Beyond Good and Evil

That which philosophers called “giving a basis to morality,” and endeavoured to realize, has, when seen in a right light, proved merely a learned form of good faith in prevailing morality, a new means of its expression, consequently just a matter-of-fact within the sphere of a definite morality, yea, in its ultimate motive, a sort of denial that it is lawful for this morality to be called in question⁠—and in any case the reverse of the testing, analyzing, doubting, and vivisecting of this very faith. Hear, for instance, with what innocence⁠—almost worthy of honour⁠—Schopenhauer represents his own task, and draw your conclusions concerning the scientificness of a “Science” whose latest master still talks in the strain of children and old wives: “The principle,” he says (page 136 of the Grundprobleme der Ethik4), “the axiom about the purport of which all moralists are practically agreed: neminem laede, immo omnes quantum potes juva⁠—is really the proposition which all moral teachers strive to establish,⁠ ⁠… the real basis of ethics which has been sought, like the philosopher’s stone, for centuries.”⁠—The difficulty of establishing the proposition referred to may indeed be great⁠—it is well known that Schopenhauer also was unsuccessful in his efforts; and whoever has thoroughly realized how absurdly false and sentimental this proposition is, in a world whose essence is Will to Power, may be reminded that Schopenhauer, although a pessimist, actually⁠—played the flute⁠ ⁠… daily after dinner: one may read about the matter in his biography. A question by the way: a pessimist, a repudiator of God and of the world, who makes a halt at morality⁠—who assents to morality, and plays the flute to laede-neminem morals, what? Is that really⁠—a pessimist?

187

Apart from the value of such assertions as “there is a categorical imperative in us,” one can always ask: What does such an assertion indicate about him who makes it? There are systems of morals which are meant to justify their author in the eyes of other people; other systems of morals are meant to tranquilize him, and make him self-satisfied; with other systems he wants to crucify and humble himself, with others he wishes to take revenge, with others to conceal himself, with others to glorify himself and gave superiority and distinction⁠—this system of morals helps its author to forget, that system makes him, or something of him, forgotten, many a moralist would like to exercise power and creative arbitrariness over mankind, many another, perhaps, Kant especially, gives us to understand by his morals that “what is estimable in me, is that I know how to obey⁠—and with you it shall not be otherwise than with me!” In short, systems of morals are only a sign-language of the emotions.

188

In contrast to laisser-aller, every system of morals is a sort of tyranny against “nature” and also against “reason,” that is, however, no objection, unless one should again decree by some system of morals, that all kinds of tyranny and unreasonableness are unlawful. What is essential and invaluable in every system of morals, is that it is a long constraint. In order to understand Stoicism, or Port Royal, or Puritanism, one should remember the constraint under which every language has attained to strength and freedom⁠—the metrical constraint, the tyranny of rhyme and rhythm. How much trouble have the poets and orators of every nation given themselves!⁠—not excepting some of the prose writers of today, in whose ear dwells an inexorable conscientiousness⁠—“for the sake of a folly,” as utilitarian bunglers say, and thereby deem themselves wise⁠—“from submission to arbitrary laws,” as the anarchists say, and thereby fancy themselves “free,” even free-spirited. The singular fact remains, however, that everything of the nature of freedom, elegance, boldness, dance, and masterly certainty, which exists or has existed, whether it be in thought itself, or in administration, or in speaking and persuading, in art just as in conduct, has only developed by means of the tyranny of such arbitrary law, and in all seriousness, it is not at all improbable that precisely this is “nature” and “natural”⁠—and not laisser-aller! Every artist knows how different from the state of letting himself go, is his “most natural” condition, the free arranging, locating, disposing, and constructing in the moments of “inspiration”⁠—and how strictly and delicately he then obeys a thousand laws, which, by their very rigidness and precision, defy all formulation by means of ideas (even the most stable idea has, in comparison therewith, something floating, manifold, and ambiguous in it). The essential thing “in heaven and in earth” is, apparently (to repeat it once more), that there should be long obedience in the same direction, there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living; for instance, virtue, art, music, dancing, reason, spirituality⁠—anything whatever that is transfiguring, refined, foolish, or divine. The long bondage of the spirit, the distrustful constraint in the communicability of ideas, the discipline which the thinker imposed on himself to think in accordance with the rules of a church or a court, or conformable to Aristotelian premises, the persistent spiritual will to interpret everything that happened according to a Christian scheme, and in every occurrence to rediscover and justify the Christian God:⁠—all this violence, arbitrariness, severity, dreadfulness, and unreasonableness, has proved itself the disciplinary means whereby the European spirit has attained its strength, its remorseless curiosity and subtle mobility; granted also that much irrecoverable strength and spirit had to be stifled, suffocated, and spoilt in the process (for here, as everywhere, “nature” shows herself as she is, in all her extravagant and indifferent magnificence, which is shocking, but nevertheless noble). That for centuries European thinkers only thought in order to prove something⁠—nowadays, on the contrary, we are suspicious of every thinker who “wishes to prove something”⁠—that it was always settled beforehand what was to be the result of their strictest thinking, as it was perhaps in the Asiatic astrology of former times,