The Rudolf Steiner Archive

2. The Superman

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[ 1 ] All human striving, like that of every living being, consists in satisfying instincts and drives implanted by nature in the best possible way. When people strive for virtue, justice, knowledge and art, it is because virtue, justice and so on are the means by which human instincts can develop in the way that corresponds to their nature. The instincts would atrophy without these means. It is now a peculiarity of man that he forgets this connection of his living conditions with his natural instincts and regards those means to a natural, powerful life as something that in itself has an unconditional value. Man then says: virtue, justice, knowledge and so on must be pursued for their own sake. They do not have a value because they serve life, but rather life only acquires a value because it strives for these ideal goods. Man is not there to live according to his instincts, like the animal; rather, he should ennoble his instincts by placing them in the service of higher purposes. In this way, man comes to worship as ideals that which he himself has created for the satisfaction of his instincts and which give his life the right consecration. He demands submission to the ideals that he values more highly than himself. He detaches himself from the mother earth of reality and wants to give his existence a higher meaning and purpose. He invents an unnatural origin for his ideals. He calls them the "will of God", the "eternal moral commandments". He wants to strive for "truth for the sake of truth", "virtue for the sake of virtue". He only considers himself a good person when he has supposedly succeeded in taming his selfishness, i.e. his natural instincts, and selfishly following an ideal goal. To such an idealist, the person who has not achieved such self-conquest is considered ignoble and "evil".

[ 2 ] Now, all ideals originally stem from natural instincts. Even what the Christian regards as virtue, which God has revealed to him, was originally invented by men to satisfy some instinct or other. The natural origin has been forgotten and the divine one added. It is similar with the virtues that philosophers and preachers of morality put forward.

[ 3 ] If people only had healthy instincts and determined their ideals in accordance with them, the theoretical error about the origin of these ideals would do no harm. The idealists would have wrong views about the origin of their goals, but these goals themselves would be healthy and life would have to flourish. But there are unhealthy instincts that are not aimed at strengthening and promoting life, but at weakening and stunting it. These instincts take possession of the theoretical error mentioned above and make it the practical purpose of life. They tempt man to say that a perfect man is not the one who wants to serve himself, his life, but the one who devotes himself to the realization of an ideal. Under the influence of these instincts, man does not merely persist in mistakenly attributing an unnatural or supernatural origin to his goals, but he actually creates such ideals for himself or adopts them from others, which do not serve the needs of life. He no longer strives to bring to light the powers inherent in his personality, but lives according to a model imposed on his nature. Whether he takes this goal from a religion or whether he determines it himself on the basis of certain presuppositions not inherent in his nature: that is not the point. The philosopher who has a general purpose of mankind in mind and derives his moral ideals from it, puts fetters on human nature just as much as the founder of religion who says to men: this is the goal that God has set for you; and you must follow it. It is also irrelevant whether man sets out to become an image of God or whether he invents an ideal of the "perfect man" and wants to become as similar to this as possible. Only the individual human being and the drives and instincts of this individual human being are real. Only by focusing on the needs of his own person can man experience what is good for his life. The individual human being does not become "perfect" when he denies himself and becomes similar to a role model, but when he realizes that which urges him towards realization. Human activity does not only acquire meaning when it serves an impersonal, external purpose; it has its meaning in itself.

[ 4 ] The anti-idealist will also see an expression of instinct in man's unhealthy turning away from his very own instincts. He knows that man himself can only accomplish what is contrary to instinct out of instinct. He will, however, fight against instinctive abnormality, just as a doctor fights against an illness, even though he knows that it has naturally arisen from certain causes. So the anti-idealist must not be accused of claiming that everything that man strives for, including all ideals, has arisen naturally; yet you are fighting idealism. Certainly ideals arise just as naturally as illnesses; but the healthy person fights idealism just as he fights illness. The idealist, however, sees ideals as something that must be cherished and nurtured.

[ 5 ] The belief that man only becomes perfect when he serves "higher" purposes is, in Nietzsche's opinion, something that must be overcome. Man must reflect on himself and realize that he has only created ideals in order to serve himself. Living according to nature is healthier than chasing after ideals that supposedly do not come from reality. The person who does not serve impersonal goals, but who seeks the purpose and meaning of his existence in himself, who makes such virtues his own that serve his development of strength, his perfection of power - Nietzsche places this person higher than the selfless idealist.

[ 6 ] This is what he proclaims through his "Zarathustra". For Nietzsche, the sovereign individual, who knows that he can only live out of his nature and who sees his personal goal in a way of life that corresponds to his nature, is the superhuman, in contrast to the person who believes that life has been given to him in order to serve a purpose outside of himself.

[ 7 ] Zarathustra teaches the superhuman, that is, the human being who knows how to live according to nature. He teaches people to regard their virtues as their creatures; he tells them to despise those who regard their virtues higher than themselves.

[ 8 ] Zarathustra has gone into solitude in order to free himself from the humility in which men bow before their virtues. He only walks among people again when he has learned to despise the virtues that subdue life and do not want to serve life. He now moves easily like a dancer, for he follows only himself and his will and pays no attention to the lines drawn for him by the virtues. The belief that it is wrong to follow only oneself no longer weighs heavily on his back. Zarathustra no longer sleeps in order to dream of ideals; he is a waking man who freely confronts reality. Man, who has lost himself and lies in the dust before his own creatures, is a dirty river to him. To him, the superman is a sea that absorbs this stream without becoming impure itself. For the superman has found himself; he recognizes himself as master and creator of his virtues. Zarathustra has experienced the great thing that all virtue has become disgusting to him, which is set above man.

[ 9 ] "What is the greatest thing you can experience? This is the hour of great contempt. The hour in which even your happiness becomes disgusting to you, as do your reason and your virtue."

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[ 10 ] The wisdom of Zarathustra is not to the liking of the "modern educated". They want to make all people equal. If everyone only strives for one goal, they say, then there is contentment and happiness on earth. People should, they demand, hold back their particular personal desires and only serve the common good, the common happiness. Peace and tranquillity will then reign on earth. If everyone has the same needs, then no one will disturb the circles of others. The individual should not have himself and his individual goals in mind, but everyone should live according to the template once it has been determined. All individual life should disappear and all should become members of the common world order.

[ 11 ] "No shepherd and one flock! Everyone wants the same, everyone is the same: whoever feels differently goes voluntarily to the madhouse.

[ 12 ] 'Once all the world was mad' - say the finest and wink.

[ 13 ] You are wise and know everything that has happened: so you have no end to mock. You still quarrel, but you soon make up; otherwise it spoils your stomach."

[ 14 ] Zarathustra has been a hermit too long to pay homage to such wisdom. He has heard the peculiar tones that sound from within the personality when man stands apart from the noise of the market, where one merely repeats the words of another. And he would like to call it into people's ears: listen to the voices that sound only in each one of you. For they are only natural, they only tell everyone what they are capable of. An enemy of life, of rich, full life, is the one who lets these voices go unheard and listens to the common cry of mankind. Zarathustra does not want to speak to the friends of the equality of all people. They could only misunderstand him. For they would believe that his superman is the ideal model to which all should become equal. But Zarathustra does not want to tell people how they should be; he only wants to refer each individual to himself and tell him: leave yourself to yourself, follow yourself alone, place yourself above virtue, wisdom and knowledge. Zarathustra speaks to those who want to seek themselves; not to a crowd seeking a common goal, but to those companions who, like him, go their own way. They alone understand him, for they know that he does not want to say: see, this is the superman, become like him, but: see, I have sought me; this is how I am, as I teach you; go and seek yourselves likewise, then you will have the superman.

[ 15 ] "I will sing my song to the hermits and to the two-settlers; and to those who still have ears for the unheard, I will make their hearts heavy with my happiness."

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[ 16 ] Two animals: the snake, as the cleverest, and the eagle, as the proudest, accompany Zarathustra. They are the symbols of his instincts. Zarathustra values wisdom because it teaches man to find the winding paths of reality; it teaches him what he needs to live. And Zarathustra also loves pride, for pride brings forth man's self-respect, through which he comes to regard himself as the meaning and purpose of his existence. The proud man does not place his wisdom, his virtue, above himself. Pride prevents people from forgetting themselves above "higher, holier" goals. Zarathustra would rather lose wisdom than pride. For wisdom that is not accompanied by pride does not see itself as the work of man. Those who lack pride and self-respect believe that their wisdom is a gift from heaven. Such a one says: man is a fool, and he has only as much wisdom as heaven wants to give him.

[ 17 ] "And if one day my wisdom leaves me: alas, it loves to fly away! - may my pride then still fly with my folly!"

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[ 18 ] The human spirit must undergo three transformations until it has found itself. This is what Zarathustra teaches. The spirit is reverent first. It calls virtue what weighs on it. He humbles himself in order to elevate his virtue. He says: all wisdom is with God, and God's ways I must follow. God lays the heaviest things upon me to test my strength, to see whether it is strong and patient. Only the patient is strong. I want to obey, says the spirit at this stage, and carry out the commandments of the world spirit without asking what the meaning of these commandments is. The spirit feels the pressure exerted on it by a higher power. The spirit does not go its own ways, but the ways of the one it serves. The time comes when the spirit realizes that no God speaks to it. Then it wants to be free and master in its own world. He searches for a guideline for his destiny. He no longer asks the spirit of the world how he should organize his life. But he strives for a firm law, a holy "thou shalt". He is looking for a yardstick to measure the value of things; he is looking for a sign to distinguish between good and evil. There must be a rule for my life that does not depend on me, on my will, says the spirit at this stage. I want to submit to this rule. I am free, says the spirit, but only free to obey such a rule.

[ 19 ] The spirit also overcomes this stage. It becomes like the child who does not ask in his play: how should I do this or that, but who only carries out his will, who only follows himself. "His will now wants the spirit, his world wins the world-lost one for himself.

[ 20 ] I told you three transformations of the spirit: how the spirit became a camel, and the camel became a lion, and the lion finally became a child. - Thus spoke Zarathustra."

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[ 21 ] What do the wise who place virtue above man want? asks Zarathustra. They say: only those who have done their duty, who have followed the holy "thou shalt" can have peace of mind. A person should be virtuous so that he can dream of fulfilled ideals after his duty is done and not feel remorse. The virtuous say that a person with remorse is like a sleeper whose night's rest is disturbed by bad dreams.

[ 22 ] "Few know this: but one must have all the virtues in order to sleep well. Will I bear false witness? Will I commit adultery?

[ 23 ] Will I lust after my neighbor's maid? All this is not compatible with a good night's sleep ...

[ 24 ] Peace with God and your neighbor: that's what good sleep wants And peace with your neighbor's devil, too! Otherwise he will kill you at night."

[ 25 ] The virtuous man does not do what his impulse calls him to do, but what brings about peace of mind. He lives to be able to dream about life in peace. He prefers it even more when his sleep, which he calls peace of mind, is not disturbed by dreams. In other words, the virtuous man prefers it when he receives the rules for his actions from somewhere and can otherwise enjoy his peace of mind. "His wisdom is to wake in order to sleep well. And truly, if life had no meaning and I had to choose nonsense, this would also be the most worthy nonsense for me to choose," says Zarathustra.

[ 26 ] There was also a time for Zarathustra when he believed that a spirit living outside the world, a god, had created the world. Zarathustra thought of a dissatisfied, suffering God. Zarathustra once thought that God had created the world to give himself satisfaction, to get away from his suffering. But he came to realize that it was a delusion that he had created for himself. "Ah, brothers, this God I created was the work and madness of man, like all the gods!" Zarathustra learned to use his senses and observe the world. And he became satisfied with the world; his thoughts no longer wandered into the hereafter. He was once blind and could not see the world, so he sought his salvation outside the world. But Zarathustra learned to see and recognize that the world had its meaning in itself.

[ 27 ] "My ego taught me a new pride, which I teach people: no longer to bury my head in the sand of heavenly things, but to carry it freely, an earthly head that creates meaning for the earth!"

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[ 28 ] The idealists have divided man into body and soul, they have divided all existence into idea and reality. And they have made the soul, the spirit, the idea into something particularly valuable in order to be able to despise reality, the body, all the more. But Zarathustra says: There is only one reality, only one body, and the soul is only something in the body, the idea only something in reality. One unity are the body and soul of man; body and spirit spring from one root. The spirit is only there because there is a body that has the power to develop the spirit in itself. Like the plant itself develops the flower, the body itself develops the spirit.

[ 29 ] "Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, there is a powerful master, an unknown sage called Self. He dwells in your body, he is your body."

[ 30 ] He who has a sense for the real seeks the spirit, the soul in and of the real, he seeks reason in the real; only he who regards reality as spiritless, as "merely natural", as "crude", gives the spirit, the soul a special existence. He makes reality the mere dwelling place of the spirit. But such a person also lacks the sense for the perception of the spirit itself. It is only because he does not see the spirit in reality that he looks for it elsewhere.

[ 31 ] "There is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom...

[ 32 ] The body is one great reason, a multiplicity with one mind, one war and one peace, one flock and one shepherd.

[ 33 ] The tool of your body is also your small reason, my brother, which you call 'spirit', a small tool and toy of your great reason."

[ 34 ] A fool is he who tears the blossom from the plant and believes that the torn blossom will now develop into fruit. He is also a fool who separates the spirit from nature and believes that such a separated spirit can still create.

[ 35 ] People with sick instincts have made the separation of mind and body. Only a sick instinct can say: my kingdom is not of this world. A healthy instinct's realm is only this world.

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[ 36 ] What ideals they have created, these despisers of reality! Let's take a look at them, the ideals of the ascetics who say: turn your gaze away from this world and look to the hereafter! What do ascetic ideals mean? With this question and the suppositions with which he answers it, Nietzsche has given us the deepest insight into his heart, which is unsatisfied by modern Western culture. ("Genealogy of Morals", 3rd treatise.)

[ 37 ] If an artist, such as Richard Wagner, in the last period of his creative work, becomes a follower of the ascetic ideal, this does not mean much. Throughout his life, the artist stands above his creations. He looks down on his realities from above. He creates realities that are not his reality. "A Homer would not have written an Achilles, a Goethe a Faust, if Homer had been an Achilles, and if Goethe had been a Faust." ("Genealogy", 3rd treatise, § 4.) If such an artist takes his own existence seriously, wants to translate himself and his personal views into reality, it is no wonder that something very unreal emerges. Richard Wagner completely changed his mind about his art when he became aware of Schopenhauer's philosophy. Previously, he considered music to be a means of expression that needed something to give it expression, the drama. In his pamphlet "Opera and Drama", written in 183 1, he states that the greatest error one can make with regard to opera is "that a means of expression (music) was made the end, but the end of expression (drama) was made the means."

[ 38 ] He professed a different view after becoming acquainted with Schopenhauer's doctrine of music. Schopenhauer is of the opinion that the essence of things itself speaks to us through music. The eternal will, which lives in all things, is embodied in all other arts only in its images, in the ideas; music is not a mere image of the will: in it the will reveals itself immediately. Schopenhauer believes he can hear directly in the sounds of music what appears to us in all our ideas only as a reflection: the eternal ground of all being, the will. For Schopenhauer, music brings news from the beyond. This view had an effect on Richard Wagner. He no longer regarded music as a means of expressing real human passions, as they are embodied in drama, but as "a kind of mouthpiece of the 'self' of things, a telephone of the beyond". Richard Wagner now no longer believed that he could express reality in sound; "he no longer spoke only music, this ventriloquist of God, - he spoke metaphysics: what wonder that one day he finally spoke ascetic ideals?..." ("Genealogy", 3rd treatise, § 5.)

[ 39 ] If Richard Wagner had merely changed his view of the meaning of music, Nietzsche would have no reason to accuse him of anything. Nietzsche could then at most say: Wagner created all kinds of wrong theories about art in addition to his works of art. But the fact that Wagner also embodied Schopenhauer's belief in the afterlife in his works of art in the last period of his creative work, that he used his music to glorify the escape from reality: that went against Nietzsche's taste.

[ 40 ] But the "Wagner case" says nothing when it comes to the meaning of glorifying the hereafter at the expense of this world, when it comes to the meaning of ascetic ideals. Artists do not stand on their own two feet. Just as Richard Wagner is dependent on Schopenhauer, artists have "at all times been the valets of a morality or philosophy or religion".

[ 41 ] It is different when philosophers advocate contempt for reality, for ascetic ideals. They do this out of a deep instinct.

[ 42] Schopenhauer betrayed this instinct in the description he gives of the creation and enjoyment of a work of art. "That the work of art thus facilitates so much the conception of ideas, in which aesthetic pleasure consists, is due not merely to the fact that art, by emphasizing the essential and separating out the inessential, represents things more clearly and characteristically, but just as much to the fact that the complete silence of the will required for the purely objective conception of the essence of things is most surely achieved by the fact that the object looked at does not itself lie in the realm of things that are capable of a relation to the will." ("Supplements to Book 3 of 'The World as Will and Representation'", ch. 30. ) "But when an external occasion or an inner mood suddenly lifts us out of the endless stream of volition, snatches cognition from the slave service of the will, attention is now no longer directed to the motives of volition, but grasps things free from their relation to the will, thus without interest, without subjectivity, purely objectively contemplating them, completely devoted to them, insofar as they are mere representations, not insofar as they are motives: then is . ... the painless state, which Epicuros praised as the highest good and as the state of the gods, has occurred: for that moment we are rid of the vile urge of will, we celebrate the sabbath of the penal labor of the will, the wheel of Ixion stands still." ("World as Will and Imagination", § 38.)

[ 43 ] This is a description of a kind of aesthetic pleasure that only occurs in the philosopher. Nietzsche contrasts it with another description "made by a real spectator and artist -Stendhal", who calls the beautiful "une promesse de bonheur". Schopenhauer wants to eliminate all interest of the will, all real life, when it comes to contemplating a work of art and only enjoy it with the spirit; Stendhal sees in the work of art a promise of happiness, i.e. a reference to life, and sees the value of art in this connection between art and life.

[ 44 ] Kant demands of the beautiful work of art that it pleases without interest, that is, that it lifts us out of real life and grants us a purely spiritual pleasure.

[ 45 ] What does the philosopher seek in artistic pleasure? Relief from reality. The philosopher wants to be transported into a mood alien to reality by the work of art. He thereby betrays his basic instinct. The philosopher feels most at ease in those moments when he can get away from reality. His view of aesthetic pleasure shows that he does not love reality.

[ 46 ] The philosophers do not tell us in their theories what the spectator who is turned towards life demands of the work of art, but only what is appropriate to themselves. And for the philosopher, turning away from life is very beneficial. He does not want to let reality interfere with his convoluted paths of thought. Thinking thrives better when the philosopher turns away from life. It is no wonder, then, that this basic philosophical instinct becomes downright hostile to life. We find such a mood in the majority of philosophers. And it stands to reason that the philosopher develops his own antipathy towards life into a doctrine and demands that all people profess such a doctrine. Schopenhauer did this. He found that the noise of the world disturbed his thinking. He felt that the best way to think about reality was to escape from it. At the same time, he forgot that all thinking about reality only has value if it arises from this reality. He did not take into account that the philosopher's withdrawal from reality can only happen so that the philosophical thoughts that arise at a distance from life can then serve life all the better. If the philosopher wants to impose the basic instinct, which is only beneficial to him as a philosopher, on the whole of humanity, then he becomes an enemy of life.

[ 47 ] The philosopher who regards flight from the world not as a means to create environmentally friendly thoughts, but as an end, as a goal, can only create worthless things. The true philosopher flees reality on the one hand only to bore himself all the deeper into it on the other. But it is understandable that this basic instinct can easily seduce the philosopher into considering the flight from the world as such to be valuable. The philosopher then becomes an advocate of world denial. He teaches renunciation of life, the ascetic ideal. He finds: "A certain asceticism... a hard and cheerful renunciation of the best will is one of the favorable conditions of the highest spirituality, and at the same time one of its most natural consequences: so it is not surprising from the outset that the ascetic ideal has never been treated by philosophers without some bias." ("Genealogy of Morals", 3rd treatise, § 9.)

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[ 48 ] The ascetic ideals of the priests have a different origin. What arises in the philosopher through the overgrowth of an instinct that is justified in him forms the basic ideal of the great danger that threatens the healthy, the strong, the self-confident from the unhealthy, the downcast, the broken. The latter hate the healthy and the physically and spiritually priestly work. The priest sees an error in man's devotion to real life; he demands that this life be disregarded in comparison to another life that is guided by higher than merely natural forces. The priest denies that real life has a meaning in itself, and he demands that this meaning be given to it through the implantation of a higher will. He sees life in temporality as imperfect and contrasts it with an eternal, perfect life. The priest teaches turning away from temporality and entering into the eternal, immutable. I would like to cite a few sentences from the famous 14th century book "The German Theology" as particularly characteristic of the priestly way of thinking, of which Luther says that he learned more about God, Christ and man from no book, with the exception of the Bible and St. Augustine, than from this one. Schopenhauer also finds that the spirit of Christianity is perfectly and powerfully expressed in this book. After the author, who is unknown to us, has explained that all things in the world are only imperfect and divided compared to the perfect, "which has comprehended and determined all beings in itself and in its essence, and without which and apart from which there is no true being and in which all things have their essence", he explains that man can only penetrate this essence if he has "lost all creatureliness, creatureliness, ego, selfhood and the like" and has brought them to nothing in himself. What has flowed out from the perfect and what man recognizes as his real world is characterized as follows: "This is not a true being and has no being other than in the perfect, but it is an accident or a radiance and an appearance that is no being or has no being other than in the fire where the radiance flows out, or in the sun, or in a light. -Scripture and faith and truth say that sin is nothing other than that the creature turns away from the unchangeable good and turns to the changeable, that is, that it turns from the perfect to the divided and imperfect, and most of all to itself. Now notice. When the creature assumes something good, as being, life, knowledge, cognition, faculty, and lately all that is to be called good, and thinks that it is that, or that it is hers, or that it belongs to her, or that it is of her: as often and as much as this happens, she turns away. (1) What did the devil do differently, or what was his fall and turning away different, but that he assumed that he was also something and that something was his and that something also belonged to him*? This assumption and his I and his me, his me and his mine, that was his turning away and his fall. So it still is... For all that is considered good or should be called good belongs to no one, but to the eternal true good, which is God alone, and whoever accepts it does wrong and against God." (i., 2nd, 4th chap. of "Deutsch. Theol.", 3rd ed., translated by Pfeiffer.)

[ 49 ] These sentences express the attitude of every priest. They express the actual character of priesthood. And this character is the opposite of that which Nietzsche describes as the superior, the worthy of life. The superior type of man wants to be everything that he is only through himself; he wants everything that he considers good and calls good to belong to no one but himself.

[ 50 ] But that inferior disposition is not an exceptional case. "It is one of the broadest and longest facts in existence. Read from a distant star, the majuscule script of our earthly existence would perhaps lead to the conclusion that the earth is the actual ascetic star, a corner of discontented, haughty and adverse creatures who cannot rid themselves of a deep displeasure with themselves, with the earth, with all life." ("Genealogy of Morals", 3rd treatise, § 11.) The ascetic priest is a necessity because the majority of people suffer from an "inhibition and fatigue" of the vital forces, because they suffer from reality. The ascetic priest is the comforter and physician of those who suffer from life. He comforts them by telling them: this life you are suffering from is not the true life; the true life is much easier to reach for those who suffer from this life than for the healthy who cling to this life and devote themselves to it. Through such sayings, the priest breeds contempt, the slander of this real life. He finally produces the attitude that says: in order to attain true life, this real life must be denied. The ascetic priest seeks his strength in spreading this attitude. By cultivating this attitude, he eliminates happy people who take their strength from nature. The priest seeks to suppress this hatred, which should be expressed by the weak waging a constant war of destruction against the strong. He therefore portrays the strong as those who lead a worthless, degrading life and claims that true life is only attainable for those who are harmed by life on earth. "The ascetic priest must be seen as the predestined savior, shepherd and advocate of the sick flock: only then can we understand his immense historical mission. The rule over the suffering is his realm, his instinct directs him to it, in it he has his own art, his mastery, his kind of happiness." ("Genealogy", 3rd treatise, § 15.) It is no wonder that such a way of thinking finally leads its followers not only to despise life, but to work towards its destruction. If people are told that only the suffering, the weak can really attain a higher life, then suffering, weakness will finally be searched. To inflict pain on oneself, to kill the will in oneself completely, that becomes the goal of lust for the one who strives for actual holiness; Throwing away all property, abandoning every dwelling place, all relatives, deep, complete solitude, spent in silent contemplation, with voluntary penance and terrible, slow self-torture, to the complete mortification of the will, which ultimately leads to voluntary death through hunger, also by going to meet the crocodiles, by falling from the sacred rocky summit in the Himalayas, by being buried alive, also by being thrown under the wheels of the immense chariot that drives the images of the gods around amidst the singing, cheering and dancing of the bayaders", these are the last fruits of the ascetic attitude. (Schopenhauer, "World as Will and Representation", § 68.)

[ 51 ] This way of thinking has sprung from the suffering of life, and it directs its weapons against life. If the healthy, joyful person is infected by it, then it wipes out the healthy, strong instincts in him. Nietzsche's work culminates in asserting something else in opposition to this doctrine, a view for the healthy, the well-adjusted. Let the degenerate, the depraved seek their salvation in the teachings of the ascetic priests; Nietzsche wants to gather the healthy around him and tell them an opinion that is better suited to them than any ideal that is hostile to life.

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[ 52 ] The ascetic ideal is still to be found even in the cultivators of modern science. This science boasts that it has thrown all old beliefs overboard and only adheres to reality. It does not want to accept anything that cannot be counted, calculated, weighed, seen and grasped. Modern scholars are indifferent to the fact that, in this way, "existence is degraded to an arithmetic exercise and couch potato for mathematicians". ("Fröhliche Wissenschaft", § 373.) Such a scholar does not ascribe to himself the right to interpret the events of the world that pass before his senses and his reason, so that he can control them with his thinking. He says: the truth must be independent of my art of interpretation, and I do not have to create the truth, but I must allow it to be dictated to me by the phenomena of the world.

[ 53 ] What this modern science ultimately arrives at when it abstains from all interpretation of world phenomena was expressed by a follower of this science (Richard Wahle) in a recently published book ("Das Ganze der Philosophie und ihr Ende"): "What could the mind, which, peering into the world and rolling around in itself the questions about the nature and purpose of events, finally find as an answer? It happened to him that, as he stood there so seemingly in opposition to the surrounding world, he dissolved and merged with all events in a flight of occurrences. He no longer 'knew' the world; he said, I am not sure that knowers are there, but occurrences are there per se. Of course, they come in such a way that the concept of knowledge could arise prematurely, unjustifiably. And 'concepts' flitted up to shed light on the occurrences, but they were will-o'-the-wisps, souls of desires for knowledge, pathetic, in their evidence meaningless postulates of an unfulfilled form of knowledge. Unknown factors must alternate. Darkness was spread over their nature. Occurrences are the veil of the true."

[ 54 ] Modern scholars do not think that the human personality can put meaning into the occurrences of reality and supplement the unknown factors that prevail in the alternation of events by its own ability. They do not want to interpret the flight of phenomena through the ideas that come from their personality. They merely want to observe and describe the phenomena, but not interpret them. They want to remain with the facts and not allow the creative imagination to form a self-structured picture of reality.

[ 55 ] When an imaginative natural scientist, such as Ernst Haeckel, creates an overall picture of the development of organic life on earth from the results of individual observations, these fanatics of factuality attack him and accuse him of sinning against the truth. They cannot see the pictures he draws of life in nature with their eyes or grasp them with their hands. They prefer impersonal judgment to judgment colored by the spirit of personality. They would prefer to eliminate personality altogether in their observations.

[ 56 ] It is the ascetic ideal that dominates the fanatics of factuality. They want a truth beyond personal, individual judgment. What man can "fantasize" into things does not concern them; the "truth" is something absolutely perfect to them, a god; man should discover it, surrender to it, but not create it. Naturalists and historians are currently animated by the same spirit of ascetic ideals. Everywhere enumerating, describing facts, and nothing more. Any attribution of facts is frowned upon. All personal judgment should be avoided.

[ 57 ] Among these modern scholars there are also atheists. However, these atheists are no freer spirits than their contemporaries who believe in God. The existence of God cannot be proven with the means of modern science. As one of the luminaries of modern science (Du Bois-Reymond) said about the assumption of a "world soul": before the natural scientist decides to make such an assumption, he demands "that somewhere in the world, bedded in neuroglia and fed with warm arterial blood under proper pressure, he be shown a convolute of ganglion balls and nerve fibers corresponding in size to the spiritual capacity of such a soul" ("Grenzen des Naturerkennens"). Modern science rejects belief in God because this belief cannot exist alongside belief in "objective truth". However, this "objective truth" is nothing other than a new God who has triumphed over the old one. "The unconditional honest atheism (- and its air alone we breathe, we more spiritual people of this age! ) is therefore not in opposition to that [ascetic] ideal, as it appears; it is rather only one of its last phases of development, one of its final forms and inner conclusions, - it is the awe-inspiring catastrophe of two thousand years of cultivation towards the truth, which in the end forbids itself the lie in the belief in God." ("Genealogy", 3rd treatise, § 27.) The Christian seeks the truth in God because he considers God to be the source of all truth; the modern atheist rejects belief in God because his God, his ideal of truth, forbids him this belief. The modern spirit sees in God a human creation; in "truth" he sees something that exists by itself without any human intervention. The truly "free spirit" goes even further. It asks: "What does all will to truth mean?" Why truth? All truth arises from the fact that man thinks about the phenomena of the world, forms thoughts about things. Man himself is the creator of truth. The "free spirit" becomes aware of its creation of truth. He no longer regards truth as something to which he is subordinate; he regards it as his creature.

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[ 58 ] People endowed with weak, misguided cognitive instincts do not dare to use the concept-forming power of their personality to make sense of world phenomena. They want the "laws of nature" to appear before their senses as facts. A subjective view of the world formed in accordance with the human mind seems worthless to them. But the mere observation of events in the world only provides us with an incoherent and yet not in detail separate world view. To the mere observer of things, no object, no event appears more important, more meaningful than the other. The rudimentary organ of an organism, which perhaps, when we have thought about it, appears without any significance for the development of life, stands there with just the same claim to attention as the noblest part of the organism, as long as we merely look at the objective facts. Cause and effect are successive phenomena that flow into one another without being separated by anything as long as we mere observe them. Only when we begin to think and relate the phenomena that flow into one another to one another in our minds does a lawful connection become visible. Only thinking explains one phenomenon as the cause and the other as the effect. We see a raindrop falling on the ground and causing a depression. A being that cannot think will not see cause and effect here, but only a succession of phenomena. A thinking being isolates the phenomena, brings the isolated facts into a relationship and designates one fact as the cause and the other as the effect. Observation stimulates the intellect to produce thoughts and to merge these with the observed facts into a thoughtful picture of the world. Man does this because he wants to master the sum of his observations mentally. An emptiness of thought that confronts him presses down on him like an unknown force. He resists this power, overcomes it by making it conceivable. All counting, weighing and calculating of phenomena happens for the same reason. It is the will to power that lives itself out in the cognitive drive. (I have described the process of cognition in detail in my two writings: "Truth and Science" and "The Philosophy of Freedom").

[ 59 ] The dull, weak intellect does not want to admit to itself that it is itself that interprets the phenomena as an expression of its striving for power. It also considers its interpretation to be a fact. And it asks: how does man come to find such a fact in reality? He asks, for example: how is it that the intellect recognizes cause and effect in two successive phenomena? All epistemologists from Locke, Hume and Kant to the present day have dealt with this question. The sophistry they have devoted to this investigation has remained unfruitful. The explanation is given in the striving of the human intellect for power. The question is not at all: are judgments, thoughts about phenomena possible, but: does the human intellect need such judgments? Because it needs them, that is why it applies them, and not because they are possible. It is a matter of "understanding that for the purpose of preserving beings of our species such judgments must be believed to be true; which is why they could of course still be false judgments!" ("Beyond Good and Evil", § II.) "And we are generally inclined to maintain that the most false judgments... are the most indispensable to us, that without allowing logical fictions to prevail, without measuring reality against the purely invented world of the unconditional, self-same, without a constant falsification of the world by number, man could not live, - that to renounce false judgments would be to renounce life, a negation of life." (Ibid., § 4.) If this statement seems paradoxical to you, consider how fruitful the application of geometry to reality is, although nowhere in the world are there really geometrically regular lines, surfaces and so on.

[ 60 ] When the dull, weak intellect realizes that all judgments about things come from itself, are produced by it and fused with observations, then it does not have the courage to apply these judgments without reserve. He says: judgments of this kind cannot give us any knowledge of the "true essence" of things. This "true essence" therefore remains closed to our knowledge.

[ 61 ] In yet another way, the weak intellect seeks to prove that nothing fixed can be gained through human cognition. He says: Man sees, hears, feels things and processes. What he perceives are impressions on his sensory organs. When he perceives a color, a sound, he can only say: my eye, my ear are determined in a certain way to perceive color, sound. Man does not perceive something outside himself, but only a determination, a modification of his own organs. In perception, the eye, the ear and so on are caused to feel in a certain way; they are put into a certain state. Man perceives these states of his own organs as colors, sounds, smells and so on. In all perception, man only perceives his own states. What he calls the outside world is only composed of these states; it is therefore in the true sense his work. He does not know the things that cause him to spin the outside world out of himself; only their effects on his organs. The world appears in this illumination like a dream dreamed by man, which is prompted by something unknown.

[ 62 ] If this thought is taken to its logical conclusion, it leads to the following postscript. Man also only knows his organs insofar as he perceives them; they are members of his perceptual world. And man only becomes aware of his own self insofar as he spins the images of the world out of himself. He perceives dream images and, in the midst of these dream images, an "I" that these dream images pass by. Every dream image appears in the company of this "I". You could also say that every dream image always appears in the midst of the dream world in relation to this "I". This "I" clings to the dream images as a destiny, as a quality. It is thus, as a determination of dream images, itself a dreamlike quality. J. G. Fichte summarizes this view in the words: "What arises through knowledge and from knowledge is only knowledge. All knowledge, however, is only an image, and something is always required in it that corresponds to the image. This demand cannot be satisfied by any knowledge; and a system of knowledge is necessary, a system of mere images, without all reality, meaning and purpose." For Fichte, "all reality" is a wonderful "dream, without a life to dream of, and without a spirit to dream for"; a dream "which is connected in a dream of itself". ("Destiny of Man", 2nd book.)

[ 63 ] What is the meaning of this whole chain of thought? A weak intellect that does not want to undertake to give meaning to the world out of itself seeks this meaning in the world of observations. Of course, it cannot find it there because mere observation is devoid of thought.

[ 64 ] The strong, productive intellect uses its conceptual world to interpret the observations; the weak, unproductive intellect declares itself too impotent to do so and says: I cannot find any meaning in the phenomena of ~; they are mere images that pass me by. The meaning of existence must be sought outside, beyond the world of appearances. As a result, the world of appearances, i.e. human reality, is declared to be a dream, an illusion, a nothing and the "true essence" of the appearances is sought in a "thing in itself", up to which no observation, no cognition reaches, i.e. of which the cognizer cannot form any idea. This "true essence" is therefore a completely empty thought for the cognizer, the thought of a nothing. For those philosophers who speak of the "thing in itself", dream is the world of appearances. But nothing is what they regard as the "true essence" of this phenomenal world. The entire philosophical movement that speaks of the "thing in itself" and which in more recent times is based on Kant in particular, is the belief in nothing, is philosophical nihilism.

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[ 65 ] When the strong spirit searches for the cause of human action and accomplishment, it always finds it in the will to power of the individual personality. However, the person with a weak, discouraged intellect does not want to admit this. He does not feel strong enough to make himself the master and director of his actions. He interprets the instincts that guide him as commands from a foreign power. He does not say: I act as I will; but he says: I act according to a commandment, as I should. He does not want to command himself, he wants to obey. At one stage of development, people see their impulses to act as commands from God; at another stage, they believe they hear a voice within themselves that commands them. In the latter case they do not dare to say: it is I myself who command; they claim: a higher will speaks in me. That his conscience tells him in each individual case how he should act is the opinion of one person; that a categorical imperative commands him is asserted by another. Let us listen to what J. G. Fichte says: "Something ought to happen simply because it should happen: that which conscience now demands of me ... that it should happen, for that, for that alone am I there; to recognize it, I have understanding: to accomplish it, strength." ("The Destiny of Man", Book 3.) I prefer to cite J. G. Fichte's sayings because he thought the opinion of the "weak and misguided" through to the end with iron consistency. What these opinions ultimately lead to can only be recognized if one seeks them out where they have been thought through to the end; one cannot rely on those who think every thought only to its center.

[ 66 ] The source of knowledge is not sought in the individual personality by those who think in the manner indicated; but beyond this personality in a "will in itself". This "will in itself" is supposed to speak to the individual as the "voice of God" or "the voice of conscience", the "categorical imperative" and so on. It should be the universal guide of human action and the source of morality and also determine the purposes of moral action. "I say that it is the commandment of action itself which by itself sets me a purpose: the same thing in me which compels me to think that I should act in this way compels me to believe that something will come of this action; it opens to the eye the prospect of another world." "As I live in obedience, I live at the same time in the contemplation of its purpose, I live in the better world which it promises to me." (Fichte, "The Destiny of Man", Book 3.) The person who thinks in this way does not want to set his own goal; he wants to be led to a goal by the higher will that he obeys. He wants to get rid of his own will and make himself the instrument of "higher" purposes. In words that are among the most beautiful products of the sense of obedience and humility known to me, Fichte describes the surrender to the "eternal will in itself". "Sublime, living will, which no name names and no concept encompasses, I may well raise my mind to you; for you and I are not separate. Your voice resounds in me, mine resounds in you; and all my thoughts, if only they are true and good, are thought in you. - In you, the incomprehensible, I become myself, and the world becomes completely comprehensible to me, all the riddles of my existence are solved, and the most perfect harmony arises in my spirit." "I cover my face before you and put my hand over my mouth. I can never understand how you are for yourself and how you appear to yourself, just as I can never become yourself. After a thousand times a thousand spirit lives lived through, I will understand you just as little as I do now, in this hut of earth." ("Destiny of Man", 3rd book.)

[ 67 ] Where this will ultimately wants to lead man, the individual cannot know. Anyone who believes in this will therefore admits that he knows nothing about the ultimate purpose of his actions. However, the goals that the individual creates for himself are not "true" goals for such a believer in a higher will. He thus replaces the positive individual goals created by the individual with a final goal for all mankind, the thought content of which is nothing. Such a believer is a moral nihilist. He is caught up in the worst kind of ignorance imaginable. Nietzsche wanted to deal with this kind of ignorance in a special book of his unfinished work "The Will to Power". (Cf. appendix to volume VIII of the complete edition of Nietzsche's works.)

[ 68 ] We find the praise of moral nihilism again in Fichte's "Determination of Man" (Book 3): "I will not attempt what is denied me by the nature of finitude, and what would be of no use to me; what you are like in yourself I do not want to know. But your relations and relationships to me, the finite, and to everything finite, lie open before my eyes: will I be what I ought to be! - and they surround me with brighter clarity than the awareness of my own existence. You work in me the knowledge of my duty, of my destiny in the line of rational beings; how I do not know, nor do I need to know. You know and recognize what I think and will; how you can know - by what act you bring about this consciousness, I understand nothing about it; indeed, I know very well that the concept of an act, and of a particular act of consciousness, applies only to me, but not to you, the Infinite. You will, for you want my free obedience to have consequences for all eternity; I do not understand the act of your will, and know only so much that it is not similar to mine. You do, and your will itself is act; but your mode of action is almost opposite to that which I alone am able to think. You live and are, for you know, will and work, omnipresent to finite reason; but you are not, as I alone will be able to think a being throughout all eternity."

[ 69 ] Nietzsche contrasts moral nihilism with the goals that the creative individual will sets itself. Zarathustra calls out to the teachers of surrender:

[ 70 ] "These teachers of surrender! Wherever it is small and sick and grindy, they crawl like lice; and only my disgust prevents me from cracking them. So long! This is my sermon for your ears: I am Zarathustra, the godless one, who says: 'Who is more godless than I that I should rejoice in his teaching? I am Zarathustra, the wicked: where can I find my equals? And all those are like me, who give their will to themselves and turn away all submission."

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[ 71 ] The strong personality that creates goals is ruthless in the realization of them. The weak personality, on the other hand, only carries out what the will of God or the "voice of conscience" or the "categorical imperative" says yes to. The weak person describes what corresponds to this yes as good, what is contrary to this yes as evil. The strong cannot acknowledge this "good and evil"; for he does not recognize the power by which the weak allows his good and evil to be determined. What he, the strong, wants is good for him; he carries it out against all opposing powers. What disturbs him in this execution, he seeks to overcome. He does not believe that an "eternal world will" directs all individual wills towards a great harmony; but he is of the opinion that all human development results from the will impulses of the individual personalities and that there is an eternal war between the individual expressions of will, in which the stronger will always triumphs over the weaker. The strong personality that wants to give itself law and purpose is called evil, sinful, by the weak and discouraged. It arouses fear because it breaks through the established order; it calls worthless what the weak are used to calling valuable, and it invents something new, unknown to it, which it calls valuable. "Every individual action, every individual way of thinking arouses horror; it is impossible to calculate what the rarer, more select, more original spirits must have suffered throughout history by always being perceived as evil and dangerous, indeed that they themselves felt that way. Under the rule of the morality of custom, originality of every kind has acquired an evil conscience; until this moment, the heaven of the best is even darker than it ought to be." ("Dawn", § 9.)

[ 72 ] The truly free spirit makes first decisions; the unfree one decides according to custom. "Morality is nothing else (i.e. namely nothing more!) than obedience to customs, whatever they may be; but customs are the conventional way of acting and judging." ("Dawn", § 9.) It is this convention that is interpreted by moralists as "eternal will", "categorical imperative". Every heredity, however, is the result of the natural instincts and impulses of individuals, entire tribes, peoples and so on. It is just as much the product of natural causes as, for example, the weather conditions of individual regions. The free spirit does not declare itself bound by this origin. It has its individual instincts and impulses, and these are no less justified than those of others. It transforms these impulses into actions, just as a cloud sends rain to the earth's surface when the causes are present. The free spirit stands beyond what tradition considers good and evil. It creates its own good and evil.

[ 73 ] "When I came to the people, I found them sitting on an old conceit: they all thought they had long known what was good and evil to man. All talk of virtue seemed to him an old tired thing; and those who wanted to sleep well still spoke of 'good' and 'evil' before going to bed. I broke up this sleepiness when I taught that no one knows what good and evil are - except the creator! - But that is he who creates man's goal and gives the earth its meaning and its future: only he creates it that something is good and evil." ("Zarathustra", part 3, "Of old and new tablets.")

[ 74 ] Even when the free spirit acts according to custom, it does so because it wants to make the conventional motives its own, and because in certain cases it does not consider it necessary to put something new in the place of the conventional.

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[ 75 ] The strong man seeks his purpose in life by asserting his creative self. This selfishness distinguishes him from the weak, who see morality in the selfless devotion to what they call the good. The weak preach selflessness as the highest virtue. However, their selflessness is only the result of their lack of creative power. If they had a creative self, they would want to enforce it. The strong love war, because they need war to enforce their creations against the opposing powers.

[ 76 ] "Your enemy you shall seek, your war you shall wage and for your thoughts! And if your thoughts are defeated, let your integrity shout triumph over them!

[ 77 ] You shall love peace as a means to new wars. And the short peace more than the long one.

[ 78 ] I do not advise you to work, but to fight. To you I do not advise peace, but victory. Let your work be a battle, let your peace be a victory! ...

[ 79 ] You say that it is the good cause that sanctifies even war? I tell you: it is the good war that sanctifies every cause.

[ 80 ] War and courage have done more great things than charity. It is not your compassion but your bravery that has so far saved those who have perished." ("Zarathustra", part 1. "Of war and the people of war.")

[ 81 ] The creative man acts relentlessly and without sparing the reluctant. He does not know the virtue of the suffering: compassion. The creative person's impulses come from his power, not from the feeling of another's suffering. He is committed to the victory of strength, not to the care of the suffering, the weak. Schopenhauer declared the whole world to be a hospital, and the actions arising from compassion for the suffering to be the highest virtues. He thus expressed the morality of Christianity in a different form than Christianity itself does. The creative person does not feel called to be a nurse. The capable and healthy cannot be there for the sake of the weak and sick. Pity weakens strength, courage and bravery.

[ 82 ] Compassion seeks to preserve precisely that which the strong want to overcome: weakness, suffering. The victory of the strong over the weak is the meaning of all human and natural development. "Life itself is essentially appropriation, violation, overpowering the alien and the weaker, oppression, harshness, imposition of one's own forms, incorporation and at the very least, at the mildest, exploitation." ("Beyond Good and Evil", § 259.)

[ 83 ] "And will you not be fates and implacable: how could you with me - prevail? And if your hardness does not want to flash and cut and slice: how could you once with me - create? For the creators are hard. And bliss it must seem to you to press your hand on millennia as on wax - bliss to write on the will of millennia as on ore - harder than ore, nobler than ore. Only the noblest is hardest. This new tablet, 0 my brothers, I place over you: be hard!" ("Zarathustra", part 3. "Of old and new tablets.")

[ 84 ] The free spirit makes no claim to pity. If you wanted to pity him, he would have to ask: do you think I am so weak that I cannot bear my suffering myself? For him, all pity goes against his shame. Nietzsche illustrates the strong man's aversion to compassion in the fourth part of his "Zarathustra". On his wanderings, Zarathustra comes to a valley called "snake death". There is no living creature to be found here. Only a kind of ugly green snake comes here to die. This valley has been visited by the "ugliest man". He does not want to be seen by any being because of his ugliness. No one sees him in this valley except God. But he cannot bear the sight of God either. The awareness that God's gaze penetrates every room is a burden to him. He has therefore killed God, that is, he has killed the belief in God within him. He has become an atheist because of his ugliness. When Zarathustra sees this man, he is once again overcome by what he believes he has eradicated from himself forever: compassion for the terrible ugliness. This is one of Zarathustra's temptations. However, he soon rejects the feeling of pity and becomes hard again. The ugliest man says to him: Your hardness honors my ugliness. I am too rich in ugliness to bear anyone's pity. Pity goes against shame.

[ 85 ] He who needs pity cannot stand alone, and the free spirit wants to be completely on its own.

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[ 86 ] The weak are not satisfied with the demonstration of the natural will to power as the cause of human actions. They do not merely search for natural connections in human development, but they seek the relationship of human actions to what they call the "will in itself", the "eternal, moral world order". They attribute guilt to anyone who acts contrary to this world order. And they are not content to evaluate an action according to its natural consequences, but claim that a guilty action also entails moral consequences, punishments. They call themselves guilty if they do not find their actions in accordance with the moral world order; they turn away from the source of evil within themselves with disgust and call this feeling evil conscience. The strong personality does not accept any of these concepts. It is only concerned with the natural consequences of its actions. It asks: how much is my behavior worth for life? Does it correspond to what I wanted? The strong person can feel sorry when an action fails, when the result does not correspond to his intentions. But he does not accuse himself. For he does not measure his actions against extra-natural standards. He knows that he is acting in accordance with his natural instincts and can only regret that they are not better. He feels the same way when judging the actions of others. He has no moral assessment of actions. He is an immoralist.

[ 87 ] What tradition describes as evil, the immoralist sees as an outflow of human instinct, just like good. For him, punishment is not morally conditioned, but merely a means of eradicating the instincts of certain people who are harmful to others. According to the immoralist, society does not punish because it has a "moral right" to atone for guilt, but solely because it proves to be stronger than the individual, who has instincts that are contrary to the whole. The power of society stands against the power of the individual. This is the natural connection between an "evil" act by an individual and the jurisdiction of society and the punishment of that individual. It is the will to power, i.e. to live out those instincts that are present in the majority of people, which expresses itself in the administration of justice in a society. The victory of a majority over an individual is every punishment. If the individual were victorious over society, his actions would have to be described as good and those of others as evil. The respective right only expresses what society recognizes as the best basis for its will to power.

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[ 88 ] Because Nietzsche sees in human behavior only an outflow of instincts, and these latter are different in different people, it seems necessary to him that their ways of acting are also different. Nietzsche is therefore a staunch opponent of the democratic principle: equal rights and equal duties for all. People are unequal, therefore their rights and duties must also be unequal. The natural course of world history will always show strong and weak, productive and unproductive people. And the strong will always be called upon to determine the goals of the weak. Even more: the strong will use the weak as a means to an end, i.e. as slaves. Of course, Nietzsche does not speak of a "moral" right of the strong to keep slaves. He does not recognize "moral" rights. Rather, he is of the opinion that the overcoming of the weaker by the stronger, which he considers to be the principle of all life, must necessarily lead to slavery.

[ 89 ] It is also natural that the conquered should rebel against the conqueror. If this rebellion cannot express itself through action, it at least expresses itself in feeling. And the expression of this feeling is revenge, which always dwells in the hearts of those who have been overcome in some way by the better-disposed. Nietzsche sees the modern social democratic movement as an outgrowth of this revenge. For him, the victory of this movement would be an exaltation of the misfits, of those who have gone astray to the detriment of the better. Nietzsche strives for precisely the opposite: the cultivation of the strong, autocratic personality. And he hates the addiction that wants to make everything the same and make sovereign individuality disappear in the sea of general mediocrity.

[ 90 ] Not everyone should have and enjoy the same thing, says Nietzsche, but everyone should have and enjoy what he can achieve according to his personal strength.

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[ 91 ] What man is worth depends solely on the value of his instincts. Nothing else can determine the value of man. One speaks of the value of work. Work is supposed to ennoble man. But work has no value in itself. It only acquires value through the fact that it serves man. Only insofar as work is a natural consequence of human inclinations is it worthy of man. He who makes himself the servant of work degrades himself. Only the man who cannot determine his own value seeks to measure this value by the greatness of his work. It is characteristic of the democratic bourgeoisie of modern times that it measures the value of people according to their work. Even Goethe is not free of this attitude. He allows his Faust to find complete satisfaction in the awareness of work done.

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[ 92 ] In Nietzsche's opinion, art also only has value if it serves the life of the individual. Here too, Nietzsche advocates the view of the strong personality and rejects everything that the weak instincts say about art. Almost all German aestheticians take the viewpoint of the weak instincts. Art should represent an "infinite" in the "finite", an "eternal" in the "temporal", an "idea" in "reality". For Schelling, for example, all sensual beauty is only a reflection of that infinite beauty that we can never perceive with our senses. The work of art is not beautiful for its own sake and through what it is, but because it depicts the idea of beauty. The sensual image is only a means of expression, only the form for a supersensible content. And Hegel calls the beautiful "the sensual appearance of the idea". Something similar can also be found among the other German aesthetes. For Nietzsche, art is an element that promotes life, and only when it is this is it justified. He who cannot bear life as he directly perceives it, reshapes it according to his needs and thus creates a work of art. And what does the enjoyer want from the work of art? He wants to increase his zest for life, strengthen his vital forces, satisfy needs that reality does not satisfy. But if his mind is focused on the real, he does not want to see through the work of art the reflection of the divine, the supernatural. Listen to how Nietzsche describes the impression Bizet's Carmen made on him: "I become a better person when this Bizet speaks to me. Also a better musician, a better listener. Is there any better way to listen? - I still bury my ears under this music, I hear its cause. It seems to me that I am experiencing its genesis - I tremble at the dangers that accompany any venture, I am delighted by strokes of luck in which Bizet is innocent. - And strangely enough, I don't actually think about it, or I don't know how much I think about it. Because completely different thoughts are running through my head... Has anyone noticed that music frees the mind? gives wings to thought? that the more you become a musician, the more of a philosopher you become? - The gray sky of abstraction as if flashed by lightning; the light strong enough for all the filigree of things; the great problems close enough to touch; the world as if seen from a mountain. - I have just defined philosophical pathos. - And suddenly answers fall into my lap, a small hail of ice and wisdom, of solved problems ... Where am I? - Bizet makes me fruitful. All good things make me fruitful. I have no other gratitude, I have no other evidence of what is good." - ("The Wagner Case", § 1.) Because Richard Wagner's music did not have such an effect on him, Nietzsche rejected it: "My objections to Wagner's music are physiological objections... My 'fact', my 'petit fait vrai' is that I no longer breathe easily when this music first affects me; that immediately my foot becomes evil against it and revolts: it has the need for beat, dance, march... it demands from music first of all the delights that lie in good walking, striding, dancing. But does not my stomach protest? my heart? my circulation? Do not my bowels grieve? Do I not suddenly become hoarse? And so I ask myself: what does my whole body actually want from music at all?... I believe its relief: as if all animal functions should be accelerated by light, bold, relaxed, self-assured rhythms; as if the brazen, leaden life should lose its heaviness through golden, tender, oil-like melodies. My melancholy wants to rest in the hiding places and abysses of perfection: for this I need music." ("Nietzsche contra Wagner". Ch.: "Where I make objections")-

[ 93 ] In the beginning of his career as a writer, Nietzsche was mistaken about what his instincts demanded of art, which is why he was a follower of Wagner at the time. He allowed himself to be seduced into idealism by studying Schopenhauer's philosophy. He believed in idealism for some time and deluded himself with artificial needs, ideal needs. It was only later in his life that he realized that all idealism was exactly the opposite of his drives. He now became more honest with himself. He expressed how he himself felt. And this could only lead to the complete rejection of Wagner's music, which increasingly took on the ascetic character that we have already listed as a characteristic of Wagner's final goal.

[ 94 ] The aestheticians, who make it the task of art to sensualize the idea of embodying the divine, hold a similar view in this area as the philosophical nihilists do in the area of knowledge and morality. They look for something otherworldly in the objects of art, but this dissolves into nothing before the sense of reality. There is also an aesthetic nihilism.

[ 95 ] This is contrasted with the aesthetics of the strong personality, which sees in art a reflection of reality, a higher reality that people prefer to enjoy rather than everyday life.

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[ 96 ] Nietzsche contrasts two types of people: the weak and the strong. The former seeks knowledge as an objective fact that should flow into his mind from the outside world. He allows his good and evil to be dictated by an "eternal will of the world" or a "categorical imperative". He describes every action that is not determined by this will of the world, but only by creative self-will, as a sin that must result in moral punishment. He wants to decree equal rights for all people and determine the value of man according to an external standard. Finally, he wants to see in art an image of the divine, a message from the hereafter. The strong, on the other hand, sees all knowledge as an expression of the will to power. Through knowledge, he seeks to make things conceivable and thereby subjugate them. He knows that he himself is the creator of truth; that no one but he himself can create his good and his evil. He regards man's actions as the consequences of natural instincts and accepts them as natural occurrences that are never to be regarded as sins and do not deserve moral condemnation. He seeks the value of man in the efficiency of his instincts. He values a person with the instincts for health, spirit, beauty, endurance and nobility more highly than one with the instincts for weakness, ugliness and slavery. He judges a work of art by the degree to which it contributes to the enhancement of his powers.

[ 97 ] Nietzsche understands this latter type of human being as his superman. Such supermen could previously only arise through the coincidence of chance circumstances. To make their development the conscious goal of humanity is the intention of Zarathustra. Until now, the goal of human development has been seen in some kind of ideals. Here Nietzsche considers a change of views necessary. The "higher type has often enough already been there: but as a stroke of luck, as an exception, never as wanted. Rather, he has just been feared the most, he has almost been the fearful; - and out of fear the opposite type was wanted, bred, achieved: the domestic animal, the herd animal, the sick animal man - the Christian ..." ("Antichrist", § 3.)

[ 98 ] Zarathustra's wisdom is to teach this superman, to whom that other type is only a transition.

[ 99 ] Nietzsche calls this wisdom a Dionysian wisdom. It is a wisdom that is not given to man from outside; it is a self-created wisdom. The Dionysian sage does not research; he creates. He does not stand as an observer outside the world he wants to recognize; he has become one with his knowledge. He does not search for a God; what he can still imagine as divine is only He Himself as the creator of his own world. When this state extends to all the powers of the human organism, it gives the Dionysian man, for whom it is impossible not to understand any suggestion; he overlooks no sign of affect, he has the highest degree of the understanding and guessing instinct, just as he possesses the highest degree of the art of communication. He enters into every skin, into every affect: he constantly transforms himself. The Dionysian sage is confronted by the mere observer, who always believes himself to be outside his objects of knowledge, as an objective, suffering spectator. Opposite the Dionysian man is the Apollinian, who "above all keeps the eye excited so that it acquires the power of vision". The Apollonian spirit strives for visions, images of things that are beyond human reality, not a wisdom created by itself.

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[ 100 ] The Apollonian wisdom has the character of seriousness. It perceives the dominion of the beyond, which it only possesses in image, as a heavy pressure, as a power that resists it. Apollonian wisdom is serious, for it believes itself to be in possession of a message from the beyond, even if it is only conveyed through images and visions. The Apollonian spirit walks along heavily laden with its knowledge, for it carries a burden that comes from another world. And it assumes the expression of dignity, for all laughter must fall silent before the manifestations of the infinite.

[ 101 ] This laughter, however, characterizes the Dionysian spirit. He knows that everything he calls wisdom is only his wisdom, invented by him to make life easy for himself. Only this one thing should be his wisdom: a means that allows him to say yes to life. The spirit of heaviness is repugnant to the Dionysian man because it does not make life easier but depresses it. Self-created wisdom is a cheerful wisdom, because those who create their own burden only create one that they can carry easily. With self-created wisdom, the Dionysian spirit moves easily through the world like a dancer.

[ 102] "But that I am good at wisdom and often too good: that makes, it reminds me very much of life!"

[ 103 ] She has her eye, her laugh and even her golden fishing rod: what can I do that the two look so much alike?"

[ 104 ] "I looked into your eye recently, O life: I saw gold flashing in your night eye - my heart stood still before this lust:

[ 105 ] -I saw a golden barge flashing on nocturnal waters, a sinking, drinking, again beckoning golden rocking barge!

[ 106 ] After my foot, the dance-loving one, you cast a glance, a laughing, questioning, melting rocking glance:

[ 107 ] Only twice you stirred your rattle with small hands - then my foot swayed with dancing rage

[ 108 ] My heels clenched, my toes listened to understand you: but the dancer carries his ear - in his toes!" ("Zarathustra", z. u. 3. part. "The Dance Songs.")

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[ 109 ] Because the Dionysian spirit takes from itself all the impulses of its actions and obeys no external power, it is a free spirit. For a free spirit is one that follows only its nature. However, Nietzsche's works only speak of instincts as the drives of the free spirit. I believe that here Nietzsche has summarized a series of drives with one name, which require a more detailed consideration. Nietzsche calls instincts both the instincts present in animals for nourishment and self-preservation, as well as the highest drives of human nature, for example the instinct of cognition, the instinct to act according to moral standards, the instinct to delight in works of art and so on. Admittedly, all these drives are manifestations of one and the same basic force. But they represent different stages in the development of this force. The moral impulses, for example, are a special stage of the instincts. Even if it can be admitted that they are only higher forms of sensual instincts, they nevertheless arise in man, who has this moral imagination is truly free, for man must act according to conscious instincts. And if he cannot produce them himself, then he must allow them to be given to him by external authorities or by the heredity that speaks in him in the form of the voice of conscience. A person who merely abandons himself to his sensual instincts acts like an animal; a person who subordinates his sensual instincts to other people's thoughts acts unfree; only the person who creates his own moral goals acts free. The moral imagination is missing in Nietzsche's explanations. Anyone who thinks his thoughts through to the end must necessarily come up with this concept. But on the other hand, it is also an absolute necessity that this concept is added to Nietzsche's world view. Otherwise it could always be objected to: It is true that the Dionysian human being is not a servant of convention or of the "will beyond", but he is a servant of his own instincts. a special kind into existence. This is shown by the fact that it is possible for man to perform actions that are not directly attributable to sensual instincts, but only to those drives that can be described as higher forms of instinct. Man creates drives for his actions that cannot be derived from his sensual instincts, but only from conscious thought. He sets himself individual purposes, but he sets them with consciousness. And there is a big difference between following an instinct that has arisen unconsciously and is only later incorporated into consciousness and following a thought that he has produced from the outset with full consciousness. If I eat because my food instinct urges me to, this is essentially different from solving a mathematical problem. The thinking apprehension of world phenomena represents a special form of the general faculty of perception. It differs from mere sensory perception. The higher forms of development of instinctual life are just as natural to man as the lower ones. If the two are not in harmony, he is condemned to lack of freedom. It may happen that a weak personality with perfectly healthy sensual instincts has only weak spiritual instincts. In this case he will develop his own individuality with regard to his sensory life, but he will borrow the mental impulses for his actions from his origins. A disharmony of both instincts can arise. The sensual drives urge to live out one's own personality, the mental drives are under the spell of an external authority. The spiritual life of such a personality is tyrannized by the sensual instincts, the sensual life by the spiritual instincts. For the two powers do not belong together, do not arise from one entity. A truly free personality therefore requires not only a healthily developed individual sensual instinctual life, but also the ability to create the mental impulses for life. Only that person is completely free who can also produce thoughts that lead to action. In my essay "The Philosophy of Freedom", I called the ability to create purely mental motivations for action the "moral imagination". Only those who

[ 110 ] Nietzsche focused his gaze on the original, the self-personal in man. He sought to detach this self-personality from the cloak of the impersonal, in which it was wrapped by a worldview hostile to reality. But he did not come to distinguish the stages of life within the personality itself. He therefore underestimated the importance of consciousness for the human personality. "Consciousness is the last and latest development of the organic and consequently also the most incomplete and inefficient part of it. Consciousness is the source of innumerable mistakes that cause an animal, a human being, to perish earlier than it should, 'through skill', as Homer says. If the sustaining association of instincts were not so much more powerful, it would not serve as a regulator on the whole: mankind would have to perish from their wrong judgments and fantasizing with open eyes, from their inscrutability and credulity, in short, from their consciousness," says Nietzsche. ("Joyful Science", § II.)

[ 111 ] This is certainly to be admitted; but it is no less true that man is only free to the extent that he can create mental driving forces for his actions within his consciousness.

[ 112 ] However, the consideration of mental driving forces goes even further. It is a fact of experience that these mental impulses, which people produce of their own accord, nevertheless show a certain degree of agreement among individuals. Even if the individual creates thoughts quite freely out of himself, these thoughts coincide to a certain extent with the thoughts of other people. From this it follows that the free man is justified in assuming that harmony in human society occurs of its own accord when it consists of sovereign individuals. He can contrast this opinion with the defender of unfreedom, who believes that the actions of a majority of people only coincide if they are directed towards a common goal by an external force. The free spirit is therefore by no means a supporter of the view that allows animal instincts to rule absolutely freely and therefore wants to abolish all legal orders. But it demands absolute freedom for those who do not merely want to follow their animal instincts, but who are able to create moral impulses, their own good and evil.

[ 113 ] Only those who have not penetrated Nietzsche to such an extent that they are able to draw the ultimate consequences of his worldview, even though Nietzsche did not draw them himself, can see in him a man who "with a certain stylistic voluptuousness has found the courage to reveal what may have lurked hitherto in the most secret souls of grandiose criminal types ... may have lurked hidden". (Ludwig Stein, "Friedrich Nietzsche's Weltanschauung und ihre Gefahren", p. 5.) The average education of a German professor is still not so far advanced as to separate the greatness of a personality from its minor errors. Otherwise one could not experience that the criticism of such a professor is directed precisely against these small errors. I think true education takes up the greatness of a personality and improves small errors or thinks half-finished thoughts to the end.