Let us halt a moment before this symptom of highest culture, I call it the pessimism of strength. Man now no longer requires a "justification of evil"; justification is precisely what he abhors: he enjoys evil, pur, cru; he regards purposeless evil as the most interesting kind of evil. If he had required a God in the past, he now delights in cosmic disorder without a God, a world of accident, to the essence of which terror, ambiguity, and seductiveness belong.
In a state of this sort, it is precisely goodness which requires to be justified—that is to say, it must either have an evil and a dangerous basis, or else it must contain a vast amount of stupidity: in which case it still pleases. Animality no longer awakens terror now; a very intellectual and happy wanton spirit in favour of the animal in man, is, in such periods, the most triumphant form of spirituality. Man is now strong enough to be able to feel ashamed of a belief in God: he may now play the part of the devil's advocate afresh. If in practice he pretends to uphold virtue, it will be for those reasons which lead virtue to be associated with subtlety, cunning, lust of gain, and a form of the lust of power.
This pessimism of strength also ends in a theodicy, i.e. in an absolute saying of yea to the world—but the same arguments will be raised in favour of life which formerly were raised against it: and in this way, in a conception of this world as the highest ideal possible, which has been effectively attained.
1020.
The principal kinds of pessimism:—
The pessimism of sensitiveness (excessive irritability with a preponderance of the feelings of pain).
The pessimism of the will that is not free (otherwise expressed: the lack of resisting power against stimuli).
The pessimism of doubt (shyness in regard to everything fixed, in regard to all grasping and touching).
The psychological conditions which belong to these different kinds of pessimism, may all be observed in a lunatic asylum, even though they are there found in a slightly exaggerated form. The same applies to "Nihilism" (the penetrating feeling of nonentity).
What, however, is the nature of Pascal's moral pessimism, and the metaphysical pessimism of the Vedânta-Philosophy? What is the nature of the social pessimism of anarchists (as of Shelley), and of the pessimism of compassion (like that of Leo Tolstoy and of Alfred de Vigny)?