Significance of madness in the history of morality. — When in spite of that fearful pressure of ‘morality of custom’ under which all the communities of mankind have lived, many millennia before the beginnings of our calendar and also on the whole during the course of it up to the present day (we ourselves dwell in the little world of the exceptions and, so to speak, in the evil zone): – when, I say, in spite of this, new and deviate ideas, evaluations, drives again and again broke out, they did so accompanied by a dreadful attendant: almost everywhere it was madness which prepared the way for the new idea, which broke the spell of a venerated usage and superstition. Do you understand why it had to be madness which did this? Something in voice and bearing as uncanny and incalculable as the demonic moods of the weather and the sea and therefore worthy of a similar awe and observation? Something that bore so visibly the sign of total unfreedom as the convulsions and froth of the epileptic, that seemed to mark the madman as the mask and speaking-trumpet of a divinity? Something that awoke in the bearer of a new idea himself reverence for and dread of himself and no longer pangs of conscience and drove him to become the prophet and martyr of his idea? – while it is constantly suggested to us today that, instead of a grain of salt, a grain of the spice of madness is joined to genius, all earlier people found it much more likely that wherever there is madness there is also a grain of genius and wisdom – something ‘divine’, as one whispered to oneself. Or rather: as one said aloud forcefully enough. ‘It is through madness that the greatest good things have come to Greece’, Plato said, in concert with all ancient mankind. Let us go a step further: all superior men who were irresistibly drawn to throw off the yoke of any kind of morality and to frame new laws had, if they were not actually mad, no alternative but to make themselves or pretend to be mad – and this indeed applies to innovators in every domain and not only in the domain of priestly and political dogma: – even the innovator of poetical metre had to establish his credentials by madness. (A certain convention that they were mad continued to adhere to poets even into much gentler ages: a convention of which Solon, for example, availed himself when he incited the Athenians to reconquer Salamis.)

– ‘How can one make oneself mad when one is not mad and does not dare to appear so?’ – almost all the significant men of ancient civilisation have pursued this train of thought; a secret teaching of artifices and dietetic hints was propagated on this subject, together with the feeling that such reflections and purposes were innocent, indeed holy. The recipes for becoming a medicine-man among the Indians, a saint among the Christians of the Middle Ages, an angekok among Greenlanders, a pajee among Brazilians are essentially the same: senseless fasting, perpetual sexual abstinence, going into the desert or ascending a mountain or a pillar, or ‘sitting in an aged willow tree which looks upon a lake’ and thinking of nothing at all except what might bring on an ecstasy and mental disorder. Who would venture to take a look into the wilderness of bitterest and most superfluous agonies of soul in which probably the most fruitful men of all times have languished! To listen to the sighs of these solitary and agitated minds: ‘Ah, give me madness, you heavenly powers! Madness, that I may at last believe in myself! Give deliriums and convulsions, sudden lights and darkness, terrify me with frost and fire such as no mortal has ever felt, with deafening din and prowling figures, make me howl and whine and crawl like a beast: so that I may only come to believe in myself! I am consumed by doubt, I have killed the law, the law anguishes me as a corpse does a living man: if I am not more than the law I am the vilest of all men. The new spirit which is in me, whence is it if it is not from you? Prove to me that I am yours; madness alone can prove it.’ And only too often this fervour achieved its goal all too well: in that age in which Christianity proved most fruitful in saints and desert solitaries, and thought it was proving itself by this fruitfulness, there were in Jerusalem vast madhouses for abortive saints, for those who had surrendered to it their last grain of salt.

First proposition of civilisation. — Among barbarous peoples there exists a species of customs whose purpose appears to be custom in general: minute and fundamentally superfluous stipulations (as for example those among the Kamshadales forbidding the scraping of snow from the shoes with a knife, the impaling of a coal on a knife, the placing of an iron in the fire – and he who contravenes them meets death!) which, however, keep continually in the consciousness the constant proximity of custom the perpetual compulsion to practise customs: so as to strengthen the mighty proposition with which civilisation begins: any custom is better than no custom.

Morality makes stupid. — Custom represents the experiences of men of earlier times as to what they supposed useful and harmful – but the sense for custom (morality) applies, not to these experiences as such, but to the age, the sanctity, the indiscussability of the custom. And so this feeling is a hindrance to the acquisition of new experiences and the correction of customs: that is to say, morality is a hindrance to the creation of new and better customs: it makes stupid.

‘Observance of the law’. — If obedience to a moral precept produces a result different from the one promised and expected, and instead of the promised good fortune the moral man unexpectedly encounters ill fortune and misery, the conscientious and fearful will always be able to recourse to saying: ‘something was overlooked in the way it was performed’. In the worst event, a profoundly sorrowful and crushed mankind will even decree: ‘it is impossible to perform the precept properly, we are weak and sinful through and through and in the depths of us incapable of morality, consequently we can lay no claim to success and good fortune. Moral precepts and promises are for better beings than we are.’

Refined cruelty as virtue. — Here is a morality which rests entirely on the drive to distinction – do not think too highly of it! For what kind of a drive is that and what thought lies behind it? We want to make the sight of us painful to another and to awaken in him the feeling of envy and of his own impotence and degradation; by dropping on to his tongue a drop of our honey, and while doing him this supposed favour looking him keenly and mockingly in the eyes, we want to make him savour the bitterness of his fate. This person has become humble and is now perfect in his humility – seek for those whom he has for long wished to torture with it! you will find them soon enough! That person is kind to animals and is admired on account of it – but there are certain people on whom he wants to vent his cruelty by this means. There stands a great artist: the pleasure he anticipated in the envy of his defeated rivals allowed his powers no rest until he had become great – how many bitter moments has his becoming great not cost the souls of others! The chastity of the nun: with what punitive eyes it looks into the faces of women who live otherwise! how much joy in revenge there is in these eyes! – The theme is brief, the variations that might be played upon it might be endless but hardly tedious – for it is still a far too paradoxical and almost pain-inducing novelty that the morality of distinction is in its ultimate foundation pleasure in refined cruelty. In its ultimate foundation – in this case that means: in its first generation. For when the habit of some distinguishing action is inherited, the thought that lies behind it is not inherited with it (thoughts are not hereditary, only feelings): and provided it is not again reproduced by education, even the second generation fails to experience any pleasure in cruelty in connection with it, but only pleasure in the habit as such. This pleasure, however, is the first stage of the ‘good’.

Contempt for causes, for consequences and for reality. — Whenever an evil chance event – a sudden storm or a crop failure or a plague – strikes a community, the suspicion is aroused that custom has been offended in some way or that new practices now have to be devised to propitiate a new demonic power and caprice. This species of suspicion and reflection is thus a direct avoidance of any investigation of the real natural causes of the phenomenon: it takes the demonic cause for granted. This is one spring of the perversity of the human intellect which we have inherited: and the other spring arises close beside it, in that the real natural consequences of an action are, equally on principle, accorded far less attention than the supernatural (the so-called punishments and mercies administered by the divinity). Certain ablutions are, for example, prescribed at certain times: one bathes, not so as to get clean, but because it is prescribed. One learns to avoid, not the real consequences of uncleanliness, but the supposed displeasure of the gods at the neglect of an ablution. Under the pressure of superstitious fear one suspects there must be very much more to this washing away of uncleanliness, one interprets a second and third meaning into it, one spoils one's sense for reality and one's pleasure in it, and in the end accords reality a value only insofar as it is capable of being a symbol. Thus, under the spell of the morality of custom, man despises first the causes, secondly the consequences, thirdly reality, and weaves all his higher feelings (of reverence, of sublimity, of pride, of gratitude, of love) into an imaginary world: the so-called higher world. And the consequences are perceptible even today: wherever a man's feelings are exalted, that imaginary world is involved in some way. It is a sad fact, but for the moment the man of science has to be suspicious of all higher feelings, so greatly are they nourished by delusion and nonsense. It is not that they are thus in themselves, or must always remain thus: but of all the gradual purifications awaiting mankind, the purification of the higher feelings will certainly be one of the most gradual.

With freedom of movement, groups of similar people can come together and form communities. Overcoming the Nations.

To consider the good as it appears as a sign of degeneration – as religious madness, for example, as philanthropy, etc.: everywhere where healthy egoism diminishes and apathy or asceticism is striven for.

The “saint” as an ideal of bodily atrophy, also the whole Brahmanical philosophy a sign of degeneration.

The fear of power as productive force. This is the realm of religion. On the other hand, it appears to be man's highest aspiration to become one with the most powerful thing there is. This is the origin of Brahmanism, for example: generated within the caste of the rulers, as a phantastic further development of the need for power, probably because its discharge in wars is lacking.

The fusion with the deity can be greed for the highest lust (feminine-hysterical in some saints) or greed for the highest undisturbedness and silence and spirituality (Spinoza) or greed for power etc. Or even the consequence of the most helpless fearfulness: the only salvation and escape is to take refuge in God. The most cunning [Raffinierteste] is probably “overcoming grace” [Überwindung der Gnade] among the mystics.

the Brahmin feels “all action is suffering” due to lack of initiative.

the highest power, in Brahman[ism] and Christianity — to turn away from the world.

The Brahmins and Christians lead away from the apparent world [Augenscheinwelt] because they consider (fear –) it to be evil, but the scientists work in the service of the will to overpower nature.

Of the hypocrisy of philosophers.

the Greeks: conceal their agonal affect, drape themselves as the “happiest” through virtue, and as the most virtuous (twofold hypocrisy)

(Socrates, victorious as the plebeian ugly one among the beautiful and noble, the low talker among a city of orators, the conqueror of his affects, the common clever man with the “Why?” among the hereditary nobility — hides his pessimism)

the Brahmins basically want redemption from the tired, lukewarm, unenthusiastic feeling of existence

Leibnitz Kant Hegel Schopenhauer, their German two-nature

Spinoza and the vengeful affect, the hypocrisy of overcoming the affects

The hypocrisy of “pure science”, of “knowledge for the sake of knowledge”

Of the superficiality of the mind! – Nothing is more dangerous than the self-indulgent “navel-gazing” of the mind, as with the Brahmins.

There is from the first something unhealthy in such priestly aristocracies and in the habits ruling in them which turn them away from action and alternate between brooding and emotional explosions, habits which seem to have as their almost invariable consequence that intestinal morbidity and neurasthenia which has afflicted priests at all times; but as to that which they themselves devised as a remedy for this morbidity — must one not assert that it has ultimately proved itself a hundred times more dangerous in its effects than the sickness it was supposed to cure? Mankind itself is still ill with the effects of this priestly naïveté in medicine! Think, for example, of certain forms of diet (abstinence from meat), of fasting, of sexual continence, of flight “into the wilderness” (the Weir Mitchell isolation cure — without, to be sure, the subsequent fattening and overfeeding which constitute the most effective remedy for the hysteria induced by the ascetic ideal): add to these the entire antisensualistic metaphysic of the priests that makes men indolent and overrefined, their autohypnosis in the manner of fakirs and Brahmins — Brahma used in the shape of a glass knob and a fixed idea — and finally the only-too-comprehensible satiety with all this, together with the radical cure for it, nothingness (or God — the desire for a unio mystica with God is the desire of the Buddhist for nothingness, Nirvana — and no more!). For with the priests everything becomes more dangerous, not only cures and remedies, but also arrogance, revenge, acuteness, profligacy, love, lust to rule, virtue, disease…

As is well known, the priests are the most evil enemies — but why? Because they are the most impotent. It is because of their impotence that in them hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions, to the most spiritual and poisonous kind of hatred. The truly great haters in world history have always been priests; likewise the most ingenious¹ haters: other kinds of spirit² hardly come into consideration when compared with the spirit of priestly vengefulness.

A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years. Neither are a people any the less slaves because permitted periodically to choose new masters. What makes them slaves is the fact that they now are, and are always hereafter to be, in the hands of men whose power over them is, and always is to be, absolute and irresponsible.

(Of what appreciable value is it to any man, as an individual, that he is allowed a voice in choosing these public masters? His voice is only one of several millions.)

In truth, in the case of individuals, their actual voting is not to be taken as proof of consent, even for the time being. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, without his consent having even been asked, a man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist; a government that forces him to pay money, render service, and forego the exercise of many of his natural rights, under peril of weighty punishments. He sees, too, that other men practise this tyranny over him by the use of the ballot. He sees further, that, if he will but use the ballot ​himself, he has some chance of relieving himself from this tyranny of others, by subjecting them to his own. In short, he finds himself, without his consent, so situated that, if he use the ballot, he may become a master; if he does not use it, he must become a slave. And he has no other alternative than these two. In self-defence, he attempts the former.

His case is analogous to that of a man who has been forced into battle, where he must either kill others, or be killed himself. Because, to save his own life in battle, a man attempts to take the lives of his opponents, it is not to be inferred that the battle is one of his own choosing. Neither in contests with the ballot—which is a mere substitute for a bullet—because, as his only chance of self-preservation, a man uses a ballot, is it to be inferred that the contest is one into which he voluntarily entered; that he voluntarily set up all his own natural rights, as a stake against those of others, to be lost or won by the mere power of numbers. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, in an exigency into which he had been forced by others, and in which no other means of self-defence offered, he, as a matter of necessity, used the only one that was left to him.

Doubtless the most miserable of men, under the most oppressive government in the world, if allowed the ballot, would use it, if they could see any chance of thereby meliorating their condition. But it would not, therefore, be a legitimate inference that the government itself, that crushes them, was one which they had voluntarily set up, or ever consented to.

Therefore, a man's voting under the Constitution of the United States, is not to be taken as evidence that he ever freely assented to the Constitution, even for the time being. Consequently we have no proof that any very large portion, even of the actual voters of the United States, ever really and voluntarily consented to the Constitution, even for the time being. Nor can we ever have such proof, until every man is left perfectly free to consent, or not, without thereby subjecting himself or his property to be disturbed or injured by others.

we will burn the constitution just like we burnt the Ramayana, Mahabharatham, Geethai, Prabandam etc.

Just like how we declared and burnt all of those texts as being impractical and harmful for our everyday lives, we will do the same with this constitution that has been put in place to make it easy for those in power to enslave and exploit the people of this country.

We will burn it. Yes, we will!

my friends tell me that I have made the Constitution. But I am quite prepared to say that I shall be the first person to burn it out. I do not want it. It does not suit anybody. But whatever that may be, if our people want to carry on, they must not forget that there are majorities and there are minorities, and they simply cannot ignore the minorities…

People always keep on saying to me, ‘Oh, you are the maker of the Constitution.’ My answer is, I was a hack. What I was asked to do, I did much against my will.

The Hindus wanted the Vedas, and they sent for Vyasa who was not a caste Hindu. The Hindus wanted an epic, and they sent for Valmiki, who was an untouchable. The Hindus wanted a Constitution, and they have sent for me.

Contemplation first appeared on earth in disguise, in ambiguous form, with an evil heart and often an anxious head: there is no doubt of that. The inactive, brooding, unwarlike element in the instincts of contemplative men long surrounded them with a profound mistrustfulness: the only way of dispelling it was to arouse a decided fear of oneself. And the ancient Brahmins, for instance, knew how to do this! The earliest philosophers knew how to endow their existence and appearance with a meaning, a basis and background, through which others might come to fear them: more closely considered, they did so from an even more fundamental need, namely, so as to fear and reverence themselves. For they found all the value judgments within them turned against them, they had to fight down every kind of suspicion and resistance against “the philosopher in them.” As men of frightful ages, they did this by using frightful means: cruelty toward themselves, inventive self-castigation — this was the principal means these power-hungry hermits and innovators of ideas required to overcome the gods and tradition in themselves; so as to be able to believe in their own innovations.

Let us compress the facts into a few brief formulas: to begin with, the philosophic spirit always had to use as a mask and cocoon the previously established types of the contemplative man — priest, sorcerer, soothsayer, and in any case a religious type — in order to be able to exist at all: the ascetic ideal for a long time served the philosopher as a form in which to appear, as a precondition of existence — he had to represent it so as to be able to be a philosopher; he had to believe in it in order to be able to represent it. The peculiar, withdrawn attitude of the philosopher, world-denying, hostile to life, suspicious of the senses, freed from sensuality, which has been maintained down to the most modern times and has become virtually the philosopher's pose par excellence — it is above all a result of the emergency conditions under which philosophy arose and survived at all; for the longest time philosophy would not have been possible at all on earth without ascetic wraps and cloak, without an ascetic self-misunderstanding. To put it vividly: the ascetic priest provided until the most modern times the repulsive and gloomy caterpillar form in which alone the philosopher could live and creep about.

Has all this really altered? Has that many-colored and dangerous winged creature, the “spirit” which this caterpillar concealed, really been unfettered at last and released into the light, thanks to a sunnier, warmer, brighter world? Is there sufficient pride, daring, courage, self-confidence available today, sufficient will of the spirit, will to responsibility, freedom of will, for “the philosopher” to be henceforth — possible on earth? —

Only now that we behold the ascetic priest do we seriously come to grips with our problem: what is the meaning of the ascetic ideal? — only now does it become “serious”: we are now face to face with the actual representative of seriousness. “What is the meaning of all seriousness?” — this even more fundamental question may perhaps be trembling on our lips at this point: a question for physiologists, of course, but one which we must still avoid for the moment. The ascetic priest possessed in this ideal not only his faith but also his will, his power, his interest. His right to exist stands or falls with that ideal: no wonder we encounter here a terrible antagonist — supposing we are antagonists of that ideal — one who fights for his existence against those who deny that ideal.

On the other hand, it is inherently improbable that so interested an attitude toward our problem will benefit it: the ascetic priest will hardly provide the best defense of his ideal, just as a woman who tries to defend “woman as such” usually fails — and he certainly will not be the most objective judge of this controversy.
Far from fearing he will confute us — this much is already obvious — we shall have to help him defend himself against us.

The idea at issue here is the valuation the ascetic priest places on our life: he juxtaposes it (along with what pertains to it: “nature,” “world,” the whole sphere of becoming and transitoriness) with a quite different mode of existence which it opposes and excludes, unless it turn against itself, deny itself: in that case, the case of the ascetic life, life counts as a bridge to that other mode of existence. The ascetic treats life as a wrong road on which one must finally walk back to the point where it begins, or as a mistake that is put right by deeds — that we ought to put right: for he demands that one go along with him; where he can he compels acceptance of his evaluation of existence.