On the Genealogy of Morality (Chap. 4.19)

The ascetic priest’s methods, which we learned about earlier—the collective deadening of the feeling for life, mechanical activity, minor joys, above all, the joy in “loving one’s neighbour,” the organization of the herd, the awakening of the feeling of power in the community, as a result of which the dissatisfaction of the individual with himself is drowned out by his pleasure in the flourishing of the community— these things are, measured by modern standards, his innocent methods in the war against unhappiness. But now let’s turn our attention to more interesting methods, to his “guilty” ones. With all of them there is one thing involved: some kind of excess of feeling —employed as the most effective anaesthetic against stifling, crippling, and long-lasting pain. For that reason, the priest’s powers of innovation have been tireless in addressing this one question in particular: “Through what means do people reach emotional excess?”. . . That sounds harsh. It’s clear enough that it would sound more appealing and perhaps please our ears better if I said something like “The ascetic priest has always used the enthusiasm which lies in all strong emotions.” But why keep caressing the mollycoddled ears of our modern delicate sensibilities? Why should we, for our part, retreat even one step back from the Tartufferie [hypocrisy] of their vocabulary? Doing something like that would already make us psychologists active hypocrites—apart from the fact that for us it would be disgusting. For if a psychologist today has good taste anywhere (others might say his honesty), it’s because he detests that disgraceful moralizing way of talking, which effectively covers in slime all modern judgments about human beings and things. For we must not deceive ourselves in this business. The most characteristic feature which forms modern souls and modern books is not lying but the ingrained innocence in their moralistic lying. To have to discover this “innocence” again all over the place—that is perhaps the most repellent part of our work, of all the inherently dangerous work which nowadays a psychologist has to undertake. It is a part of our great danger—it is a path that perhaps takes us in particular to a great revulsion. I have no doubt about what single purpose will be served, or can be served, in a coming world by modern books (provided they last, which, of course, we need not fear, and provided there will one day be a later world with a stronger, harder, and healthier taste), or what general purpose all things modern will have: they will serve as emetics—and they’ll do that thanks to their moralistic sugar and falsity, their innermost femininity, which likes to call itself “idealism” and which, at all events, has faith in idealism. Today our educated people, our “good people,” don’t tell lies—that’s true. But that’s no reason to respect them! The real lie, the genuine, resolute, “honest” lie (people should listen to Plato on its value) for them would be something far too demanding, too strong. It would require what people are not allowed to demand of them, that they opened up their eyes and looked at themselves, so that they would know how to differentiate between “true” and “false” with respect to themselves. But they are fit only for ignoble lies. Everyone today who feels that he is a “good man” is completely incapable of taking a stand on any issue at all, other than with dishonest falseness—an abysmal falsity, which is, however, innocent falsity, true-hearted falsity, blue-eyed falsity, virtuous falsity. These “good people”—collectively they are now utterly and completely moralized and, so far as their honesty is concerned, they’ve been disgraced and ruined for all eternity. Who among them could endure even one truth “about human beings”! . . . Or, to ask the question more precisely, who among them could bear a true biography! Here are a couple of indications: Lord Byron recorded some very personal things about himself, but Thomas Moore was “too good” for them. He burned his friend’s papers. The executor of Schopenhauer’s will, Dr. Gwinner, is alleged to have done the same thing, for Schopenhauer had also recorded some things about himself and also perhaps against himself (“eis auton” [against himself]). The capable American Thayer, the biographer of Beethoven, all of a sudden stopped his work: at some point or other in this venerable and naive life he could no longer continue . . . Moral: What intelligent man nowadays would still write an honest word about himself?—He would already have to be a member of the Order of Holy Daredevils. We have been promised an autobiography of Richard Wagner. Who has any doubts that it will be a prudent autobiography?* Let’s remember the comical horror which the Catholic priest Janssen aroused in Germany with his incomprehensibly bland and harmless picture of the German Reformation movement. How would people react if one day someone explained this movement differently, if, for once, a true psychologist with spiritual strength and not a shrewd indulgence toward strength pictured a true Luther for us, no longer with the moralistic simplicity of a country parson, no longer with the sweet and considerate modesty of a protestant historian, but with something like the fearlessness of a Taine? . . . (Parenthetically, the Germans have finally produced a sufficiently beautiful classical type of such shrewd indulgence—they can classify him as one of their own and be proud of him, namely, their Leopold Ranke, this born classical advocate of every causa fortior [stronger cause], the shrewdest of all the shrewd “realists”).*

Thomas Moore (1779-1852), an Irish poet; Dr. Gwinner: Wilhelm von Gwinner (1825-1917), German lawyer and civil servant. Thayer: Alexander Thayer (1817-1897).

Taine: Hippolyte Adolphe Taine (1828-1893), a French historian; Leopold Ranke: (1795 to 1886) a very famous and influential German historian.