Part 77

(5) My struggle against the predominance of gregarious instincts, now science makes common cause with them; against the profound hate with which every kind of order of rank and of aloofness is treated.

1022.

From the pressure of plenitude, from the tension of forces that are continually increasing within us and which cannot yet discharge themselves, a condition is produced which is very similar to that which precedes a storm: we--like Nature's sky--become overcast. I hat, too, is "pessimism.".. A teaching which puts an end to such a condition by the fact that it commands something: a transvaluation of values by means of which the accumulated forces are given a channel, a direction, so that they explode into deeds and flashes of lightning-does not in the least require to be a hedonistic teaching: in so far as it releases strength which was compressed to an agonising degree, it brings happiness.

1023.

Pleasure appears with the feeling of power.

Happiness means that the consciousness of power and triumph has begun to prevail.

Progress is the strengthening of the type, the ability to exercise great will-power, everything else is a misunderstanding and a danger.

1024.

There comes a time when the old masquerade and moral togging-up of the passions provokes repugnance: naked Nature; when the quanta of power are recognised as decidedly simple (as determining rank); when grand style appears again as the result of great passion.

1025.

The purpose of culture would have us enlist everything terrible, step by step and experimentally, into its service; but before it is strong enough for this it must combat, moderate, mask, and even curse everything terrible.

Wherever a culture points to anything as evil, it betrays its fear and therefore weakness.

Thesis: everything good is the evil of yore which has been rendered serviceable. Standard: the more terrible and the greater the passions may be which an age, a people, and an individual are at liberty to possess, because they are able to use them as a means, the higher is their culture: the more mediocre, weak, submissive, and cowardly a man may be, the more things he will regard as evil: according to him the kingdom of evil is the largest. The lowest man will see the kingdom of evil (i.e. that which is forbidden him and which is hostile to him) everywhere.

1026.

It is not a fact that "happiness follows virtue"--but it is the mighty man who first declares his happy state to be virtue.

Evil actions belong to the mighty and the virtuous: bad and base actions belong to the subjected.

The mightiest man, the creator, would have to be the most evil, inasmuch as he makes his ideal prevail over all men in opposition to their ideals, and remoulds them according to his own image.

Evil, in this respect, means hard, painful, enforced.

Such men as Napoleon must always return and always settle our belief in the self-glory of the individual afresh: he himself, however, was corrupted by the means he had to stoop to, and had lost noblesse of character. If he had had to prevail among another kind of men, he could have availed himself of other means; and thus it would not seem necessary that a Cæsar must become bad.

1027.

Man is a combination of the beast and the super-beast; higher man a combination of the monster and the superman: these opposites belong to each other. With every degree of a man's growth towards greatness and loftiness, he also grows downwards into the depths and into the terrible: we should not desire the one without the other;--or, better still: the more fundamentally we desire the one, the more completely we shall achieve the other.

1028.

Terribleness belongs to greatness: let us not deceive ourselves.

1029.

I have taught the knowledge of such terrible things, that all "Epicurean contentment" is impossible concerning them. Dionysian pleasure is the only adequate kind here: I was the first to discover the tragic. Thanks to their superficiality in ethics, the Greeks misunderstood it. Resignation is not the lesson of tragedy, but only the misunderstanding of it! The yearning for nonentity is the denial of tragic wisdom, its opposite!

1030.

A rich and powerful soul not only gets over painful and even terrible losses, deprivations, robberies, and insults: it actually leaves such dark infernos in possession of still greater plenitude and power; and, what is most important of all, in possession of an increased blissfulness in love. I believe that he who has divined something of the most fundamental conditions of love, will understand Dante for having written over the door of his Inferno: "I also am the creation of eternal love."

1031.