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THIRD ESSAY
WHAT DO ASCETIC IDEALS MEAN?
Regardless, mocking, violent, thus wisdom wisheth us:
she is a woman, she ever loveth a warrior only.
Thus Spake Zarathustra
1
What do ascetic ideals mean? — In the case of artists nothing or too many things; in the case of philosophers and scholars something like a scenting and instinct of the most favourable conditions of high intellectuality; in the case of woman, at best, an additional amiableness for seduction, a little morbidezza on a pretty piece of flesh, the saintliness of some fine, fat animal; in the case of the physiologically aborted and depressed (the majority of mortals) an attempt to think themselves "too good" for this world, a sacred form of dissipation, their chief weapon in the struggle with slow pain and ennui; in the case of priests the specific priestly creed, their most effective instrument of power, also their "supreme" license to power; and finally in the case of saints a pretext for going into hibernation, their novissima gloriæ cupido, their rest in the nothing ("God"),-their form of madness. But the fact that the ascetic ideal has meant so much for man, expresses that other fundamental fact of human will, its horror vacui. It needs a goal, — and it will rather will nothingness, than not will at all, — Am I understood? . . . . Have I been understood? . . . . "By no means, Sir!"— Well, let us, then, begin at the beginning!
2
What do ascetic ideals mean? — Or, to pick out a single case, in regard to which I have often enough been asked my advice: what does it mean, for instance, when an artist like Richard Wagner, in the eve of his life, gives an ovation to chastity? In a certain sense, it is true, he has always done so; but in an ascetic sense only in his very last years. What does this alteration of his "mind," this radical revulsion of his mind mean? For such it was, inasmuch as Wagner, in so doing, turned straightway into his antithesis: What does it mean when an artist turns into his antithesis? . . . . Here, if we will stop a moment at this question, the remembrance will at once suggest itself, of the best, strongest, most joyful and most courageous period which perhaps existed in Wagner's life: the period, when his mind was deeply occupied by the thought of a "Marriage of Luther." Who knows to what incidents it is due that to-day, in place of this marriage-music, we possess the Mastersingers? And how much of this marriage-music perhaps sounds on in the Mastersingers? But there is no doubt, that also in this "Marriage of Luther" the plot would have turned on the praise of chastity. It is true, also on the praise of sensuality; and even so I should have thought it proper; and even so it would have been "Wagnerian." For chastity and sensuality are not necessarily antithetical; every true marriage, every genuine love-affair is past that antithesis. Wagner, it seems to me, would have done well to apprise his Germans once more of this agreeable fact by means of some fine, brave comedy, with Luther figuring as hero, — for among the Germans there always were and still are many slanderers of sensuality; and perhaps the greatest merit of Luther is that he had the courage of his sensuality (in those days it was called, delicately enough, "evangelical freedom") . . . . But even in those cases in which that antithesis between chastity and sensuality really exists, it fortunately needs not at all to be a tragical antithesis. This might at least be the case with all better constituted and more cheerful mortals, who are not at all disposed, without further ado, to reckon their fluctuating state of equilibrium betwixt "angel and petite bête" among the arguments against existence; the finest, the brightest, such as Hafiz or Goethe, have even discerned an additional charm of life therein. It is just such "contradictions" that seduce to life . . . . But if, on the other hand, the ill-constituted swine can be induced to worship chastity — and there are such swine! — they will, as is but too plain, see and worship in it only their own antithesis, the antithesis of ill-constituted swine — and oh, one can imagine with how much tragic grunting and eagerness! —, that same painful and superfluous antithesis which Richard Wagner, at the end of his days, undoubtedly intended to set to music and produce on the stage. Prithee, wherefore? as we have a right to ask. For what had he, and what have we to do with swine?
3
Here, to be sure, that other question cannot be avoided: what had Wagner really to do with that manly (also, so very unmanly) "rustic simplicity," that poor devil and country lad Parsifal whom, by such insidious means, he finally succeeded in making a Roman Catholic? What? was this Parsifal really meant seriously? For one might be tempted to believe, and even to wish, the reverse, — namely that the Wagnerian Parsifal had been meant to be gay, like a finale or satiric drama with which, precisely in a due and worthy manner, the tragedian Wagner had intended to take his farewell of us, also of himself, and above all of tragedy, namely with an excess of the greatest and most wanton parody on the tragic itself, on all the awful earth-earnestness and earth-sorrowfulness of the past, on the stupidest form of the anti-naturalness of the ascetic ideal finally surmounted. Thus, as I said, it would have precisely been in keeping with a great tragedian: who, like every artist, only reaches the last summit of his greatness, when he learns to see himself and his art below him, when he knows how to laugh at himself. Is Wagner's "Parsifal" his secret laugh of superiority at himself, the triumph of his greatest, finally attained, artistic freedom and artistic other-world? As has been said, one might wish that it were so! For, what sense could we attach to a Parsifal seriously meant? Is it really necessary to suppose (as I have been told), that Wagner's "Parsifal" is "the product of a maddened hatred of perception, intellect, and sensuality?" an anathema on the senses and the intellect in one breath, in a fit of hatred? an apostasy and return to sickly, Christian, and obscurantist ideals? And finally, worst of all, the self-negation and self-annulment of an artist, who had striven, so far, with all his will-power, for the opposite, namely for the highest spiritualising and sensualising of his art? And not only of his art, but of his life as well. Let us recollect how enthusiastically Wagner once walked in the footsteps of Feuerbach the philosopher. Feuerbach's phrase of "a healthy sensuality" echoed in the third and fourth decades of this century to Wagner as to many other Germans — they called themselves the "young Germans" — like the word of salvation. Did the older Wagner unlearn his former creed? Very likely he did! judging from the disposition he evinced toward the end of his life to unteach his first belief . . . . And not only with the trumpets of Parsifal from the stage; but there are also a hundred passages in the gloomy, constrained, and perplexed writings of his last years in which a secret wish and will, a wavering, hesitating, unacknowledged inclination is shown actually to preach return, conversion, negation, Christianity, medievalism, and to tell his disciples: "All is vain! Seek your salvation elsewhere!" Even the "blood of the Saviour" is once invoked . . . .
4
Let me in such a case, somewhat painful but typical, give my opinion: — it is certainly best to separate an artist so far from his work as not to take him as seriously as his work. All in all, he is but the condition of his work, — the womb, soil, nay, at times even the dung and manure upon which and out of which it grows, and hence, in most cases, something which must be forgotten if we would enjoy the work itself. The insight into the origin of a work is the business of the physiologists and vivisectors of the mind: never of the aesthetic people, the artists. Just as a pregnant woman is not spared the many odiousnesses and oddnesses peculiar to pregnancy (which must be forgotten if one would take pleasure in the child), so the poet and artificer of Parsifal had deeply, thoroughly and even frightfully to penetrate and descend into medieval psychological antitheses; he could not be spared a life aloof from every height, rigour and training of the spirit (if I may use the word), a kind of intellectual perversity. We must guard against the error into which an artist is but too apt to fall from psychological contiguity (as Englishmen call it) of supposing that he himself is really that which he is able to represent, to think out, to express in words. The fact is that, if he were such, he could under no circumstances represent it, nor think it out, nor express it in words. Homer would never have created an Achilles, Goethe would never have created a Faust, had Homer been Achilles, or Goethe Faust. A perfect and genuine artist is, for aye and evermore, separated from that which is "real," actually existing. On the other hand, it is seen how an artist can, at times, grow tired even to surfeit of this eternal "unreality" and falseness of his own inmost existence, — and that, then, he will attempt an excursion into the realm most strictly forbidden to him, into reality, into being real. With what success? It is easily found out . . . . This is the typical velleity of the artist; that same velleity, to which also Wagner grown-old fell a victim and for which he had to pay so dearly, so fatally (losing, as he did, the valuable part of his friends). But altogether disregarding this velleity, who is there that does not wish — for Wagner's own sake — that he had taken farewell from us and from his art, not by means of a Parsifal, but in different wise, — more victorious, more self-confident, more Wagnerian, — less misleading, less double-dealing in regard to his whole intention, less Schopenhauerian, less nihilistic? . . . .
5
What, then, do ascetic ideals mean? In the case of an artist, as by this time will have become clear to us, — nothing! . . . . Or so many things that it is the same as if they meant nothing! . . . . Let us, therefore, first of all, eliminate artists. Their position in and against the world is not at all of sufficient independence to make their valuations and the evolution of them in themselves deserve our attention. They were at all times the chamberlains of some morality or philosophy or religion; not even considering the fact that, I am sorry to say, often enough they were the all-too-pliant courtiers to their followers and patrons, and the sharp-nosed flatterers of long established or newly rising powers. In any case, they always stand in need of a safe-guard, a backing, some firmly established authority: artists never stand alone; they have a deep and instinctive aversion to standing alone. So, for instance, Richard Wagner, when the time "had come to pass," took Schopenhauer the philosopher as his front-line man and safe-guard. Who would even so much as deem it possible that Wagner would have had the courage for an ascetic ideal, but for the backing furnished to him by the philosophy of Schopenhauer, but for the authority of Schopenhauer himself which in the seventies gained the ascendency in Europe? (Here we shall pay no regard to the question whether an artist — unless suckled by the milk of meek, loyally meek disposition — would have been at all possible in the new Germany.) — And this brings us to the more serious question: what does it mean, when a genuine philosopher renders homage to the ascetic ideal, a really independent spirit like Schopenhauer, a man and knight with iron look, who has the courage for himself, the strength to stand alone, and disdains to wait for front-line men and hints from above? — Let us here consider the remarkable and for a certain class of people even fascinating position which Schopenhauer held in respect to art. For apparently this it was that formed the immediate reason of Wagner's going over to Schopenhauer (persuaded to this step, as is well known, by a poet, Herwegh). He went over to such an extent that thereby arose a complete theoretical contradiction between his earlier and his later aesthetic creed, — the former, for instance, being expressed in "Opera and Drama," the latter in the writings which he edited after 1870. Especially (what is, perhaps, strangest of all) Wagner changed regardlessly his judgment as to the value and position of music itself. What did it concern him that so far he had used it for a means, a medium, a "woman" who, in order to thrive, must be given an end, a man, the drama, to wit! He all at once understood that by means of Schopenhauer's theory and innovation more might be accomplished in majorem musicae gloriam, — namely by means of the theory of the sovereignty of music, as Schopenhauer understood it: music being placed aside from and against other arts, as the independent art as such, and differing from the other arts in that it presents not merely copies of phenomenality, as they do, but rather speaks the language of the will itself immediately from the "abyss," as its most private, most original, most undefined and underived revelation. By means of this extraordinary enhancement of the value of music which seemed to grow from Schopenhauerian philosophy, the value, also, of the musician himself underwent an unheard-of increase: he now became an oracle, a priest, nay, more than a priest — a kind of mouth-piece of the "In-itself" of things, a telephone from another world. Henceforth he talked not merely music, this ventriloquist of God, — he talked metaphysics. Was it wonderful, then, that someday he should talk ascetic ideals? . . . .
6
Schopenhauer availed himself of the Kantian formulation of the aesthetic problem, — although he certainly did not view it with Kantian eyes. Kant thought he did an honour to art, when among the predicates of beauty, he gave preference to, and emphasised those which constitute the honour of knowledge: impersonality and omnivalence. Whether, in the main, this was not a mistake, is a question which this is not the place to discuss. All that I wish to underscore is that like all philosophers, Kant, instead of approaching the problem of aesthetics from the experiences of the artist (the creator), meditated over art and beauty merely from the standpoint of the "spectator" and so quite unconsciously got the "spectator himself" into his concept of "beauty." The case were not so bad, if this "spectator" had, at least, been sufficiently known to the philosophers of beauty! — namely as a great personal fact and experience, as an abundance of most private, strong experiences, desires, surprises, ecstasies in the domain of beauty. But the reverse, I fear, has ever been the case. Hence, from the very beginning, we receive from them definitions in which, as in that celebrated definition of beauty given by Kant, the lack of subtler self-experience lurks in the form of a big worm of fundamental error. "Beautiful," according to Kant, "is that, which pleases without interest." Without interest! Compare with this definition that other one made by a genuine spectator and artist, — Stendhal, who somewhere calls beauty une promesse de bonheur. In this definition, at any rate, precisely that is refused and expunged which Kant emphasises in the aesthetic state: le desinteressement. Who is right, Kant or Stendhal? If, to be sure, our aestheticians will not tire to advance in favour of Kant, the old argument that, under the spell of beauty, one can behold even naked female statues "without interest,"—then I should think that we have a right to laugh a little at their expense. The experiences of artists in regard to this delicate point are "more interesting," and Pygmalion was, at any rate, not necessarily an "unaesthetic man." Let us think all the more highly of the innocence of our aestheticians which is reflected by such argument; let us duly appreciate in Kant, for instance, what, with the naïveté of some country-parson he has to teach us on the peculiarities of the sense of touch! — And this brings us back to Schopenhauer who, to quite another extent than Kant, was familiar with art, and nevertheless failed to break the ban of this Kantian definition. Why? The thing is curious enough: the phrase "without interest" he interpreted for himself in the most personal manner, out of an experience which seems to have been among the most regular occurrences with him. On few topics Schopenhauer talks with such confidence as on the effects of aesthetic contemplation. He claims that it tends to counteract just sexual "interestedness," in a way similar to that of lupulin and camphor. He never wearied of celebrating this escape from will as the great advantage and boon of the aesthetic state. Indeed, one might be tempted to raise the question whether his fundamental conception of "will and representation," — the thought that redemption from will is only possible through "representation" may not owe its origin to a generalisation of even this sexual experience. (In all questions, by the bye, as to the philosophy of Schopenhauer, regard must be had for the fact that it is the conception of a youth of twenty-six, and partakes, consequently, not only of the specifics of Schopenhauer, but also of the specifics of that season of life.) Let us, for instance, hear one of the most express among the many passages written by him in honour of the aesthetic state (The World as Will and Representation, I, p. 54); let us note the tone of his language, the suffering, the joy, the thankfulness of it. "It is the painless state which Epicurus praised as the highest good and as the state of the gods; for we are, for that moment, set free from the striving of vile will; we keep the Sabbath of the penal servitude of willing; the wheel of Ixion stands still" . . . . What vehemence of language! What pictures of torture and of long surfeit! What almost pathological contra-positing of the time of "that moment" and the usual "wheel of Ixion," the "penal servitude of willing," the "vile striving of will"! — But granting even Schopenhauer to be a hundred times right with respect to his own person, — would thereby our insight into the nature of beauty be promoted? Schopenhauer describes one effect of beauty, — the will-calming effect. But is this effect even so much as a rule? Stendhal, as I said, a not less sensual but more happily constituted nature than Schopenhauer, lays stress on a different effect of beauty: "beauty promises happiness." With him the very stimulation of will ("interest") by beauty seems to be the fact. And might we not finally object to Schopenhauer that he is very far wrong in calling himself a Kantian in this respect; that he did not at all understand the Kantian definition of beauty in the sense of Kant; — that also his pleasure derived from beauty was due to an "interest" even the strongest and most personal interest, the interest of one tortured who escapes his torture? And, to revert to our first question: "What does it mean, when a philosopher renders homage to the ascetic ideal?" we now receive at least a first hint: he wishes to get, rid of a torture.
7
Let us guard ourselves from making gloomy faces at the mere sound of the word "torture"! For in this very case quite a number of allowances and deductions can be made. There even remains something to laugh at. Let us, above all, not undervalue the fact that Schopenhauer — who actually treated sensuality (including the tool of sensuality, woman, this instrumentum diaboli) as his personal enemy — stood in need of enemies, to keep him in good spirits; that he loved the grim-humoured, gaily, black-browed words; that he frowned for frowning's sake; from inclination; that he would have become sick, become pessimist (— for pessimist he was not, much though he wished to be so), but for his enemies, but for Hegel, for woman, for sensuality, and the whole will to life, the will to stay here. Had Schopenhauer been a pessimist, he would not have stayed here, to be sure; he would have run away. But his enemies held him fast; his enemies kept seducing him to existence; his anger, quite as in the case of the ancient cynics, constituted his comfort, his recreation, his reward, his remedium for surfeit, his happiness. So much in regard to that which is specifically personal in the case of Schopenhauer! But on the other hand his case presents also something typical, — and now only we come back to our problem. Undoubtedly there exists, as long as philosophers exist on earth, and wherever philosophers have existed (from India as far as England — to take the opposite poles of philosophical ability), a specific philosopher's sensitiveness and rancour against sensuality; Schopenhauer being, in fact, only the most eloquent and, if we have ears for such sounds, the most ravishing and rapturous outburst of it. In the same manner there exists a singular philosopher's, prepossessedness and heartiness in favour of the whole ascetic ideal; — about which and against which fact it will hardly do for us to shut our eyes. Both things are, as I said, essential to the type. If either be wanting in a philosopher, then, we may be sure, he is always but a "so-called " philosopher. What does that mean? For this fact must first be interpreted: in itself it stands stupid to all eternity, as every "thing in itself." Every animal, and hence also la bête philosophe, instinctively strives for an optimum of favourable conditions under which it is free to discharge fully its power and attains its maximum consciousness of power; every animal, quite as instinctively and with a keenness of scent which "passeth all understanding," abhors every kind of disturber or obstacle which obstructs or could obstruct his road to the optimum ( — it is not its road to "happiness," of which I am now speaking, but its road to power, to action, to mightiest action, and, actually, in most cases, its road to unhappiness). So, also, the philosopher abhors wedlock and all that would fain persuade to this state — as being an obstacle and fatality on his road to the optimum. Who among the great philosophers is known to have been married? Heraclitus, Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, Schopenhauer — they were not; nay, we cannot even so much as conceive them as married. A married philosopher is a figure of comedy, this is my proposition; and that exception, Socrates, mischievous Socrates, married, it seems, ironice, with the express purpose of demonstrating this very proposition. Every philosopher would say what Buddha said, when the birth of a son was announced to him: "Râhula is born unto me, a fetter is forged for me" (Râhula means here "a little demon"). For every "free spirit" a thoughtful hour would be bound to come (assuming, that before he had a thoughtless hour), as it came to the same Buddha! " 'Closely confined,' he thought within himself, 'is the life in the house, a place of impurity! Freedom is in the leaving of the house.' " "Because he thought in this wise, he left the house." In the ascetic ideal there are indicated so many bridges leading to independence that a philosopher will not be able to hear, without some inner chuckling and exultation, the story of all those resolute souls, who one day said No to all un-freedom and went into some desert; even assuming that they were nothing but mighty asses and the very counterparts of mighty spirits. What, then, does the ascetic ideal mean in the case of a philosopher? My answer is — as long ago will have been anticipated —: the aspect of the ascetic ideal draws from the lips of the philosopher a smile because he recognises in it an optimum of the conditions of highest and keenest spirituality. In so doing, he does not negate "existence," but rather asserts his own existence and only his own existence, and this perhaps so much so that the frivolous wish is not far from him: pereat mundus, fiat philosophia, fiat philosophus, fiam! . . . .
8
These philosophers, we see, are anything but unbiassed witnesses and judges as to the value of the ascetic ideal! They think of themselves — what does "the Saint" concern them! In valuing the ascetic ideal, they think of that which is most indispensable to them: freedom from constraint, interference, noise, from business, duties, cares; they think of a clear head, of dancing, leaping, flying of thoughts; good air, thin, clear, free, dry mountain-air, spiritualising and lending wings to all animal being; peace in all souterrains; all dogs securely chained; no barking indicative of hostility or shaggy rancour; no gnaw-worms of thwarted ambition; modest and obsequious intestines, busy as mills, but absent; the heart distant, beyond, futurous, posthumous. All in all, the ascetic ideal suggests to them that aerial asceticism of some deified and newly fledged animal which more roves than rests aloof from life. It is known what are the three great show-words of the ascetic ideal: Poverty, Humility, Chastity. And now let people for once examine the lives of all great productive and inventive spirits: to a certain extent all three will be found again in them. Not at all their "virtues." This kind of man, what has it to do with virtues! But as the most essential, most natural conditions of their best existence, of their finest productivity. And it is also quite possible that their dominating spirituality had, first of all, to subdue an untamable and tender pride or an unruly sensuality; or that it found it rather difficult to keep up their will to the "desert" perhaps against a hankering for luxury and most exquisite things, as also against an extravagant liberality of heart and hand. But this spirituality prevailed, even by virtue of its function of dominating instinct which insisted on its postulates against all other instincts. This spirituality still does so; for if it did not, then it would not dominate. In this kind of abstinence, therefore, is anything but a "virtue." The desert, by the bye, of which even now I spoke, into which the strong and independently constituted spirits retire to be lonesome — oh, how different it looks from the desert, as our "educated classes" imagine it. For, as the case may be, they themselves are the desert, these educated classes. And certain it is that all stage-players of the spirit have ever found it unbearable. For them it is not by far romantic enough, not Syrian enough, not stage-desert enough! Camels, it is true, are not absent from it; but this is the only respect in which it resembles a real desert. Perchance, that desert consists in a self-willed obscurity; in a going out of the way of one's self; in a horror of noise, honours, newspapers, influence; in a little office, an everyday, something which more hides than exposes; in an occasional intercourse with harmless, gladsome, little "foules and beastes," the sight of which refreshes; in some mountains as one's company — yet not mountains dead, but provided with eyes (—with lakes, to wit); at times even in a room in some crowded everybody hotel where one is sure to be mistaken and may safely converse with everybody else. This is a "desert" in this sense. Oh, believe me, it is lonesome enough! If Heraclitus retired into the courtyards and colonnades of the gigantic Artemis-temple, that "desert," I admit, was rather more dignified. Why are such temples wanting to us? (Peradventure they are not wanting to us: I am just thinking of my finest study, the piazza di San Marco; spring presupposed, as also forenoon, the hours between ten and twelve.) But that which Heraclitus fled, is even this which we also flee: the hubbub and Democrat gossip of the Ephesians, their politics, their news from the "empire" (Persia, you understand), their market-truck of "to-day." For we philosophers must have rest from one thing first of all, from every "to-day." We revere what is still, cold, calm, distant, past, everything, in fact, the aspect of which does not assault or freeze the soul, — something with which we may talk, without talking aloud. Mark but the timbre which a spirit has when talking; every spirit has his own timbre, loves his own timbre. Yonder man, for instance, must, I think, be an agitator, say rather a hollow-head, a hollow-pot. Whatsoever goes into him, is sure to reverberate, heavy and hollow, laden with the echo of great emptiness. That one over there speaks rarely otherwise than with a hoarse voice. Has he thought himself into hoarseness? Possible enough — one may ask physiologists; — he, however, who thinks in words, thinks, not as thinker but as speaker. (It shows that he thinks, at bottom, not of matters, not to the point, but only in regard to matters; that he thinks, in reality, of himself and of his listeners.) This third one, here, talks impertinently, his body rubs against our own; his breath breathes upon us. Involuntarily we shut our mouths, though it is a book through which he speaks to us. The timbre of his style tells the reason why; that he has no time, that he has little faith in himself, that to-day or never he has a chance to speak. But a spirit, convinced of himself, speaks softly; he seeks retirement; he waits to be asked. It characterises the philosopher that he avoids three showy and noisy things, — glory, princes and women; whereby it is not meant to be said, however, that they should not come to him. He shuns all too glaring brightness; hence he shuns his own time and the "day" of it. In this respect he is like a shadow; the farther the sun sinks, the bigger he grows. As regards his "humility," he will endure, even as he endures darkness, so also a certain amount of dependence and obscurity; nay, he fears to be disturbed by lightnings, he shrinks back from the unprotectedness of an all too isolated and exposed tree against which every storm vents its temper, and every temper vents its storm. His "motherly" instinct, the secret love for that which grows within him, consigns him to conditions in which he is freed from the duty of taking care of himself; in the same sense that the instinct of the mother in woman has so far maintained the dependent condition of woman in general. All in all, it is little enough they demand, these philosophers. Their motto is: "He who possesses, is possessed;" not, as again and again I must urge, from a virtue, or a meritorious will to simplicity and contentedness, but because their supreme lord demands it of them, demands it wisely and inexorably; which lord, has but one end in view and gathers and saves exclusively for it time, strength, love, interest, everything. Men of his kind like to be disturbed by enmities, as little as by amities: they are quick to forget, quick to despise. They deem it a poor taste to play the martyr. "To suffer for truth" — this they leave to the ambitious, the stage-heroes of the spirit and whoso has time enough for it. (They themselves, the philosophers, have to do something for truth.) They are niggard in the use of big words; we are told that they cannot brook to hear the word "truth;" they say, it sounds grandiloquent . . . . And finally, as regards the " chastity " of philosophers, the productivity of such spirits consists manifestly in something else than in children. Perhaps they also have somewhere else the continuance of their name, their little immortality. (Still more immodestly the ancient Indian philosophers expressed themselves: "Wherefore posterity for him whose soul is the world?") Therein is nothing of chastity out of any ascetic scrupulosity or hatred of the senses; as little as it is chastity if an athlete or jockey abstains from woman. Rather, thus it is demanded by the dominating instinct of the philosopher, especially during the period of his great pregnancy. All artists know the injurious effects of sexual intercourse in times of great spiritual suspense and preparation; in the case of the most powerful among them, and those in whom the instinct operates with the greatest certainty, experience, fatal experience is not even necessary, — for in their case it is even their "motherly " instinct which, for the benefit of the work in preparation, will regardlessly dispose of all other supplies and advances of power, — of the vigour of animal life. In such cases the greater power will absorb the lesser. — Let people expound the above-considered case of Schopenhauer in the light of this interpretation. The sight of beauty in his case, it seems, acted as a kind of disengaging irritant upon the main power of his nature (the power of reflection and intensified eye), so that this power then exploded and, all of a sudden, gained the upper hand in consciousness. With this explanation the possibility is not at all meant to be precluded that that peculiar sweetness and fulness owned by the aesthetic state may take its origin from the very ingredient of "sensuality," (as from that same source that idealism springs which belongs to " marriageable maidens") — and that, therefore, sensuality upon the origination of the aesthetic state is by no means annulled, as Schopenhauer thought, but merely transfigured, and now no longer presents itself to consciousness as sexual irritant. (To this point of view I shall some other time revert, in connection with still more delicate problems relative to the hitherto so untouched-upon, so undisclosed Physiology of Æsthetics.)
9
A certain asceticism, we saw, a hard and cheerful will to renunciation, are among the favourable conditions of highest spirituality, as also among the most natural consequences of it. Hence nobody can wonder that, from the very beginning, the ascetic ideal has always been treated with some prepossession just by philosophers. On an exact historical investigation, the tie of relationship between the ascetic ideal and philosophy proves to be much more intimate and severe. One might say that only in the leading-strings of this ideal has philosophy learnt to take her first steps and steplets on earth, alas, how very awkwardly! alas, how very peevishly! alas, how very ready to tumble over and lie flat on the belly, — this dear little toddler and tenderling with bent legs! Philosophy in her infancy fared, as all good things have fared; for a long time they lacked self-confidence; they ever looked about for some one to extend a helping hand; they feared, in fact, all those that witnessed their efforts. Let us but review the individual bents and virtues of the philosopher, one after the other; — his sceptical bent, his negating bent, his expectant ("ephectical") bent, his analytical bent, his searching, scrutinising, daring bent, his comparing and levelling bent, his will to neutrality and objectivity, his will to every "sine ira et studio"' Has any one understood that all these bents for the longest period ran directly counter to the first demands of morality and of conscience? (to say nothing of reason which Luther nicknamed Madame Smartness the smart whore); and that a philosopher, if he had become conscious of himself, would of necessity, have felt himself as the incarnation of the "nitimur in vetitum," and that, therefore, he took good care not "to feel himself and not to become conscious of himself?" . . . . The same is true, as I said, of all good things in which to-day we pride ourselves. Even measured by the standard of the ancient Greeks, our whole modern life — in so far as it is not weakness, but power and consciousness of power — appears as sheer hybris and godlessness. For the very opposite things from those which to-day we revere, had — for the longest period — consciousness upon their side and God as their guardian. Hybris is to-day our whole attitude towards nature, our violation of nature with the aid of machines and the quite unscrupulous inventiveness of technologists and engineers. Hybris is our attitude towards God, say rather towards any alleged spider of purpose and morality, seated behind the great cobweb and catch-trap of causativeness. We might say with Charles the Bold, when warring against Louis the Eleventh: "Je combats l'universelle araignée." Hybris is our attitude towards ourselves; for we experiment upon ourselves, as we should not allow upon any other animal, and quite merrily and curiously rip up our soul in our live body. What do we care for the salvation of the soul! Afterwards we heal ourselves. To be sick is instructive, no question whatever, — more instructive even than to be well. The sickmakers seem to us to be more necessary to-day than any medicinemen and "saviours." We now violate ourselves, no doubt whatever, we nut-crackers of the soul, we questioners and questionable ones, as if life were nothing but sheer nut-cracking; and, by virtue of that, we must, from day to day, become more questionable, more worthy to question, and hence perhaps also worthier — to live? All good things were at one time bad things; every original sin has developed into an original virtue. Matrimony, for instance, seemed for a long time to be a trespass upon the right of the community; formerly a fine was paid for the presumption of claiming a woman for one's self (under this head must be considered, for instance, the jus primæ noctis, — at this very day in Combodja the prerogative of the priests, these preservers of "good old customs "). The gentle, benevolent, indulgent, sympathetic feelings — rated at present so high that they almost are the "values as such" — were for the longest period branded self-contempt. People were ashamed of "mildness,'' as one now is ashamed of severity (cf. Beyond Good and Evil, aph. 260). The submission to law — oh, with what opposition of conscience the noble families have relinquished their privilege of vendetta and acknowledged the supremacy of law! "Law" for a long time was a vetitum, a crime, an innovation; it made its appearance with violence, — as a violence to which man did not submit but with shame to himself. Every step on earth, however small, has, in past ages, been contended for with spiritual and bodily pangs. This entire point of view, "that not only progress, nay, the mere act of going, motion, change, has needed its countless martyrs, sounds very strange just to-day." I have placed it in its proper light in Dawn of the Day, aph. 18. "Nothing," I say in that work (aph. 18), "has been more dearly paid for than the trifle of human reason and of the feeling of freedom which constitutes our pride to-day. But this pride it is which renders it almost impossible for us to share the feelings of those immense periods of the 'morality of custom,' which precede 'general history,' and which constitute real, principal and decisive history in which the character of mankind was fixed — those times in which suffering was identified with virtue, cruelty with virtue, simulation with virtue, revenge with virtue, the negation of reason with virtue; and, on the other hand, welfare with danger, thirst of knowledge with danger, peace with danger, pity with danger, the being-pitied with disgrace, labour with disgrace, madness with godlikeness, change with immorality and doom!"
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In the same work (aph. 42) is explained by what valuation, under what pressure of valuation, the oldest race of contemplative men was forced to live, — as men despised to precisely the extent that they were not feared! Contemplation has first made its appearance on earth in muffled guise, in questionable repute, with evil heart and often with a timorous head; no doubt whatever! That which was inactive, brooding, unwarlike in the instincts of contemplative men, for a long time enshrouded them in deep mistrust. To counteract this there was no other expedient but to beget fear in others. And this art the ancient Brahmans, for instance, understood to perfection! These most ancient philosophers contrived to give to their life and appearance a sense, a footing and backing, such as might teach their fellowmen to fear them. Considered more exactly they were prompted by a still more fundamental need, — that of begetting, in themselves, fear and reverence of themselves. For in themselves they found all valuations turned against themselves; they had, against "the philosopher in themselves," to combat and subdue every variety of suspicion and opposition. And, as beings of a terrible age, they did so with terrible means: self-cruelty, inventive self-mortification — that was the principal means of these power-craving hermits and thought-innovators who, to enable themselves to believe in their own innovation, required to do violence to the Gods and to tradition in themselves. I recall the celebrated story of king Viçvamitra who, by thousands of years of self-torture, attained to such consciousness of power and self-confidence that he undertook to build a new heaven; — the awful symbol of the oldest as well as of the most recent philosopher's history on earth; — all those who undertook at some time or other to build a new heaven found the power for such an undertaking only in their own hell. Let us compress all facts into short formulae: the philosophical spirit has at all times been compelled to adopt provisionally the garb and guise of the priority-established type of contemplative man, as priest, sorcerer, soothsayer, — in general, as religious man, in order to be, in some measure at least, even so much as possible. For a long time the ascetic ideal served the philosopher as a form of appearance, as a condition of existence. He had to represent this ideal, to be able to be philosopher; he had to believe in this ideal, to be able to represent it. The peculiarly world-negating, life-hostile, sense-doubting, de-sensualised state of aloof-keeping of philosophers, which has been maintained up to most recent times, and thereby has almost come to be recognised as the philosophers' attitude as such, — is, above all, a consequence of a deficiency and of the conditions under which philosophy came into, and maintained her existence, in so far as for the longest time philosophy would have been quite impossible on earth, but for some ascetic garb and integument, but for some ascetic self-misunderstanding. Clearly and ostensibly expressed: the ascetic priest has until quite recent times acted as the dismal and repulsive larva under which alone philosophy was permitted to live and move about . . . . Has this state of affairs really changed? Has that many-coloured and dangerous winged-animal, that "spirit" which this larva contained, thanks to a sunnier, warmer, more enlightened world, after all succeeded in breaking its prison and in escaping to the light of day? Is the supply of pride, of daring, of bravery, of self-confidence, of will of the spirit, of will to responsibility, of freedom of will, already large enough to-day for "the philosopher" to be henceforth really — possible on earth? . . . .
