The Joyous Science Page 5

  This is the eternal injustice of the noble.

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  That Which Preserves the Species

  The strongest and most evil minds have thus far advanced mankind the most: they ever rekindled slumbering passions – all orderly society lulls the passions to sleep – they ever reawakened the sense of comparison, of contradiction, of the pleasure in experiment, innovation and adventure, compelling people to set opinion against opinion, epitome against epitome. By force of arms, by displacement of boundary stones,5 by violation of the pieties most of all; but also by new religions and morals! The same kind of ‘malice’ which makes a conqueror infamous is present in every teacher and preacher of some innovation, although it expresses itself more daintily, and does not immediately set the muscles in motion, and for that reason does not make them infamous! Innovation, however, is under all circumstances evil, being that which wants to conquer, which wants to topple the old boundary stones and the old pieties; only the old is good! The good people of every age are farmers of the mind who dig deep into the soil of the old thoughts and get it to bear fruit. But in the end, every soil becomes exhausted, and the ploughshare of evil must come, again and again.

  There is at present a fundamentally erroneous theory of morality much celebrated, especially in England, according to which the judgements ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are the accumulation of the experiences ‘expedient’ and ‘inexpedient’: whatever preserves the species is called good, whatever harms it is called evil. In truth, the evil impulses are every bit as expedient, indispensable and conducive to the preservation of the species as the good – they just have a different function.

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  Unconditional Obligations

  All people who feel that they need the strongest words and tones, the most eloquent gestures and attitudes, in order to be effective at all, revolutionary politicians, socialists, preachers with or without Christianity, for whom there must be no merely partial success: all these speak of ‘obligations’, and indeed, always of obligations which have the character of being unconditional – without such they would have no right to their great pathos: that they know full well! So they seize upon philosophies of morality, preach some kind of categorical imperative, or help themselves to a good slice of religion, as, for example, Mazzini6 did. Because they want to be trusted implicitly, it is first of all necessary for them to trust themselves, on the basis of some ultimate, incontrovertible, intrinsically sublime authority whose minister and instrument they would like to impersonate and feel themselves to be. Here we have the most natural, and often very influential, opponents of moral enlightenment and scepticism; but they are rare. On the other hand, there is a very extensive class of opponents wherever interest teaches subjection, while reputation and honour seem to forbid it. Anyone who feels dishonoured at the thought of being the instrument of a prince, or of a party and sect, or even of a moneyed power, for example the descendant of a proud, old family, but who now wishes to be or must be seen to be an instrument, in his own eyes and in the eyes of the public, has need of lofty principles which may at any time be pronounced – principles of an unconditional ‘shalt’ to which one may without shame bow down and make a display of subservience. A finer servility adheres to the categorical imperative, and is the mortal enemy of those who want to deprive obligation of its unconditional character: the dignity of their position requires this of them, and not only that of their position.

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  Loss of Dignity

  Contemplation has lost all its dignity of form; we have made a mockery of the ceremonial and solemn bearing of the contemplative person, and would no longer abide a wise man of the old style. We think too hastily while on the go and out and about on all kinds of business, even when engaged in the most serious thought; we require scarcely any preparation or even any quiet – it is as if we had wheels inexorably turning in our heads even under the most adverse circumstances. Formerly one could tell at a glance that a man wanted to think – it was probably the exception – that he now wanted to grow wiser and prepared himself for a thought: he came to a halt and put on a prayerful countenance; indeed, one stood still in the street for hours in case a thought ‘came’ – on one leg or two. Such was the ‘dignity of the thing’!

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  Something for the Industrious

  At present, whoever wants to make a study of moral matters opens a vast field of labour for himself. All kinds of passions must be considered and pursued individually through periods, peoples, individuals great and small; the reason in them, all the appraisals they involve and the light they shed on things must themselves be brought to light! So far all that has given colour to existence still has no history: where would you find a history of love, of avarice, of envy, of conscience, of piety, of cruelty? Even a comparative history of law, or even only of punishment, is so far completely absent. Have the various ways of dividing the day, the consequences of appointing regular times for labour, rest and festival, ever been made the subject of investigation? Do we know the moral effects of foods? Is there a philosophy of nutrition? (The perpetual hue and cry for and against vegetarianism proves that there is still no such philosophy!) Have the experiences of living together, for example the experience of the monasteries, been collected? Has the dialectic of marriage and friendship ever been represented? The mores of the scholars, merchants, artists, workmen – have they yet found their thinkers? There is so much in them to think about! All that until now people have taken to be their ‘conditions of existence’, and all reason, passion and superstition this ‘taking’ involved – have they been subjected to a conclusive investigation? The observation of how variously human impulses have grown and might still grow depending upon different moral climates would, all by itself, provide more than enough work for the industrious; it would require whole generations of coordinated research just to exhaust the points of view and material. The same applies to determining the reason for the variety of the moral climates (‘why does this sun of basic moral judgement and primary measure of value shine here – and another there?’). And it would be a further task to demonstrate the erroneousness of all these reasons, and the whole nature of moral judgement so far. Assuming all these works were done, the most delicate question of all would then come to the fore: whether science is in a position to provide aims for action, after it has proved that it can take them away and destroy them – and then experimentation would be in order in which every kind of heroism could satisfy itself, centuries-long experimentation which would cast into the shade all the great endeavours and sacrifices of history hitherto. Science has not yet built its Cyclopean structures;7 for that too the time will come.

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  Unconscious Virtues

  The qualities in us of which we are conscious – and especially when we assume that they are visible and evident to our milieu as well – are subject to quite different laws of development than those which are unknown or not well understood. By their subtlety the latter escape even the eye of the subtlest observer, and hide, as it were, behind nothing. So it is with the subtle bas-relief of reptile scales: it would be a mistake to suppose they are for display or defence – for they can only be seen under a microscope, and this sort of artificially enhanced vision is simply not available to similar animals for whom they might signify display or defence. The moral qualities in us that can be seen, and especially those we think are seen, take their course – but there are invisible qualities of the very same name, which in relation to others serve for neither display nor defence. These qualities probably take an entirely different course, and with lines and subtleties and bas-relief, in which perhaps a god with a divine microscope could take pleasure. For example, we have our industry, our ambition, our acumen: all the world knows of them – and, in addition, we probably also have our industry, our ambition, our acumen; but for these reptile scales of ours the microscope has not yet been invented! And here the friends of instinctive morality will say: ‘Bravo! At least he thinks unconscious virtues are po
ssible – that satisfies us!’ Oh you are so easily satisfied!

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  Our Eruptions

  Innumerable things which mankind acquired in its earlier stages, but to so slight and incipient a degree as to be imperceptible, suddenly come to light long afterwards, perhaps centuries later; in the meantime they have become strong and mature. In some ages, as in some men, this or that talent, this or that virtue, seems to be entirely lacking; but in time, what they concealed within them, their grandchildren and great-grandchildren bring into the light of day. Often, the son betrays the father, who then understands himself better for having had a son. We all contain hidden gardens and orchards; or, to vary the figure, we are all smouldering volcanoes whose time of eruption will come – but of course no one knows how soon, not even God.

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  A Kind of Atavism

  I prefer to understand the best men of an age as scions of past cultures and their strengths, whose sudden emergence long after the fact is, as it were, the atavism of a people and its civilization – that way, at least there is something about them one can actually understand! Now, they seem rare, strange, extraordinary; and he who feels these strengths in himself has to cultivate, educate, honour and defend them in the face of opposition from another world; and he thus becomes either a great man or a strange and mad one, if he is not brought to an early grave. Formerly, these very same qualities were ordinary and therefore regarded as base: they were not a mark of distinction. Perhaps they were required, expected; it was impossible to become great with them, if only because there was no danger of becoming isolated and deranged by them.

  Such grace notes of the old impulses occur principally in the preserving generations and castes of a people, as there is no probability of such atavism where races, habits and appraisals are rapidly changing. For among the powers of development, tempo means just as much in peoples as it does in music; in our case an andante of development is absolutely necessary, as the tempo of a passionate and steady spirit – and which is indeed the spirit of conservative generations.

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  Consciousness

  Being conscious is the last and latest organic development, and consequently also the least finished and least powerful. It gives rise to innumerable mistakes which cause a human being or an animal to perish sooner than is necessary, ‘beyond fate’,8 as Homer says. Were the assemblage of instincts that contributes to our preservation not so exceedingly strong by comparison, it would not have served on the whole as a regulator: we would have inevitably perished by dint of our daydreams and misapprehensions, by our negligence and credulity, in short, by our being conscious; or rather, without these instincts, we would have long since ceased to be conscious! Before a function is fully formed and mature, it is a danger to the organism; it is well if something plays the tyrant over it for a good long while. Being conscious is thus much oppressed – and not least by the pride we take in it! It is thought to be the pith and marrow of a human being, the part that is most pristine, final, everlasting and eternal! Being conscious is held to have a determinate magnitude! Its growth and its discontinuities are denied! It is taken for the ‘unity of the organism’!

  This ludicrous overestimation and misunderstanding of consciousness has had in consequence the great advantage of preventing it from developing too rapidly. Because people believed that they already had it, they have taken no pains to acquire it – and it is no different today! It is only just dawning upon us that we have an entirely new and scarcely recognizable task, to make what we know a part of us, to make it instinctive – a task seen only by those who understand that so far only our errors have become a part of us, that being conscious pertains to nothing but errors!

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  Of the Purpose of Science

  How is that? The ultimate purpose of science is to give people as much pleasure and as little pain as possible? But suppose that pleasure and pain are so intertwined that whoever wants as much as possible of the one must also have as much as possible of the other – that whoever wants to know ‘rejoicing to heaven’ must be prepared for ‘grieving unto death’9 as well? And such might be the case! At least so the Stoics believed, who were consistent when they sought as little pleasure as possible, that life might afford them as little pain as possible. (With the adage ‘those who are virtuous are the happiest’ on their lips, the school had both a billboard for the great unwashed, as well as a piece of casuistry for the subtle.) Even today you have a choice: either as little pain as possible, in short, analgesia – and in the end, socialists and party politicians cannot in all honesty promise their people more – or as much pain as possible, as the price of a luxuriance of subtle and seldom-tasted joys and pleasures! Should you decide in favour of the former, should you want to mitigate and assuage human suffering, well, you must also moderate and diminish the human capacity for joy. In fact, science can serve the one purpose as well as the other! Perhaps it is still better known on account of its power to kill a man’s joys and make him colder, more statue-like, more Stoical. But it might also be revealed as the great woe-bearer! And then perhaps at the same time would its opposing force be revealed, its prodigious power to light up new starry worlds10 of joy!

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  On the Theory of the Sense of Power

  In doing others well or ill, we want no more than to exert power over them! In doing ill, we hurt those to whom we need to make our power palpable, for pain is a much more striking way to do so than pleasure – pain always casts about for its cause, while pleasure is inclined to look no further than itself. In doing well and wishing well, we help those who somehow or other already depend upon us (that is, who are accustomed to regard us as the cause of their existence); we want to increase their power, because in so doing we increase our own; or we want show them the advantages of being in our power – so they will be more satisfied with their position, and assume a more threatening and hostile aspect against the enemies of our power. It does not alter the final value of our actions if we make sacrifices to do well or ill; even if we lay down our lives like martyrs for the sake of our Church, it is a sacrifice made to our desire for power, or for the purpose of preserving our sense of power. Whoever has the feeling that says, ‘I am in possession of the truth’, how many other possessions would he not gladly forgo to retain it? What would he not jettison to keep ‘above’ water – or should I say, above others who lack the ‘truth’! Certainly, doing ill is seldom so agreeable, so purely agreeable, as doing well; it indicates that we still lack power, or betrays that we are vexed at this privation; it exposes us to new dangers and uncertainties which threaten the power we already possess, and darkens our horizon with the prospect of revenge, scorn, punishment and failure. Only he who is most covetous of the sense of power and most susceptible to its charms, for whom the sight of an object of benevolence, that is, the already subjugated, has become tedious and burdensome, might find it more pleasurable to stamp the seal of power on more refractory material. It depends on how we are accustomed to give spice to life; it is a matter of taste whether we prefer a slow but sure growth of power to a sudden, dangerous and daring one – we always relish this or that spice, each according to his temperament. To proud natures, an easy prey is something contemptible; they have a sense of well-being only at the sight of an untamed man who could be an enemy, just as they do at the sight of anything difficult to acquire; they are often hard towards those who suffer as not worthy of them or their efforts – but they show themselves to be more obliging towards their equals, with whom strife and struggle would at least be honourable, should the occasion present itself. Imbued with the sense of well-being engendered by this perspective, the men of the knightly caste have accustomed themselves to an exquisite courtesy to one another.