On the Genealogy of Morality (Chap. 4.14)

The more normal this pathology is among human beings—and we cannot deny its normality—the higher we should esteem the rare cases of spiritual and physical power, humanity’s strokes of luck, and the more strongly successful people should protect themselves from the most poisonous air, the atmosphere of illness. Do people do that? . . . Sick people are the greatest danger for healthy people. For strong people disaster does not come from the strongest, but from the weakest. Are we aware of that? . . . If we consider the big picture, we should not wish for any diminution of the fear we have of human beings, for this fear compels the strong people to be strong and, in some circumstances, terrible—that fear sustains the successful types of people. What we should fear, what has a disastrous effect unlike any other, would not be a great fear of humanity but a great loathing for humanity; similarly, a great pity for humanity. If both of these were one day to mate, then something most weird would at once inevitably appear in the world, the “ultimate will” of man, his will to nothingness, to nihilism. And, as a matter of fact, a great deal of preparation has gone on for this union. Whoever possesses, not only a nose to smell with, but also eyes and ears, senses almost everywhere, no matter where he steps nowadays, an atmosphere something like that of an insane asylum or hospital—I’m speaking, as usual, of people’s cultural surroundings, of every kind of “Europe” there is right here on this earth. The invalids are the great danger to humanity: not the evil men, not the “predatory animals.” Those people who are, from the outset, failures, oppressed, broken— they are the ones, the weakest, who most undermine life among human beings, who in the most perilous way poison and question our trust in life, in humanity, in ourselves. Where can we escape it, that downcast glance with which people carry a deep sorrow, that reversed gaze of the man originally born to fail which betrays how such a man speaks to himself—that gaze which is a sigh. “I wish I could be someone else!”— that’s what this glance sighs. “But there is no hope here. I am who I am. How could I detach myself from myself? And yet—I’ve had enough of myself!”. . . On such a ground of contempt for oneself, a truly swampy ground, grows every weed, every poisonous growth, and all of them so small, so hidden, so dishonest, so sweet. Here the worms of angry and resentful feelings swarm; here the air stinks of secrets and duplicity; here are constantly spun the nets of the most malicious conspiracies—the plotting of suffering people against the successful and victorious; here the appearance of the victor is despised. And what dishonesty not to acknowledge this hatred as hatred! What an extravagance of large words and postures, what an art of “decent” slander! These failures: what noble eloquence streams from their lips! How much sugary, slimy, humble resignation swims in their eyes! What do they really want? At least to make a show of justice, love, wisdom, superiority— that’s the ambition of these “lowest” people, these invalids! And how clever such an ambition makes people! For let’s admire the skilful counterfeiting with which people here imitate the trademarks of virtue, even its resounding tinkle, the golden sound of virtue. They have now taken a lease on virtue entirely for themselves, these weak and hopeless invalids—there’s no doubt about that: “We alone are the good men, the just men”—that’s how they speak: “We alone are the homines bonae voluntatis [men of good will].” They wander around among us like personifications of reproach, like warnings to us—as if health, success, strength, pride, and a feeling of power were already inherently depraved things, for which people must atone some day, atone bitterly. O how ready they themselves basically are to make people atone, how they thirst to be hangmen! Among them there are plenty of people disguised as judges seeking revenge. They always have the word “Justice” in their mouths, like poisonous saliva, with their mouths always pursed, always ready to spit at anything which does not look discontented and goes on its way in good spirits. Among them there is no lack of that most disgusting species of vain people, the lying monsters who aim to present themselves as “beautiful souls” and who, for example, carry off to market their ruined sensuality, wrapped up in verse and other swaddling clothes, as “purity of heart,” the species of self-gratifying moral masturbators. The desire of sick people to present some form or other of superiority, their instinct for secret paths leading to a tyranny over the healthy—where can we not find it, this very will to power of the weakest people! The sick woman, in particular: no one outdoes her in refined ways to rule others, to exert pressure, to tyrannize. For that purpose, the sick woman spares nothing living or dead. She digs up again the most deeply buried things (the Bogos say “The woman is a hyena”). Take a look into the background of every family, every corporation, every community: everywhere you see the struggle of the sick against the healthy—a quiet struggle, for the most part, with a little poison powder, with needling, with deceitful expressions of long suffering, but now and then also with that sick man’s Pharisaic tactic of loud gestures, whose favourite role is “noble indignation.” It likes to make itself heard all the way into the consecrated rooms of science, that hoarse, booming indignation of the pathologically ill hound, the biting insincerity and rage of such “noble” Pharisees (—once again I remind readers who have ears of Eugene Dühring, that apostle of revenge from Berlin, who in today’s Germany makes the most indecent and most revolting use of moralistic gibberish [Bumbum]—Dühring, the pre-eminent moral braggart we have nowadays, even among those like him, the anti-Semites).* They are all men of ressentiment, these physiologically impaired and worm-eaten men, a totally quivering earthly kingdom of subterranean revenge, inexhaustible, insatiable in its outbursts against the fortunate, and equally in its masquerades of revenge, its pretexts for revenge. When would they truly attain their ultimate, most refined, most sublime triumph of revenge? Undoubtedly, if they could succeed in pushing their own wretchedness, all misery in general, into the consciences of the fortunate, so that the latter one day might begin to be ashamed of their good fortune and perhaps would say to themselves, “It’s shameful to be fortunate. There’s too much misery!”. . . But there could be no greater and more fateful misunderstanding than if, through this process, the fortunate, the successful, the powerful in body and spirit should start to doubt their right to happiness. Away with this “twisted world”! Away with this disgraceful softening of feelings! That the invalids do not make the healthy sick—and that would be such a softening—that should surely be ruling point of view on earth:—but that would require above everything that the healthy remain separated from the sick, protected even from the gaze of sick people, so that they don’t confuse themselves with the ill. Or would it perhaps be their assignment to attend on the sick or be their doctors? . . . But they could not misjudge or negate their work more seriously—something higher must not demean itself by becoming the tool of something lower. The pathos of distance must keep the work of the two groups forever separate! Their right to exist, the privilege of a bell with a perfect ring in comparison to one that is cracked and off key, is indeed a thousand times greater. They alone are the guarantors of the future; they alone stand as pledge for humanity’s future. Whatever they can do, whatever they should do—the sick can never to do and should not do. But so that they are able to do what only they should do, how can they have the freedom to make themselves the doctor, the consoler, the “person who cures” for the invalids? . . . And therefore let’s have fresh air! fresh air! In any case, let’s keep away from the neighbourhood of all cultural insane asylums and hospitals! And for that let’s have good companionship, our companionship! Or loneliness, if that’s necessary! But by all means let’s stay away from the foul stink of inner rotting and of the secret muck from sick worms! In that way, my friends, we can defend ourselves, at least for a while, against the two nastiest scourges which may be lying in wait precisely for us—against a great disgust with humanity and against a great pity for humanity!

. . . Eugene Dühring (1833-1921), a German philosopher and socialist who attacked Marxism, Christianity, and Judaism.