Part 45

People speak of the profound injustice of the social arrangement, as it the fact that one man is born in favourable circumstances and that another is born in unfavourable ones--or that one should possess gifts the other has not, were on the face of it an injustice. Among the more honest of these opponents of society this is what is said: "We, with all the bad, morbid, criminal qualities which we acknowledge we possess, are only the inevitable result of the oppression for ages of the weak by the strong"; thus they insinuate their evil natures into the consciences of the ruling classes. They threaten and storm and curse. They become virtuous from sheer indignation--they don't want to have become bad men and canaille for nothing. The name for this attitude, which is an invention of the last century, is, if I am not mistaken, pessimism; and even that pessimism which is the outcome of indignation. It is in this attitude of mind that history is judged, that it is deprived of its inevitable fatality, and that responsibility and even guilt is discovered in it. For the great desideratum is to find guilty people in it. The botched and the bungled, the decadents of all kinds, are revolted at themselves, and require sacrifices in order that they may not slake their thirst for destruction upon themselves (which might, indeed, be the most reasonable procedure). But for this purpose they at least require a semblance of justification, i.e. a theory according to which the fact of their existence, and of their character, may be expiated by a scapegoat. This scapegoat may be God,--in Russia such resentful atheists are not wanting,--or the order of society, or education and upbringing, or the Jews, or the nobles, or, finally, the well-constituted of every kind. "It is a sin for a man to have been born in decent circumstances, for by so doing he disinherits the others, he pushes them aside, he imposes upon them the curse of vice and of work.... How can I be made answerable for my misery; surely some one must be responsible for it, or I could not bear to live."...

In short, resentful pessimism discovers responsible parties in order to create a pleasurable sensation for itself--revenge.... "Sweeter than honey"--thus does even old Homer speak of revenge.

***

The fact that such a theory no longer meets with understanding--or rather, let us say, contempt is accounted for by that particle of Christianity which still circulates in the blood of every one of us; it makes us tolerant towards things simply because we scent a Christian savour about them.... The Socialists appeal to the Christian instincts; this is their really refined piece of cleverness.... Thanks to Christianity, we have now grown accustomed to the superstitious concept of a soul--of an immortal soul, of soul monads, which, as a matter of fact, hails from somewhere else, and which has only become inherent in certain cases--that is to say, become incarnate in them--by accident: but the nature of these cases is not altered, let alone determined by it. The circumstances of society, of relationship, and of history are only accidents for the soul, perhaps misadventures: in any case, the world is not their work. By means of the idea of soul the individual is made transcendental; thanks to it, a ridiculous amount of importance can be attributed to him.

As a matter of fact, it was Christianity which first induced the individual to take up this position of judge of all things. It made megalomania almost his duty: it has made everything temporary and limited subordinate to eternal rights! What is the State, what is society, what are historical laws, what is physiology to me? Thus speaks something from beyond Becoming, an immutable entity throughout history: thus speaks something immortal, something divine--it is the soul!

Another Christian, but no less insane, concept has percolated even deeper into the tissues of modern ideas: the concept of the equality of all souls before God. In this concept the prototype of all theories concerning equal rights is to be found. Man was first taught to stammer this proposition religiously: later, it was converted into a moral; no wonder he has ultimately begun to take it seriously, to take it practically!--that is to say, politically, socialistically, resento-pessimistically.

Wherever responsible circumstances or people have been looked for, it was the instinct of revenge that sought them. This instinct of revenge obtained such an ascendancy over man in the course of centuries that the whole of metaphysics, psychology, ideas of society, and, above all, morality, are tainted with it. Man has nourished this idea of responsibility to such an extent that he has introduced the bacillus of vengeance into everything. By means of it he has made God Himself ill, and killed innocence in the universe, by tracing every condition of things to acts of will, to intentions, to responsible agents. The whole teaching of will, this most fatal fraud that has ever existed in psychology hitherto, was invented essentially for the purpose of punishment. It was the social utility of punishment that lent this concept its dignity, its power, and its truth. The originator of that psychology, that we shall call volitional psychology, must be sought in those classes which had the right of punishment in their hands; above all, therefore, among the priests who stood on the very pinnacle of ancient social systems: these people wanted to create for themselves the right to wreak revenge--they wanted to supply God with the privilege of vengeance. For this purpose; man was declared "free": to this end every action had to be regarded as voluntary, and the origin of every deed had to be considered as lying in consciousness. But by such propositions as these ancient psychology is refuted.

To-day, when Europe seems to have taken the contrary direction; when we halcyonians would fain withdraw, dissipate, and banish the concept of guilt and punishment with all our might from the world; when our most serious endeavours are concentrated upon purifying psychology, morality, history, nature, social institutions and privileges, and even God Himself, from this filth; in whom must we recognise our most mortal enemies? Precisely in those apostles of revenge and resentment, in those who are par excellence pessimists from indignation, who make it their mission to sanctify their filth with the name of "righteous indignation."... We others, whose one desire is to reclaim innocence on behalf of Becoming, would fain be the missionaries of a purer thought, namely, that no one is responsible for man's qualities; neither God, nor society, nor his parents, nor his ancestors, nor himself--in fact, that no one is to blame for him ... The being who might be made responsible for a man's existence, for the fact that he is constituted in a particular way, or for his birth in certain circumstances and in a certain environment, is absolutely lacking.--And it is a great blessing that such a being is non-existent .... We are not the result of an eternal design, of a will, of a desire: there is no attempt being made with us to attain to an "ideal of perfection," to an "ideal of happiness," to an "ideal of virtue,"--and we are just as little the result of a mistake on God's part in the presence of which He ought to feel uneasy (a thought which is known to be at the very root of the Old Testament). There is not a place nor a purpose nor a sense to which we can attribute our existence or our kind of existence. In the first place, no one is in a position to do this: it is quite impossible to judge, to measure, or to compare, or even to deny the whole universe! And why?--For five reasons, all accessible to the man of average intelligence: for instance, because there is no existence outside the universe ... and let us say it again, this is a great blessing, for therein lies the whole innocence of our lives.

2. The Individual.

766.

Fundamental errors: to regard the herd as an aim instead of the individual! The herd is only a means and nothing more! But nowadays people are trying to understand the herd as they would an individual, and to confer higher rights upon it than upon isolated personalities. Terrible mistake!! In addition to this, all that makes for gregariousness, e.g. sympathy, is regarded as the more valuable side of our natures.

767.

The individual is something quite new, and capable of creating new things. He is something absolute, and all his actions are quite his own. The individual in the end has to seek the valuation for his actions in himself: because he has to give an individual meaning even to traditional words and notions. His interpretation of a formula is at least personal, even if he does not create the formula itself: at least as an interpreter he is creative.

768.

The "ego" oppresses and kills. It acts like an organic cell. It is predatory and violent. It would fain regenerate itself--pregnancy. It would fain give birth to its God and see all mankind at its feet.

769.

Every living organism gropes around as far as its power permits, and overcomes all that is weaker than itself: by this means it finds pleasure in its own existence. The increasing "humanity" of this tendency consists in the fact that we are beginning to feel ever more subtly how difficult it is really to absorb others: while we could show our power by injuring him, his will estranges him from us, and thus makes him less susceptible of being overcome.

770.

The degree of resistance which has to be continually overcome in order to remain at the top, is the measure of freedom, whether for individuals or for societies: freedom being understood as positive power, as will to power. The highest form of individual freedom, of sovereignty, would, according to this, in all probability be found not five feet away from its opposite--that is to say, where the danger of slavery hangs over life, like a hundred swords of Damocles. Let any one go through the whole of history from this point of view: the ages when the individual reaches perfect maturity, i.e. the free ages, when the classical type, sovereign man, is attained to--these were certainly not humane times!

There should be no choice: either one must be uppermost or nethermost--like a worm, despised, annihilated, trodden upon. One must have tyrants against one in order to become a tyrant, i.e. in order to be free. It is no small advantage to have a hundred swords of Damocles suspended over one: it is only thus that one learns to dance, it is only thus that one attains to any freedom in one's movements.

771.

Man more than any other animal was originally altruistic--hence his slow growth (child) and lofty development. Hence, too, his extraordinary and latest kind of egoism.--Beasts of prey are much more individualistic.

772.

A criticism of selfishness. The involuntary ingenuousness of La Rochefoucauld, who believed that he was saying something bold, liberal, and paradoxical (in his days, of course, truth in psychological matters was something that astonished people) when he said. "Les grandes âmes ne sont pas celles qui ont moins de passions et plus de vertus que les âmes communes, mais seulement celles qui ont de plus grands desseins." Certainly, John Stuart Mill (who calls Chamfort the noble and philosophical La Rochefoucauld of the eighteenth century) recognises in him merely an astute and keen-sighted observer of all that which is the result of habitual selfishness in the human breast, and he adds: "A noble spirit is unable to see the necessity of a constant observation of baseness and contemptibility, unless it were to show against what corrupting influences a lofty spirit and a noble character were able to triumph."

773.

The Morphology of the Feelings of Self.

First standpoint--To what extent are sympathy or communal feelings, the lower or preparatory states, at a time when personal self-esteem and initiative in valuation, on the part of individuals, are not yet possible?

Second standpoint.--To what extent is the zenith of collective self-esteem, the pride in the distinction of the clan, the feeling of inequality and a certain abhorrence of mediation, of equal rights and of reconciliation, the school for individual self-esteem? It may be this in so far as it compels the individual to represent the pride of the community --he is obliged to speak and act with tremendous self-respect, because he stands for the community And the same holds good when the individual regards himself as the instrument or speaking-tube of a godhead.