Preface

The Shadow: Since I haven't heard your voice in so long, I would like to give you an opportunity to speak.

The Wanderer: Someone said something—where? and who? It almost seems as if I myself were speaking, though in an even weaker voice than mine.

The Shadow (after a pause): Are you not happy to have an opportunity to speak?

The Wanderer: By God and all things, in which I do not believe, my shadow speaks; I hear it, but I don't believe it.

The Shadow: Let’s accept it and don't continue to think about it—in one hour it will all be over.

The Wanderer: That’s what I thought, when I saw two and then five camels in a forest near Pisa.

The Shadow: It’s good, that we are both indulgent in the same way, if our reason stands still: thus we will not become annoying and press each other in conversation when something sounds incomprehensible to us. If one does not know how to answer, then it is already enough to say something—that’s the reasonable policy under which I agree to converse. With longer discussions, the wisest one becomes once the fool and three times the dullard.

The Wanderer: Your modesty is not complimentary to your confessor.

The Shadow: Am I to flatter?

The Wanderer: I thought a man’s shadow was his vanity, but his vanity would never ask: “Am I to flatter?"

The Shadow: Nor would man’s vanity, as far as I know, inquire—as I did twice already—whether it could speak: it always speaks.

The Wanderer: Only now do I notice how impolite I am, my beloved shadow: I have not said a word about how pleased I am to see you as well as hear you. You should know that I love the shadow as much as I cherish the light. For facial beauty, clarity of speech, quality and firmness of character, shadow is as necessary as light. They are not opponents: they are rather affectionate, holding hands—and if the light disappears, the shadow slips away after it.

The Shadow: And I hate the same thing you hate: the night; I love human beings, because they are devotees of light and I’m pleased when their eyes shine as they discern and discover knowledge—untiring knowers and discoverers that they are. That shadow, which all things cast, if the sunshine of perception falls upon them—that shadow am I as well.

The Wanderer: I believe I understand you, despite your somewhat shadowy expressions. But you were right: good friends give each other—here and there—a cryptic word as a sign of agreement, which should be a mystery to any third party. And we are good friends. Therefore, let’s dispense with the preliminaries! A few hundred questions press upon my soul, and the time you have to answer them is perhaps only brief. Let’s see what, in all haste and peaceableness, we can agree upon.

The Shadow: But shadows are shier than human beings: you won't tell anyone how we have spoken together!

The Wanderer: How we have spoken together? Heaven forfend! especially from long drawn-out literary discussions. If Plato had less desire to “spin" his readers, they would find more pleasure in Plato. A really amusing discussion—when written down—is merely a painting with false perspectives: everything is too long or too short—nevertheless, perhaps you'll allow me to indicate what we agreed upon?

The Shadow: I’m happy with that, since everyone will recognize therein only your opinions—nobody will think of the shadow.

The Wanderer: Perhaps you are wrong, my friend! Up to now one assumed in my opinions more of shadow than of me.

The Shadow: More shadow than light? Is it possible?

The Wanderer: Dear fool, be serious! My first question requires seriousness.

1.

Of the tree of knowledge.— Probability but no truth: appearance of freedom but no freedom—it is on account of these two fruits that the tree of knowledge cannot be confused with the tree of life.

9.

Where the theory of freedom of will originated.— Over one man necessity stands in the shape of his passions, over another as the habit of hearing and obeying, over a third as a logical conscience, over a fourth as caprice and a mischievous pleasure in escapades. These four will, however, seek the freedom of their will precisely where each of them is most firmly fettered: it is as if the silkworm sought the freedom of its will in spinning. How does this happen? Evidently because each considers himself most free where his feeling of living is greatest; thus, as we have said, in passion, in duty, in knowledge, in mischievousness respectively. That through which the individual human being is strong, wherein he feels himself animated, he involuntarily thinks must also always be the element of his freedom: he accounts dependence and dullness, independence and the feeling of living as necessarily coupled.— Here an experience in the social-political domain has been falsely transferred to the farthest metaphysical domain: in the former the strong man is also the free man; the lively feeling of joy and sorrow, high hope, boldness in desire, powerfulness in hatred is the property of the rulers and the independent, while the subjected man, the slave, lives dull and oppressed.— The theory of freedom of will is an invention of the ruling classes.

11.

Freedom of will and isolation of facts.— Our usual imprecise mode of observation takes a group of phenomena as one and calls it a fact: between this fact and another fact it imagines in addition an empty space, it isolates every fact. In reality, however, all our doing and knowing is not a succession of facts and empty spaces but a continuous flux. Now, belief in freedom of will is incompatible precisely with the idea of a continuous, homogenous, undivided, indivisible flowing: it presupposes that every individual action is isolate and indivisible, it is an atomism in the domain of willing and knowing.— Just as we understand characters only imprecisely, so do we also facts: we speak of identical characters, identical facts: neither exists. Now, we praise and censure, however, only under this false presupposition that there are identical facts, that there exists a graduated order of classes of facts which corresponds to a graduated world-order: thus we isolate, not only the individual fact, but also again groups of supposedly identical facts (good, evil, sympathetic, envious actions, etc.)—in both cases erroneously.— The word and the concept are the most manifest ground for our belief in this isolation of groups of actions: we do not only designate things with them, we think originally that through them we grasp the true in things. Through words and concepts we are still continually misled into imagining things as simpler than they are, separate from one another, indivisible, each existing in and for itself. A philosophical mythology lies concealed in language which breaks out again every moment, however careful one may be otherwise. Belief in freedom of will—that is to say in identical facts and in isolated facts—has in language its constant evangelist and advocate.

12.

The fundamental errors.— For man to feel any sort of physical pleasure or displeasure he must be in the grip of one of these two illusions: either he believes in the identity of certain facts, certain sensations: in which case he experiences psychical pleasure or displeasure through comparing his present states with past ones and declaring them identical or not identical (as happens in all recollection); or he believes in freedom of will, for instance when he thinks “I did not have to do this," “this could have happened differently," and likewise gains pleasure or displeasure. Without the errors which are active in every psychical pleasure and displeasure a humanity would never have come into existence—whose fundamental feeling is and remains that man is the free being in a world of unfreedom, the eternal miracle worker whether he does good or ill, the astonishing exception, the superbeast and almost-god, the meaning of creation which cannot be thought away, the solution of the cosmic riddle, the mighty ruler over nature and the despiser of it, the creature which calls its history world history!— Vanitas vanitatum homo.

15.

Modesty of man.— How little pleasure most people need to make them find life good, how modest man is!

18.

The modern Diogenes.— Before one seeks men one must have found the lantern. Will it have to be the lantern of the cynic?

23.

Have the adherents of the theory of free will the right to punish?— People who judge and punish as a profession try to establish in each case whether an ill-doer is at all accountable for his deed, whether he was able to employ his intelligence, whether he acted for reasons and not unconsciously or under compulsion. If he is punished, he is punished for having preferred the worse reasons to the better: which he must therefore have known. Where this knowledge is lacking a man is, according to the prevailing view, unfree and not responsible: except if his lack of knowledge, his ignorantia legis [ignorance of the law] for example, is a result of an intentional neglect to learn; in which case, when he failed to learn what he should have learned he had already preferred the worse reasons to the better and must now suffer the consequences of his bad choice. If, on the other hand, he did not see the better reasons, perhaps from dull-wittedness or weakness of mind, it is not usual to punish him: he lacked, one says, the capacity to choose, he acted as an animal would. For an offense to be punishable presupposes that its perpetrator intentionally acted contrary to the better dictates of his intelligence. But how can anyone intentionally be less intelligent than he has to be? Whence comes the decision when the scales are weighted with good and bad motives? Not from error, from blindness, not from an external nor from an internal compulsion? (Consider, moreover, that every so-called “external compulsion" is nothing more than the internal compulsion of fear and pain.) Whence? one asks again and again. The intelligence is not the cause, because it could not decide against the better reasons? And here one calls “free will" to one’s aid: it is pure willfulness which is supposed to decide, as impulse is supposed to enter within which motive plays no part, in which the deed, arising out of nothing, occurs as a miracle. It is this supposed willfulness, in a case in which willfulness ought not to reign, which is punished: the rational intelligence, which knows law, prohibition and command, ought to have permitted no choice, and to have had the effect of compulsion and a higher power. Thus the offender is punished because he employs “free will," that is to say, because he acted without a reason where he ought to have acted in accordance with reasons. Why did he do this? But it is precisely this question that can no longer even be asked: it was a deed without a “for that reason," without motive, without origin, something purposeless and non-rational.— But such a deed too ought, in accordance with the first condition of all punishability laid down above, not to be punished! It is not as if something had not been done here, something omitted, the intelligence had not been employed: for the omission is under all circumstances unintentional! and only the intentional omission to perform what the law commands counts as punishable. The offender certainly preferred the worse reasons to the better, but without reason or intention: he certainly failed to employ his intelligence, but not for the purpose of not employing it. The presupposition that for an offense to be punishable its perpetrator must have intentionally acted contrary to his intelligence—it is precisely this presupposition which is annulled by the assumption of “free will." You adherents of the theory of “free will" have no right to punish, your own principles deny you that right! But these are at bottom nothing but a very peculiar conceptual mythology; and the hen that hatched it sat on her egg in a place far removed from reality.

25.

A fair exchange.— An exchange is honest and just only when each of those participating demands as much as his own object seems worth to him, including the effort it cost to acquire it, its rarity, the time expended, etc., together with its sentimental value. As soon as he sets the price with reference to the need of the other he is a subtler robber and extortioner.— If money is the exchange object it must be considered that a shilling in the hand of a rich heir, a day laborer, a shopkeeper, a student are quite different things: according to whether he did almost nothing or a great deal to get it, each ought to receive little or a great deal in exchange for it: in reality it is, of course, the other way round. In the great world of money the shilling of the laziest rich man is more lucrative than that of the poor and industrious.

33.

Elements of revenge.— The word “revenge" is said so quickly it almost seems as if it could contain no more than one conceptual and perceptional root. And so one continues to strive to discover it: just as our economists have not yet wearied of scenting a similar unity in the word “value" and of searching after the original root-concept of the word. As if every word were not a pocket into which now this, now that, now several things at once have been put! Thus “revenge," too, is now this, now that, now something more combined. Distinguish first of all that defensive return blow which one delivers even against lifeless objects (moving machinery, for example) which have hurt us: the sense of our countermove is to put a stop to the injury by bringing the machine to a halt. Occasionally, the strength of the counterblow must be so strong to succeed in this that it smashes the machine; but where that is too strong to be destructible immediately by an individual, he will nevertheless strike as hard as he can—making, as it were, a last-ditch effort. One behaves the same way against persons who harm one, as long as one feels the harm immediately: if you want to call this action an act of revenge, all right; but consider that it is only self-preservation that has here put its rational machinery into motion, and that in the last analysis one does not think at all of the harming person in such a case but only of oneself: we act that way without any wish to do harm in return, merely in order to get away with life and limb.— Time is needed—when instead of concentrating on oneself one begins to think about one’s opponent, asking oneself how one can hurt him the most. This happens in the second type of revenge: reflection on the other person’s vulnerability and capacity for suffering is its presupposition; one wants to hurt. Protecting oneself against further harm, on the other hand, is so little a consideration for the seeker of such vengeance that he almost regularly brings about further harm to himself and quite often anticipates this in cold blood. In the first type of revenge it was fear of a second blow that made the counterblow as strong as possible; here we find almost total indifference to what the opponent will do yet; the strength of the counterblow is determined solely by what he has done to us. But what has he done? And what use is it to us if he now suffers after we have suffered on his account? What matters is a restoration, while the act of revenge of the first type serves only self-preservation. Perhaps we have lost through our opponent possessions, rank, friends, children: such losses are not brought back by revenge; the restoration concerns solely a loss incidental to all these losses. The revenge of restoration does not protect us against further harm; it does not make good the harm suffered—except in one case. If our honor has suffered from our opponent, then revenge can restore it. But this has suffered damage in every instance in which suffering has been inflicted on us deliberately; for our opponent thus demonstrated that he did not fear us. By revenge we demonstrate that we do not fear him either: this constitutes the equalization, the restoration. (The intent of showing one’s utter lack of fear goes so far in some persons that the danger their revenge involves for them—loss of health or life or other damage—is for them an indispensable condition of all revenge. Therefore they choose the means of a duel although the courts offer them help in attaining satisfaction for the insult: but they do not accept an undangerous restoration of their honor as sufficient, because it cannot demonstrate their lack of fear.)— In the first type of revenge it is fear that strikes the counterblow; here, on the other hand, it is the absence of fear that, as I have tried to show, wants to prove itself by means of the counterblow.— Nothing therefore seems more different than the inner motivation or the two ways of action that are called by one name, “revenge." Nevertheless it happens quite frequently that the person seeking revenge is unclear about what really induced him to act: perhaps he delivered the counterblow from fear and in order to preserve himself, but later, when he has time to think about the point of his injured honor, he convinces himself that he avenged himself for his honor’s sake—after all, this motive is nobler than the other one. Moreover, it is also important whether he believes his honor to have been injured in the eyes of others (the world) or only in the eyes of the opponent who insulted him: in the latter case he will prefer secret revenge, in the former public revenge. Depending on whether he projects himself strongly or weakly into the soul of his opponent and the spectators, his revenge will be more embittered or tamer; if he lacks this type of imagination entirely, he will not think of revenge at all, for in that case the feeling for “honor" is not present in him and hence cannot be injured. Just so, he will not think of revenge if he despises the doer and the spectators of the deed—because they, being despised, cannot accord him any honor and hence also cannot take it away. Finally, he will forgo revenge in the not unusual case in which he loves the doer: to be sure, he thus loses honor in his opponent’s eyes and perhaps thus becomes less worthy of being loved in return. But even forgoing all such counterlove is a sacrifice that love is prepared to make if only it does not have to hurt the beloved being: that would mean hurting oneself more than this sacrifice hurts.— Thus: everybody will revenge himself unless he is without honor or full of contempt or full of love for the person who has harmed and insulted him. Even when he has recourse to the courts he wants revenge as a private person—but besides, being a member of society who thinks further and considers the future, he also wants society’s revenge on one who does not honor it. Thus judicial punishment restores both private honor and the honor of society—which means, punishment is revenge.— Indubitably, it also contains that other element of revenge which we described first, insofar as society uses punishment for its self-preservation and deals a counterblow in self-defense. Punishment desires to prevent further damage; it desires to deter. Thus both of these so different elements of revenge are actually tied together in punishment, and perhaps this is the main support of that above-mentioned conceptual confusion by virtue of which the individual who revenges himself usually does not know what he really wants.

34.

The virtues that incur loss.— As members of society we believe we ought not to practice certain virtues from which as private persons we acquire the highest honor and a certain satisfaction, for example mercy and consideration for transgressors of all kinds—in general any action by which the interests of society would suffer through our virtue. No bench of judges may conscientiously practice mercy: this privilege is reserved to the king as an individual; one rejoices when he makes use of it, as proof that one would like to be merciful, even though as a society one absolutely cannot be. Society thus recognizes only those virtues that are advantageous, or at least not harmful to it (those that can be practiced without its incurring loss, for example justice). Those virtues that incur loss cannot, consequently, have come into existence within society, since even now there is opposition to them within every society, however circumscribed. They are thus virtues belonging among non-equals, devised by the superior, the individual; they are the virtues of bearing the sense: “I am sufficiently powerful to put up with a palpable loss, this is a proof of my power"—and are thus virtues related to pride.

37.

A kind of cult of the passions.— In order to raise an accusation against the whole nature of the world, you dismal philosophical blindworms speak of the terrible character of human passions. As if wherever there have been passions there had also been terribleness! As if this kind of terribleness was bound to persist in the world!— Through a neglect of the small facts, through lack of self-observation and observation of those who are to be brought up, it is you yourselves who first allowed the passions to develop into such monsters that you are overcome by fear at the word “passion"! It was up to you, and is up to us, to take from the passions their terrible character and thus prevent their becoming devastating torrents.— One should not inflate one’s oversights into eternal fatalities; let us rather work honestly together on the task of transforming the passions of mankind one and all into joys.

40.

The significance of forgetting for the moral sensation.— The same actions as within primitive society appear to have been performed first with a view to common utility have been performed by later generations for other motives: out of fear of or reverence for those who demanded and recommended them, or out of habit because one had seen them done all around one from childhood on, or from benevolence because their performance everywhere produced joy and concurring faces, or from vanity because they were commended. Such actions, whose basic motive, that of utility, has been forgotten, are then called moral actions: not because, for instance, they are performed out of those other motives, but because they are not performed from any conscious reason of utility.— Where does it come from, this hatred of utility which becomes visible here, where all praiseworthy behavior formally excludes behavior with a view to utility?— It is plain that society, the hearth of all morality and all eulogy of moral behavior, has had to struggle too long and too hard against the self-interest and self-will of the individual not at last to rate any other motive morally higher than utility. Thus it comes to appear that morality has not grown out of utility; while it is originally social utility, which had great difficulty in asserting itself against all the individual private utilities and making itself more highly respected.

48.

Prohibitions without reasons.— A prohibition, the reason for which we do not understand or admit, is almost a command not only for the stubborn but also for those who thirst for knowledge: one risks an experiment to find out why the prohibition was pronounced. Moral prohibitions, like those of the Decalogue, are suitable only for an age of subjugated reason: now, such a prohibition as “Thou shalt not kill" or “Thou shalt not commit adultery," presented without reasons, would have a harmful rather than a useful effect.

50.

Pity and contempt.— To show pity is felt as a sign of contempt because one has clearly ceased to be an object of fear as soon as one is pitied. One has sunk below the level of equilibrium, whereas human vanity is not satisfied even with that, the sensation most desired being one of predominance and the inspiration of fear. That is why the high value pity has come to be accorded presents a problem, just as the praise now accorded selfless disinterestedness needs to be explained: originally it was despised, or feared as a deception.

52.

Content of the conscience.— The content of our conscience is everything that was during the years of our childhood regularly demanded of us without reason by people we honored or feared. It is thus the conscience that excites that feeling of compulsion ("I must do this, not do that”) which does not ask: why must I?— In every case in which a thing is done with “because" and “why" man acts without conscience; but not yet for that reason against it.— The belief in authorities is the source of the conscience: it is therefore not the voice of God in the heart of man but the voice of some men in man.

53.

Overcoming of the passions.— The man who has overcome his passions has entered into possession of the most fertile ground; like the colonist who has mastered the forests and swamps. To sow the seeds of good spiritual works in the soil of the subdued passions is then the immediate urgent task. The overcoming itself is only a means, not a goal; if it is not so viewed, all kinds of weeds and devilish nonsense will quickly spring up in this rich soil now unoccupied, and soon there will be more rank confusion than there ever was before.

55.

Linguistic danger to spiritual freedom.— Every word is a prejudice.

56.

Spirit and boredom.— The saying “The Magyar is much too lazy to feel bored" is thought-provoking. Only the most acute and active animals are capable of boredom.— A theme for a great poet would be God’s boredom on the seventh day of creation.

65.

What is needed first.— A man who refuses to become master over his wrath, his choler and revengefulness, and his lusts and attempts to become master in anything else, is as stupid as a farmer who stakes out his field besides a torrential stream without protecting himself against it.

67.

Habit of seeing opposites.— The general imprecise way of observing sees everywhere in nature opposites (as, e.g., “warm and cold”) where they are, not opposites, but differences of degree. This bad habit has led us into wanting to comprehend and analyze the inner world, too, the spiritual-moral world, in terms of such opposites. An unspeakable amount of pain, arrogance, harshness, estrangement, frigidity has entered into human feelings because we think we see opposites instead of transitions.

78.

Belief in the sickness as sickness.— It was Christianity which first painted the Devil on the world’s wall; it was Christianity which first brought sin into the world. Belief in the cure which it offered has now been shaken to its deepest roots: but belief in the sickness which it taught and propagated continues to exist.

85.

The persecutor of God.— Paul thought up the idea and Calvin rethought it, that for innumerable people damnation has been decreed from eternity, and that this beautiful world plan was instituted to reveal the glory of God: heaven and hell and humanity are thus supposed to exist—to satisfy the vanity of God! What cruel and insatiable vanity must have flared in the soul of the man who thought this up first, or second. Paul has remained Saul after all—the persecutor of God.

86.

Socrates.— If all goes well, the time will come when one will take up the memorabilia of Socrates rather than the Bible as a guide to morals and reason... The pathways of the most various philosophical modes of life lead back to him... Socrates excels the founder of Christianity in being able to be serious cheerfully and in possessing that wisdom full of roguishness that constitutes the finest state of the human soul. And he also possessed the finer intellect.

87.

Learning to write well.— The age of speaking well is past, because the age of the city cultures is past. The extreme limit Aristotle allowed for the size of a city—it must be possible for the herald to make himself audible to the whole assembled community—this limit is of as little concern to us as is the city community itself: we want to make ourself understood, not merely beyond the city, but out over the nations. That is why everyone who is a good European now has to learn to write well and ever better: this is still so even if he happens to have been born in Germany, where writing badly is regarded as a national privilege. To write better, however, means at the same time also to think better; continually to invent things more worth communicating and to be able actually to communicate them; to become translatable into the language of one’s neighbor; to make ourselves accessible to the understanding of those foreigners who learn our language; to assist towards making all good things common property and freely available to the free-minded; finally, to prepare the way for that distant state of things in which the good Europeans will come into possession of their great task: the direction and supervision of the total culture of the earth.— Whoever preaches the opposite and sets no store by writing well and reading well—both virtues grow together and decline together—is in fact showing the peoples a way of becoming more and more national: he is augmenting the sickness of this century and is an enemy of all good Europeans, an enemy of all free spirits.

176.

The patient.— The pine tree seems to listen, the fir tree to wait: and both without impatience—they give no thought to the little people beneath them devoured by their impatience and their curiosity.

192.

The philosopher of sensual pleasure.— A little garden, figs, little cheeses and in addition three or four good friends—these were the sensual pleasures of Epicurus.

194.

Dreams.— On the rare occasions when our dreams succeed and achieve perfection—most dreams are bungled—they are symbolic chains of scenes and images in place of a narrative poetic language; they circumscribe our experiences or situations with such poetic boldness and decisiveness that in the morning we are always amazed at ourselves when we remember our dreams. We use up too much artistry in our dreams—and therefore often are impoverished during the day.

200.

The solitary speaks.— One receives as a reward for much ennui, despondency, boredom—such as a solitude without friends, books, duties, passions must bring with it—those quarter-hours of profoundest contemplation within oneself and nature. He who completely entrenches himself against boredom also entrenches himself against himself: he will never get to drink the strongest refreshing draught from his own innermost fountain.

203.

Too much and too little.— All men now live through too much and think through too little: they suffer at the same time from extreme hunger and from colic, and therefore become thinner and thinner, no matter how much they eat.— Whoever says now, “I have not lived through anything"—is an ass.

204.

End and goal.— Not every end is the goal. The end of a melody is not its goal; and yet: if a melody has not reached its end, it has not reached its goal. A parable.

206.

Forgetting our objectives.— During the journey we commonly forget its goal. Almost every profession is chosen and commenced as a means to an end but continued as an end in itself. Forgetting our objectives is the most frequent act of stupidity.

217.

Classical and romantic.— The classically disposed spirits no less than those romantically inclined—as these two species always exist—carry a vision of the future: but the former out of the strength of their time: the latter out of its weakness.

249.

Positive and negative.— The thinker needs nobody to refute him: for that he suffices himself.

251.

Not to assert one’s rights.— To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled—because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.

261.

Letter.— A letter is an unannounced visit; the mailman, the mediator of impolite incursions. One ought to have one hour in every eight days for receiving letters, and then take a bath.

267.

There are no educators.— As a thinker one should speak only of self-education. The education of youth by others is either an experiment carried out on an as yet unknown and unknowable subject, or a leveling on principle with the object of making a new being, whatever it may be, conform to the customs and habits then prevailing: in both cases therefore something unworthy of the thinker, the work of those elders and teachers whom a man of rash honesty once described as nos ennemis naturels.— One day, when one has long since been educated as the world understands it, one discovers oneself: here begins the task of the thinker; now the time has come to call on him for assistance—not as an educator but as one who has educated himself and thus knows how it is done.

273.

The unwomanly.— “Stupid as a man" say the women: “cowardly as a woman" say the men. Stupidity is in woman the unwomanly.

278.

Premises of the machine age.— The press, the machine, the railway, the telegraph are premises whose thousand-year conclusion no one has yet dared to draw.

284.

The means to real peace.— No government admits any more that it keeps an army to satisfy occasionally the desire for conquest. Rather the army is supposed to serve for defense, and one invokes the morality that approves of self-defense. But this implies one’s own morality and the neighbor’s immorality; for the neighbor must be thought of as eager to attack and conquer if our state must think of means of self-defense. Moreover, the reasons we give for requiring an army imply that our neighbor, who denies the desire for conquest just as much as does our own state, and who, for his part, also keeps an army only for reasons of self-defense, is a hypocrite and a cunning criminal who would like nothing better than to overpower a harmless and awkward victim without any fight. Thus all states are now ranged against each other: they presuppose their neighbor’s bad disposition and their own good disposition. This presupposition, however, is inhumane, as bad as war and worse. At bottom, indeed, it is itself the challenge and the cause of wars, because, as I have said, it attributes immorality to the neighbor and thus provokes a hostile disposition and act. We must abjure the doctrine of the army as a means of self-defense just as completely as the desire for conquests. And perhaps the great day will come when people, distinguished by wars and victories and by the highest development of a military order and intelligence, and accustomed to make the heaviest sacrifices for these things, will exclaim of its own free will, “We break the sword," and will smash its entire military establishment down to its lowest foundations. Rendering oneself unarmed when one had been the best-armed, out of a height of feeling—that is the means to real peace, which must always rest on a peace of mind; whereas the so-called armed peace, as it now exists in all countries, is the absence of peace of mind. One trusts neither oneself nor one’s neighbor and, half from hatred, half from fear, does not lay down arms. Rather perish than hate and fear, and twice rather perish than make oneself hated and feared—this must someday become the highest maxim for every single commonwealth. Our liberal representatives, as is well known, lack the time for reflecting on the nature of man: else they would know that they work in vain when they work for a “gradual decrease of the military burden." Rather, only when this kind of need has become greatest will the kind of god be nearest who alone can help here. The tree of war-glory can only be destroyed all at once, by a stroke of lightning: but lightning, as indeed you know, comes from a cloud—and from up high.

289.

Hundred-year quarantine.— Democratic institutions are quarantine arrangements to combat that ancient pestilence, lust for tyranny: as such they are very useful and very boring.

290.

The most dangerous follower.— The most dangerous follower is he whose defection would destroy the whole party: that is to say, the best follower.

298.

From the practice of wise men.— To become wise, one must wish to have certain experiences and run, as it were, into their gaping jaws. This, of course, is very dangerous; many a “wise guy" has been swallowed.

302.

How one tries to improve bad arguments.— Some people throw a bit of their personality after their bad arguments, as if that might straighten their paths and turn them into right and good arguments—just as a man in a bowling alley, after he has let go of the ball, still tries to direct it with gestures.

304.

Man!— What is the vanity of the vainest man compared with the vanity which the most modest possesses when, in the midst of nature and the world, he feels himself to be “man"!

317.

Opinions and fish.— Possessing opinions is like possessing fish, assuming one has a fishpond. One has to go fishing and needs some luck—then one has one’s own fish, one’s own opinions. I am speaking of live opinions, of live fish. Others are satisfied if they own a cabinet of fossils—and in their heads, “convictions.”

323.

Remorse.— Never yield to remorse, but at once tell yourself: remorse would simply mean adding to the first act of stupidity a second.— If you have done harm, see how you can do good.— If you are punished for your actions, bear the punishment with the feeling that you are doing good—by deterring others from falling prey to the same folly. Every evildoer who is punished may feel that he is a benefactor of humanity.

324.

To become a thinker.— How can one become a thinker if he does not spend at least a third of the day without passions, people and books?

326.

Don't touch!— There are terrible people who, instead of solving a problem, bungle it and make it more difficult for all who come after. Whoever can't hit the nail on the head should, please, not hit it at all.

330.

Weather prophets.— Just as the clouds tell us the direction of the wind high above our heads, so the lightest and freest spirits are in their tendencies foretellers of the weather that is coming. The wind in the valley and the opinions of the marketplace of today indicate nothing of that which is coming but only of that which has been.

333.

Dying for the “truth."— We should not let ourselves be burnt by our opinions: we are not that sure of them. But perhaps for this: that we may have and change our opinions.

348.

Measure of wisdom.— Growth in wisdom can be measured precisely by decline in bile.

350.

The golden watchword.— Many chains have been laid upon man so that he should no longer behave like an animal: and he has in truth become gentler, more spiritual, more joyful, more reflective than any animal is. Now, however, he suffers from having worn his chains for so long, from being deprived for so long of clean air and free movement:—these chains, however, I shall never cease from repeating, are those heavy and pregnant errors contained in the conceptions of morality, religion and metaphysics. Only when this sickness from one’s chains has also been overcome will the first great goal have truly been attained: the separation of man from the animals.— We stand now in the midst of our work of removing these chains, and we need to proceed with the greatest caution. Only the ennobled man may be given freedom of the spirit; to him alone does alleviation of life draw near and salve his wounds; only he may say that he lives for the sake of joy and for the sake of no further goal; and in any other mouth his motto would be perilous: Peace all around me and goodwill to all things closest to me.— With this motto for individuals he recalls an ancient great and moving saying intended for all which has remained hanging over all mankind as a sign and motto by which anyone shall perish who inscribes it on his banner too soon—by which Christianity perished. The time has, it seems, still not yet come when all men are to share the experience of those shepherds who saw the heavens brighten above them and heard the words: “On earth peace, good will toward men."— It is still the age of the individual.

AFTERWORD

The Shadow: From everything that you said, nothing has pleased me more than a promise: you want again to become a good neighbor to the things closest to you. This will benefit us poor shadows as well. Because, admit it, so far you have slandered us all too often.

The Wanderer: Slander? But why haven't you ever defended yourselves? You were near to our ear.

The Shadow: It seemed to us as if we were much too close to be allowed to speak of ourselves.

The Wanderer: Delicately! Very delicately! Oh, you shadows are “better human beings" than we are, I see.

The Shadow: And, nevertheless, you call us “obtrusive”; we understand at least one thing well: to be silent and wait—no Englishman understands it better. It is true, one very often finds us in the retinue of human beings, but nevertheless we are not servants. When human beings shun the light, we shun them: that’s the extent of our freedom.

The Wanderer: Oh, the light shuns human beings even more frequently, and then you abandon us as well.

The Shadow: I've often abandoned you with sorrow: it remains dark for man since I—being eager for knowledge—cannot always be around. As full payment for the complete understanding of man, I would probably be your slave.

The Wanderer: Do you know—do I know?—whether you would undergo a sudden change from slave to master? Or remain a slave, but also become disdainful of your master, and lead a life of degradation and disgust? Let’s be content with this freedom, such as you have it, you and me! Because the sight of one unfree turns my greatest joys into rancor; I would be adverse to the best if I had to share it with someone—I do not want slaves around me. Thus, I don't even like dogs, lazy tail-wagging parasites that became “doglike" only as servants of man and who are still praised for their faithfulness to their master and follow him in this manner.

The Shadow: Like his shadow, that’s what they say. Yet today—have I already followed you too easily, and for too long?

The Wanderer: Oh, is it time to part? I had to give you the last blow—and I see that you became darker thereby.

The Shadow: I blushed, in the color that I’m able to blush. It occurred to me that I've often been at your heels like a dog, and that you then—

The Wanderer: And couldn't I do in all haste something to please you? Don't you have a desire?

The Shadow: Nothing, except perhaps the same desire that the philosophical “dog" had of the great Alexander: move a little out of the sun, it’s getting too cold for me.

The Wanderer: What am I to do?

The Shadow: Step under these spruces and look out at the mountains; the sun is sinking.

The Wanderer: —Where are you? Where are you?