Human, All-Too-Human: A Book For Free Spirits; Part II

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The Journey to Hades. – I too have been in the underworld, even as Odysseus, and I shall often be there again. Not sheep alone have I sacrificed, that I might be able to converse with a few dead souls, but not even my own blood have I spared. There were four pairs who responded to me in my sacrifice: Epicurus and Montaigne, Goethe and Spinoza, Plato and Rousseau, Pascal and Schopenhauer. With them I have to come to terms. When I have long wandered alone, I will let them prove me right or wrong; to them will I listen, if they prove each other right or wrong. In all that I say, conclude, or think out for myself and others, I fasten my eyes on those eight and see their eyes fastened on mine. – May the living forgive me if I look upon them at times as shadows, so pale and fretful, so restless and, alas! so eager for life. Those eight, on the other hand, seem to me so living that I feel as if even now, after their death, they could never become weary of life. But eternal vigour of life is the important point: what matters “eternal life,” or indeed life at all?

Part II. The Wanderer And His Shadow

The Shadow: It is so long since I heard you speak that I should like to give you an opportunity of talking.

The Wanderer: I hear a voice – where? whose? I almost fancied that I heard myself speaking, but with a voice yet weaker than my own.

The Shadow (after a pause): Are you not glad to have an opportunity of speaking?

The Wanderer: By God and everything else in which I disbelieve, it is my shadow that speaks. I hear it, but I do not believe it.

The Shadow: Let us assume that it exists, and think no more about it. In another hour all will be over.

The Wanderer: That is just what I thought when in a forest near Pisa I saw first two and then five camels.

The Shadow: It is all the better if we are both equally forbearing towards each other when for once our reason is silent. Thus we shall avoid losing our tempers in conversation, and shall not at once apply mutual thumb-screws in the event of any word sounding for once unintelligible to us. If one does not know exactly how to answer, it is enough to say something. Those are the reasonable terms on which I hold conversation with any person. During a long talk the wisest of men becomes a fool once and a simpleton thrice.

The Wanderer: Your moderation is not flattering to those to whom you confess it.

The Shadow: Am I, then, to flatter?

The Wanderer: I thought a man's shadow was his vanity. Surely vanity would never say, “Am I, then, to flatter?”

The Shadow: Nor does human vanity, so far as I am acquainted with it, ask, as I have done twice, whether it may speak. It simply speaks.

The Wanderer: Now I see for the first time how rude I am to you, my beloved shadow. I have not said a word of my supreme delight in hearing and not merely seeing you. You must know that I love shadows even as I love light. For the existence of beauty of face, clearness of speech, kindliness and firmness of character, the shadow is as necessary as the light. They are not opponents – rather do they hold each other's hands like good friends; and when the light vanishes, the shadow glides after it.

The Shadow: Yes, and I hate the same thing that you hate – night. I love men because they are votaries of life. I rejoice in the gleam of their eyes when they recognise and discover, they who never weary of recognising and discovering. That shadow which all things cast when the sunshine of knowledge falls upon them – that shadow too am I.

The Wanderer: I think I understand you, although you have expressed yourself in somewhat shadowy terms. You are right. Good friends give to each other here and there, as a sign of mutual understanding, an obscure phrase which to any third party is meant to be a riddle. And we are good friends, you and I. So enough of preambles! Some few hundred questions oppress my soul, and the time for you to answer them is perchance but short. Let us see how we may come to an understanding as quickly and peaceably as possible.

The Shadow: But shadows are more shy than men. You will not reveal to any man the manner of our conversation?

The Wanderer: The manner of our conversation? Heaven preserve me from wire-drawn, literary dialogues! If Plato had found less pleasure in spinning them out, his readers would have found more pleasure in Plato. A dialogue that in real life is a source of delight, when turned into writing and read, is a picture with nothing but false perspectives. Everything is too long or too short. – Yet perhaps I may reveal the points on which we have come to an understanding?

The Shadow: With that I am content. For every one will only recognise your views once more, and no one will think of the shadow.

The Wanderer: Perhaps you are wrong, my friend! Hitherto they have observed in my views more of the shadow than of me.

The Shadow: More of the shadow than of the light? Is that possible?

The Wanderer: Be serious, dear fool! My very first question demands seriousness.

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Of the Tree of Knowledge. – Probability, but no truth; the semblance of freedom, but no freedom – these are the two fruits by virtue of which the tree of knowledge cannot be confounded with the tree of life.

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The World's Reason. – That the world is not the abstract essence of an eternal reasonableness is sufficiently proved by the fact that that bit of the world which we know – I mean our human reason – is none too reasonable. And if this is not eternally and wholly wise and reasonable, the rest of the world will not be so either. Here the conclusion a minori ad majus, a parte ad totum holds good, and that with decisive force.

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“In the Beginning was.” – To glorify the origin – that is the metaphysical after-shoot which sprouts again at the contemplation of history, and absolutely makes us imagine that in the beginning of things lies all that is most valuable and essential.

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Standard for the Value of Truth. – The difficulty of climbing mountains is no gauge of their height. Yet in the case of science it is different! – we are told by certain persons who wish to be considered “the initiated,” – the difficulty in finding truth is to determine the value of truth! This insane morality originates in the idea that “truths” are really nothing more than gymnastic appliances, with which we have to exercise ourselves until we are thoroughly tired. It is a morality for the athletes and gymnasts of the intellect.

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Use of Words and Reality. – There exists a simulated contempt for all the things that mankind actually holds most important, for all everyday matters. For instance, we say “we only eat to live” – an abominable lie, like that which speaks of the procreation of children as the real purpose of all sexual pleasure. Conversely, the reverence for “the most important things” is hardly ever quite genuine. The priests and metaphysicians have indeed accustomed us to a hypocritically exaggerated use of words regarding these matters, but they have not altered the feeling that these most important things are not so important as those despised “everyday matters.” A fatal consequence of this twofold hypocrisy is that we never make these everyday matters (such as eating, housing, clothes, and intercourse) the object of a constant unprejudiced and universal reflection and revision, but, as such a process appears degrading, we divert from them our serious intellectual and artistic side. Hence in such matters habit and frivolity win an easy victory over the thoughtless, especially over inexperienced youth. On the other hand, our continual transgressions of the simplest laws of body and mind reduce us all, young and old, to a disgraceful state of dependence and servitude – I mean to that fundamentally superfluous dependence upon physicians, teachers and clergymen, whose dead-weight still lies heavy upon the whole of society.

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Earthly Infirmities and their Main Cause. – If we look about us, we are always coming across men who have eaten eggs all their lives without observing that the oblong-shaped taste the best; who do not know that a thunder-storm is beneficial to the stomach; that perfumes are most fragrant in cold, clear air; that our sense of taste varies in different parts of our mouths; that every meal at which we talk well or listen well does harm to the digestion. If we are not satisfied with these examples of defective powers of observation, we shall concede all the more readily that the everyday matters are very imperfectly seen and rarely observed by the majority. Is this a matter of indifference? – Let us remember, after all, that from this defect are derived nearly all the bodily and spiritual infirmities of the individual. Ignorance of what is good and bad for us, in the arrangement of our mode of life, the division of our day, the selection of our friends and the time we devote to them, in business and leisure, commanding and obeying, our feeling for nature and for art, our eating, sleeping, and meditation; ignorance and lack of keen perceptions in the smallest and most ordinary details– this it is that makes the world “a vale of tears” for so many. Let us not say that here as everywhere the fault lies with human unreason. Of reason there is enough and to spare, but it is wrongly directed and artificially diverted from these little intimate things. Priests and teachers, and the sublime ambition of all idealists, coarser and subtler, din it even into the child's ears that the means of serving mankind at large depend upon altogether different things– upon the salvation of the soul, the service of the State, the advancement of science, or even upon social position and property; whereas the needs of the individual, his requirements great and small during the twenty-four hours of the day, are quite paltry or indifferent. – Even Socrates attacked with all his might this arrogant neglect of the human for the benefit of humanity, and loved to indicate by a quotation from Homer the true sphere and conception of all anxiety and reflection: “All that really matters,” he said, “is the good and evil hap I find at home.”

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Two Means of Consolation. – Epicurus, the soul-comforter of later antiquity, said, with that marvellous insight which to this very day is so rarely to be found, that for the calming of the spirit the solution of the final and ultimate theoretical problems is by no means necessary. Hence, instead of raising a barren and remote discussion of the final question, whether the Gods existed, it sufficed him to say to those who were tormented by “fear of the Gods”: “If there are Gods, they do not concern themselves with us.” The latter position is far stronger and more favourable, for, by conceding a few points to the other, one makes him readier to listen and to take to heart. But as soon as he sets about proving the opposite (that the Gods do concern themselves with us), into what thorny jungles of error must the poor man fall, quite of his own accord, and without any cunning on the part of his interlocutor! The latter must only have enough subtlety and humanity to conceal his sympathy with this tragedy. Finally, the other comes to feel disgust – the strongest argument against any proposition – disgust with his own hypothesis. He becomes cold, and goes away in the same frame of mind as the pure atheist who says, “What do the Gods matter to me? The devil take them!” – In other cases, especially when a half-physical, half-moral assumption had cast a gloom over his spirit, Epicurus did not refute the assumption. He agreed that it might be true, but that there was a second assumption to explain the same phenomenon, and that it could perhaps be maintained in other ways. The plurality of hypotheses (for example, that concerning the origin of conscientious scruples) suffices even in our time to remove from the soul the shadows that arise so easily from pondering over a hypothesis which is isolated, merely visible, and hence overvalued a hundredfold. – Thus whoever wishes to console the unfortunate, the criminal, the hypochondriac, the dying, may call to mind the two soothing suggestions of Epicurus, which can be applied to a great number of problems. In their simplest form they would run: firstly, granted the thing is so, it does not concern us; secondly, the thing may be so, but it may also be otherwise.

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In the Night. – So soon as night begins to fall our sensations concerning everyday matters are altered. There is the wind, prowling as if on forbidden paths, whispering as if in search of something, fretting because he cannot find it. There is the lamplight, with its dim red glow, its weary look, unwillingly fighting against night, a sullen slave to wakeful man. There are the breathings of the sleeper, with their terrible rhythm, to which an ever-recurring care seems to blow the trumpet-melody – we do not hear it, but when the sleeper's bosom heaves we feel our heart-strings tighten; and when the breath sinks and almost dies away into a deathly stillness, we say to ourselves, “Rest awhile, poor troubled spirit!” All living creatures bear so great a burden that we wish them an eternal rest; night invites to death. – If human beings were deprived of the sun and resisted night by means of moonlight and oil-lamps, what a philosophy would cast its veil over them! We already see only too plainly how a shadow is thrown over the spiritual and intellectual nature of man by that moiety of darkness and sunlessness that envelops life.

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Origin of the Doctrine of Free Will. – Necessity sways one man in the shape of his passions, another as a habit of hearing and obeying, a third as a logical conscience, a fourth as a caprice and a mischievous delight in evasions. These four, however, seek the freedom of their will at the very point where they are most securely fettered. It is as if the silkworm sought freedom of will in spinning. What is the reason? Clearly this, that every one thinks himself most free where his vitality is strongest; hence, as I have said, now in passion, now in duty, now in knowledge, now in caprice. A man unconsciously imagines that where he is strong, where he feels most thoroughly alive, the element of his freedom must lie. He thinks of dependence and apathy, independence and vivacity as forming inevitable pairs. – Thus an experience that a man has undergone in the social and political sphere is wrongly transferred to the ultimate metaphysical sphere. There the strong man is also the free man, there the vivid feeling of joy and sorrow, the high hopes, the keen desires, the powerful hates are the attributes of the ruling, independent natures, while the thrall and the slave live in a state of dazed oppression. – The doctrine of free will is an invention of the ruling classes.

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Absence of Feeling of New Chains. – So long as we do not feel that we are in some way dependent, we consider ourselves independent – a false conclusion that shows how proud man is, how eager for dominion. For he hereby assumes that he would always be sure to observe and recognise dependence so soon as he suffered it, the preliminary hypothesis being that he generally lives in independence, and that, should he lose that independence for once in a way, he would immediately detect a contrary sensation. – Suppose, however, the reverse to be true – that he is always living in a complex state of dependence, but thinks himself free where, through long habit, he no longer feels the weight of the chain? He only suffers from new chains, and “free will” really means nothing more than an absence of feeling of new chains.

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Freedom of the Will and the Isolation of Facts. – Our ordinary inaccurate observation takes a group of phenomena as one and calls them a fact. Between this fact and another we imagine a vacuum, we isolate each fact. In reality, however, the sum of our actions and cognitions is no series of facts and intervening vacua, but a continuous stream. Now the belief in free will is incompatible with the idea of a continuous, uniform, undivided, indivisible flow. This belief presupposes that every single action is isolated and indivisible; it is an atomic theory as regards volition and cognition. – We misunderstand facts as we misunderstand characters, speaking of similar characters and similar facts, whereas both are non-existent. Further, we bestow praise and blame only on this false hypothesis, that there are similar facts, that a graduated order of species of facts exists, corresponding to a graduated order of values. Thus we isolate not only the single fact, but the groups of apparently equal facts (good, evil, compassionate, envious actions, and so forth). In both cases we are wrong. – The word and the concept are the most obvious reason for our belief in this isolation of groups of actions. We do not merely thereby designate the things; the thought at the back of our minds is that by the word and the concept we can grasp the essence of the actions. We are still constantly led astray by words and actions, and are induced to think of things as simpler than they are, as separate, indivisible, existing in the absolute. Language contains a hidden philosophical mythology, which, however careful we may be, breaks out afresh at every moment. The belief in free will – that is to say, in similar facts and isolated facts – finds in language its continual apostle and advocate.

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The Fundamental Errors. – A man cannot feel any psychical pleasure or pain unless he is swayed by one of two illusions. Either he believes in the identity of certain facts, certain sensations, and in that case finds spiritual pleasure and pain in comparing present with past conditions and in noting their similarity or difference (as is invariably the case with recollection); or he believes in the freedom of the will, perhaps when he reflects, “I ought not to have done this,” “This might have turned out differently,” and from these reflections likewise he derives pleasure and pain. Without the errors that are rife in every psychical pain and pleasure, humanity would never have developed. For the root idea of humanity is that man is free in a world of bondage – man, the eternal wonder-worker, whether his deeds be good or evil – man, the amazing exception, the super-beast, the quasi-God, the mind of creation, the indispensable, the key-word to the cosmic riddle, the mighty lord of nature and despiser of nature, the creature that calls its history “the history of the world”! Vanitas vanitatum homo.

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Repetition. – It is an excellent thing to express a thing consecutively in two ways, and thus provide it with a right and a left foot. Truth can stand indeed on one leg, but with two she will walk and complete her journey.

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