The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book I and II

by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Nobody believes in these assumed airs of importance any longer to-day: and we have sifted our wisdom through the sieve of contempt. Nevertheless the optical habit survives, which would fain measure the value of man by his proximity to a certain ideal maw. at bottom the personalisation view is upheld as firmly as that of the equality of rights as regards the ideal. In short: people seem to think that they know what the ultimate desideratum is in regard to the ideal man....

But this belief is merely the result of the exceedingly detrimental influence of the Christian ideal, as anybody can discover for himself every time he carefully examines the "ideal type." In the first place, it is believed that the approach to a given "type" is desirable; secondly, that this particular type is known; thirdly, that every deviation from this type is a retrograde movement, a stemming of the spirit of progress, a loss of power and might in man.... To dream of a state of affairs in which this perfect man will be in the majority: our friends the Socialists and even Messrs. the Utilitarians have not reached a higher level than this. In this way an aim seems to have crept into the evolution of man: at any rate the belief in a certain progress towards an ideal is the only shape in which an aim is conceived in the history of mankind to-day. In short: the coming of the "Kingdom of God" has been placed in the future, and has been given an earthly, a human meaning—but on the whole the faith in the old ideal is still maintained....

340.

The more concealed forms of the cult of Christian, moral ideals.—The insipid and cowardly notion "Nature" invented by Nature-enthusiasts (without any knowledge whatsoever of the terrible, the implacable, and the cynical element in even "the most beautiful" aspects), is only a sort of attempt at reading the moral and Christian notion of "humanity" into Nature;—Rousseau's concept of Nature, for instance, which took for granted that "Nature" meant freedom, goodness, innocence, equity, justice, and Idylls, was nothing more at bottom than the cult of Christian morality. We should collect passages from the poets in order to see what they admired, in lofty mountains, for instance. What Goethe had to do with them—why he admired Spinoza. Absolute ignorance concerning the reasons of this cult....

The insipid and cowardly concept "Man" à la Comte and Stuart Mill, is at times the subject of a cult.... This is only the Christian moral ideal again under another name.... Refer also to the freethinkers—Guyau for example.

The insipid and cowardly concept "Art" which is held to mean sympathy with all suffering and with everything botched and bungled (the same thing happens to history, cf. Thierry): again it is the cult of the Christian moral ideal.

And now, as to the whole socialistic ideal: it is nothing but a blockheaded misunderstanding of the Christian moral ideal.

341.

The origin of the ideal. The examination of the soil out of which it grows.

A. Starting out from those "æsthetic" mental states during which the world seems rounder, fuller, and more perfect: we have the pagan ideal with its dominating spirit of self-affirmation (people give of their abundance). The highest type: the classical ideal—regarded as an expression of the successful nature of all the more important instincts. In this classical ideal we find the grand style as the highest style. An expression of the "will to power" itself. The instinct which is most feared dares to acknowledge itself.