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The ascetic ideal has corrupted not only health and taste, but also a something third, fourth, fifth, sixth. I shall take good care not to state them all (I fear I should never come to an end!). Not the effects of this ideal it is in this place my purpose to set forth; — but solely the meaning of it; what it points to; what lies behind it, under it, in it; that of which it is the expression, provisional, indistinct and overloaded with interrogation marks and misunderstandings. And with a view to this purpose, I was not allowed to spare my readers a glance upon the enormity of its effects, its fatal effects included; viz., in order to prepare them for the final and most terrible aspect which the question as to the meaning of this ideal has for me. What means the power of that ideal, the enormity of its power? How comes it that people have yielded to it to this extent? Why has it not been better resisted? The ascetic ideal expresses a will. Where is the antagonistic will expressing an antagonistic ideal? The ascetic ideal has a goal which is universal enough to let all other interests of man's existence, compared with it, appear petty and narrow. It inexorably interprets times, peoples, and men with a view to this one end. It recognises no other interpretation, no other goal; it rejects, be-nays, be-yeas, confirms things exclusively to suit its own interpretation. And was there ever a more completely spun-out system of interpretation? It submits to no power, but rather believes in its prerogative over every power, in its unconditional rank-distance, as regards every power. It believes that there is on earth nothing of power, which does not owe its meaning, its right to existence, its value to it; it considers everything to be a tool for its work, a way and means to its goal, to one goal . . . Where is the counterpart to this corporate system of will, goal and interpretation? Why is a counterpart wanting? . . . . Where is the other "one goal?" . . . . But I am told, it is not wanting; it has not only waged a long and successful war against that ideal, but even vanquished it in all essential points. All our modern science is said to testify to this fact, — this modern science, which, being a specific philosophy of reality, to all appearance believes in itself only, to all appearance has the courage and will to itself and has so far managed to get along perfectly well without a God, another world, and be-naying virtues. But such noise, such agitator-gossip goes for nought with me. These trumpeters of reality are poor musicians. As is audible enough, their voices do not rise from the depth; out of them does not speak the abyss of scientific conscience (for to-day scientific conscience is an abyss); the word "science" in such trumpeter-mouths being mere ribaldry, misuse and impudence. The very opposite from that which is maintained by them is true: science to-day has absolutely no faith in itself, not to speak of an ideal above itself, — and where it is still passion, love, glow, suffering, there it is not the antithesis, but rather the latest and noblest form of the ascetic ideal. Does this sound strange to you? . . . There are, I admit, plenty of worthy and modest labourers even among the scientists of to-day, who like their little nook, and who, because they like it, at times give utterance a little immodestly to the demand that everybody should feel contented, especially in science, — where, as they say, so much useful work remains to be accomplished. I do not contradict; and least of all should I like to make their handicraft unpleasant to these honest labourers; for I rejoice in their labour. But to say that much work is accomplished at present in science, and that there are contented labourers, is as yet far from proving that science, as a whole, has a goal, a will, an ideal, a passion of a great faith. The reverse, as I said, is true: where science is not the latest manifestation of the ascetic ideal, — (which is so in too rare, too noble, too choice cases to nullify the corporate judgment) science is a subterfuge for every kind of discontent, unbelief, mental gnaw-worm, despectio sui, bad conscience, — it is the unrest of ideallessness itself, the suffering from the absence of great love, the feeling of dissatisfaction arising from an involuntary contentedness. Oh, how much is to-day hidden by science! Oh, how much it is expected to hide! The capacity of our best scholars, their inconsiderate industry, their head reeking, fuming, day and night, their handicraftmastery: — how often all this finds its ultimate sense in the fact that they wish to hide something from themselves! Science as a means of self-narcosis — ye know of that? They are occasionally wounded to the heart (as every one knows who comes into contact with scholars) by some careless word; the wrath of one's learned friends will be brought down upon one in the very moment that one thinks to honour them; they are disconcerted merely by one being too "heavy" to see whom one has before one, — sufferers, who do not like to confess to themselves what they are, men narcotised and senseless who fear but one thing: to recover consciousness . . . .
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And now behold, on the other hand, those rarer cases of which I spoke; the last idealists among modern philosophers and scholars: they are peradventure the wished-for opponents, the counter-idealists of the ascetic ideal? And in very deed, they believe themselves such, these "infidels" (for infidels they are, each and every one). And judging from the amount of earnestness evinced, from their passionateness as manifested in speech and gesture, it seems to be their last rest of belief that they are opponents of this ideal. But does it follow from this that what they believe is true? . . . . We "perceivers" eye, by this time, with mistrust every kind of believer; our mistrust has gradually taught us to reason reversely from what was reasoned in former times: viz., wherever the power of some belief rises into prominence to conclude, as to a certain faintness of demonstrableness, as to an improbability of that which is believed. Nor do we deny that faith "saves." For this very reason we deny that faith proves anything. A strong faith that saves, renders suspect what it believes; it does not establish truth, but rather a certain probability of illusion. How does the case stand, then? Those who to-day be-nay and stand aside; these minds absolute in one thing, in their claim to intellectual cleanliness; these hard, stern, continent, heroic spirits which constitute the honour of our age; all these pallid atheists, antichrists, immoralists, nihilists; these sceptics, ephectics, hectics of the spirit (for hectics they are, each and every one in some sense or other); these last idealists of perception in whom alone to-day the intellectual conscience stays and has become incarnate; — they do actually believe themselves emancipated as much as possible from the ascetic ideal, — these "free, very free spirits." And yet — let me tell them, what they themselves cannot see ("for they stand too near to themselves") —: even this ideal is also their ideal; they themselves represent it to-day, and possibly they alone; they themselves are its most spiritual offspring, its skirmishes and outposts, its most captious, tenderest, most incomprehensible form of seduction. If in any respect I can read riddles, I wish to do so in this sentence! These spirits are yet far from being free spirits. For they still believe in truth . . . . When the Christian crusaders in the orient lighted upon that invincible Order of Assassins, that order of free spirits par excellence, the lowest grades of which lived in such strict obedience as no order of monks ever attained, they received in some way or other among other things a hint as to that symbol and tally-word which was reserved for the highest grades only, as their secretum: "Nought is true, all is permitted". . . . Good, this was freedom of spirit; this was renouncing faith to truth itself . . . . Has ever any European, any Christian free spirit, become involved in this sentence and its labyrinthine consequences? Does he know from experience the Minotaur of this cave? . . . I doubt it; nay, I know it to be otherwise. Nothing is farther from these souls absolute in one thing, these so-called "free spirits," than freedom and emancipation in that sense; in no respect are they more firmly bound; in the belief in truth they are, more so than any other, firm and absolute. Perhaps I know all this from all too immediate experience. That venerable philosophers' continence to which such faith obliges; that Stoicism of intellect which finally forbids itself as strictly to pronounce a Nay as a Yea; that will to stand still before everything real, — the factum brutum; that fatalism of "petits faits" (ce petit faitalisme, as I call it), in which French science now tries to reach a kind of moral priority as compared with German science; that desisting from interpretation in general (which is violation, accommodation, shortening, omitting, stuffing, supplementing by fancy, forging and whatsoever belongs to the essence of interpreting) — all this implies, on the whole, an asceticism of virtue, no less so than any negation of sensuality. (It is at bottom only a mode of this negation.) What, however, enforces this asceticism — that absolute will to truth —, is the faith in the ascetic ideal itself, though appearing as the unconscious imperative of this ideal (let there be no illusion about this point); is the belief in a metaphysical value of truth, a value in itself of truth, such as is guaranteed and chartered by this ideal only. (It stands and falls with it.) There is, strictly judging, no such thing as an "unconditioned" science; the very thought of such a thing is unthinkable, paralogical. A philosophy, a "creed," must always exist, in order that from it science may receive a direction, a meaning, a limit, a method, a right to existence. (He who holds the opposite view, who undertakes, for instance, to place philosophy "on a strictly scientific basis," requires to turn, not only philosophy but truth herself, upside down — the worst offence against decency which can exist, towards two matrons so venerable!) Indeed there is no doubt — and here my Joyful Science may do the speaking (cf. book v, aph. 344): "He who is veritable in that daring and ultimate sense, as is presupposed by the belief in science, in so believing be-yeas another world than the world of life, nature and history;" and in so far as he be-yeas this "other world " — what? must he not even thereby be-nay its counterpart, this world, our world? It is still a metaphysical belief which underlies our belief in science. We too, we knowing ones of to-day, we ungodly ones and anti-metaphysicians, we too still take our fire from that conflagration which has been kindled by a two-thousand-years old faith; that Christian faith which was also the faith of Plato; the faith that God is the truth, that truth is divine . . . . How now, if even this belief should grow ever more improbable; how, if nothing should prove divine, unless it be "error," blindness and falsehood; how, if God himself should prove to be our longest lie? — Here we do well to pause and bethink ourselves a long while. Science itself now stands in need of vindication (which does not mean so much as that a vindication for it exists). Let people, as regards this question, look at the most ancient as well as the most recent philosophies. All of them lack the consciousness how far the will to truth itself stands in need of vindication. Here is a gap in every philosophy — how comes this? Because the ascetic ideal so far lorded it over all philosophy; because truth itself was posited as the being, as God, as highest instance; because truth was not permitted to be looked at as a problem. Is this "permitted" understood? — From the moment that the faith in the God of the ascetic ideal is denied, a new problem exists, the problem of the value of truth. The will to truth stands in need of a criticism (let us herewith define our own task); the value of truth must, by way of experiment, be put in question . . . . (If some one should find this too short a statement, we advise him to read for information that section of Joyful Science which bears the title: "How far we also are still pious," aph. 344; better still, the entire fifth book of said work, as also the Preface to Dawn of the Day.)
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No! Keep away with science, when I ask for the natural antagonist of the ascetic ideal, when I ask: "Where is the antagonistic will which represents an ideal antagonistic to it?" To be such a will, science is not by far independent enough; in every respect she needs some ideal of value, some power which creates values, in the service of which she is allowed to believe in herself. She herself never creates values. Her relation to the ascetic ideal is in itself as yet far from being antagonistic. She rather represents in the main the propulsive factor in the inner development of this ideal. Her opposition and fighting are, on closer examination, directed, not against the ideal itself, but only against the outer fortifications, the garb and masquerade, the occasional incrustation, petrifaction, dogmatisation of this ideal. Science and the ascetic ideal — science frees life in it by denying what is exoteric in it. For both — science and the ascetic ideal — root in one common soil, as I already intimated, namely, in the common over-estimation of truth (more exactly: in the common belief in the uncriticisableness and inestimableness of truth). Even for this reason they are, of necessity, allies — so that, in case they are combated, they cannot be combated or put in question but together. An estimation of the value of the ascetic ideal will inevitably involve an estimation also of the value of science: open your eyes betimes to this fact, ay, and prick your ears! — Art, as I may say in advance, — for I shall at some time revert to this subject at length — art, in which just falsehood is sanctified, the will to illusion, has good conscience on its part, is much more than science fundamentally opposed to the ascetic ideal. This is what the instinct of Plato prompted to him — Plato, this greatest enemy to art whom Europe has ever produced. Plato against Homer — this is the entire, true antagonism. On the one hand, the man of "another world" with entire will, the great slanderer of life; on the other, the involuntary deifier of life, the representative of golden nature. Hence the serving of an artist in the service of the ascetic ideal is the thoroughest of all artist-corruptions possible; unfortunately also one of the most frequent (for nothing is more corruptible than an artist). Also physiologically reconsidered, science and the ascetic ideal root in one common soil. A certain impoverishment of life is the condition for each. The emotions cooled down; the step retarded; instinct replaced by dialectics; earnest impressed on countenances and demeanours (earnest, this most unmistakable sign of an impeded metabolism, of a struggling and wrestling life). Witness the times in the life of a people, when the scholar rises into prominence! They are times of languor, of sunset, of decline, — the teeming fulness of power, the confidence in life, the confidence in a future being gone. The predominance of the mandarin never means anything good; no more so than the rising of democracy, of peace-arbitraments in place of war, of the equality of woman with man, of the religion of sympathy and all the other symptoms of declining life. (Science taken as a problem: What is the meaning of science? —compare, for this topic, the Preface of the Birth of Tragedy.) — No! this "modern science" — open your eyes widely to this fact! — is at present the best ally of the ascetic ideal, and even for the reason that she is the most unconscious, the most involuntary, the most secret, the most subterranean! They have acted in concert so far, — the "poor in spirit" and the scientific adversaries of that ideal (let people guard themselves, by the bye, against supposing that these scientists are the counterpart of these poor ones, that they are the rich in spirit. This they are not; I have called them hectics of the spirit). These celebrated victories of the latter: no doubt, they are victories. But victories over what? The ascetic ideal was not at all conquered by them; on the contrary, it became even stronger, i.e., more incomprehensible, more spiritual, more captious, by ever again a wall, a bulwark which had been reared about the ascetic ideal and had roughened its aspect, being ruthlessly removed and broken down by science. Is it actually thought that the defeat of theological astronomy implies a defeat of that ideal? Has here, peradventure, become less requisite to man some another-world-solution of his riddle of existence because of the fact that since that time existence has looked still more fortuitous, still more commonplace, still more dispensable-with in the visible order of things? Is not just the self-diminution of man, is not his will to self-diminution ever since Copernicus making irresistible progress? Alas, the belief in his dignity, his uniqueness, his irreplaceability in the rank-sequence of beings is gone; he has become an animal, an animal without likeness, allowance, and reserve, — he, who in his former belief was almost a God ("Child of God," "God-man") . . . . It seems as though man, since Copernicus, had slid upon an inclined plane, — he ever more rapidly rolls away from the centre. Whither? Into the Nothing? into the "piercing feeling of his nothingness?". . . . Good! This were just the straight road into the old ideal? . . . . All science (and not merely astronomy, on the humiliating and prostrating effects of which Kant has left a memorable confession: "She annihilates my significance" . . . .), all science, natural as well as unnatural — thus I call the self-criticism of perception — tries to talk man out of his former self-esteem, as though it had been no more than a bizarre self-conceit. Indeed, one might go so far as to say that this constitutes her proper pride, her own, grim form of Stoical άταραξία, to maintain this laboriously acquired self-contempt of man as his last and most earnest claim to self-esteem (and with good reason indeed, for he who despises is one who has not yet "unlearnt to esteem". . . .). Is this, then, a counteraction against the ascetic ideal? Is it actually still seriously believed, that (as theologians for a while imagined) Kant's victory over the theological dogmatism of concepts such as "God," "soul," "freedom," "immortality" did injure that ideal? In asking which, we shall, in the meantime, have nothing to do with the question whether Kant ever intended any such thing. Certain it is that every variety of transcendentalist since Kant once more plays a winning game. They are emancipated from the theologians: what happiness! He has betrayed to them that by-way on which they may now (on their own behalf and with the best scientific grace) follow out the "inclinations of their hearts." And again: who would now dare to blame the agnostics, — reverers, as they are, of the Unknown and the Mysterious in itself, if they now will worship the interrogation-mark itself as God? (Xavier Doudan, somewhere speaks of the ravages which were occasioned by "l'habitude d'admirer l'inintelligible au lieu de rester tout simplement dans l'inconnu;" the ancients, he thinks, managed to get along without that). Supposing that all that man "perceives" will not satisfy his wishes but runs counter to them and fills him with awe, what a godlike expedient to be allowed to blame not "the wishing" but "the perceiving" itself! . . . . "There is no perception; therefore there is a God:" what a new elegantia syllogismi! what a triumph of the ascetic ideal!
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Or did, peradventure, all modern historiography present a demeanour more certain of life, more certain of its ideals? Its noblest ambition now is to be a mirror; it disowns all teleology; it no longer undertakes to "prove" anything; it disdains to play the judge and finds therein its own good taste; it neither be-nays nor be-yeas; it only determines; it only describes . . . All this is ascetic in a high degree; but it is also in a still higher degree nihilistic. On this point let no-one deceive himself! We see a dreary, cold, but determined look — an eye, which looketh outwards like an isolated north-pole traveller (perhaps, in order not to be obliged to look inwards? or backwards? . . . .). Here lies snow, here life is silent; the last crows, whose voice is heard, are called "Wherefore?" "In vain," "Nada!" — here no longer grows or thrives anything except peradventure St. Petersburg metapolitics or Tolstoian "sympathy." But again, as regards that other kind of historians, perchance a still "more modern" kind, a libidinous, lustful kind, which ogles with life no less than with the ascetic ideal; which uses the word "artist" as a glove, and to-day holds a monopoly, as it were, of praising contemplation— oh, what thirst these sweet souls full of esprit create even for ascetics and winter-scenes! No! to the devil with these contemplative people! Oh, how much I should prefer to walk in the company of those historical nihilists through the dreariest, gray, cold mists! — indeed, suppose that I must choose, I shall not refrain from listening even to somebody altogether unhistorical, antihistorical (such as that Dühring by whose melodies a yet somewhat bashful, somewhat unconfessed species of "beautiful souls" is intoxicated, the species anarchistica among the educated proletariat). A hundred times worse are the " contemplative." I know of nothing more apt to beget nausea than such an "objective" easy-chair, such a dainty relisher in the presence of history, half priest, half satyr, parfum Renan, the shrill falsetto of whose applause sufficiently betrays wherein he is deficient, where in this case the Parca applied, alas! all too chirurgically, her cruel shears. This goes against my taste, also against my patience. In the presence of such spectacles, let him who is not the worse for it, preserve his patience. — I am exasperated by such a sight; I am provoked against the play by such spectators, nay, even more than by the play (history itself, ye understand?). All of a sudden Anacreontic humours come over me. That nature which gave to the bull his horn, to the lion his χάσύ ὀδόντων, to what end has she given me my foot? . . . . To kick, by Saint Anacreon, and not merely to run away; to kick over those worm-eaten easy-chairs, that cowardly contemplativeness, that libidinous Eunuchism towards history, that dalliance with ascetic ideals, that tartuffism of righteousness practised by impotence! My highest respect to the ascetic ideal, in so far as it is honest! so long as it believes in itself and cuts no capers for us! But I do not like the coquette bed-bugs whose ambition is insatiate in the desire — to smell of the infinite, till at last the infinite smells of bed-bugs; I do not like the whited sepulchres which mimic life; I do not like the weary and worn-out who wrap themselves in wisdom and view things "objectively;" I do not like the agitators dressed up as heroes and wearing a halo of idealism about the straw-wisp of their heads; I do not like the ambitious artists who would fain represent ascetics and priests, and who are at bottom tragic clowns only; I do not like them either — the latest speculators in idealism, the anti-Semites, who to-day distort their eyes in Christian-Aryan-goodman fashion, and who, by an abuse (such as will exhaust all patience) of the cheapest means of agitation, moral attitude, endeavour to work up all the blockhead elements of the people. (The fact that every kind of spiritual humbug thrives well in Germany at present, is connected with the now-a-days undeniable and by this time palpable desolation of German spirit, the cause of which I seek in the all too exclusive nourishment by newspapers, politics, beer and Wagnerian music, together with that which forms the prime condition for such diet: first, the national confinement and vanity, the strong, but narrow principle, "Germany, Germany over everything," and secondly, the paralysis agitans of "modern ideas.") Europe to-day is, if in anything, rich and inventive in means of excitation; indeed, nothing seems to be so indispensable to it as stimulants and distilled waters. Hence, among other things, the enormous forgery in ideals, these best distilled waters of the spirit; hence, also, the nauseous, ill-smelling, false, pseudo-alcoholic air everywhere. I should like to know how many shiploads of spurious idealism, of heroic costumes and tinkle-tankling of gallant words; how many tons of sugared, spirituous sympathy (firm: la religion de la souffrance); how many stilts of "noble indignation" for the benefit of the spiritually flat-footed; how many comedians of the Christian-moral ideal would have to be exported from Europe to-day, so that its air once more might smell cleaner . . . . Obviously, this overproduction suggests the possibility of a new trade; obviously new "profits" can be made with small ideal-idols and corresponding "idealists" — let this broad hint not be overheard! Who has courage enough for such an undertaking? We hold in our hands the possibility to "idealise" the entire globe! . . . . But what say I of courage? Here but one thing is necessary — even this hand, an unembarrassed, very much unembarrassed hand . . . .
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Enough! enough! Let us leave these curiosities and complexities of the most modern spirit, which are, in equal degree, calculated to excite laughter and vexation. Just our problem, the problem of the meaning of the ascetic ideal, can dispense with them. What has it to do with yesterday or to-day! These matters shall be handled by myself more thoroughly and more severely in another connection (under the head of "A contribution to the history of European Nihilism;" for which I refer to a work, which I am now preparing: THE WILL TO POWER. An Essay Towards a Transvaluation of all Values). The only point I wish to emphasise in this place is this: the ascetic ideal has, as in others also in the most spiritual sphere of thought, at present only one kind of real enemies and injurers. These are the comedians of this ideal; for they arouse mistrust. Wherever else the spirit is at work earnestly, powerfully and without counterfeiting, it lacks in any ideals whatsoever — the popular word for this abstinence is "Atheism" — minus its will to truth. But this will, this remnant of an ideal, is, if you will believe me, this ideal itself in its strictest, most spiritual formulation, altogether esoteric, freed from every attire. Thus it is, not so much the remnant, but the kernel of this ideal. The absolute candid atheism (and it is its air we breathe, we more spiritual men of this age!) is, therefore, by no means opposed to the ascetic ideal, as it would seem. It is, on the contrary, but one of the latest phases of development of it; one of the final forms and logical results of it; it is the awe-inspiring catastrophe of a training for truth which lasted two thousand years, and at last forbids itself the falsehood in the belief in God. (The same trend of development has taken place in India, in perfect independence, and therefore proving the case; the same ideal forcing to the same conclusion; the decisive point being reached with Buddha, five centuries before the Christian era, or more exactly: already with the Sankhyam-philosophy, which Buddha popularised and transformed into a religion.) What, to put the question in its strictest form, has triumphed over the Christian God? The answer will be found in my Joyful Science, aph. 357): "Christian morality itself, the ever more rigorously conceived notion of truthfulness, the father-confessor finesse of the Christian conscience, translated and sublimated into scientific conscience, into intellectual cleanliness at any price. To regard nature as if she were a proof of the goodness and the fatherhood of a God; to interpret history in honour of some divine intelligence, as a perpetual testimony of a moral regulation of the world and of moral end-purposes; to interpret one's own experiences in the manner that pious people were for a long time wont to do, as if all were Providence, as if all were a divine reminder, as if all had been devised and decreed for the benefit of the soul's salvation — this is now past, this has conscience against it, this is by every finer conscience considered to be indecent, dishonest, trickery, femininism, weakness, cowardice. With this rigour, if in any one respect, we are good Europeans and the heirs of Europe's longest and bravest self-vanquishment" . . . . All great things perish through themselves, through an act of self-effacement. Such is the law of life, the law of necessary "self-surmounting" in the essence of life. Always in the end the summons is addressed to the law-giver: "Patere legem, quam ipse tulisti." In this wise Christianity as a dogma perished from its own morality. In this wise, also, Christianity as a moral code must now perish. We stand at the threshold of this event. Christian truthfulness, after having drawn inference upon inference, will finally draw its strongest inference, the inference against itself. And this will happen when it will put the question: "What does all will to truth mean?" . . . . And herewith, my unknown friends (for as yet I know of no friend), I touch once more upon my problem, upon our problem: what sense would our entire existence have, if not this that in ourselves this will to truth has become conscious of itself as a problem? . . . . Of this becoming-conscious-of-itself of the will to truth — no doubt whatever — morality will die. That grand drama in a hundred acts, which is reserved for the next two centuries of Europe — the most terrible, most questionable and perhaps also the most hopeful of all dramas . . . .
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The ascetic ideal apart, man, animal man so far had no significance. His existence on earth implied no goal. "Wherefore should man be at all?" — this was a question without an answer. The will for man and earth was lacking. Every great human career was followed by the refrain of a still greater "in vain!" Precisely this is meant by the ascetic ideal: that something was lacking, that an immense gap yawned round man. He was unable to justify, explain, be-yea himself, he suffered from the problem of his significance. He suffered also in other respects; he was in the main a sickly animal. Not suffering itself, however, constituted his problem, but the lack of the answer to the cry of the question: "Wherefore suffer?" Man, the animal bravest and best accustomed to pain, does not be-nay suffering in itself: he wills to suffer; he even seeks for suffering, provided that he is shown a significance, a therefore of suffering. The senselessness of suffering, not suffering itself, was the curse which so far lay upon mankind. And the ascetic ideal offered to mankind a significance. It was so far the only significance; any significance is better than no significance at all. The ascetic ideal was in every respect the faute de mieux par excellence which so far existed. In it suffering was interpreted; the immense void seemed to be filled out; the door closed to all suicidal nihilism. The interpretation — no doubt whatever — brought with it new suffering, deeper, more internal, more poisonous, more life-undermining suffering; it brought all suffering into the perspective of guilt . . . . But, nevertheless, man was saved thereby; he had a significance; he was henceforth no longer like a leaf in the wind; sport of nonsense, of "no-sense;" he could now will something; no matter for the present whither or wherefore or wherewith he willed: will itself was saved. One cannot possibly hide from one's self what is ultimately expressed by all that willing, which has received its direction from the ascetic ideal. This hatred of what is human; still more, of what is animal; still more, of what is material; this horror of the senses, of reason itself; this fear of happiness and beauty; this longing away from all appearance, change, becoming, death, desire, longing itself — all this implies (let us dare to comprehend it!) a will to the Nothing, a horror of life, an insurrection against the most fundamental presuppositions of life; nevertheless, it is and remains a will! . . . . And to say once more at the end what I have said at the outset: rather would man will the Nothing, than not will . . . .
