Source
THIRD BOOK
108
New struggles. —
After Buddha was dead, his shadow was still shown for centuries in
a cave—a tremendous, gruesome shadow. God is dead[1]; but given the way of men, there may still be caves for
thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown. — And we—we
still have to vanquish his shadow, too.
109
Let us beware. —
Let us beware of thinking that the world is a living being. Where
should it expand? On what should it feed? How could it grow and
multiply? We have some notion of the nature of the organic; and we
should not reinterpret the exceedingly derivative, late, rare,
accidental, that we perceive only on the crust of the earth and
make of it something essential, universal, and eternal, which is
what those people do who call the universe an organism. This
nauseates me. Let us even beware of believing that the universe is
a machine: it is certainly not constructed for one purpose, and
calling it a “machine” does it far too much honor. Let us beware
of positing generally and everywhere anything as elegant as the
cyclical movements of our neighboring stars; even a glance into
the Milky Way raises doubts whether there are not far coarser and
more contradictory movements there, as well as stars with
eternally linear paths, etc. The astral order in which we live is
an exception; this order and the relative duration that depends on
it have again made possible an exception of exceptions: the
formation of the organic. The total character of the world,
however, is in all eternity chaos—in the sense not of a lack of
necessity but of a lack of order, arrangement, form, beauty,
wisdom, and whatever other names there are for our aesthetic
anthropomorphisms. Judged from the point of view of our reason,
unsuccessful attempts are by all odds the rule, the exceptions are
not the secret aim, and the whole musical box repeats eternally
its tune[2] which may never be called a melody—and ultimately even the
phrase “unsuccessful attempt” is too anthropomorphic and
reproachful. But how could we reproach or praise the universe? Let
us beware of attributing to it heartlessness and unreason or their
opposites: it is neither perfect nor beautiful, nor noble, nor
does it wish to become any of these things; it does not by any
means strive to imitate man. None of our aesthetic and moral
judgments apply to it. Nor does it have any instinct for
self-preservation or any other instinct; and it does not observe
any laws either. Let us beware of saying that there are laws in
nature. There are only necessities: there is nobody who commands,
nobody who obeys, nobody who trespasses. Once you know that there
are no purposes, you also know that there is no accident; for it
is only beside a world of purposes that the word “accident” has
meaning. Let us beware of saying that death is opposed to life.
The living is merely a type of what is dead, and a very rare type.
Let us beware of thinking that the world eternally creates new
things. There are no eternally enduring substances; matter is as
much of an error as the God of the Eleatics.[3] But when shall we ever be done with our caution and care?
When will all these shadows of God cease to darken our minds? When
will we complete our de-deification of nature? When may we begin
to “naturalize” humanity in
terms of a pure, newly discovered, newly redeemed nature?[4]
[…]
114
How far the moral sphere
extends. — As soon as we see a new image, we immediately
construct it with the aid of all our previous experiences,
depending on the degree of our
honesty and justice. All experiences are moral experiences, even
in the realm of sense perception.[5]
115
The four
errors.[6] — Man has been educated by his errors. First, he always
saw himself only incompletely; second, he endowed himself with
fictitious attributes; third, he placed himself in a false order
of rank in relation to animals and nature; fourth, he invented
ever new tables of goods and always accepted them for a time as
eternal and unconditional: as a result of this, now one and now
another human impulse and state held first place and was ennobled
because it was esteemed so highly. If we removed the effects of
these four errors, we should also remove humanity, humaneness, and
“human dignity.”
[…]
117
Herd remorse. —
During the longest and most remote periods of the human past, the
sting of conscience was not at all what it is now. Today one feels
responsible only for one’s will and actions, and one finds one’s
pride in oneself. All our teachers of law start from this sense of
self and pleasure in the individual, as if this had always been
the fount of law. But during the longest period of the human past
nothing was more terrible than to feel that one stood by oneself.
To be alone, to experience things by oneself, neither to obey nor
to rule, to be an individual—that was not a pleasure but a
punishment; one was sentenced “to individuality.”[7] Freedom of thought was considered discomfort itself. While
we experience law and submission as compulsion and loss, it was
egoism that was formerly experienced as something painful and as
real misery. To be a self and to esteem oneself according to one’s
own weight and measure—that offended taste in those days. An
inclination to do this would have been considered madness; for
being alone was associated with every misery and fear. In those
days, “free will” was very closely associated with a bad
conscience; and the more unfree one’s actions were and the more
the herd instinct rather than any personal sense found expression
in an action, the more moral one felt. Whatever harmed the herd,
whether the individual had wanted it or not wanted it, prompted
the sting of conscience in the individual—and in his neighbor,
too, and even in the whole herd. — There is no point on which we
have learned to think and feel more differently.
[…]
119
No altruism! — In
many people I find an overwhelmingly forceful and pleasurable
desire to be a function: they have a very refined sense for all
those places where precisely
they could “function” and push
in those directions. Examples include those women who transform
themselves into some function of a man that happens to be
underdeveloped in him, and thus become his purse or his politics
or his sociability. Such beings preserve themselves best when they
find a fitting place in another organism; if they fail to do this,
they become grumpy, irritated, and devour themselves.
[…]
121
Life no argument. —
We have arranged for ourselves a world in which we can live—by
positing bodies, lines, planes, causes and effects, motion and
rest, form and content; without these articles of faith nobody now
could endure life. But that does not prove them. Life is no
argument. The conditions of life might include error.[8]
122
Moral skepticism in
Christianity. — Christianity, too, has made a great
contribution to the enlightenment, and taught moral skepticism
very trenchantly and effectively, accusing and embittering men,
yet with untiring patience and subtlety; it destroyed the faith in
his “virtues” in every single individual; it led to the
disappearance from the face of the earth of all those paragons of
virtue of whom there was no dearth in antiquity—those popular
personalities who, imbued with faith in their own perfection, went
about with the dignity of a great matador. When we today, trained
in this Christian school of skepticism, read the moral treatises
of the ancients—for example, Seneca and Epictetus—we have a
diverting sense of superiority and feel full of secret insights
and over-sights: we feel as embarrassed as if a child were talking
before an old man, or an over-enthusiastic young beauty before La
Rochefoucauld[9]: we know better what virtue is. In the end, however, we
have applied this same skepticism also to all
religious states and processes,
such as sin, repentance, grace, sanctification, and we have
allowed the worm to dig so deep that now we have the same sense of
subtle superiority and insight when we read any Christian book: we
also know religious feelings better! And it is high time to know
them well and to describe them well, for the pious people of the
old faith are dying out, too. Let us save their image and their
type at least for knowledge.
123
Knowledge as more than a
mere means. — Without this new passion—I mean the passion to
know—science would still be promoted; after all, science has grown
and matured without it until now. The good faith in science, the
prejudice in its favor that dominates the modern state (and
formerly dominated even the church) is actually based on the fact
that this unconditional urge and passion has manifested itself so
rarely and that science is considered
not a passion but a mere
condition or an “ethos.” Often mere
amour-plaisir[10] of knowledge (curiosity) is felt to be quite sufficient,
or amour-vanité[11], being accustomed to it with the ulterior motive of honors
and sustenance; for many people it is actually quite enough that
they have too much leisure and do not know what to do with it
except to read, collect, arrange, observe, and recount—their
“scientific impulse” is their boredom. Pope Leo X once sang the
praises of science (in his brief to Beroaldo[12]): he called it the most beautiful ornament and the
greatest pride of our life and a noble occupation in times of
happiness as well as unhappiness; and finally he said: “without it
all human endeavors would lack any firm foothold—and even with it
things are changeable and insecure enough.” But this tolerably
skeptical pope keeps silent, like all other ecclesiastical
eulogists of science, about his ultimate judgment. From his words
one might infer, although this is strange enough for such a friend
of the arts, that he places science above art; but in the end it
is nothing but good manners when he does not speak at this point
of what he places high above all of the sciences, too: “revealed
truth” and the “eternal salvation of the soul.” Compared to that,
what are ornaments, pride, entertainment, and the security of life
to him? “Science is something second-class, not anything ultimate,
unconditional, not an object of passion”—this judgment Leo
retained in his soul: the truly Christian judgment about
science.
In antiquity the dignity and recognition of science were diminished by the fact that even her most zealous disciples placed the striving for virtue first, and one felt that knowledge had received the highest praise when one celebrated it as the best means to virtue. It is something new in history that knowledge wants to be more than a mere means.
124
In the horizon of the
infinite. — We have left the land and have embarked. We have
burned our bridges behind us—indeed, we have gone farther and
destroyed the land behind us. Now, little ship, look out! Beside
you is the ocean: to be sure, it does not always roar, and at
times it lies spread out like silk and gold and reveries of
graciousness. But hours will come when you will realize that it is
infinite and that there is nothing more awesome than infinity. Oh,
the poor bird that felt free and now strikes the walls of this
cage! Woe, when you feel homesick for the land as if it had
offered more freedom—and there
is no longer any “land.”
125
The madman. — Have
you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright
morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: “I
seek God! I seek God!” — As many of those who did not believe in
God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has
he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked
another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a
voyage? emigrated? — Thus they yelled and laughed. The madman
jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. “Whither
is God?” he cried; “I will tell you.
We have killed him — you and I.
All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we
drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire
horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its
sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from
all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward,
forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we
not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the
breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night
continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in
the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the
gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of
the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God
remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort
ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and
mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death
under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is
there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what
sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this
deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to
appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and
whoever is born after us—for the sake of this deed he will belong
to a higher history than all history hitherto.” Here the madman
fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were
silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his
lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. “I
have come too early,” he said then; “my time is not yet. This
tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not
yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time;
the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still
require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant
from them than the most distant
stars—and yet they have done it
themselves.” It has been related further that on the same day
the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck
up his requiem aeternam deo.
Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied
nothing but: “What after all are these churches now if they are
not the tombs and sepulchers of God?”
126
Mystical
explanations. — Mystical explanations are considered deep.
The truth is that they are not even superficial.
Notes
Source of English translation: The Gay Science by Friedrich Nietzsche, translated by Walter Kaufmann. Random House, 1974. Used by permission of Random House, Inc.
Source of original German text: Friedrich Nietzsche, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (1882), in Nietzsche, Werke, edited by Karl Schlechta, 6th ed., 3 vols. Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1969, vol. 2; also reprinted in Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (“la gaya scienza”), edited by Renate Reschke. Leipzig: Reclam-Verlag, 1990, Book Three 108–126, pp. 117–31.