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Only now, after having gained sight of the ascetic priest, we attack seriously our problem: what does the ascetic ideal mean? — Only now matters are growing "earnest." Now we stand face to face with the true representative of all earnest. "What does all earnest mean?" This even still more fundamental question will perhaps forthwith prepare to escape our lips: a question for physiologists, of course, which we, however, for the present slide past. The ascetic priest has in that ideal not only his faith, but also his will, his power, his interest. His right to exist stands and falls with that ideal; no wonder if here we encounter a dangerous antagonist (assuming us to be the antagonists of that ideal), an antagonist who will fight for his existence against the deniers of that ideal? . . . . On the other hand it will ipso facto not be very probable that such a prepossession in favour of our problem will be especially useful for it. The ascetic priest himself will not very likely make the most successful defender of his own ideal (for precisely the same reason that a woman is wont to make a mess of it, when she undertakes to defend "woman as such") and far less the most objective judge and referee in the controversy raised here. More likely — and this much is plain even now — he will need our help in order to defend himself well against ourselves, than that we need fear a too good refutation on his part . . . . The thought, round which the struggle turns, is the valuation of our life as pronounced by the ascetic priest. Life (together with that of which it forms part — "nature," "worid," the entire sphere of becoming and of change) is brought by him into relation with an existence of an altogether different kind, to which it bears an antithetical and exclusive attitude, unless it be that it turn against itself, that it negate itself. In this case — the case of an ascetic life — life is regarded as a bridge leading to that other existence. The ascetic treats life as a wrong way which man had best retrace to the point whence it starts; or as an error which can be, should be disproved by our deeds. For he demands, that one should follow him; he enforces, wherever he can, his valuation of existence. What does that mean? A manner of valuation thus eccentric is not marked down in the history of man, as an exception and curiosum. It is one of the most diffused and longest facts in existence. Read from some far-off star, the majuscules of our earthly existence would perhaps lead the looker-on to infer that our earth is the essentially ascetic star, — a corner of malcontent, conceited and ugly creatures, unable to rid themselves of a deep chagrin at self, at the earth, at all life, and causing each other as much pain as possible, from the pleasure of causing pain: — probably, their only pleasure. Let us but consider how regularly, how universally, how almost at any period, the ascetic priest makes his appearance; he does not belong, exclusively, to any one race; he flourishes anywhere; he grows out of all classes. Wrong it were to suppose that he fosters and propagates his manner of valuation by way of heredity. The contrary is the case: a deep instinct rather denies him, all in all, propagation. It must be a necessity of cardinal import, which will have this kind of life-inimical species thrive and flourish again and again, — or, perhaps, it is an interest of life itself, which prevents this type of self-contradiction from dying out. For an ascetic life is a self-contradiction. Here a most extraordinary resentment prevails, — the resentment of an insatiate instinct and will to power, which would fain lord it — not merely over something in life but over life itself, over the deepest, strongest, and most fundamental conditions of life. Here an attempt is made to use power for the purpose of stopping the sources of power. Here physiological thriving itself, — especially, its expression, beauty and joy, is viewed with dark and jealous eye; whereas a satisfaction is felt and sought in all abortive, degenerate growth, in pain, in mishap, in ugliness, in voluntary detraction, in self-mortification, in self-castigation, in self-sacrificing. All this is paradoxical in the highest degree. We have before us a case of duality which wills itself dual; which in this suffering enjoys itself and grows more and ever more self-confident and triumphant, in proportion as its own presupposition — physiological vitality — diminishes. "Triumph in the very hour of last agony," under this superlative symbol all battles of the ascetic ideal have ever been fought. In this riddle of seduction, in this emblem of ecstasy and torture, it perceived its own brightest light, its salvation, its final victory. Crux, nux, lux,— these three with it are one.
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Assuming that this kind of impersonate will to contradiction and anti-naturalness undertakes to philosophise,— against what will it discharge its inmost arbitrariness? Against that which is felt to be most certainly true, real. It will seek for error even there where the functional instinct of life in an absolute way posits truth. It will for instance, in the manner of the ascetics of Vedânta philosophy, abase corporality to mere illusion, as also pain, multiplicity, the entire antithesis between the concepts of "subject" and "object." Errors, all errors! To refuse to believe in one's own ego, to deny one's own "reality" — what triumph! no longer over the senses merely, over visible nature, no! a much higher kind of triumph, a violation and cruelty against reason itself; which voluptuousness reaches its climax, when the ascetic self-contempt and self-scorn of reason decrees that there is a realm of truth and of being, but just reason is shut out from it. (By the bye: even in the Kantian concept of the "intelligible character of things" a trace of this libidinous asceticist-duality — which delights in setting reason against reason — still remains. "Intelligible character," to wit, with Kant betokens a kind of condition of things of which the intellect comprehends just this that it is for the intellect altogether incomprehensible.) — Let us finally — cognisers as we are — be not ungrateful to such resolute subversions of the ordinary perspectives and valuations with which the spirit has, for all too long a time and, as it would seem, criminally and futilely raged against itself! Thus to see and to will to see things in another manner forms a most excellent training and preparation of the intellect for its future "objectivity,"— understanding the latter to be not an "uninterested contemplation" (which is a perversity and misconcept) but as the faculty of commanding and disposing, at perfect pleasure, of our For and our Against, to put in and unhinge them: so that one knows how to make use of the very manifoldness of perspectives and emotional interpretations for the furtherance of knowledge. For, Messrs. philosophers, let us henceforth guard ourselves better against the dangerous, old fabling with concepts which posited a "pure, will-less, painless, timeless subject of knowledge;" let us guard ourselves against the clutches of such contradictory concepts as "pure reason," "absolute spirituality," "cognition as such." Here always an eye is postulated to be conceived which cannot be conceived; an eye which is asked to have no direction at all; an eye the active and interpretative faculties of which are asked to be tied up or wanting altogether, — through which alone a looking at becomes a seeing something; i.e., a perversity and misconcept of an eye is postulated. There is no other seeing but a perspective seeing; there is no other knowing but a perspective "knowing;" and the more emotions we make speak on a matter, the more eyes, the more different eyes, we place in our face, the more complete will be our "concept" of this matter, our "objectivity." But to eliminate will altogether, to unhinge— provided this were possible—each and every emotion — what? would not this mean to castrate the intellect? . . . .
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But let us revert! The kind of self-contradiction which seems to present itself in the ascetic, i.e., "life against life," is — this much is clear on the face of it — physiologically (and no longer psychologically) considered, sheer nonsense. It can be but a seeming contradiction; it is to be expected to be a kind of provisional expression, an interpretation, formula, accommodation, a psychological misunderstanding of a something the real nature of which could, for a long time, not be understood, not be denoted by itself — a mere word crammed into an old gap of human knowledge. And, to state briefly the facts of the case: the ascetic ideal is prompted by the self-protective and self-preservative instinct of degenerating life,— a life which struggles for existence and seeks to maintain itself by all means; it points to a partial physiological stagnation and languishment which the deepest, intact-preserved instincts of life incessantly seek to counteract with ever changing means and inventions. The ascetic ideal is such a means: and hence, precisely the reverse is the case from what the worshippers of this ideal believe, — in it and through it, life struggles with and against death; the ascetic ideal is an artifice for the preservation of life. In the fact that this ideal could, to the extent that history teaches us, sway and prevail over man, and especially wherever the civilising and taming of man was enforced, an important truth is expressed: the morbidity of the type of man which hitherto prevailed, at least of tamed man; the physiological wrestling of man with death (more exactly stated: with the surfeit of life, with weariness, with the wish for the "end"). The ascetic priest is the incarnate wish for a state of being otherwise, being elsewhere; in fact, the highest grade of this wish, the hottest fervour and passion of this wish. But the very power of his wishing is the chain which binds him fast to life and makes him a tool for bringing about more favourable conditions, for being here and being a man. By this very power and by leading them instinctively as their shepherd, he holds fast to existence the entire herd of the mis-fashioned, the disappointed, the maltreated, the defective, every description of sufferers from their self. I am already understood: this ascetic priest, this seeming enemy of life, this benayer, — this very man is among the great conserving, and yea-creative powers of life . . . . On what turns it, that morbidity? For man, no question whatever, is sicker, less secure, more changeable, more unfixed than any other animal, — he is the sick animal. And why so? Certainly he has also dared more, innovated more, defied more, challenged fate more than all other animals taken together, — he, the great self-experimenter, the unsatisfied and insatiate one, struggling with animal nature and the gods for final supremacy, — he, the still unconquered, the eternally futurous one who finds no rest from his own thronging power, so that his future like a spur inexorably rakes the flesh of every Now of his. How could it happen that such a courageous and rich animal should not also be of all sick animals the one most jeopardised, the one with the longest and deepest sickness? Man is satiated to surfeit, often enough; there are entire epidemics of this satiety (— for instance, about the year 1348, the time of the "dance of death"). But even this nausea, this weariness, this self-annoyance, — all this becomes so powerfully apparent in him that at once it turns into an additional fetter. The Nay which he pronounces upon life, brings to light, as if by magic, an abundance of more delicate Yeas. Nay, when he has wounded himself — this master of destruction, of self-destruction, — it is the wound itself which forces him to live . . . .
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The more normal the sickliness in man — and we cannot deny this normality — the more highly those rare cases of spiritual and bodily capability, the lucky cases of man, should be honoured; and the more rigorously the well-constituted should be guarded against that worst air, sickroom air. Is that done? . . . . The sick are the greatest danger for the sound. Not from the strongest do bale and mischief come upon the strong, but from the weakest. Is that known? . . . . All in all, it is by no means the diminution of the fear of man which is desirable. For this fear compels the strong to be strong, nay, as the case may be, even terrible. Fear preserves the well-constituted type of man. That which really is to be feared; that which proves fatal beyond all fatalities — is not the great fear, but the great surfeit of man, and in the same way the great pity for man. Assuming that someday these two were to embrace in wedlock, then forthwith something most awful would inevitably be born, — the last will of man, his will to the Nothing, nihilism. And truly, for that much has been prepared. He who smells not only with his nose but with his eyes and ears as well, will, almost wherever he steps to-day, experience a sensation as of mad- and sick-house air. (I am, as is but fair, speaking here of the realm of human civilisation,— of every kind of "Europe" existing now-a-days on earth.) The sickly are the great danger of man: not the evil, not the "beasts of prey." They who are ill-shaped, prostrated and wrecked from birth — they, the weakest, are those who most undermine life among men; who most dangerously poison and question our confidence in life, in man, in ourselves. Where do we not encounter it — that veiled look which begets in our mind a heavy sadness, — that retrospective look of the primordially aborted one, — which betrays how such a man speaks to himself; that look which is a sigh. "Would I were some one else!" this look will sigh. "But all hope is vain. I am he that I am. How could I flee myself from myself? And yet I am tired of myself." Out of such a soil of self-contempt — a truly swampy soil, every weed and poisonous herb will grow, and everything so pettily, so secretly, so dishonestly, so sweetishly. Here the feelings of resentment and revenge will swarm like so much vermin; here the air will stink of secretnesses and unconfessednesses; here continually a net will be spun of the most malignant conspiracy, — the conspiracy of sufferers against the well-constituted and victorious; here the aspect of the victorious will be hated. And what a falsehood is employed to conceal that this hatred is hatred! What pageant of great words and attitudes; what art of "righteous" calumny! These ill-constituted — what noble eloquence streams from their lips! How much sugared, slimy, humble resignation beams from their eyes! What is it they wish? At least to represent justice, love, wisdom, superiority — such is the ambition of these "lowest," these sick ones. And what dexterity such an ambition gives! Let people admire especially the counterfeiter-skilfulness with which the stamp of virtue, nay, even its metal "ring," the gold-sound of virtue, is imitated. No doubt, they have now got a monopoly of virtue, these weak and hopelessly sick ones. "We alone are the good, the just," they say; "we alone are the homines bonae voluntatis." They walk about among us like so many live reproaches, like so many warnings, — just as if health, well-constitutedness, strength, pride, consciousness of power, were, in themselves, vicious things which one day must be atoned for, bitterly atoned for. Oh, how much are they at bottom ready to make others atone for! — Oh, how much long they to play the hangman! Among them there is an abundance of such as are revengeful ones disguised as judges, who always carry about in their mouths the word "justice" like a poisonous spittle; ever with rounded lips, ever ready to spit on everything which is not, like themselves, "of sad countenance," but cheerfully pursues its way. Neither is there wanting among them that most detestable species of the vain, — those abortions given to lying whose ambition it is to represent "beautiful souls" and peradventure bring to market their bungled sensuality wrapped in verse and other napkins, calling it "purity of heart:" the species of moral onanists and "self-gratifiers." The will of the sick to represent some form or other of superiority; their instinct for finding secret ways leading to a tyranny over the sound — where could it not be found, this will to power of the very weakest! Sick woman especially; no one excels more in raffinements — of ruling, of oppressing, of tyrannising. A sick woman will spare nothing living, nothing dead; she will dig up the most deeply buried things (the Bogos say: "Woman is a hyena"). Let people glance into the backgrounds of every family, every corporation, every community: everywhere there exists the battle of the sick with the sound, — generally, a silent battle carried on with little poisonous mixtures, with needle-pricks, with malignant sufferers' countenance, but occasionally also with that sick-pharisaism of ostentative posture which delights most of all in playing "noble indignation." Even as far as the hallowed realms of science it would like to be heard, — the hoarse indignant barking of the sickly dogs, the mordacious lying and fury of such "noble" Pharisees (— readers, who have ears, may be reminded once again of that Eugen Dühring, the Berlin apostle of revenge, who in the Germany of to-day makes the most indecent and repulsive use of moral bum-bum; Dühring, the biggest moral braggadocio now in existence, not even excepting his kin, the anti-Semites). All these are men of resentment, these physiological failures and worm-eaten creatures, a whole, trembling soil of subterranean revenge; inexhaustible, insatiable in outbursts against the happy, as well as in masquerades of revenge, in pretexts to revenge. When, we ask, would they attain their final, finest, sublimest triumph of revenge? At the moment, no doubt, when they should succeed in charging their own misery, — all misery in the world —, to the conscience of the happy, so that someday these would begin to be ashamed of their happiness and probably declare among themselves: "It is a disgrace to be happy! There is too much misery!" But there could be no greater, no more fatal misunderstanding than if thus the happy, the well-constituted, the mighty in body and soul, were to begin to doubt their own right to happiness. Away, with this world "turned upside down!" Away, with this shameful effeminacy of sentiment! That the sick may not make the sound sick — and this would be the meaning of such an effeminacy—surely, this should be the first point of view on earth. But for that the first condition is that the sound be removed from the sick, guarded from the very aspect of the sick, that they may not confuse themselves with the sick. Or, is it peradventure their task to be the nurses and leeches of the sick? But they could not more misjudge or abnegate their own task than if they did so. What is higher shall not degrade itself to a tool of what is lower; the pathos of distance shall to all eternity keep tasks asunder as well as other things. For the right of the happy to exist, to be there, is a thousand times greater; just as the privilege of the sonorous bell beats that of the bell discordant and cracked. The happy alone are the pledges of the future; they alone lie under an obligation for the future of man. What they are able to do, what they shall do, that the sick could never and should never do. But in order that they may do what only they shall do, how could they be at liberty to act also as leeches, comforters, "saviours" of the sick? And therefore, good air! good air! And at any rate, away from the neighbourhood of all sick- and mad-houses of civilisation! And therefore, good company, our company! Or loneliness, if so be it must! But away, at any rate, from the foul vapours of internal corruption and the secret worm-eatenness of the sick! . . . . In order that we, my friends, may guard ourselves, for some time at least, against the two most fatal plagues which may have been reserved just for us — against the great surfeit of man and the great pity for man.
