ye who are well-disposed and willing to assist, lend your aid in the endeavour to do away with that conception of punishment which has swept over the whole world! No weed more harmful than this! It is not only to the consequences of our actions that this conception has been applied – and how horrible and senseless it is to confuse cause and effect with cause and punishment! – but worse has followed: the pure accidentality of events has been robbed of its innocence by this execrable manner of interpreting conception of punishment. Yea, they have even pushed their folly to such extremes that they would have us look upon existence itself as a punishment – from which it would appear that the education of mankind had hitherto been confided to cranky gaolers and hangmen.
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The Signification of Madness in the History of Morality. – If, despite that formidable pressure of the “morality of custom,” under which all human communities lived – thousands of years before our own era, and during our own era up to the present day (we ourselves are dwelling in the small world of exceptions, and, as it were, in an evil zone): – if, I say, in spite of all this, new and divergent ideas, valuations, and impulses have made their appearance time after time, this state of things has been brought about only with the assistance of a dreadful associate: it was insanity almost everywhere that paved the way for the new thought and cast off the spell of an old custom and superstition. Do ye understand why this had to be done through insanity? by something which is in both voice and appearance as horrifying and incalculable as the demoniac whims of wind and sea, and consequently calling for like dread and respect? by something bearing upon it the signs of entire lack of consciousness as clearly as the convulsions and foam of the epileptic, which appeared to typify the insane person as the mask and speaking-trumpet of some divine being? by something that inspired even the bearer of the new thought with awe and fear of himself, and that, suppressing all remorse, drove him on to become its prophet and martyr? – Well, in our own time, we continually hear the statement reiterated that genius is tinctured with madness instead of good sense. Men of earlier ages were far more inclined to believe that, wherever traces of insanity showed themselves, a certain proportion of genius and wisdom was likewise present – something “divine,” as they whispered to one another. More than this, they expressed their opinions on the point with sufficient emphasis. “All the greatest benefits of Greece have sprung from madness,” said Plato, setting on record the opinion of the entire ancient world. Let us take a step further: all those superior men, who felt themselves irresistibly urged on to throw off the yoke of some morality or other, had no other resource —if they were not really mad– than to feign madness, or actually to become insane. And this holds good for innovators in every department of life, and not only in religion and politics. Even the reformer of the poetic metre was forced to justify himself by means of madness. (Thus even down to gentler ages madness remained a kind of convention in poets, of which Solon, for instance, took advantage when urging the Athenians to reconquer Salamis.) – “How can one make one's self mad when one is not mad and dare not feign to be so?” Almost all the eminent men of antiquity have given themselves up to this dreadful mode of reasoning: a secret doctrine of artifices and dietetic jugglery grew up around this subject and was handed down from generation to generation, together with the feeling of the innocence, even sanctity, of such plans and meditations. The means of becoming a medicine-man among the Indians, a saint among Christians of the Middle Ages, an angecok among Greenlanders, a Pagee among Brazilians, are the same in essence: senseless fasting, continual abstention from sexual intercourse, isolation in a wilderness, ascending a mountain or a pillar, “sitting on an aged willow that looks out upon a lake,” and thinking of absolutely nothing but what may give rise to ecstasy or mental derangements.
Who would dare to glance at the desert of the bitterest and most superfluous agonies of spirit, in which probably the most productive men of all ages have pined away? Who could listen to the sighs of those lonely and troubled minds: “O ye heavenly powers, grant me madness! Madness, that I at length may believe in myself! Vouchsafe delirium and convulsions, sudden flashes of light and periods of darkness; frighten me with such shivering and feverishness as no mortal ever experienced before, with clanging noises and haunting spectres; let me growl and whine and creep about like a beast, if only I can come to believe in myself! I am devoured by doubt. I have slain the law, and I now dread the law as a living person dreads a corpse. If I am not above the law, I am the most abandoned of wretches. Whence cometh this new spirit that dwelleth within me but from you? Prove to me, then, that I am one of you – nothing but madness will prove it to me.” And only too often does such a fervour attain its object: at the very time when Christianity was giving the greatest proof of its fertility in the production of saints and martyrs, believing that it was thus proving itself, Jerusalem contained large lunatic asylums for shipwrecked saints, for those whose last spark of good sense had been quenched by the floods of insanity.
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The most Ancient Means of Solace. – First stage: In every misfortune or discomfort man sees something for which he must make somebody else suffer, no matter who – in this way he finds out the amount of power still remaining to him; and this consoles him. Second stage: In every misfortune or discomfort, man sees a punishment, i. e. an expiation of guilt and the means by which he may get rid of the malicious enchantment of a real or apparent wrong. When he perceives the advantage which misfortune bring with it, he believes he need no longer make another person suffer for it – he gives up this kind of satisfaction, because he now has another.
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First Principle of Civilisation. – Among savage tribes there is a certain category of customs which appear to aim at nothing but custom. They therefore lay down strict, and, on the whole, superfluous regulations (e. g. the rules of the Kamchadales, which forbid snow to be scraped off the boots with a knife, coal to be stuck on the point of a knife, or a piece of iron to be put into the fire – and death to be the portion of every one who shall act contrariwise!) Yet these laws serve to keep people continually reminded of the custom, and the imperative necessity on their parts to conform to it: and all this in support of the great principle which stands at the beginning of all civilisation: any custom is better than none.
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Goodness and Malignity. – At first men imposed their own personalities on Nature: everywhere they saw themselves and their like, i. e. their own evil and capricious temperaments, hidden, as it were, behind clouds, thunder-storms, wild beasts, trees, and plants: it was then that they declared Nature was evil. Afterwards there came a time, that of Rousseau, when they sought to distinguish themselves from Nature: they were so tired of each other that they wished to have separate little hiding-places where man and his misery could not penetrate: then they invented “nature is good.”
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The Morality of Voluntary Suffering. – What is the highest enjoyment for men living in a state of war in a small community, the existence of which is continually threatened, and the morality of which is the strictest possible? i. e. for souls which are vigorous, vindictive, malicious, full of suspicion, ready to face the direst events, hardened by privation and morality? The enjoyment of cruelty: just as, in such souls and in such circumstances, it would be regarded as a virtue to be ingenious and insatiable in cruelty. Such a community would find its delight in performing cruel deeds, casting aside, for once, the gloom of constant anxiety and precaution. Cruelty is one of the most ancient enjoyments at their festivities. As a consequence it is believed that the gods likewise are pleased by the sight of cruelty and rejoice at it – and in this way the belief is spread that voluntary suffering, self-chosen martyrdom, has a high signification and value of its own. In the community custom gradually brings about a practice in conformity with this belief: henceforward people become more suspicious of all exuberant well-being, and more confident as they find themselves in a state of great pain; they think that the gods may be unfavourable to them on account of happiness, and favourable on account of pain – not compassionate! For compassion is looked upon with contempt, and unworthy of a strong and awe-inspiring soul – but
