparatus it is possible to act by
means of magic, for the basic principle is that
to everything spiritual corresponds something
corporeal. With the aid of this corporeal ele-
ment the spirit may be bound, injured or de-
stroyed. The corporeal affords the handle by
which the spiritual can be laid hold of. In the
same way that man influences mankind does he
influences some spirit of nature, for this latter
has also its corporeal element that can be grasp-
ed. The tree, and on the same basis, the seed
from which it grew: this puzzling sequence
seems to demonstrate that in both forms the
same spirit is embodied, now large, now small.
A stone that suddenly rolls, is the body in which
the spirit works. Does a huge boulder lie in a
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147
lonely moor? It is impossible to think of mortal
power having placed it there. The stone must
have moved itself there. That is to say some
spirit must dominate it. Everything that has a
body is subject to magic, including, therefore,
the spirits of nature. If a god is directly con-
nected with his portrait, a direct influence (by
refraining from devout offerings, by whippings,
chainings and the like) can be brought to bear
upon him. The lower classes in China tie cords
around the picture of their god in order to defy
his departing favor, when he has left them in
the lurch, and tear the picture to pieces, drag
it through the streets into dung heaps and gut-
ters, crying: “You dog of a spirit, we housed
you in a beautiful temple, we gilded you pret-
tily, we fed you well, we brought you offerings,
and yet how ungrateful you are!" Similar dis-
plays of resentment have been made against pic-
tures of the mother of god and pictures of
saints in Catholic countries during the present
century when such pictures would not do their
duty during times of pestilence and drought.
Through all these magical relationships to
nature countless ceremonies are occasioned, and
finally, when their complexity and confusion
grow too great, pains are taken to systematize
them, to arrange them so that the favorable
course of nature's progress, namely the great
148
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
yearly circle of the seasons, may be brought
about by a corresponding course of the cere-
monial progress. The aim of religious worship
is to influence nature to human advantage, and
hence to instit a subjection to law into her that
originally she has not, whereas at present man
desires to find out the subjection to law of na-
ture in order to guide himself thereby. In brief,
the system of religious worship rests upon the
idea of magic between man and man, and the
magician is older than the priest. But it rests
equally upon other and higher ideas. It brings
into prominence the sympathetic relation of man
to man, the existence of benevolence, gratitude,
prayer, of truces between enemies, of loans upon
security, of arrangements for the protection of
property. Man, even in very inferior degrees
of civilization, does not stand in the presence of
nature as a helpless slave, he is not willy-nilly
the absolute servant of nature. In the Greek
development of religion, especially in the rela-
tionship to the Olympian gods, it becomes pos-
sible to entertain the idea of an existence side
by side of two castes, a higher, more powerful,
and a lower, less powerful: but both are bound
together in some way, on account of their origin
and are one species. They need not be ashamed
of one another. This is the element of distinction
in Greek religion.
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149
112
At the Contemplation of Certain Ancient
Sacrificial Proceedings.-How many senti-
ments are lost to us is manifest in the union of
the farcical, even of the obscene, with the reli-
gious feeling. The feeling that this mixture is
possible is becoming extinct. We realize the mix-
ture only historically, in the mysteries of De-
meter and Dionysos and in the Christian Easter
festivals and religious mysteries. But we still
perceive the sublime in connection with the ri-
diculous, and the like, the emotional with the ab-
surd. Perhaps a later age will be unable to un-
derstand even these combinations.
113
Christianity as Antiquity.-When on a
Sunday morning we hear the old bells ringing,
we ask ourselves: Is it possible? All this for a
Jew crucified two thousand years ago who said
he was God's son? The proof of such an as-
sertion is lacking.-Certainly, the Christian re-
ligion constitutes in our time a protruding bit
of antiquity from very remote ages and that its
assertions are still generally believed-although
men have become so keen in the scrutiny of
claims-constitutes the oldest relic of this inhe-
ritance. A god who begets children by a mortal
160
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
woman; a sage who demands that no more work
be done, that no more justice be administered
but that the signs of the approaching end of the
world be heeded; a system of justice that accepts
an innocent as a vicarious sacrifice in the place
of the guilty; a person who bids his disciples
drink his blood; prayers for miracles; sins
against a god expiated upon a god; fear of a
hereafter to which death is the portal; the figure
of the cross as a symbol in an age that no
longer knows the purpose and the ignominy
of the cross-how ghostly all these things flit
before us out of the grave of their primitive an-
tiquity! Is one to believe that such things can
still be believed ?
114
The Un-Greek in Christianity.—The Greeks
did not look upon the Homeric gods above
them as lords nor upon themselves beneath
as servants, after the fashion of the Jews.
They saw but the counterpart as in a mirror of
the most perfect specimens of their own caste,
hence an ideal, but no contradiction of their own
nature. There was a feeling of mutual relation-
ship, resulting in a mutual interest, a sort of al-
liance." Man thinks well of himself when he
gives himself such gods and places himself in a
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151
relationship akin to that of the lower nobility
with the higher; whereas the Italian races have a
decidedly vulgar religion, involving perpetual
anxiety because of bad and mischievous powers
and soul disturbers. Wherever the Olympian
gods receded into the background, there even
Greek life became gloomier and more perturbed.
-Christianity, on the other hand, oppressed and
degraded humanity completely and sank it into
deepest mire: into the feeling of utter abase-
ment it suddenly flashed the gleam of divine
compassion, so that the amazed and grace-
dazzled stupefied one gave a cry of delight and
for a moment believed that the whole of heaven
was within him. Upon this unhealthy excess of
feeling, upon the accompanying corruption of
heart and head, Christianity attains all its psy-
chological effects. It wants to annihilate, debase,
stupefy, amaze, bedazzle. There is but one thing
that it does not want: measure, standard (das
Maas) and therefore is it in the worst sense bar-
barous, asiatic, vulgar, un-Greek.
115
Being Religious to Some Purpose.—There
are certain insipid, traffic-virtuous people to
whom religion is pinned like the hem of some
garb of a higher humanity. These people do
152
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
well to remain religious: it adorns them. All
who are not versed in some professional weapon
-including tongue and pen as weapons
are
servile: to all such the Christian religion is very
useful, for then their servility assumes the aspect
of Christian virtue and is amazingly adorned.-
People whose daily lives are empty and colorless
are readily religious. This is comprehensible and
pardonable, but they have no right to demand
that others, whose daily lives are not empty and
colorless, should be religious also.
116
The Everyday Christian.-If Christianity,
with its allegations of an avenging God, univer-
sal sinfulness, choice of grace, and the danger
of eternal damnation, were true, it would be an
indication of weakness of mind and character not
to be a priest or an apostle or a hermit, and toil
for one's own salvation. It would be irrational
to lose sight of one's eternal well being in com-
parison with temporary advantage: Assuming
these dogmas to be generally believed, the every
day Christian is a pitiable figure, a man who
really cannot count as far as three, and who, for
the rest, just because of his intellectual incapa-
city, does not deserve to be as hard punished as
Christianity promises he shall be.
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153
117
Concerning the Cleverness of Christianity.
-It is a master stroke of Christianity to so
emphasize the unworthiness, sinfulness and de-
gradation of men in general that contempt of
one's fellow creatures becomes impossible. “He
may sin as much as he pleases, he is not by na-
ture different from me. It is I who in every way
am unworthy and contemptible.” So says the
Christian to himself. But even this feeling lias
lost its keenest sting for the Christian does not
believe in his individual degradation. He is bad
in his general human capacity and he soothes
himself a little with the assertion that we are all
alike.
118
Personal Change.--As soon as a religion
rules, it has for its opponents those who were
its first disciples.
119
Fate of Christianity.-Christianity arose to
lighten the heart, but now it must first make the
heart heavy in order to be able to lighten it aft-
erwards. Christianity will consequently go down.
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HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
120
The Testimony of Pleasure.—The agree-
able opinion is accepted as true. This is the tes-
timony of pleasure (or as the church says, the
evidence of strength) of which all religions are
so proud, although they should all be ashamed of
it. If a belief did not make blessed it would not
be believed. How little it would be worth, then!
121
Dangerous Play.-Whoever gives religious
feeling room, must then also let it grow. He
can do nothing else. Then his being gradually
changes. The religious element brings with it
affinities and kinships. The whole circle of his
judgment and feeling is clouded and draped in
religious shadows. Feeling cannot stand still.
One should be on one's guard.
122
The Blind Pupil. As long as one knows
very well the strength and the weakness of one's
dogma, one's art, one's religion, its strength is
still low. The pupil and apostle who has no eye
for the weaknesses of a dogma, a religion and
so on, dazzled by the aspect of the master and
by his own reverence for him, has, on that very
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165
account, generally more power than the master.
Without blind pupils the influence of a man and
his work has never become great. To give vic-
tory to knowledge, often amounts to no more
than so allying it with stupidity that the brute
force of the latter forces triumph for the former.
123
The Breaking off of Churches.—There is
not sufficient religion in the world merely to put
an end to the number of religions.
124
Sinlessness of Men.-If one have understood
how "Sin came into the world,” namely through
errors of the reason, through which men in their
intercourse with one another and even individual
men looked upon themselves as much blacker and
wickeder than was really the case, one's whole
feeling is much lightened and man and the world
appear together in such a halo of harmlessness
that a sentiment of well being is instilled into
one's whole nature. Man in the midst of nature
is as a child left to its own devices. This child
indeed dreams a heavy, anxious dream. But
when it opens its eyes it finds itself always in
paradise.
106
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
125
Irreligiousness of Artists.-Homer is SO
much at home among his gods and is as a poet
so good natured to them that he must have been
profoundly irreligious. That which was brought
to him by the popular faith-a mean, crude and
partially repulsive superstition—he dealt with as
freely as the Sculptor with his clay, therefore
with the same freedom that Æschylus and Ari-
stophanes evinced and with which in later times
the great artists of the renaissance, and also
Shakespeare and Goethe, drew their pictures.
126
Art and Strength of False Interpretation.
-All the visions, fears, exhaustions and
delights of the saint are well known symptoms
of sickness, which in him, owing to deep rooted
religious and psychological delusions, are ex-
plained quite differently, that is not as symptoms
of sickness.-So, too, perhaps, the demon of So-
crates was nothing but a malady of the ear that
he explained, in view of his predominant moral
theory, in a manner different from what would
be thought rational to-day. Nor is the case dif-
ferent with the frenzy and the frenzied speeches
of the prophets and of the priests of the oracles.
It is always the degree of wisdom, imagination,
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157
capacity and morality in the heart and mind of
the interpreters that got so much out of them.
It is among the greatest feats of the men who
are called geniuses and saints that they made in-
terpreters for themselves who, fortunately for
mankind, did not understand them.
127
Reverence for Madness. Because it was
perceived that an excitement of some kind often
made the head clearer and occasioned fortunate
inspirations, it was concluded that the utmost
excitement would occasion the most fortunate in-
spirations. Hence the frenzied being was revered
as a sage and an oracle giver. A false conclu-
sion lies at the bottom of all this.
128
Promises of Wisdom.-Modern science has
as its object as little pain as possible, as long a
life as possible-hence a sort of eternal blessed-
ness, but of a very limited kind in comparison
with the promises of religion.
129
Forbidden Generosity.—There is not enough
of love and goodness in the world to throw any
of it away on conceited people.
158
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
130
Survival of Religious Training in the Dis-
Position.--The Catholic Church, and before
it all ancient education, controlled the whole do-
main of means through which man was put into
certain unordinary moods and withdrawn from
the cold calculation of personal advantage and
from calm, rational reflection. A church vibrat-
ing with deep tones; gloomy, regular, restrain-
ing exhortations from a priestly band, who in-
voluntarily communicate their own tension to
their congregation and lead them to listen almost
with anxiety as if some miracle were in course of
preparation; the awesome pile of architecture
which, as the house of a god, rears itself vastly
into the vague and in all its shadowy nooks in-
spires fear of its nerve-exciting power -- who
would care to reduce men to the level of these
things if the ideas upon which they rest became
extinct? But the results of all these things are
nevertheless not thrown away: the inner world
of exalted, emotional, prophetic, profoundly re-
pentant, hope-blessed moods has become inborn
in man largely through cultivation. What still
exists in his soul was formerly, as he germinated,
grew and bloomed, thoroughly disciplined.
131
Religious After-Pains.-Though one believe
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159
oneself absolutely weaned away from religion,
the process has yet not been so thorough as to
make impossible a feeling of joy at the presence
of religious feelings and dispositions without
intelligible content, as, for example, in music;
and if a philosophy alleges to us the validity of
metaphysical hopes, through the peace of soul
therein attainable, and also speaks of "the whole
true gospel in the look of Raphael's Madonna,"
we greet such declarations and innuendoes with
a welcome smile. The philosopher has here a
matter easy of demonstration. He responds with
that which he is glad to give, namely a heart
that is glad to accept. Hence it is observable how
the less reflective free spirits collide only with
dogmas but yield readily to the magic of religi-
ous feelings; it is a source of pain to them to let
the latter go simply on account of the former.-
Scientific philosophy must be very much on its
guard lest on account of this necessity—an evoly-
ed and hence, also, a transitory necessity-de-
lusions are smuggled in. Even logicians speak of
"presentiments” of truth in ethics and in art (for
example of the presentiment that the essence of
things is unity) a thing which, nevertheless, ought
to be prohibited. Between carefully deduced
truths and such “foreboded" things there lies
the abysmal distinction that the former are pro-
ducts of the intellect and the latter of the neces-
:
있
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HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
sity. Hunger is no evidence that there is food
at hand to appease it. Hunger merely craves
food. "Presentiment" does not denote that the
existence of a thing is known in any way what-
ever. It denotes merely that it is deemed possible
to the extent that it is desired or feared. The
"presentiment” is not one step forward in the
domain of certainty.-It is involuntarily believed
that the religious tinted sections of a philosophy
are better attested than the others, but the case
is at bottom just the opposite: there is simply
the inner wish that it may be so, that the thing
which beautifies may also be true. This wish
leads us to accept bad grounds as good.
132
Of the Christian Need of Salvation.-Care-
ful consideration must render it possible to
propound some explanation of that process in
the soul of a Christian which is termed need of
salvation, and to propound an explanation, too,
free from mythology: hence one purely psycho-
logical. Heretofore psychological explanations of
religious conditions and processes have really
been in disrepute, inasmuch as a theology calling
itself free gave vent to its unprofitable nature in
this domain; for its principal aim, so far as may
be judged from the spirit of its creator, Schleier-
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161
bacher, was the preservation of the Christian re-
Tigion and the maintenance of the Christian the-
ology. It appeared that in the psychological ana-
lysis of religious "facts” a new anchorage and
above all a new calling were to be gained. Un-
disturbed by such predecessors, we venture the
following exposition of the phenomena alluded
to. Man is conscious of certain acts which are
very firmly implanted in the general course of
conduct: indeed he discovers in himself a pre-
disposition to such acts that seems to him to be
as unalterable as his very being. How gladly he
would essay some other kind of acts which in the
general estimate of conduct are rated the best
and highest, how gladly he would welcome the
consciousness of well doing which ought to fol-
low unselfish motive! Unfortunately, however,
it goes no further than this longing: the dis-
content consequent upon being unable to satisfy
it is added to all other kinds of discontent which
result from his life destiny in particular or which
may be due to so called bad acts; so that a deep
depression ensues accompanied by a desire for
some physician to remove it and all its causes.
-This condition would not be found so bitter
if the individual but compared himself freely
with other men: for then he would have no
reason to be discontented with himself in par-
ticular as he is merely bearing his share of the
162
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
general burden of human discontent and incom-
pleteness. But he compares himself with a being
who alone must be capable of the conduct that
is called unegoistic and of an enduring consci-
ousness of unselfish motive, with God. It is be-
cause he gazes into this clear mirror, that his
own self seems so extraordinarily distracted and
so troubled. Thereupon the thought of that be-
ing, in so far as it fits before his fancy as re-
tributive justice, occasions him anxiety. In
every conceivable small and great experience he
believes he sees the anger of the being, his threats,
the very implements and manacles of his judge
and prison. What succors him in this danger,
which, in the prospect of an eternal duration of
punishment, transcends in hideousness all the
horrors that can be presented to the imagination ?
,133
Before we consider this condition in its further
effects, we would admit to ourselves that man
is betrayed into this condition not through his
"fault" and "sin" but through a series of delu-
sions of the reason; that it was the fault of the
mirror if his own self appeared to him in the
highest degree dark and hateful, and that that
mirror was his own work, the very imperfect
work of human imagination and judgment. In
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163
the first place a being capable of absolutely un-
egoistic conduct is as fabulous as the phoenix.
Such a being is not even thinkable for the very
reason that the whole notion of "unegoistic con-
duct," when closely examined, vanishes into air.
Never yet has a man done anything solely for
others and entirely without reference to a per-
sonal motive; indeed how could he possibly do
anything that had no reference to himself, that
is without inward compulsion (which must al-
ways have its basis in a personal need)? How
could the ego act without ego?-A god, who,
on the other hand, is all love, as he is usually re-
presented, would not be capable of a solitary un-
egoistic act: whence one is reminded of a reflec-
tion of Lichtenberg's which is, in truth, taken
from a lower sphere: “We cannot possibly feel
for others, as the expression goes; we feel only
for ourselves. The assertion sounds hard, but it
is not, if rightly understood. A man loves neither
his father nor his mother nor his wife nor his
child, but simply the feelings which they in-
spire.” Or, as La Rochefoucauld says: "If you
think you love your mistress for the mere love
of her, you are very much mistaken." Why acts
of love are more highly prized than others, name-
ly not on account of their nature, but on account
of their utility, has already been explained in
the section on the origin of moral feelings. But
164
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
if a man should wish to be all love like the god
aforesaid, and want to do all things for others
and nothing for himself, the procedure would be
fundamentally impossible because he must do a
great deal for himself before there would be any
possibility of doing anything for the love of
others. It is also essential that others be suffici-
ently egoistic to accept always and at all times
this self sacrifice and living for others, so that
the men of love and self sacrifice have an inter-
est in the survival of unloving and selfish ego-
ists, while the highest morality, in order to main-
tain itself must formally enforce the existence
of immorality (wherein it would be really de-
stroying itself.)-Further : the idea of a god per-
turbs and discourages as long as it is accepted
but as to how it originated can no longer, in the
present state of comparative ethnological science,
be a matter of doubt, and with the insight into
the origin of this belief all faith collapses. What
happens to the Christian who compares his na-
ture with that of God is exactly what happened
to Don Quixote, who depreciated his own prowess
because his head was filled with the wondrous
deeds of the heroes of chivalrous romance. The
standard of measurement which both employ
belongs to the domain of fable.—But if the idea
of God collapses, so too, does the feeling of "sin”
as a violation of divine rescript, as a stain upon a
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE
165
god-like creation. There still apparently remains
that discouragement which is closely allied with
fear of the punishment of worldly justice or of
the contempt of one's fellow men. The keenest
thorn in the sentiment of sin is dulled when it is
perceived that one's acts have contravened human
tradition, human rules and human laws without
having thereby endangered the "eternal salvation
of the soul" and its relations with deity. If fin-
ally men attain to the conviction of the absolute
necessity of all acts and of their utter irrespon-
sibility and then absorb it into their flesh and
blood, every relic of conscience pangs will dis-
appear.
134
If now, as stated, the Christian, through cer-
tain delusive feelings, is betrayed into self con-
tempt, that is by a false and unscientific view of
his acts and feelings, he must, nevertheless, per-
ceive with the utmost amazement that this state
of self contempt, of conscience pangs, of despair
in particular, does not last, that there are hours
during which all these things are wafted away
from the soul and he feels himself once more
free and courageous. The truth is that joy in
his own being, the fulness of his own powers in
connection with the inevitable decline of his pro-
166
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
found excitation with the lapse of time, bore off
the palm of victory. The man loves himself once
more, he feels it—but this very new love, this
new self esteem seems to him incredible. He can
see in it only the wholly unmerited stream of the
light of grace shed down upon him. If he for-
merly saw in every event merely warnings,
threats, punishments and every kind of indica-
tion of divine anger, he now reads into his ex-
periences the grace of god. The latter circum-
stance seems to him full of love, the former as
a helpful pointing of the way, and his entirely
joyful frame of mind now seems to him to be an
absolute proof of the goodness of God. As for-
merly in his states of discouragement he inter-
preted his conduct falsely so now he does the
same with his experiences. His state of consola-
tion is now regarded as the effect produced by
some external power. The love with which, at
bottom, he loves himself, seems to be the divine
love. That which he calls grace and the pre-
liminary of salvation is in reality self-grace, self-
salvation.
135
Therefore a certain false psychology, a certain
kind of imaginativeness in the interpretation of
motives and experiences is the essential prelimi-
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167
nary to being a Christian and to experiencing the
need of salvation. Upon gaining an insight into
this wandering of the reason and the imagina-
tion, one ceases to be a Christian.
136
Of Christian Asceticism and Sanctity.-
Much as some thinkers have exerted themselves to
impart an air of the miraculous to those singular
phenomena known as asceticism and sanctity, to
question which or to account for which upon a
rational basis would be wickedness and sacrilege,
the temptation to this wickedness is none the less
great. A powerful impulse of nature has in
every age led to protest against such pheno-
mena. At any rate science, inasmuch as it is
the imitation of nature, permits the casting of
doubts upon the inexplicable character and the
supernal degree of such phenomena. It is true
that heretofore science has not succeeded in its
attempts at explanation. The phenomena remain
unexplained still, to the great satisfaction of those
who revere moral miracles. For, speaking gen-
erally, the unexplained must rank as the inex-
plicable, the inexplicable as the non-natural, su-
pernatural, miraculous—so runs the demand in
the souls of all the religious and all the meta-
physicians (even the artists if they happen to be
168
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
thinkers), whereas the scientific man sees in this
demand the "evil principle.”—The universal,
first, apparent truth that is encountered in the
contemplation of sanctity and asceticism is that
their nature is complicated; for nearly always,
within the physical world as well as in the moral,
the apparently miraculous may be traced success-
fully to the complex, the obscure, the multi-con-
ditioned. Let us venture then to isolate a few
impulses in the soul of the saint and the ascetic,
to consider them separately and then view them
as a synthetic development.
137
There is an obstinacy against oneself, certain
sublimated forms of which are included in asce-
ticism. Certain kinds of men are under such a
strong necessity of exercising their power and
dominating impulses that, if other objects are
lacking or if they have not succeeded with other
objects they will actually tyrannize over some
portions of their own nature or over sections
and stages of their own personality. Thus do
many thinkers bring themselves to views which
are far from likely to increase or improve their
fame. Many deliberately bring down the con-
tempt of others upon themselves although they
could easily have retained consideration by
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169
silence. Others contradict earlier opinions and
do not shrink from the ordeal of being deemed
inconsistent. On the contrary they strive for this
and act like eager riders who enjoy horseback
exercise most when the horse is skittish. Thus
will men in dangerous paths ascend to the high-
est steeps in order to laugh to scorn their own
fear and their own trembling limbs. Thus will
the philosopher embrace the dogmas of ascetic-
ism, humility, sanctity, in the light of which his
own image appears in its most hideous aspect.
This crushing of self, this mockery of one's own
nature, this spernere se sperni out of which re-
ligions have made so much is in reality but a
very high development of vanity. The whole
ethic of the sermon on the mount belongs in this
category: man has a true delight in mastering
himself through exaggerated pretensions or ex-
cessive expedients and later deifying this tyran-
nically exacting something within him. In every
scheme of ascetic ethics, man prays to one part
of himself as if it were god and hence it is neces-
sary for him to treat the rest of himself as devil.
138
Man is Not at All Hours Equally Moral;
this is established. If one's morality be judged
according to one's capacity for great, self sacri-
170
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
ficing resolutions and abnegations (which when
continual, and made a habit are known as sancti-
ty) one is, in affection, or disposition, the most
moral: while higher excitement supplies wholly
new impulses which, were one calm and cool as
ordinarily, one would not deem oneself even cap-
able of. How comes this? Apparently from the
propinquity of all great and lofty emotional
states. If a man is brought to an extraordinary
pitch of feeling he can resolve upon a fearful
revenge or upon a fearful renunciation of his
thirst for vengeance indifferently. He craves,
under the influences of powerful emotion, the
great, the powerful, the immense, and if he
chances to perceive that the sacrifice of himself
will afford him as much satisfaction as the
sacrifice of another, or will afford him more, he
will choose self sacrifice. What concerns him
particularly is simply the unloading of his emo-
tion. Hence he readily, to relieve his tension,
grasps the darts of the enemy and buries them
in his own breast. That in self abnegation and
not in revenge the element of greatness consisted
must have been brought home to mankind only
after long habituation. A god who sacrifices him-
self would be the most powerful and most ef-
fective symbol of this sort of greatness. As the
conquest of the most hardly conquered enemy,
the sudden mastering of a passion—thus does
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE
171
such abnegation appear: hence it passes for the
summit of morality. In reality all that is involved
is the exchange of one idea for another whilst
the temperament remained at a like altitude, a
like tidal state. Men when coming out of the
spell, or resting from such passionate excitation,
no longer understand the morality of such in-
stants, but the admiration of all who participated
in the occasion sustains them. Pride is their sup-
port if the passion and the comprehension of
their act weaken. Therefore, at bottom even such
acts of self-abnegation are not moral inasmuch
as they are not done with a strict regard for
others. Rather do others afford the high strung
temperament an opportunity to lighten itself
through such abnegation.
139
Even the Ascetic Seeks to Make Life Easier,
and generally by means of absolute subjection to
another will or to an all inclusive rule and ritual,
pretty much as the Brahmin leaves absolutely no-
thing to his own volition but is guided in every
moment of his life by some holy injunction or
other. This subjection is a potent means of ac-
quiring dominion over oneself. One is occupied,
hence time does not bang heavy and there is no
incitement of the personal will and of the indi-
172
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
vidual passion. The deed once done there is no
feeling of responsibility nor the sting of regret.
One has given up one's own will once for all
and this is easier than to give it up occasionally,
as it is also easier wholly to renounce a desire
than to yield to it in measured degree. When
we consider the present relation of man to the
state we perceive unconditional obedience is eas-
ier than conditional. The holy person also
makes his lot easier through the complete sur-
render of his life personality and it is all delu-
sion to admire such a phenomenon as the loftiest
heroism of morality. It is always more difficult
to assert one's personality without shrinking and
without hesitation than to give it up altogether in
the manner indicated, and it requires moreover
more intellect and thought.
140
After having discovered in many of the less
comprehensible actions mere manifestations of
pleasure in emotion for its own sake, I fancy I
can detect in the self contempt which character-
ises holy persons, and also in their acts of self
torture (through hunger and scourgings, distor-
tions and chaining of the limbs, acts of madness)
simply a means whereby such natures may resist
the general exhaustion of their will to live (their
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE
173
*
no
Tet.
all
lly,
sire
rerves). They employ the most painful expedi-
ents to escape if only for a time from the heavi-
ness and weariness in which they are steeped by
their great mental indolence and their subjection
to a will other than their own.
141
nen
the
as-
Iso
ir.
Iu-
est
ult
nd
in
er
The Most Usual Means by which the ascetic
and the sanctified individual seeks to make life
more endurable comprises certain combats of an
inner nature involving alternations of victory and
prostration. For this purpose an enemy is neces-
sary and he is found in the so called “inner ene-
my." That is, the holy individual makes use of
his tendency to vanity, domineering and pride,
and of his mental longings in order to contem-
plate his life as a sort of continuous battle and
himself as a battlefield, in which good and evil
spirits wage war with varying fortune. It is an es-
tablished fact that the imagination is restrained
through the regularity and adequacy of sexual
intercourse while on the other hand abstention
from or great irregularity in sexual intercourse
will cause the imagination to run riot. The ima-
ginations of many of the Christian saints were
obscene to a degree; and because of the theory
that sexual desires were in reality demons that
raged within them, the saints did not feel wholly
f
I
f
174
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
responsible for them. It is to this conviction that
we are indebted for the highly instructive since-
erity of their evidence against themselves. It
was to their interest that this contest should al-
ways be kept up in some fashion because by
means of this contest, as already stated, their
empty lives gained distraction. In order that the
contest might seem sufficiently great to inspire
sympathy and admiration in the unsanctified, it
was essential that sexual capacity be ever more
and more damned and denounced. Indeed the
danger of eternal damnation was so closely allied
to this capacity that for whole generations Chris-
tians showed their children with actual cor
science pangs. What evil may not have been
done to humanity through this! And yet here
the truth is just upside down: an exceedingly un-
seemly attitude for the truth. Christianity, it is
true, had said that every man is conceived and
born in sin, and in the intolerable and excessive
Christianity of Calderon this thought is again
perverted and entangled into the most distorted
paradox extant in the well known lines
The greatest sin of man
Is the sin of being born,
In all pessimistic religions the act of procrea-
tion is looked upon as evil in itself. This is far
from being the general human opinion. It is not
even the opinion of all pessimists. Empedocles,
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE
175
hat
ace-
It
al
by
heir
the
pire
1. it
hore
the
lied
Iris-
con-
peen
for example, knows nothing of anything shame-
ful, devilish and sinful in it. He sees rather in the
great field of bliss of unholiness simply a health-
ful and hopeful phenomenon, Aphrodite. She is
to him an evidence that strife does not always
rage but that some time a gentle demon is to
wield the sceptre. The Christian pessimists of
practice, had, as stated, a direct interest in the
prevalence of an opposite belief. They needed
in the loneliness and the spiritual wilderness of
their lives an ever living enemy, and a univers-
ally known enemy through whose conquest they
might appear to the unsanctified as utterly in-
comprehensible and half unnatural beings. When
this enemy at last, as a 'result of their mode of
life and their shattered health, took flight for-
ever, they were able immediately to people their
inner selves with new demons. The rise and fall
of the balance of cheerfulness and despair main-
tained their addled brains in a totally new fluctu-
ation of longing and peace of soul. And in that
period psychology served not only to cast suspi-
cion on everything human but to wound and
scourge it, to crucify it. Man wanted to find him-
self as base and evil as possible. Man sought to
become anxious about the state of his soul, he
wished to be doubtful of his own capacity. Eve-
rything natural with which man connects the
idea of badness and sinfulness (as, for instance,
nere
un-
It is
and
sive
gain
ted
cea-
far
not
Cles,
176
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
is still customary in regard to the erotic) injures
and degrades the imagination, occasions a
shamed aspect, leads man to war upon himself
and makes him uncertain, distrustful of himself.
Even his dreams acquire a tincture of the un
clean conscience. And yet this suffering because
of the natural element in certain things is whol-
ly superfluous. It is simply the result of opinions
regarding the things. It is easy to understand
why men become worse than they are if they are
brought to look upon the unavoidably natural as
bad and later to feel it as of evil origin. It is the
master stroke of religions and metaphysics that
wish to make man out bad and sinful by nature,
to render nature suspicious in his eyes and to so
make himself evil, for he learns to feel himself
evil when he cannot divest himself of nature. He
gradually comes to look upon himself, after a
long life lived naturally, so oppressed by a
weight of sin that supernatural powers become
necessary to relieve him of the burden; and with
this notion comes the so called need of salvation,
which is the result not of a real but of an imagin-
ary sinfulness. Go through the separate moral
expositions in the vouchers of christianity and
it will always be found that the demands are ex-
cessive in order that it may be impossible for
man to satisfy them. The object is not that he
may become moral but that he may feel as sinful
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE
177
jures
IS 2
mseli
nseli
un]
e
cause
vhol
nion;
stand
are
al as
the
that
Eure,
as possible. If this feeling had not been render-
ed agreeable to man—why should he have im-
provised such an ideal and clung to it so long?
As in the ancient world an incalculable strength
of intellect and capacity for feeling was squan-
dered in order to increase the joy of living
through feastful systems of worship, so in the
era of christianity an equally incalculable quantity
of intellectual capacity has been sacrificed in an-
other endeavor: that man should in every way
feel himself sinful and thereby be moved, inspir-
ed, inspirited. To move, to inspire, to inspirit
at any cost-is not this the freedom cry of an
exhausted, over-ripe, over cultivated age? The
circle of all the natural sensations had been gone
through a hundred times: the soul had grown
weary. Then the saints and the ascetics found
a new order of ecstacies. They set themselves
before the eyes of all not alone as models for
imitation to many, but as fearful and yet delight-
ful spectacles on the boundary line between this
world and the next world, where in that period
everyone thought he saw at one time rays of
heavenly light, at another fearful, threatening
tongues of flame. The eye of the saint, directed
upon the fearful significance of the shortness
of earthly life, upon the imminence of the last
judgment, upon eternal life hereafter; this glow-
ering eye in an emaciated body caused men, in
CO SO
7self
He
er a
ya
ome
with
Lion,
gin-
pral
and
ex-
for
he
aful
178
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
the old time world, to tremble to the depths of
their being. To look, to look away and shudder,
to feel anew the fascination of the spectacle, to
yield to it, sate oneself upon it until the soul
trembled with ardor and fever that was the
last pleasure left to classical antiquity when its
sensibilities had been blunted by the arena and
the gladiatoral show.
142
To Sum Up All That Has Been Said: that
condition of soul at which the saint or expectant
saint is rejoiced is a combination of elements
which we are all familiar with, except that under
other influences than those of mere religious
ideation they customarily arouse the censure of
men in the same way that when combined with
religion itself and regarded as the supreme at-
tainment of sanctity, they are object of admira-
tion and even of prayer—at least in more simple
times. Very soon the saint turns upon himself
that severity that is so closely allied to the in-
stinct of domination at any price and which in-
spire even in the most solitary individual the
sense of power. Soon his swollen sensitiveness
of feeling breaks forth from the longing to re-
strain his passions within it and is transformed
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE
179
į
into a longing to master them as if they were
wild steeds, the master impulse being ever that
of a proud spirit; next he craves a complete ces-
sation of all perturbing, fascinating feelings, a
waking sleep, an enduring repose in the lap of a
dull, animal, plant-like indolence. Next he
seeks the battle and extinguishes it within him-
self because weariness and boredom confront
him. He binds his self-deification with self-con-
tempt. He delights in the wild tumult of his
desires and the sharp pain of sin, in the very
idea of being lost. He is able to play his very pas-
sions, for instance the desire to domineer, a trick
so that he goes to the other extreme of abject
humiliation and subjection, so that his over-
wrought soul is without any restraint through
this antithesis. And, finally, when indulgence
in visions, in talks with the dead or with divine
beings overcomes him, this is really but a form
of gratification that he craves, perhaps a form of
gratification in which all other gratifications are
blended. Novalis, one of the authorities in mat-
ters of sanctity, because of his experience and
instinct, betrays the whole secret with the utmost
simplicity when he says: "It is remarkable that
the close connection of gratification, religion and
cruelty has not long ago made men aware of
their inner relationship and common tendency."
180
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
143
Not What the Saint is but what he was in
the eyes of the non-sanctified gives him his his-
torical importance. Because there existed a de-
lusion respecting the saint, his soul states being
falsely viewed and his personality being sunder-
ed as much as possible from humanity as a some-
thing incomparable and supernatural, because of
these things he attained the extraordinary with
which he swayed the imaginations of whole na-
tions and whole ages. Even he knew himself
not for even he regarded his dispositions, passi-
ons and actions in accordance with a system of
interpretation as artificial and exaggerated as
the pneumatic interpretation of the bible. The
distorted and diseased in his own nature with its
blending of spiritual poverty, defective knowl-
edge, ruined health, overwrought nerves, re-
mained as hidden from his view as from the
view of his beholders. He was neither a parti-
cularly good man nor a particularly bad man but
he stood for something that was far above the
human standard in wisdom and goodness. Faith
in him sustained faith in the divine and miracul-
ous, in a religious significance of all existence,
in an impending day of judgment. In the last
rays of the setting sun of the ancient world,
which fell upon the christian peoples, the shad-
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE
181
owy form of the saint attained enormous propor-
tions—to such enormous proportions, indeed,
that down even to our own age, which no longer
believes in god, there are thinkers who believe in
the saints.
144
It stands to reason that this sketch of the saint,
made upon the model of the whole species, can
be confronted with many opposing sketches that
would create more agreeable impression.
There are certain exceptions among the species
who distinguish themselves either by especial
gentleness or especial humanity, and perhaps by
the strength of their own personality. Others
are in the highest degree fascinating because
certain of their delusions shed a particular glow
over their whole being, as is the case with the
founder of christianity who took himself for the
only begotten son of God and hence felt himself
sinless; so that through his imagination—that
should not be too barshly judged since the whole
of antiquity swarmed with sons of god—he at-
tained the same goal, the sense of complete sin-
lessness, complete irresponsibility, that can now
be attained by every individual through science.
- In the same manner I have viewed the saints of
India who occupy an intermediate station between
182
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
the christian saints and the Greek philosophers
and hence are not to be regarded as a pure type.
Knowledge and science as far as they existed-
and superiority to the rest of mankind by logical
discipline and training of the intellectual powers
were insisted upon by the Buddhists as essential
to sanctity, just as they were denounced by the
christian world as the indications of sinfulness.
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