Beyond Good and Evil

venerated types of contemporary morality, how much virtue was outlived, they have always said, “We must remove hence to where you are least at home.” In the face of a world of “modern ideas,” which would like to confine everyone in a corner, in a “specialty,” a philosopher, if there could be philosophers nowadays, would be compelled to place the greatness of man, the conception of “greatness,” precisely in his comprehensiveness and multifariousness, in his all-roundness, he would even determine worth and rank according to the amount and variety of that which a man could bear and take upon himself, according to the extent to which a man could stretch his responsibility. Nowadays the taste and virtue of the age weaken and attenuate the will, nothing is so adapted to the spirit of the age as weakness of will: consequently, in the ideal of the philosopher, strength of will, sternness, and capacity for prolonged resolution, must specially be included in the conception of “greatness,” with as good a right as the opposite doctrine, with its ideal of a silly, renouncing, humble, selfless humanity, was suited to an opposite age⁠—such as the sixteenth century, which suffered from its accumulated energy of will, and from the wildest torrents and floods of selfishness. In the time of Socrates, among men only of worn-out instincts, old conservative Athenians who let themselves go⁠—“for the sake of happiness,” as they said, for the sake of pleasure, as their conduct indicated⁠—and who had continually on their lips the old pompous words to which they had long forfeited the right by the life they led, irony was perhaps necessary for greatness of soul, the wicked Socratic assurance of the old physician and plebeian, who cut ruthlessly into his own flesh, as into the flesh and heart of the “noble,” with a look that said plainly enough “Do not dissemble before me! here⁠—we are equal!” At present, on the contrary, when throughout Europe the herding-animal alone attains to honours, and dispenses honours, when “equality of right” can too readily be transformed into equality in wrong⁠—I mean to say into general war against everything rare, strange, and privileged, against the higher man, the higher soul, the higher duty, the higher responsibility, the creative plenipotence and lordliness⁠—at present it belongs to the conception of “greatness” to be noble, to wish to be apart, to be capable of being different, to stand alone, to have to live by personal initiative, and the philosopher will betray something of his own ideal when he asserts, “He shall be the greatest who can be the most solitary, the most concealed, the most divergent, the man beyond good and evil, the master of his virtues, and of superabundance of will; precisely this shall be called greatness: as diversified as can be entire, as ample as can be full.” And to ask once more the question: Is greatness possible⁠—nowadays?

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It is difficult to learn what a philosopher is, because it cannot be taught: one must “know” it by experience⁠—or one should have the pride not to know it. The fact that at present people all talk of things of which they cannot have any experience, is true more especially and unfortunately as concerns the philosopher and philosophical matters:⁠—the very few know them, are permitted to know them, and all popular ideas about them are false. Thus, for instance, the truly philosophical combination of a bold, exuberant spirituality which runs at presto pace, and a dialectic rigour and necessity which makes no false step, is unknown to most thinkers and scholars from their own experience, and therefore, should anyone speak of it in their presence, it is incredible to them. They conceive of every necessity as troublesome, as a painful compulsory obedience and state of constraint; thinking itself is regarded by them as something slow and hesitating, almost as a trouble, and often enough as “worthy of the sweat of the noble”⁠—but not at all as something easy and divine, closely related to dancing and exuberance! “To think” and to take a matter “seriously,” “arduously”⁠—that is one and the same thing to them; such only has been their “experience.”⁠—Artists have here perhaps a finer intuition; they who know only too well that precisely when they no longer do anything “arbitrarily,” and everything of necessity, their feeling of freedom, of subtlety, of power, of creatively fixing, disposing, and shaping, reaches its climax⁠—in short, that necessity and “freedom of will” are then the same thing with them. There is, in fine, a gradation of rank in psychical states, to which the gradation of rank in the problems corresponds; and the highest problems repel ruthlessly everyone who ventures too near them, without being predestined for their solution by the loftiness and power of his spirituality. Of what use is it for nimble, everyday intellects, or clumsy, honest mechanics and empiricists to press, in their plebeian ambition, close to such problems, and as it were into this “holy of holies”⁠—as so often happens nowadays! But coarse feet must never tread upon such carpets: this is provided for in the primary law of things; the doors remain closed to those intruders, though they may dash and break their heads thereon. People have always to be born to a high station, or, more definitely, they have to be bred for it: a person has only a right to philosophy⁠—taking the word in its higher significance⁠—in virtue of his descent; the ancestors, the “blood,” decide here also. Many generations must have prepared the way for the coming of the philosopher; each of his virtues must have been separately acquired, nurtured, transmitted, and embodied; not only the bold, easy, delicate course and current of his thoughts, but above all the readiness for great responsibilities, the majesty of ruling glance and contemning look, the feeling of separation from the multitude with their duties and virtues, the kindly patronage and defense of whatever is misunderstood and calumniated, be it God or devil, the delight and practice