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Finally, noble manners, bearing, courage, self-confidence,—how they alter the value of that which is attained by means of them!
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Concerning the optics of valuation:—
The influence of the greatness or smallness of the aims.
The influence of the intellectuality of the means. The influence of the behaviour in action. The influence of success or failure. The influence of opposing forces and their value. The influence of that which is permitted and that which is forbidden.
780.
The tricks by means of which actions, measures, and passions are legitimised, which from an individual standpoint are no longer good form or even in good taste.—
Art, which allows us to enter such strange worlds, makes them tasteful to us.
Historians prove its justification and reason; travels, exoticism, psychology, penal codes, the lunatic asylum, the criminal, sociology.
Impersonality (so that as media of a collective whole we allow ourselves these passions and action—the Bar, juries, the bourgeois, the soldier, the minister, the prince, society, "critics") makes us feel that we are sacrificing something.
781.
Preoccupations concerning one's self and one's eternal salvation are not expressive either of a rich or of a self-confident nature, for the latter lets all questions of eternal bliss go to the devil,—it is not interested in such matters of happiness it is all power, deeds, desires; it imposes itself upon things; it even violates things. The Christian[Pg 225] is a romantic hypochondriac who does not stand firmly on his legs.
Whenever hedonistic views come to the front, one can always presuppose the existence of pain and a certain ill-constitutedness.
782.
"The growing autonomy of the individual"—Parisian philosophers like M. Fouille talk of such things: they would do well to study the race moutonnire for a moment; for they belong to it. For Heaven's sake open your eyes, ye sociologists who deal with the future! The individual grew strong under quite opposite conditions: ye describe the extremest weakening and impoverishment of man; ye actually want this weakness and impoverishment, and ye apply the whole lying machinery of the old ideal in order to achieve your end. Ye are so constituted that ye actually regard your gregarious wants as an ideal! Here we are in the presence of an absolute lack of psychological honesty.
783.
The two traits which characterise the modern European are apparently antagonistic individualism and the demand for equal rights: this I am at last beginning to understand. The individual is an extremely vulnerable piece of vanity: this vanity, when it is conscious of its high degree of susceptibility to pain, demands that every one should be made equal; that the individual should only stand inter pares. But in this way a social[Pg 226] race is depicted in which, as a matter of fact, gifts and powers are on the whole equally distributed. The pride which would have loneliness and but few appreciators is quite beyond comprehension: really "great" successes are only attained through the masses—indeed, we scarcely understand yet that a mob success is in reality only a small success; because pulchrum est paucorum hominum.
No morality will countenance order of rank among men, and the jurists know nothing of a communal conscience. The principle of individualism rejects really great men, and demands the most delicate vision for, and the speediest discovery of, a talent among people who are almost equal; and inasmuch as every one has some modicum of talent in such late and civilised cultures (and can, therefore, expect to receive his share of honour), there is a more general buttering-up of modest merits to-day than there has ever been. This gives the age the appearance of unlimited justice. Its want of justice is to be found not in its unbounded hatred of tyrants and demagogues, even in the arts; but in its detestation of noble natures who scorn the praise of the many. The demand for equal rights (that is to say, the privilege of sitting in judgment on everything and everybody) is anti-aristocratic.
This age knows just as little concerning the absorption of the individual, of his mergence into a great type of men who do not want to be personalities. It was this that formerly constituted the distinction and the zeal of many lofty natures (the greatest poets among them); or of the desire[Pg 227] to be a polis, as in Greece; or of Jesuitism, or of the Prussian Staff Corps, and bureaucracy; or of apprenticeship and a continuation of the tradition of great masters: to all of which things, non-social conditions and the absence of petty vanity are necessary.
784.
Individualism is a modest and still unconscious form of will to power; with it a single human unit seems to think it sufficient to free himself from the preponderating power of society (or of the State or Church). He does not set himself up in opposition as a personality, but merely as a unit; he represents the rights of all other individuals as against the whole. That is to say, he instinctively places himself on a level with every other unit: what he combats he does not combat as a person, but as a representative of units against a mass.
Socialism is merely an agitatory measure of individualism: it recognises the fact that in order to attain to something, men must organise themselves into a general movement—into a "power." But what the Socialist requires is not society as the object of the individual, but society as a means of making many individuals possible: this is the instinct of Socialists, though they frequently deceive themselves on this point (apart from this, however, in order to make their kind prevail, they are compelled to deceive others to an enormous extent). Altruistic moral preaching thus enters into the service of individual egoism,—one of[Pg 228] the most common frauds of the nineteenth century.
Anarchy is also merely an agitatory measure of Socialism; with it the Socialist inspires fear, with fear he begins to fascinate and to terrorise: but what he does above all is to draw all courageous and reckless people to his side, even in the most intellectual spheres.
In spite of all this, individualism is the most modest stage of the will to power.
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When one has reached a certain degree of independence, one always longs for more: separation in proportion to the degree of force; the individual is no longer content to regard himself as equal to everybody, he actually seeks for his peer—he makes himself stand out from others. Individualism is followed by a development in groups and organs; correlative tendencies join up together and become powerfully active: now there arise between these centres of power, friction, war, a reconnoitring of the forces on either side, reciprocity, understandings, and the regulation of mutual services. Finally, there appears an order of rank.
Recapitulation—
1. The individuals emancipate themselves.
2. They make war, and ultimately agree concerning equal rights (justice is made an end in itself).
3. Once this is reached, the actual differences in degrees of power begin to make themselves felt, and to a greater extent than before (the reason being that on the whole peace is established, and innumerable small centres of power begin to create[Pg 229] differences which formerly were scarcely noticeable). Now the individuals begin to form groups, these strive after privileges and preponderance, and war starts afresh in a milder form.
