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(2) We must all be one in our hostility towards everything and everybody who tends to cast a slur upon the value of life: towards all gloomy, dissatisfied and brooding natures. We must prevent these from procreating! But our hostility itself must be a means to our joy! Thus we shall laugh; we shall mock and we shall exterminate without bitterness I Let this be our mortal combat
This life is thy eternal life!
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What was the cause of the downfall of the Alexandrian culture? With all its useful discoveries and its desire to investigate the nature of this world, it did not know how to lend this life its ultimate importance, the thought of a Beyond was more important to it! To teach anew in this regard is still the most important thing of all:—perhaps if metaphysics are applied to this life in the most emphatic way,—as in the case of my doctrine!
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This doctrine is lenient towards those who do not believe in it It speaks of no hells and it contains no threats. He who does not believe in it has but a fleeting life in his consciousness.
40
It would be terrible if we still believed in sin, but whatever we may do, however often we may repeat it, it is all innocent. If the thought of the eternal recurrence of all things does not overwhelm thee, then it is not thy fault: and if it does overwhelm thee, this does not stand to thy merit either.—We think more leniently of our forebears than they themselves thought of themselves; we mourn over the errors which were to them constitutional; but we do not mourn over their evil.
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Let us guard against teaching such a doctrine as if it were a suddenly discovered religion! It[Pg 256] must percolate through slowly, and whole generations must build on it and become fruitful through it,—in order that it may grow into a large tree which will shelter all posterity. What are the two thousand years in which Christianity has maintained its sway? For the mightiest thought of all many millenniums will be necessary,—long, long, long will it have to remain puny and weak!
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For this thought we do not require thirty years of glory with drums and fifes, and thirty years of grave-digging followed by an eternity of macaberesque stillness, as is the case with so many other famous thoughts.
Simple and well-nigh arid as it is, this thought must not even require eloquence to uphold it.
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Are ye now prepared? Ye must have experienced every form of scepticism and ye must have wallowed with voluptuousness in ice-cold baths,—otherwise ye have no right to this thought; I wish to protect myself against those who are over-ready to believe, likewise against those who gush over anything! I would defend my doctrine in advance. It must be the religion of the freest, most cheerful and most sublime souls, a delightful pastureland somewhere between golden ice and a pure heaven!
1
All goals have been annihilated: valuations are turning against each other:
People call him good who hearkens to the dictates of his own heart, but they also call him good who merely does his duty;
People call the mild and conciliating man good, but they also call him good who is brave, inflexible and severe;
People call him good who does not do violence to himself, but they also call the heroes of self-mastery good;
People call the absolute friend of truth good-, but they also call him good who is pious and a transfigurer of things;
People call him good who can obey his own voice, but they also call the devout man good;
People call the noble and the haughty man good, but also him who does not despise and who does not assume condescending airs.
People call him good who is kindhearted and who steps out of the way of broils, but he who thirsts for fight and triumph is also called good;
People call him good who always wishes to be first, but they also call him good who does not wish to be ahead of anybody in anything.
2
We possess a powerful store of moral feelings, but we have no goal for them all. They mutually contradict each other: they have their origin in different tables of values.
There is a wonderful amount of moral power, but there is no longer any goal towards which all this power can be directed.
3
All goals have been annihilated, mankind must give themselves a fresh goal. It is an error to suppose that they had one: they gave themselves all the goals they ever had. But the prerequisites of all previous goals have been annihilated.
Science traces the course of things but points to no goal: what it does give consists of the fundamental facts upon which the new goal must be based.
4
The profound sterility of the nineteenth century. I have not encountered a single man who really had a new ideal to bring forward. The character of German music kept me hoping longest, but in vain. A stronger type in which all our powers are synthetically correlated—this constitutes my faith.
Apparently everything is decadence. We should so direct this movement of decline that it may provide the strongest with a new form of existence.
5
The dissolution of morality, in its practical consequences, leads to the atomistic individual, and[Pg 261] further to the subdivision of the individual into a quantity of parts—absolute liquefaction.
That is why a goal is now more than ever necessary; and love, but a new love.
6
I say: "As long as your morality hung over me I breathed like one asphyxiated. That is why I throttled this snake. I wished to live, consequently it had to die."
7
As long as people are still forced to act, that is to say as long as commands are given, synthesis (the suppression of the moral man) will not be realised To be unable to be otherwise: instincts and commanding reason extending beyond any immediate object: the ability to enjoy one's own nature in action.
8
None of them wish to bear the burden of the commander; but they will perform the most strenuous task if only thou commandest them.
9
We must overcome the past in ourselves: we must combine the instincts afresh and direct the whole together to one goal:—an extremely difficult undertaking! It is not only the evil instincts which have to be overcome,—the so-called good instincts must be conquered also and consecrated anew!
10
No leaps must be made in virtue! But everyone must be given a different path! Not leading to the[Pg 262] highest development of each! Yet everyone may be a bridge and an example for others.
11
To help, to pity, to submit and to renounce personal attacks with a good will,—these things may make even insignificant and superficial men tolerable to the eye: such men must not be contradicted in their belief that this good will is "virtue in itself."
12
Man makes a deed valuable: but how might a deed make man valuable?
13
Morality is the concern of those who cannot free themselves from it: for such people morality therefore belongs to the conditions of existence. It is impossible to refute conditions of existence: the only thing one can do is not to have them.
