The joyous science, p.14
The Joyous Science, page 14
117
The Herd’s Pang of Conscience
In the longest and remotest ages of mankind the pang of conscience was quite different from the way it is today. Today we only feel responsible for what we intend and do, and are proud of ourselves. All our professors of law start with this separate sense of self and sense of pleasure, as if the source of law had arisen from this. But for the longest time in mankind’s history there was nothing more terrible to a person than to feel separate. To be alone, to feel separate, neither to obey nor to rule, to signify individuality – that was not a pleasure but a punishment; one was condemned to ‘individuality’. Free-thinking was regarded as inherently disquieting. While we experience law and order as constraint and sacrifice, formerly it was egoism that was considered painful and genuinely distressing. To be oneself, to judge according to one’s own weights and measures – that was found distasteful. The propensity to do so was considered madness, for every misery and fear was associated with being alone. At that time, ‘free will’ was in close proximity to the bad conscience: the less independently a man acted, the more the gregarious instinct expressed itself in his conduct, the less of a sense of personhood he possessed, the more moral he judged himself to be. Everything that harmed the herd, whether it was intended or not, caused in him a pang of conscience – and likewise in his neighbour, and indeed in the whole herd! It is in this regard that our way of thinking has most changed.
118
Benevolence
Is it virtuous when a cell transforms itself into a function of a stronger cell? It must. And is it evil when the stronger assimilates the weaker? It also must: it is necessary, for it has to have ample replenishment and wishes to regenerate itself. We therefore have to distinguish between two different forms of benevolence, depending upon whether it is the stronger or the weaker who shows it; in the former case, it is an expression of the impulse to appropriate, and in the latter, of the impulse to submit. In the strong, joy is accompanied by desire; the strong wish to transform something to a function. In the weak, joy is accompanied by the wish to be desired; the weak would like to become a function.
Pity is essentially an instance of the former, an agreeable excitation of the appropriative impulse at the sight of the weak; it must be remembered, however, that ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ are relative terms.
119
It’s Not Altruism!
I see in many people an excess of energy and enthusiasm in their desire to be a function; they urge themselves to it, and have the keenest scent for precisely those positions in which they can be functions. Among such persons are those women who transform themselves into the function of a man, specifically, the function which is more weakly developed in him, becoming his purse, or his politics, or his sociability. Such beings do best when they attach themselves to a foreign body; if they do not succeed in doing so they become angry, irritable and devour themselves.
120
Health of the Soul
In order for Ariston of Chios’7 popular medical adage ‘Virtue is the health of the soul’ to be at all useful, it would have to be amended to read, ‘Your virtue is the health of your soul.’ For nothing is inherently healthy, and every attempt to define things in this way has failed miserably. The determination of what health means even just for your body depends upon your aim, your horizon, your strengths, your impulses, your errors, and especially the ideals and fantasies of your soul. Thus there are innumerable kinds of physical health; the more we disregard the dogma of ‘human equality’ and allow the unique and incomparable to rear its head, the more the very idea of normal health, along with the idea of a normal diet, the normal course of a disease, etc. must be abandoned by our physicians. Only then would it be time to turn our thoughts to the health and disease of the soul, and to postulate that the peculiar virtue of each person is their health, bearing in mind all the while that the health of one soul could very well look like the opposite of the health of another. Ultimately, the great question would still remain open as to whether we could do without disease for the development of our virtue, and especially whether our thirst for knowledge and self-knowledge would not require a diseased soul as much as a healthy one: in short, whether the exclusive desire for health is not a mere prejudice, a mark of cowardice, and perhaps even the subtlest form of backwardness and barbarism.
121
Life No Argument
We have arranged for ourselves a world in which we can live – by assuming the existence of bodies, lines, surfaces, causes and effects, motion and rest, form and content; without these articles of faith nobody could now bear to live. But for all that they remain unproven. Life is no argument; error might be one of the conditions of life.
122
Moral Scepticism in Christianity
Even Christianity has made a great contribution to enlightenment: it taught moral scepticism in a very forceful and effective manner, accusing and deprecating8 with untiring patience and subtlety; it annihilated every individual’s belief in his own ‘virtue’; it wiped off the face of the earth those celebrated prigs of whom there were so many in antiquity, men who, confident in their own perfection, strutted about with all the dignity of a matador. When we now read antiquity’s books about morality, for example those of Seneca or Epictetus, after being trained in this Christian school of scepticism, we feel an amused sense of superiority, and are full of hidden insights and overviews; it seems to us as if a child were speaking to an old man, or a beautiful young enthusiast to La Rochefoucauld: we know better what virtue is! Eventually, however, we have also applied this very scepticism to all religious states and processes, such as sin, repentance, grace and holiness, and have allowed the worm to burrow so deeply that we now have the same sense of subtle superiority and insight while reading any Christian books: we also know better what the religious sentiments are! And the time has come to know them well, to describe them well, for the pious of the old faith are also dying out – let us save their likeness and type, if only for the sake of knowledge!
123
Knowledge More Than a Means
Even without the passion for knowledge, science would still be promoted; science has hitherto grown and matured without it. The belief in science, the prejudice in its favour which now dominates every state in Europe (just as it had once dominated the Church), rests, in essence, on the fact that this unconditional inclination and impulse is so rarely present, and that science is not considered a passion, but a condition and an ‘ethic’. Indeed, for some, curiosity, the amour-plaisir of knowledge, is enough; for others, amour-vanité and force of habit, along with the ulterior motive of honours and bread, are enough; for many, an abundance of leisure, with nothing better to do than to read, collect, organize, observe and recount, is enough – their ‘scientific impulse’ is boredom. Once, Pope Leo X (in his letter to Beroaldus) sang the praises of science: he described it as the most beautiful ornament and the greatest glory of human life, a noble occupation in prosperity or adversity.9 ‘Without it,’ he says finally, ‘all human undertakings should be deprived of a firm footing – even with it they are changeable and uncertain enough!’ But in the end this somewhat sceptical pope, like all other ecclesiastical apologists for science, keeps his counsel about it. While we may discern in his words a willingness to place science even above the arts, which is remarkable enough in so great a patron of them,10 ultimately it is only graciousness which prevents him from mentioning what he places high above even science: the ‘revealed truth’ and the ‘eternal salvation of the soul’ – and what are ornament, glory, preservation, or life’s uncertainties to him, compared to that? ‘Science is something secondary, nothing ultimate or unconditional; it is no object of passion’ – this remained Leo’s judgement: the actual Christian judgement about science! In antiquity, the appreciation of science and the sense of its dignity were diminished by the fact that, even among its most ardent disciples, the pursuit of virtue came first. People believed that they had given knowledge the highest praise when they celebrated it as the best means to virtue. It is something new in history that knowledge wants to be more than a means.
124
In the Horizon of the Infinite
We have left dry land and put out to sea! We have burned the bridge behind us – what is more, we have burned the land behind us! Well, little ship, look out! Beside you is the ocean. True, it does not always roar, and sometimes it is spread out like silk and gold and a gentle reverie, but there will be hours when you realize that it is infinite, and that there is nothing more terrible than infinity. Oh, poor bird that felt free, and now beats against the bars of this cage! Alas, if homesickness should befall you, as if there had been more freedom there – when there is no longer any ‘land’!
125
The Madman
Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning light, ran to the marketplace and shouted incessantly, ‘I seek God! I seek God!’? As there were many people standing together who did not believe in God, he caused much amusement. ‘Is He lost?’, asked one. ‘Did He wander off like a child?’, asked another. ‘Or is He hiding? Is He afraid of us?’ ‘Has He gone to sea? Has He emigrated?’ And in this manner they shouted and laughed. Then the madman leaped into their midst, and looked at them with piercing eyes and cried, ‘Where did God go? I will tell you! We have killed Him – you and I! We are all His murderers! But how did we do this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the whole horizon? What did we do when we unchained this earth from its sun? Where is it heading? Where are we heading? Away from all suns? Are we not constantly falling? Backwards, sidewards, forwards, in all directions? Is there still an above and below? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothingness? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is night not falling evermore? Mustn’t lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we hear nothing yet of the the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing yet of the divine putrefaction? For even gods putrefy! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed Him! How shall we, the most murderous of all murderers, ever console ourselves? The holiest and mightiest thing that the world has ever known has bled to death under our knives – who will wash this blood clean from our hands? With what water might we be purified? What lustrations, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not become gods ourselves, if only to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed – and because of it, whoever is born after us belongs to a higher history than all history hitherto!’
Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; they too were silent and stared at him, baffled. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, so that it broke into pieces and went out. ‘I have come too early,’ he then said, ‘this is not yet the right time. This tremendous event is still on its way and headed towards them – word of it has not yet reached men’s ears. Even after they are over and done with, thunder and lightning take time, the light of the stars takes time, and deeds too take time, before they can be seen and heard. This deed is further away from them than the farthest star – and yet they have done it themselves!’
It is said that on that very day, the madman made his way into various churches, and there intoned his requiem aeternam deo. When led out and called to account, he always replied, ‘What are these churches now, if not the tombs and sepulchres of God?’
126
Mystical Explanations
Mystical explanations are considered deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow.
127
After-Effect of the Most Ancient Religiosity
Each thoughtless person believes that the will is uniquely effective, that volition is something simple, absolutely given, underived and intrinsically intelligible. He is convinced that when he does anything, for example delivers a blow, it is he who strikes, and that he struck because he intended to strike. He does not notice a problem here; rather, the experience of volition is sufficient not only to persuade him that there is such a thing as cause and effect, but to instil in him the belief that he understands that relationship. Of the mechanism that lies behind the event, and the hundreds of complex and subtle activities which must transpire before the strike can take place, and likewise the inability of the will to achieve even the smallest portion of them by itself – of all this he knows nothing. To him, the will is a magically effective power: the belief in volition as the cause of effects is the belief in magically effective powers. Now originally, whenever man saw an event take place, he believed that a will was the cause, and that persons, volitional beings, were somewhere in the background, bringing it about – the very idea that a mechanism was involved was far from his mind. But because for immense periods of time man only believed in persons (and not in matter, forces, things and so on), the belief in cause and effect has become his fundamental belief which he applies to everything that happens – even now he still does so instinctively, acceding to an atavistic belief of the oldest pedigree. The propositions ‘no effect without a cause’ and ‘every effect is also a cause’ appear to be generalizations of much more circumscribed propositions, to wit, ‘where there are effects, there are acts of volition’, ‘there can only be effects on volitional beings’, ‘where there are effects on volitional beings, these are never just purely and passively suffered with no further effects ensuing from them, but rather, every form of suffering at the same time stimulates the will (to activity, defence, revenge or retribution)’. In the early history of mankind, the more general and the more circumscribed propositions were identical, the former were not generalizations of the latter, but rather the latter were meant to exemplify the former.
Schopenhauer, with his assumption that being is will, has enthroned a primitive mythology; he seems never to have attempted an analysis of the will, because like everyone he believed in the simplicity and immediacy of all volition – while volition is such a well-coordinated mechanism that it frequently escapes all but the most penetrating of observers. Against him, I offer the following propositions. First, in order for the will to arise, an impression of pleasure and pain is necessary. Second, the fact that a vehement stimulus is perceived as pleasure or pain is a matter of the interpreting intellect, which for the most part operates unconsciously; one and the same stimulus may be interpreted as pleasure or pain. Third, it is only in intellectual beings that there is pleasure, pain and will; the vast majority of organisms have nothing of the kind.
128
The Value of Prayer
Prayer was invented for those people who never have any thoughts of their own, and to whom spiritual exaltation is unknown, or at least passes unnoticed; what are these people to do in holy places and in those important situations in life where quiet and dignity of some kind are required? So that they at least do not disturb others, the wisdom of all founders of religions great and small has been to commend to them formulae of prayer which involve a protracted mechanical labour of the lips, associated with both an effort of the memory and a regular, fixed posture of hands, feet and eyes! They may then, like the Tibetans, ruminate on their ‘Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ’ over and over; or, as in Benares, count on their fingers the name of the god Ram Ram Ram (and so on, with or without grace); or honour Vishnu with the recitation of his thousand names, or Allah with his ninety-nine; or make use of prayer wheels and rosaries – the main thing is that they are in a fixed position for a time while performing this labour, and present a tolerable appearance; their manner of prayer was invented for the benefit of the pious who have thoughts and exaltations of their own. But even the latter have their weary hours when it does them good to have recourse to a series of venerable words and sounds and a mechanical piety to go with them. But supposing that these rare men – and in every religion, the religious man is an exception – know how to help themselves, the poor in spirit do not, and to forbid them their prayerful prattle would mean to take their religion away from them, a fact which Protestantism makes more and more obvious all the time. What religion wants from such people is that they should keep still with their eyes, hands, legs and every other part of their bodies; thus for a time they become beautiful to behold, and – more nearly human.
129
The Conditions for God
‘God Himself cannot do without wise men’, said Luther,11 and not without reason; but ‘Still less can God do without unwise men’ – that is something the good Luther did not say!
130
A Dangerous Determination
The Christian determination to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.
131
