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Third EssayWhat Do Ascetic Ideals Mean?19
The ascetic priest`s methods, which we learned about earlier - the collective deadening of the feeling for life, mechanical activity, minor joys, above all the joy in "loving one`s neighbour," the organization of the herd, the awakening of the feeling of power in the community, as a result of which the dissatisfaction of the individual with himself is drowned out by his pleasure in the progress of the community - these things are, measured by modern standards, his innocent methods in the war against unhappiness. But now let`s turn our attention to more interesting matters, to his "guilty" methods. Here there is always only one thing involved: some kind of excess of feeling employed as the most effective anaesthetic against stifling, crippling, enduring pain. For that reason, the priest`s powers of innovation have been tireless in addressing this one question in particular: "How do people reach emotional excess?" . . .
That sounds harsh. It`s clear enough that it would sound more appealing and perhaps please our ears better if I said something like "The ascetic priest has always used the enthusiasm which lies in all strong emotional affects." But why keep caressing the mollycoddled ears of our modern delicate sensibilities? Why should we, for our part, retreat even one step back from the hypocrisy of their vocabulary? Doing something like that would make us psychologists active hypocrites - apart from the fact that it would be disgusting. For a psychologist today, if he has good taste anywhere (others might say honesty), it`s because he detests that disgraceful moralizing way of talking, which effectively covers in slime all modern judgments about human beings and things.
We must not deceive ourselves in this business. The most characteristic feature which forms modern souls and modern books is not lying but the ingrained innocence in their moralistic lying. To have to discover this "innocence" all over the place is perhaps the most repellent part of all the by no means harmless tasks which nowadays a psychologist has to undertake. It is a part of our great danger - a path that perhaps takes us in particular to a great revulsion. . . I have no doubt about what single purpose will be served, or can be served, in a coming world by everything modern, including modern books (provided that they last, which, of course, we need not fear, and provided that there will one day be a later world with a stronger, harder, and healthier taste): they will serve as emetics, thanks to their moralistic sugar and falsity, their innermost femininity, which likes to call itself "idealism" and which, at all events, has faith in idealism.
Today our educated people, our "good people," don`t tell lies, that`s true. But that`s no reason to respect them! The real lie, the genuine, resolute, "honest" lie (people should listen to Plato on its value) for them would be something far too demanding, too strong. It would require what people are not allowed to demand of themselves, that they opened up their eyes and looked at themselves, so that they would know how to differentiate between the "true" and "false" in themselves. But they are fit only for ignoble lies. Everyone today who feels that he is a "good man" is completely incapable of taking a stand on any issue at all, other than with dishonest falseness - an abysmal falsity, which is, however, an innocent, true-hearted, blue-eyed, and virtuous falsity. These "good people" - collectively they are now utterly moralized and, so far as their honesty is concerned, they`ve been disgraced and ruined for all eternity. Who among them could endure even one truth "about human beings"! . . . Or, to ask the question more precisely, who among them could bear a true biography! .
Here are a couple of indications: Lord Byron recorded some very personal things about himself, but Thomas Moore was "too good" for them. He burned his friend`s papers. Dr. Gwinner, the executor of Schopenhauer`s will, is supposed to have done the same, for Schopenhauer also recorded some things about himself and also against himself ("eis auton"). The capable American Thayer, who wrote Beethoven`s biography, all of a sudden stopped his work - at some point or other this venerable and naïve life reached a point where he could no longer continue. . . .Moral: What intelligent man nowadays would write an honest word about himself? He would already have to be a member of the Order of Daredevils. We have been promised an autobiography of Richard Wagner. Who has any doubts that it will be a prudent autobiography? . . .
Let`s remember again the comical horror which the Catholic priest Janssen aroused in Germany with his incomprehensibly bland and harmless picture of the German Reformation. How would people react if someone explained this movement differently for once, if, for once, a true psychologist with spiritual strength and not a shrewd indulgence toward strength pictured a true Luther for us, no longer a man with the moralistic simplicity of a country parson, no longer a man with the sweet and considerate modesty of a protestant historian, but someone with the fearlessness of a Taine? . . . (Parenthetically, the Germans have finally produced a sufficiently beautiful classical type of such shrewd indulgence. They can classify him as one of their own, count him as one of their possessions - namely, Leopold Ranke, that born classical advocate of every causa fortior [stronger cause], the shrewdest of all the shrewd "objective realists").
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