146

Out beyond our neighbour too.  What? Is the nature of the truly moral to lie in our keeping in view the most immediate and most direct consequences to others of our actions and deciding in accordance with these consequences? But this, though it may be a morality, is a narrow and petty bourgeois one: a higher and freer viewpoint, it seems to me, is to look beyond these immediate consequences to others and under certain circumstances to pursue more distant goals even at the cost of the suffering of others  for example, to pursue knowledge even though one realises that our free-spiritedness will at first and as an immediate consequence plunge others into doubt, grief and even worse things. May we not at least treat our neighbour as we treat ourselves? And if with regard to ourselves we take no such narrow and petty bourgeois thought for the immediate consequences and the suffering they may cause, why do we have to take such thought in regard to our neighbour? Supposing we acted in the sense of self-sacrifice, what would forbid us to sacrifice our neighbour as well?  just as the state and as princes have done hitherto, when they sacrificed one citizen to another 'for the sake of the general interest', as they put it. We too, however, have general, and perhaps more general interests: why may a few individuals of the present generation not be sacrificed to coming generations? their grief, their distress, their despair, their blunders and fears not be deemed necessary, because a new ploughshare is to break up the ground and make it fruitful for all?  Finally: we at the same time communicate to our neighbour the point of view from which he can feel himself to be a sacrifice, we persuade him to the task for which we employ him. Are we then without pity? But if we also want to transcend our own pity and thus achieve victory over ourselves, is this not a higher and freer viewpoint and posture than that in which one feels secure when one has discovered whether an action benefits or harms our neighbour? We, on the other hand, would, through sacrifice  in which we and our neighhour are both included  Strengthen and raise higher the general feeling of human power, even though we might not attain to more. But even this would be a positive enhancement of happiness.  Finally, if even this    but now not a word more! A glance is enough; you have understood me.

147

Cause of 'altruism'.  Men have on the whole spoken of love with such emphasis and so idolised it because they have had little of it and have never been allowed to eat their fill of this food: thus it became for them 'food of the gods'. Let a poet depict a utopia in which there obtains universal love, he will certainly have to describe a painful and ludicrous state of affairs the like of which the earth has never yet seen  everyone worshipped, encumbered and desired, not by one lover, as happens now, but by thousands, indeed by everyone else, as the result of an uncontrollable drive which would then be as greatly execrated and cursed as selfishness had been in former times; and the poets in that state of things  provided they were left alone long enough to write  would dream of nothing but the happy, loveless past, of divine selfishness, of how it was once possible to be alone, undisturbed, unloved, hated, despised on earth, and whatever else may characterise the utter baseness of the dear animal world in which we live.

148

Distant prospect.  If only those actions are moral which are performed for the sake of another and only for his sake, as one definition has it, then there are no moral actions! If only those actions are moral which are performed out of freedom of will, as another definition says, then there are likewise no moral actions!  What is it then which is so named and which in any event exists and wants explaining? It is the effects of certain intellectual mistakes.  And supposing one freed oneself from these errors, what would become of 'moral actions'?  By virtue of these errors we have hitherto accorded certain actions a higher value than they possess: we have segregated them from the 'egoistic' and 'unfree' actions. If we now realign them with the latter, as we shall have to do, we shall certainly reduce their value (the value we feel they possess), and indeed shall do so to an unfair degree, because the 'egoistic' and 'unfree' actions were hitherto evaluated too low on account of their supposed profound and intrinsic difference.  Will they from then on be performed less often because they are now valued less highly?  Inevitably! At least for a good length of time, as long as the balance of value-feelings continues to be affected by the reaction of former errors! But our counter-reckoning is that we shall restore to men their goodwill towards the actions decried as egoistic and restore to these actions their value  we shall deprive them of their bad conscience! And since they have hitherto been by far the most frequent actions, and will continue to be so for all future time, we thus remove from the entire aspect of action and life its evil appearance! This is a very significant result! When man no longer regards himself as evil he ceases to be so!

BOOK III

149

The need for little deviant acts.  Sometimes to act against one's better judgment when it comes to questions of custom; to give way in practice while keeping one's reservations to oneself; to do as everyone does and thus to show them consideration as it were in compensation for our deviant opinions:  many tolerably freeminded people regard this, not merely as unobjectionable, but as 'honest', 'humane', 'tolerant', 'not being pedantic', and whatever else those pretty words may be with which the intellectual conscience is lulled to sleep: and thus this person takes his child for Christian baptism though he is an atheist; and that person serves in the army as all the world does, however much he may execrate hatred between nations; and a third marries his wife in church because her relatives are pious and is not ashamed to repeat vows before a priest. 'It doesn't really matter if people like us also do what everyone does and always has done'  this is the thoughtless prejudice! The thoughtless error! For nothing matters more than that an already mighty, anciently established and irrationally recognised custom should be once more confirmed by a person recognised as rational: it thereby acquires in the eyes of all who come to hear of it the sanction of rationality itself! All respect to your opinions! But little deviant acts are worth more!

150

Chance in marriage.  If I were a god, and a benevolent god, the marriages of mankind would make me more impatient than anything else. The individual can go far, far in his seventy years, indeed in his thirty years if that is all he has  it is amazing, even to gods! But when one then sees how he takes the legacy and inheritance of this struggle and victory, the laurel-wreath of his humanity, and hangs it up at the first decent place where a little woman can get at it and pluck it to pieces: when one sees how well he knows how to gain but how ill to preserve, that he gives no thought to the fact, indeed, that through procreation he could prepare the way for an even more victorious life: then, as aforesaid, one grows impatient and says to oneself: 'nothing can come of mankind in the long run, its individuals are squandered, chance in marriage makes a grand rational progress of mankind impossible  let us cease to be eager spectators and fools of this spectacle without a goal!'  It was in this mood that the gods of Epicurus once withdrew into their divine happiness and silence: they were tired of mankind and its love affairs.