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People will feel grateful to me if I condense a point of view, which is at once so important and so new, into four theses: by this means I shall facilitate comprehension, and shall likewise challenge contradiction.
Proposition One. The reasons upon which the apparent nature of "this" world have been based, rather tend to prove its reality,—any other kind of reality defies demonstration.
Proposition Two. The characteristics with which man has endowed the "true Being" of things, are the characteristics of non-Being, of nonentity. The "true world" has been erected upon a contradiction of the real world; and it is indeed an apparent world, seeing that it is merely a moralo-optical delusion.
Proposition Three. There is no sense in spinning yarns about another world, provided, of course, that we do not possess a mighty instinct which urges us to slander, belittle, and cast suspicion upon this life: in this case we should be avenging ourselves on[Pg 23] this life with the phantasmagoria of "another," of a "better" life.
Proposition Four. To divide the world into a "true" and an "apparent" world, whether after the manner of Christianity or of Kant (after all a Christian in disguise), is only a sign of decadence,—a symptom of degenerating life. The fact that the artist esteems the appearance of a thing higher than reality, is no objection to this statement For "appearance" signifies once more reality here, but in a selected, strengthened and corrected form. The tragic artist is no pessimist,—he says Yea to everything questionable and terrible, he is Dionysian.
[1] Nietzsche here refers to the concept "free will" of the Christians; this does not mean that there is no such thing as will—that is to say a powerful determining force from within.—TR.
1. The true world, attainable to the sage, the pious man and the man of virtue,—he lives in it, he is it.
(The most ancient form of the idea was relatively clever, simple, convincing. It was a paraphrase of the proposition "I, Plato, am the truth.")
2. The true world which is unattainable for the moment, is promised to the sage, to the pious man and to the man of virtue ("to the sinner who repents").
(Progress of the idea: it becomes more subtle, more insidious, more evasive,—It becomes a woman, it becomes Christian.)
3. The true world is unattainable, it cannot be proved, it cannot promise anything; but even as a thought, alone, it is a comfort, an obligation, a command.
(At bottom this is still the old sun; but seen through mist and scepticism: the idea has become sublime, pale, northern, Knigsbergian.)[1]
4. The true world—is it unattainable? At all events it is unattained. And as unattained it is also unknown. Consequently it no longer comforts, nor saves, nor constrains: what could something unknown constrain us to?
(The grey of dawn. Reason stretches itself and yawns for the first time. The cock-crow of positivism.)
5. The "true world"—an idea that no longer serves any purpose, that no longer constrains one to anything,—a useless idea that has become quite superfluous, consequently an exploded idea: let us abolish it!
(Bright daylight; breakfast; the return of common sense and of cheerfulness; Plato blushes for shame and all free-spirits kick up a shindy.)
6. We have suppressed the true world: what world survives? the apparent world perhaps?... Certainly not! In abolishing the true world we have also abolished the world of appearance!
(Noon; the moment of the shortest shadows; the end of the longest error; mankind's zenith; Incipit Zarathustra.)
[1] Kant was a native of Knigsberg and lived there all his life. Did Nietzsche know that Kant was simply a Scotch Puritan, whose family had settled in Germany?
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There is a time when all passions are simply fatal in their action, when they wreck their victims with the weight of their folly,—and there is a later period, a very much later period, when they marry with the spirit, when they "spiritualise" themselves. Formerly, owing to the stupidity inherent in passion, men waged war against passion itself: men pledged themselves to annihilate it,—all ancient moral-mongers were unanimous on this point, "il faut tuer les passions." The most famous formula for this stands in the New Testament, in that Sermon on the Mount, where, let it be said incidentally, things are by no means regarded from a height. It is said there, for instance, with an application to sexuality: "if thy eye offend thee, pluck it out": fortunately no Christian acts in obedience to this precept. To annihilate the passions and desires, simply on account of their stupidity, and to obviate the unpleasant consequences of their stupidity, seems to us to-day merely an aggravated form of stupidity. We no longer admire those dentists who extract teeth simply in order that they may not ache again. On the other hand, it will be admitted with some reason, that on the soil from which Christianity grew, the idea of[Pg 27] the "spiritualisation of passion" could not possibly have been conceived. The early Church, as everyone knows, certainly did wage war against the "intelligent," in favour of the "poor in spirit" In these circumstances how could the passions be combated intelligently? The Church combats passion by means of excision of all kinds: its practice, its "remedy," is castration. It never inquires "how can a desire be spiritualised, beautified, deified?"—In all ages it has laid the weight of discipline in the process of extirpation (the extirpation of sensuality, pride, lust of dominion, lust of property, and revenge).—But to attack the passions at their roots, means attacking life itself at its source: the method of the Church is hostile to life.
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The same means, castration and extirpation, are instinctively chosen for waging war against a passion, by those who are too weak of will, too degenerate, to impose some sort of moderation upon it; by those natures who, to speak in metaphor (—and without metaphor), need la Trappe, or some kind of ultimatum of war, a gulf set between themselves and a passion. Only degenerates find radical methods indispensable: weakness of will, or more strictly speaking, the inability not to react to a stimulus, is in itself simply another form of degeneracy. Radical and mortal hostility to sensuality, remains a suspicious symptom: it justifies one in being suspicious of the general state of one who goes to such extremes. Moreover, that hostility and hatred reach their height only when such natures no longer possess enough strength of character to adopt the[Pg 28] radical remedy, to renounce their inner "Satan." Look at the whole history of the priests, the philosophers, and the artists as well: the most poisonous diatribes against the senses have not been said by the impotent, nor by the ascetics; but by those impossible ascetics, by those who found it necessary to be ascetics.
