The Will to Power. Friedrich Nietzsche

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СКАЧАТЬ of our forebears; we belonged to each other, we were irrevocably joined; we grew in our own esteem, by acting according to the example of a model known to us all. There is an attempt on the part of noble families to associate religion with their own feelings of self-respect. Poets and seers do the same thing; they feel proud that they have been worthy, that they have been selected for such association, they esteem it an honor, not to be considered at all as individuals, but as mere mouthpieces (Homer). Man gradually takes possession of the highest and proudest states of his soul, as also of his acts and his works. Formerly it was believed that one paid oneself the greatest honor by denying one s own responsibility for the highest deeds one accomplished, and by ascribing them to God. The will which was not free, appeared to be that which imparted a higher value to a deed: in those days a god was postulated as the author of the deed.

      138. Priests are the actors of something which is supernatural, either in the way of ideals, gods, or saviours, and they have to make people believe in them; in this they find their calling, this is the purpose of their instincts; in order to make it as credible as possible, they have to exert themselves to the utmost extent in the art of posing; their actor s sagacity must, above all, aim at giving them a clean conscience, by means of which, alone, it is possible to persuade effectively.

      139. The priest wishes to make it an understood thing, that he is the highest type of man, that he rules, even over those who wield the power, that he is indispensable and unassailable, that he is the strongest power in the community, not by any means to be replaced or undervalued. Means thereto: he alone is cultured; he alone is the man of virtue; he alone has sovereign power over himself: he alone is, in a certain sense, God, and ultimately goes back to the Godhead; he alone is the middleman between God and others; the Godhead administers punishment to every one who puts the priest at a disadvantage, or who thinks in opposition to him. Means thereto: Truth exists. There is only one way of attaining to it, and that is to become a priest. Everything good, which relates either to order, nature, or tradition, is to be traced to the wisdom of the priests. The Holy Book is their work. The whole of nature is only a fulfilment of the maxims which it contains. No other source of goodness exists than the priests. Every other kind of perfection, even the warrior s, is different in rank from that of the priests. Consequence: If the priest is to be the highest type, then the degrees which lead to his virtues must be the degrees of value among men. Study, emancipation from material things, inactivity, im passibility, absence of passion, solemnity; the opposite of all this is found in the lowest type of man. The priest has taught a kind of morality which conduced to his being considered the highest type of man. He conceives a type which is the reverse of his own: the Chandala. By making these as contemptible as possible, some strength is lent to the order of castes. The priest s excessive fear of sensuality also implies that the latter is the most serious threat to the order of castes (that is to say, order in general). . . . Every " free tendency " in puncto puncti overthrows the laws of marriage.

      140. The philosopher considered as the development of the priestly type: He has the heritage of the priest in his blood; even as a rival he is compelled to fight with the same weapons as the priest of his time; he aspires to the highest authority. What is it that bestows authority upon men who have no physical power to wield (no army, no arms at all . . .)? How do such men gain authority over those who are in possession of material power, and who represent authority? (Philosophers enter the lists against princes, vic torious conquerors, and wise statesmen.) They can do it only by establishing the belief that they are in possession of a power which is higher and stronger God. Nothing is strong enough: every one is in need of the mediation and the services of priests. They establish themselves as indispensable intercessors. The conditions of their existence are: (i) That people believe in the absolute superiority of their god, in fact believe in their god; (2) that there is no other access, no direct access to god, save through them. The second condition alone gives rise to the concept " heterodoxy "; the first to the concept " dis believers " (that is to say, he who believes in another god).

      141. A Criticism of the Holy Lie. That a lie is allowed in pursuit of holy ends is a principle which belongs to the theory of all priestcraft, and the object of this inquiry is to discover to what extent it belongs to its practice. But philosophers, too, whenever they intend taking over the leadership of mankind, with the ulterior motives of priests in their minds, have never failed to arrogate to themselves the right to lie: Plato above all. But the most elaborate of lies is the double lie, developed by the typically Arian philosophers of the Vedanta: two systems, contradicting each other in all their main points, but interchangeable, complementary, and mutually expletory, when educational ends were in question. The lie of the one has to create a condition in which the truth of the other can alone become intelligible. . . . How far does the holy lie of priests and philo sophers go? The question here is, what hypo theses do they advance in regard to education, and what are the dogmas they are compelled to invent in order to do justice to these hypotheses? First: they must have power, authority, and absolute credibility on their side. Secondly: they must have the direction of the whole of Nature, so that everything affecting the individual seems to be determined by their law. Thirdly: their domain of power must be very extensive, in order that its control may escape the notice of those they subject: they must know the penal code of the life beyond of the life " after death," and, of course, the means where by the road to blessedness may be discovered. They have to put the notion of a natural course of things out of sight, but as they are intelligent and thoughtful people, they are able to promise a host of effects, which they naturally say are con ditioned by prayer or by the strict observance of their law. They can, moreover, prescribe a large number of things which are exceedingly reasonable only they must not point to experience or empiricism as the source of this wisdom, but to revelation or to the fruits of the " most severe exercises of penance." The holy lie, therefore, applies principally to the purpose of an action (the natural purpose, reason, is made to vanish: a moral purpose, the observ ance of some law, a service to God, seems to be the purpose): to the consequence of an action (the natural consequence is interpreted as something supernatural, and, in order to be on surer ground, other incontrollable and supernatural consequences are foretold). In this way the concepts good and evil are created, and seem quite divorced from the natural concepts: " useful," " harmful," " life-promoting," " life-retarding," indeed, inasmuch as another life is imagined, the former concepts may even be antagonistic to Nature's concepts of good and evil. In this way, the proverbial concept " conscience " is created: an inner voice, which, though it makes itself heard in regard to every action, does not measure the worth of that action according to its results, but according to its conformity or non conformity to the " law." The holy lie therefore invented: (i) a god who punishes and rewards, who recognises and carefully observes the law-book of the priests, and who is particular about sending them into the world as his mouthpieces and plenipotentiaries; (2) an After Life, in which, alone, the great penal machine is supposed to be active to this end the immor tality of the soul was invented; (3) a conscience in man, understood as the knowledge that good and evil are permanent values that God himself speaks through it, whenever its counsels are in conformity with priestly precepts; (4) Morality as the denial of all natural processes, as the subjection of all phenomena to a moral order, as the inter pretation of all phenomena as the effects of a moral order of things (that is to say, the concept of punishment and reward), as the only power and only creator of all transformations; (5) Truth as given, revealed, and identical with the teaching of the priests: as the condition to all salvation and happiness in this and the next world. In short: what is the price paid for the improve- < ment supposed to be due to morality? The unhinging of reason, the reduction of all motives to fear and hope (punishment and reward); dependence upon the tutelage of priests, and upon a formulary exactitude which is supposed to express a divine will; the implantation of a " conscience " which establishes a false science in the place of experience and experiment: as though all one had to do or had not to do were predetermined a kind of contraction of the seeking and striving spirit; in short: the worst mutilation of man that can be imagined, and it is pretended that " the good man " is the result. Practically speaking, all reason, the whole heri tage of intelligence, subtlety, and caution, the first condition of the priestly canon, is arbitrarily re duced, when it is too late, to a simple mechanical process: conformity with the law becomes a pur pose in itself, it is the highest purpose; Life no longer contains any problems; the whole conception of the world is polluted by the notion СКАЧАТЬ