The Dawn of Day

Scattered among the different nations of Europe there are now from ten to twenty millions of men who no longer “believe in God” – is it too much to ask that they should give each other some indication or password? As soon as they recognise each other in this way, they will also make themselves known to each other; and they will immediately become a power in Europe, and, happily, a power among the nations! among the classes! between rich and poor! between those who command, and those who obey! between the most restless and the most tranquil, tranquillising people!

Book II

97

One becomes Moral – but not because one is moral! Submission to morals may be due to slavishness or vanity, egoism or resignation, dismal fanaticism or thoughtlessness. It may, again, be an act of despair, such as submission to the authority of a ruler; but there is nothing moral about it per se.

98

Alterations in Morals. – Morals are constantly undergoing changes and transformations, occasioned by successful crimes. (To these, for example, belong all innovations in moral judgments.)

99

Wherein we are all Irrational. – We still continue to draw conclusions from judgments which we consider as false, or doctrines in which we no longer believe, – through our feelings.

100

Awaking from a Dream. – Noble and wise men once upon a time believed in the music of the spheres; there are still noble and wise men who believe in “the moral significance of existence,” but there will come a day when this music of the spheres also will no longer be audible to them. They will awake and perceive that their ears have been dreaming.

101

Open to Doubt. – To accept a belief simply because it is customary implies that one is dishonest, cowardly, and lazy. – Must dishonesty, cowardice, and laziness, therefore, be the primary conditions of morality?

102

The most Ancient Moral Judgments. – What attitude do we assume towards the acts of our neighbour? – In the first place, we consider how they may benefit ourselves – we see them only in this light. It is this effect which we regard as the intention of the acts, – and in the end we come to look upon these intentions of our neighbour as permanent qualities in him, and we call him, for example, “a dangerous man.” Triple error! Triple and most ancient mistake! Perhaps this inheritance comes to us from the animals and their faculty of judgment! Must not the origin of all morality be sought in these detestable narrow-minded conclusions: “Whatever injures me is evil (something injurious in itself), whatever benefits me is good (beneficial and profitable in itself), whatever injures me once or several times is hostile per se; whatever benefits me once or several times is friendly per se.” O pudenda origo! Is not this equivalent to interpreting the contemptible, occasional, and often merely accidental relations of another person to us as his primary and most essential qualities, and affirming that towards himself and every one else he is only capable of such actions as we ourselves have experienced at his hands once or several times! And is not this thorough folly based upon the most immodest of all mental reservations: namely, that we ourselves must be the standard of what is good, since we determine good and evil?

103

There are Two Classes of People who deny Morality. – To deny morality may mean, in the first place, to deny the moral inducements which, men pretend, have urged them on to their actions, – which is equivalent to saying that morality merely consists of words and forms, part of that coarse and subtle deceit (especially self-deceit) which is characteristic of mankind, and perhaps more especially of those men who are celebrated for their virtues. In the second place, it may mean our denying that moral judgments are founded on truths. It is admitted in such a case that these judgments are, in fact, the motives of the actions, but that in this way it is really errors as the basis of all moral judgments which urge men on to their moral actions. This is my point of view; but I should be far from denying that in very many cases a subtle suspicion in accordance with the former point of view —i. e. in the spirit of La Rochefoucauld – is also justifiable, and in any case of a high general utility. – Therefore I deny morality in the same way as I deny alchemy, i. e. I deny its hypotheses; but I do not deny that there have been alchemists who believed in these hypotheses and based their actions upon them. I also deny immorality – not that innumerable people feel immoral, but that there is any true reason why they should feel so. I should not, of course, deny – unless I were a fool – that many actions which are called immoral should be avoided and resisted; and in the same way that many which are called moral should be performed and encouraged; but I hold that in both cases these actions should be performed from motives other than those which have prevailed up to the present time. We must learn anew in order that at last, perhaps very late in the day, we may be able to do something more: feel anew.

104

Our Valuations. – All actions may be referred back to valuations, and all valuations are either one's own or adopted, the latter being by far the more numerous. Why do we adopt them? Through fear, i. e. we think it more advisable to pretend that they are our own, and so well do we accustom ourselves to do so that it at last becomes second nature to us. A valuation of our own, which is the appreciation of a thing in accordance with the pleasure or displeasure it causes us and no one else, is something very rare indeed! – But must not our valuation of our neighbour – which is prompted by the motive that we adopt his valuation in most cases – proceed from ourselves and by our own decision? Of course, but then we come to these decisions during our childhood, and seldom change them. We often remain during our whole lifetime the dupes of our childish and accustomed judgments in our manner of judging our fellow-men (their minds, rank, morality, character, and reprehensibility), and we find it necessary to subscribe to their valuations.

105

Pseudo-egoism. – The great majority of people, whatever they may think and say about their “egoism,” do nothing for their ego all their life long, but only for a phantom of this ego which has been formed in regard to them by their friends and communicated to them. As a consequence, they all live in a haze of impersonal and half-personal opinions and of arbitrary and, as it were, poetic valuations: the one always in the head of another, and this head, again, in the head of somebody else – a queer world of phantoms which manages to give itself a rational appearance! This haze of opinions and habits grows in extent and lives almost independently of the people it surrounds; it is it which gives rise to the immense effect of general judgments on “man” – all those men, who do not know themselves, believe in a bloodless abstraction which they call “man,” i. e. in a fiction; and every change caused in this abstraction by the judgments of powerful individualities (such as princes and philosophers) produces an extraordinary and irrational effect on the great majority, – for the simple reason that not a single individual in this haze can oppose a real ego, an ego which is accessible to and fathomed by himself, to the universal pale fiction, which he could thereby destroy.

106

Against Definitions of Moral Aims. – On all sides we now hear the aim of morals defined as the preservation and advancement of humanity; but this is merely the expression of a wish to have a formula and nothing more. Preservation wherein? advancement whither? These are questions which must at once be asked. Is not the most essential point, the answer to this wherein? and whither? left out of the formula? What results therefrom, so far as our own actions and duties are concerned, which is not already tacitly and instinctively understood? Can we sufficiently understand from this formula whether we must prolong as far as possible the existence of the human race, or bring about the greatest possible disanimalisation of man? How different the means, i. e. the practical morals, would have to be in the two cases! Supposing that the greatest possible rationality were given to mankind, this certainly would not guarantee the longest possible existence for them! Or supposing that their “greatest happiness” was thought to be the answer to the questions put, do we thereby mean the highest degree of happiness which a few individuals might attain, or an incalculable, though finally attainable, average state of happiness for all? And why should morality be the way to it? Has not morality, considered as a whole, opened up so many sources of displeasure as to lead us to think that man up to the present, with every new refinement of morality, has become more and more discontented with himself, with his neighbour, and with his own lot? Has not the most moral of men hitherto believed that the only justifiable state of mankind in the face of morals is that of the deepest misery?

107

Our Right to our Folly. – How must we act? Why must we act? So far as the coarse and immediate needs of the individual are concerned, it is easy to answer these questions, but the more we enter upon the more important and more subtle domains of action, the more does the problem become uncertain and the more arbitrary its solution. An arbitrary decision, however, is the very thing that must be excluded here, – thus commands the authority of morals: an obscure uneasiness and awe must relentlessly guide man in those very actions the objects and means of which he cannot at once perceive. This authority of morals undermines our thinking faculty in regard to those things concerning which it might be dangerous to think wrongly, – it is in this way, at all events, that morality usually justifies itself to its accusers. Wrong in this place means dangerous; but dangerous to whom? It is not, as a rule, the danger of the doer of the action which the supporters of authoritative morals have in view, but their own danger; the loss which their power and influence might undergo if the right to act according to their own greater or lesser reason, however wilfully and foolishly, were accorded to all men. They on their part make unhesitating use of their right to arbitrariness and folly, – they even command in cases where it is hardly possible, or at all events very difficult, to answer the questions, “How must they act, why must they act?” And if the reason of mankind grows with such extraordinary slowness that it was often possible to deny its growth during the whole course of humanity, what is more to blame for this than this solemn presence, even omnipresence, of moral commands, which do not even permit the individual question of how and why to be asked at all? Have we not been educated precisely in such a way as to make us feel pathetic, and thus to obscure our vision at the very time when our reason should be able to see as clearly and calmly as possible —i. e. in all higher and more important circumstances?

108

Some Theses. – We should not give the individual, in so far as he desires his own happiness, any precepts or recommendations as to the road leading to happiness; for individual happiness arises from particular laws that are unknown to anybody, and such a man will only be hindered or obstructed by recommendations which come to him from outside sources. Those precepts which are called moral are in reality directed against individuals, and do not by any means make for the happiness of such individuals. The relationship of these precepts to the "happiness and well-being of mankind" is equally slight, for it is quite impossible to assign a definite conception to these words, and still less can they be employed as guiding stars on the dark sea of moral aspirations. It is a prejudice to think that morality is more favourable to the development of the reason than immorality. It is erroneous to suppose that the unconscious aim in the development of every conscious being (namely, animal, man, humanity, etc.) is its “greatest happiness”: on the contrary, there is a particular and incomparable happiness to be attained at every stage of our development, one that is neither high nor low, but quite an individual happiness. Evolution does not make happiness its goal; it aims merely at evolution, and nothing else. It is only if humanity had a universally recognised goal that we could propose to do this or that: for the time being there is no such goal. It follows that the pretensions of morality should not be brought into any relationship with mankind: this would be merely childish and irrational. It is quite another thing to recommend a goal to mankind: this goal would then be something that would depend upon our own will and pleasure. Provided that mankind in general agreed to adopt such a goal, it could then impose a moral law upon itself, a law which would, at all events, be imposed by their own free will. Up to now, however, the moral law has had to be placed above our own free will: strictly speaking, men did not wish to impose this law upon themselves; they wished to take it from somewhere, to discover it, or to let themselves be commanded by it from somewhere.

109

Self-control and Moderation, and their Final Motive. – I find not more than six essentially different methods for combating the vehemence of an impulse. First of all, we may avoid the occasion for satisfying the impulse, weakening and mortifying it by refraining from satisfying it for long and ever-lengthening periods. Secondly, we may impose a severe and regular order upon ourselves in regard to the satisfying of our appetites. By thus regulating the impulse and limiting its ebb and flow to fixed periods, we may obtain intervals in which it ceases to disturb us; and by beginning in this way we may perhaps be able to pass on to the first method. In the third place, we may deliberately give ourselves over to an unrestrained and unbounded gratification of the impulse in order that we may become disgusted with it, and to obtain by means of this very disgust a command over the impulse: provided, of course, that we do not imitate the rider who rides his horse to death and breaks his own neck in doing so. For this, unhappily, is generally the outcome of the application of this third method.

In the fourth place, there is an intellectual trick, which consists in associating the idea of the gratification so firmly with some painful thought, that after a little practice the thought of gratification is itself immediately felt as a very painful one. (For example, when the Christian accustoms himself to think of the presence and scorn of the devil in the course of sensual enjoyment, or everlasting punishment in hell for revenge by murder; or even merely of the contempt which he will meet with from those of his fellow-men whom he most respects, if he steals a sum of money, or if a man has often checked an intense desire for suicide by thinking of the grief and self-reproaches of his relations and friends, and has thus succeeded in balancing himself upon the edge of life: for, after some practice, these ideas follow one another in his mind like cause and effect.) Among instances of this kind may be mentioned the cases of Lord Byron and Napoleon, in whom the pride of man revolted and took offence at the preponderance of one particular passion over the collective attitude and order of reason. From this arises the habit and joy of tyrannising over the craving and making it, as it were, gnash its teeth. “I will not be a slave of any appetite,” wrote Byron in his diary. In the fifth place, we may bring about a dislocation of our powers by imposing upon ourselves a particularly difficult and fatiguing task, or by deliberately submitting to some new charm and pleasure in order thus to turn our thoughts and physical powers into other channels. It comes to the same thing if we temporarily favour another impulse by affording it numerous opportunities of gratification, and thus rendering it the squanderer of the power which would otherwise be commandeered, so to speak, by the tyrannical impulse. A few, perhaps, will be able to restrain the particular passion which aspires to domination by granting their other known passions a temporary encouragement and license in order that they may devour the food which the tyrant wishes for himself alone.

In the sixth and last place, the man who can stand it, and thinks it reasonable to weaken and subdue his entire physical and psychical organisation, likewise, of course, attains the goal of weakening a single violent instinct; as, for example, those who starve their sensuality and at the same time their vigour, and often destroy their reason into the bargain, such as the ascetics. – Hence, shunning the opportunities, regulating the impulse, bringing about satiety and disgust in the impulse, associating a painful idea (such as that of discredit, disgust, or offended pride), then the dislocation of one's forces, and finally general debility and exhaustion: these are the six methods. But the will to combat the violence of a craving is beyond our power, equally with the method we adopt and the success we may have in applying it. In all this process our intellect is rather merely the blind instrument of another rival craving, whether it be the impulse to repose, or the fear of disgrace and other evil consequences, or love. While “we” thus imagine that we are complaining of the violence of an impulse, it is at bottom merely one impulse which is complaining of another, i. e. the perception of the violent suffering which is being caused us presupposes that there is another equally or more violent impulse, and that a struggle is impending in which our intellect must take part.

110

That which Opposes. – We may observe the following process in ourselves, and I should like it to be often observed and confirmed. There arises in us the scent of a kind of pleasure hitherto unknown to us, and consequently a new craving. Now, the question is, What opposes itself to this craving? If it be things and considerations of a common kind, or people whom we hold in no very high esteem, the aim of the new craving assumes the appearance of a “noble, good, praiseworthy feeling, and one worthy of sacrifice”: all the moral dispositions which have been inherited will adopt it and will add it to the number of those aims which we consider as moral – and now we imagine that we are no longer striving after a pleasure, but after a morality, which greatly increases our confidence in our aspirations.

111

To the Admirers of Objectiveness. – He who, as a child, has observed in his parents and acquaintances in the midst of whom he has grown up, certain varied and strong feelings, with but little subtle discernment and inclination for intellectual justice, and has therefore employed his best powers and his most precious time in imitating these feelings, will observe in himself when he arrives at years of discretion that every new thing or man he meets with excites in him either sympathy or aversion, envy or contempt. Under the domination of this experience, which he is powerless to shake off, he admires neutrality of feeling or “objectivity” as an extraordinary thing, as something connected with genius or a very rare morality, and he cannot believe that even this neutrality is merely the product of education and habit.

112

On the Natural History of Duty and Right. – Our duties are the claims which others have upon us. How did they acquire these claims? By the fact that they considered us as capable of making and holding agreements and contracts, by assuming that we were their like and equals, and by consequently entrusting something to us, bringing us up, educating us, and supporting us. We do our duty, i. e. we justify that conception of our power for the sake of which all these things were done for us. We return them in proportion as they were meted out to us. It is thus our pride that orders us to do our duty – we desire to re-establish our own independence by opposing to that which others have done for us something that we do for them, for in that way the others invade our sphere of power, and would for ever have a hand in it if we did not make reprisals by means of “duty,” and thus encroach upon their power. The rights of others can only have regard to that which lies within our power; it would be unreasonable on their part to require something from us which does not belong to us. To put the matter more accurately, their rights can only relate to what they imagine to be in our power, provided that it is something that we ourselves consider as being in our power. The same error may easily occur on either side. The feeling of duty depends upon our having the same belief in regard to the extent of our power as other people have, i. e. that we can promise certain things and undertake to do them freely (“free will”).

My rights consist of that part of my power which others have not only conceded to me, but which they wish to maintain for me. Why do they do it? On the one hand they are actuated by wisdom, fear and prudence: whether they expect something similar from us (the protection of their rights), whether they consider a struggle with us as dangerous or inopportune, or whether they see a disadvantage to themselves in every diminution of our power, since in that case we should be ill adapted for an alliance with them against a hostile third power. On the other hand rights are granted by donations and cessions. In this latter case, the other people have not only enough power, but more than enough, so that they can give up a portion and guarantee it to the person to whom they give it: whereby they presuppose a certain restricted sense of power in the person upon whom they have bestowed the gift. In this way rights arise: recognised and guaranteed degrees of power. When the relations of powers to one another are materially changed, rights disappear and new ones are formed, as is demonstrated by the constant flux and reflux of the rights of nations. When our power diminishes to any great extent, the feelings of those who hitherto guaranteed it undergo some change: they consider whether they shall once again restore us to our former possession, and if they do not see their way to do this they deny our “rights” from that time forward. In the same way, if our power increases to a considerable extent the feelings of those who previously recognised it, and whose recognition we no longer require, likewise change: they will then try to reduce our power to its former dimensions, and they will endeavour to interfere in our affairs, justifying their interference by an appeal to their “duty.” But this is merely useless word-quibbling. Where right prevails, a certain state and degree of power is maintained, and all attempts at its augmentation and diminution are resisted. The right of others is the concession of our feeling of power to the feeling of power in these others. Whenever our power shows itself to be thoroughly shattered and broken, our rights cease: on the other hand, when we have become very much stronger, the rights of others cease in our minds to be what we have hitherto admitted them to be. The man who aims at being just, therefore, must keep a constant lookout for the changes in the indicator of the scales in order that he may properly estimate the degrees of power and right which, with the customary transitoriness of human things, retain their equilibrium for only a short time and in most cases continue to rise and fall. As a consequence it is thus very difficult to be “just,” and requires much experience, good intentions, and an unusually large amount of good sense.

113

Striving for Distinction. – When we strive after distinction we must ceaselessly keep our eyes fixed on our neighbour and endeavour to ascertain what his feelings are; but the sympathy and knowledge which are necessary to satisfy this desire are far from being inspired by harmlessness, compassion, or kindness. On the contrary, we wish to perceive or find out in what way our neighbour suffers from us, either internally or externally, how he loses control over himself and yields to the impression which our hand or even our mere appearance makes on him. Even when he who aspires to distinction makes or wishes to make a joyful, elevating, or cheerful impression, he does not enjoy this success in that he rejoices, exalts, or cheers his neighbour, but in that he leaves his impress on the latter's soul, changing its form and dominating it according to his will. The desire for distinction is the desire to subject one's neighbour, even if it be merely in an indirect fashion, one only felt or even only dreamt of. There is a long series of stages in this secretly-desired will to subdue, and a very complete record of them would perhaps almost be like an excellent history of culture from the early distortions of barbarism down to the caricatures of modern over-refinement and sickly idealism.

This desire for distinction entails upon our neighbour – to indicate only a few rungs of the long ladder – torture first of all, followed by blows, then terror, anxious surprise, wonder, envy, admiration, elevation, pleasure, joy, laughter, derision, mockery, sneers, scourging and self-inflicted torture. There at the very top of the ladder stands the ascetic and martyr, who himself experiences the utmost satisfaction, because he inflicts on himself, as a result of his desire for distinction, that pain which his opposite, the barbarian on the first rung of the ladder, inflicts upon those others, upon whom and before whom he wishes to distinguish himself. The triumph of the ascetic over himself, his introspective glance, which beholds a man split up into a sufferer and a spectator, and which henceforth never looks at the outside world but to gather from it, as it were, wood for his own funeral pyre: this final tragedy of the desire for distinction which shows us only one person who, so to speak, is consumed internally – that is an end worthy of the beginning: in both cases there is an inexpressible happiness at the sight of torture; indeed, happiness considered as a feeling of power developed to the utmost, has perhaps never reached a higher pitch of perfection on earth than in the souls of superstitious ascetics. This is expressed by the Brahmins in the story of King Visvamitra, who obtained so much strength by thousands of years of penance that he undertook to construct a new heaven. I believe that in the entire category of inward experiences the people of our time are mere novices and clumsy guessers who “try to have a shot at it”: four thousand years ago much more was known about these execrable refinements of self-enjoyment. Perhaps at that time the creation of the world was imagined by some Hindu dreamer to have been an ascetic operation which a god took upon himself! Perhaps this god may have wished to join himself to a mobile nature as an instrument of torture in order thus to feel his happiness and power doubled! And even supposing him to have been a god of love: what a delight it would have been for him to create a suffering mankind in order that he himself might suffer divinely and super-humanly from the sight of the continual torture of his creatures, and thus to tyrannise over himself! And, again, supposing him to have been not only a god of love, but also a god of holiness, we can scarcely conceive the ecstasies of this divine ascetic while creating sins and sinners and eternal punishment, and an immense place of eternal torture below his throne where there is a continual weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth!

It is not by any means impossible that the soul of a St. Paul, a Dante, or a Calvin, and people like them, may once have penetrated into the terrifying secrets of such voluptuousness of power, and in view of such souls we may well ask whether the circle of this desire for distinction has come to a close with the ascetic. Might it not be possible for the course of this circle to be traversed a second time, by uniting the fundamental idea of the ascetic, and at the same time that of a compassionate Deity? In other words, pain would be given to others in order that pain might be given to one's self, so that in this way one could triumph over one's self and one's pity to enjoy the extreme voluptuousness of power. – Forgive me these digressions, which come to my mind when I think of all the possibilities in the vast domain of psychical debaucheries to which one may be led by the desire for power!

114

On the Knowledge of the Sufferer. – The state of sick men who have suffered long and terribly from the torture inflicted upon them by their illness, and whose reason has nevertheless not been in any way affected, is not without a certain amount of value in our search for knowledge – quite apart from the intellectual benefits which follow upon every profound solitude and every sudden and justified liberation from duties and habits. The man who suffers severely looks forth with terrible calmness from his state of suffering upon outside things: all those little lying enchantments, by which things are usually surrounded when seen through the eye of a healthy person, have vanished from the sufferer; his own life even lies there before him, stripped of all bloom and colour. If by chance it has happened that up to then he has lived in some kind of dangerous fantasy, this extreme disenchantment through pain is the means, and possibly the only means, of extricating him from it. (It is possible that this is what happened to the Founder of Christianity when suspended from the Cross; for the bitterest words ever pronounced, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” if understood in their deepest sense, as they ought to be understood, contain the evidence of a complete disillusionment and enlightenment in regard to the deceptions of life: in that moment of supreme suffering Christ obtained a clear insight into Himself, just as in the poet's narrative did the poor dying Don Quixote.)

The formidable tension of the intellect that wishes to hold its own against pain shows everything that one now looks upon in a new light, and the inexpressible charm of this new light is often powerful enough to withstand all the seductiveness of suicide and to make the continuation of life seem very desirable to the sufferer. His mind scornfully turns to the warm and comfortable dream-world in which the healthy man moves about thoughtlessly, and he thinks with contempt of the noblest and most cherished illusions in which he formerly indulged. He experiences delight in conjuring up this contempt as if from the depths of hell, and thus inflicting the bitterest sufferings upon his soul: it is by this counterpoise that he bears up against physical suffering – he feels that such a counterpoise is now essential! In one terrible moment of clear-sightedness he says to himself, “Be for once thine own accuser and hangman; for once regard thy suffering as a punishment which thou hast inflicted on thyself! Enjoy thy superiority as a judge: better still, enjoy thine own will and pleasure, thy tyrannical arbitrariness! Raise thyself above thy life as above thy suffering, and look down into the depth of reason and unreason!”

Our pride revolts as it never did before, it experiences an incomparable charm in defending life against such a tyrant as suffering and against all the insinuations of this tyrant, who would fain urge us to give evidence against life, – we are taking the part of life in the face of this tyrant. In this state of mind we take up a bitter stand against all pessimism in order that it may not appear to be a consequence of our condition, and thus humiliate us as conquered ones. The charm of being just in our judgments was also never greater than now; for now this justice is a triumph over ourselves and over so irritated a state of mind that unfairness of judgment might be excused, – but we will not be excused, it is now, if ever, that we wish to show that we need no excuse. We pass through downright orgies of pride.

And now appears the first ray of relief, of recovery, and one of its first effects is that we turn against the preponderance of our pride: we call ourselves foolish and vain, as if we had undergone some unique experience. We humiliate ungratefully this all-powerful pride, the aid of which enabled us to endure the pain we suffered, and we call vehemently for some antidote for this pride: we wish to become strangers to ourselves and to be freed from our own person after pain has forcibly made us personal too long. “Away with this pride,” we cry, “it was only another illness and convulsion!” Once more we look longingly at men and nature and recollect with a sorrowful smile that now since the veil has fallen we regard many things concerning them in a new and different light, – but we are refreshed by once more seeing the softened lights of life, and emerge from that fearfully dispassionate daylight in which we as sufferers saw things and through things. We do not get angry when we see the charms of health resume their play, and we contemplate the sight as if transformed, gently and still fatigued. In this state we cannot listen to music without weeping.

115

The so-called “Ego.” – Language and the prejudices upon which language is based very often act as obstacles in our paths when we proceed to explore internal phenomena and impulses: as one example, we may instance the fact that there are only words to express the superlative degrees of these phenomena and impulses. Now, it is our habit no longer to observe accurately when words fail us, since it is difficult in such cases to think with precision: in former times, even, people involuntarily came to the conclusion that where the domain of words ceased, the domain of existence ceased also. Wrath, hatred, love, pity, desire, recognition, joy, pain: all these are names indicating extreme conditions; the milder and middle stages, and even more particularly the ever active lower stages, escape our attention, and yet it is they which weave the warp and woof of our character and destiny. It often happens that these extreme outbursts – and even the most moderate pleasure or displeasure of which we are actually conscious, whether in partaking of food or listening to a sound, is possibly, if properly estimated, merely an extreme outburst, – destroy the texture and are then violent exceptions, in most cases the consequences of some congestions, – and how easily as such can they mislead the observer! as indeed they mislead the person acting! We are all of us not what we appear to be according to the conditions for which alone we have consciousness and words, and consequently praise and blame. We fail to recognise ourselves after these coarse outbursts which are known to ourselves alone, we draw conclusions from data where the exceptions prove stronger than the rules; we misinterpret ourselves in reading our own ego's pronouncements, which appeared to be so clear. But our opinion of ourselves, this so-called ego which we have arrived at by this wrong method, contributes henceforth to form our character and destiny.

116

The Unknown World of the “Subject.” – What men have found it so difficult to understand from the most ancient times down to the present day is their ignorance in regard to themselves, not merely with respect to good and evil, but something even more essential. The oldest of illusions lives on, namely, that we know, and know precisely in each case, how human action is originated. Not only “God who looks into the heart,” not only the man who acts and reflects upon his action, but everybody does not doubt that he understands the phenomena of action in every one else. “I know what I want and what I have done, I am free and responsible for my act, and I make others responsible for their acts; I can mention by its name every moral possibility and every internal movement which precedes an act, – ye may act as ye will, I understand myself and I understand you all!” Such was what every one thought once upon a time, and almost every one thinks so even now. Socrates and Plato, who in this matter were great sceptics and admirable innovators, were nevertheless intensely credulous in regard to that fatal prejudice, that profound error, which holds that “The right knowledge must necessarily be followed by the right action.” In holding this principle they were still the heirs of the universal folly and presumption that knowledge exists concerning the essence of an action.