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Revelation & Confusion of the 19th Century
If you even consider answering these questions on this piece of paper you will regret it.
1) How does Darwin reaffirm the concept of evolution?
2) Why was the third paragraph more dramatic that anything he ever wrote before?
3) According to Darwin, how is morality an evolutionary trait?
4) Why would paragraph 5 get Darwin in trouble? How does he use paragraph 6 to cover his tracks?
5) Explain paragraph 8 in light of known reactions to Darwin.
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6) What types of arguments does Wilberforce use in his first two paragraphs?
7) Who do you think was Wilberforce’s audience? How would he be received? How would his critics respond to
him?
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8) What is Huxley attempting to explain? What methodology is he using? Why?
9) How would this speech help further the acceptance of evolution?
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10) Define Social Darwinism
11) How was the concept of Social Darwinism applied to everyday life?
12a) Pick 1 of the passages by Spencer and put it in your own words. Then explain it in light of Social Darwinism
12b) Pick another and do the same.
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13) What are dreams representative of?
14) Why are Freud’s two dreams different?
15) “A love of convenience is not really compatible with consideration for others.” What does Freud mean?
16) Explain, in your own words, what an anxiety dream is.
17) The last paragraph is KEY to Freud’s theories- explain it.
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18) What is the point of Nietzsche’s questions in the second paragraph?
19) Which of Nietzsche’s core ideas was he expressing in paragraph 3?
20) Who do you think was the madman, as evident in paragraph 4? Support your answer.
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21) Reading from Nietzsche’s other works, what is your overall impression of the man and his works?
22) Pick one of his passages to explain and react to.
23) Do you think Nietzsche was well received in the 19th century? Why or why not?
Charles Darwin: The Descent of Man, 1871
The main conclusion here arrived at, and now held by many naturalists who are well competent to form a sound
judgment, is that man is descended from some less highly organised form. The grounds upon which this
conclusion rests will never be shaken, for the close similarity between man and the lower animals in embryonic
development,…are facts which cannot be disputed. They have long been known, but until recently they told us
nothing with respect to the origin of man. Now when viewed by the light of our knowledge of the whole organic
world their meaning is unmistakable. The great principle of evolution stands up clear and firm, when these groups
of facts are considered in connection with others, such as the mutual affinities of the members of the same group,
their geographical distribution in past and present times, and their geological succession. It is incredible that all
these facts should speak falsely. He who is not content to look, like a savage, at the phenomena of nature as
disconnected, cannot any longer believe that man is the work of a separate act of creation. He will be forced to
admit that the close resemblance of the embryo of man to that, for instance, of a dog - the construction of his
skull, limbs and whole frame on the same plan with that of other mammals, …all point in the plainest manner to
the conclusion that man is the co-descendant with other mammals of a common progenitor.
We have seen that man incessantly presents individual differences in all parts of his body and in his mental
faculties. These differences or variations seem to be induced by the same general causes, and to obey the same
laws as with the lower animals. In both cases similar laws of inheritance prevail. Man tends to increase at a
greater rate than his means of subsistence; consequently he is occasionally subjected to a severe struggle for
existence, and natural selection will have effected whatever lies within its scope. A succession of strongly-marked
variations of a similar nature is by no means requisite; slight fluctuating differences in the individual suffice for
the work of natural selection…
By considering the embryological structure of man, …and the reversions to which he is liable, we can partly
recall in imagination the former condition of our early progenitors; and can approximately place them in their
proper place in the zoological series. We thus learn that man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped,
probably arboreal in its habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World. This creature, if its whole structure had been
examined by a naturalist, would have been classed amongst the Quadrumana, as surely as the still more ancient
progenitor of the Old and New World monkeys. The Quadrumana and all the higher mammals are probably
derived from an ancient marsupial animal, and this through a long line of diversified forms, from some
amphibian-like creature, and this again from some fish-like animal. In the dim obscurity of the past we can see
that the early progenitor of all the Vertebrata must have been an aquatic animal, provided with branchiæ, with the
two sexes united in the same individual, and with the most important organs of the body (such as the brain and
heart) imperfectly or not at all developed. This animal seems to have been more like the larvæ of the existing
marine Ascidians than any other known form…
…The moral nature of man has reached its present standard, partly through the advancement of his reasoning
powers and consequently of a just public opinion, but especially from his sympathies having been rendered more
tender and widely diffused through the effects of habit, example, instruction, and reflection. It is not improbable
that after long practice virtuous tendencies may be inherited. With the more civilised races, the conviction of the
existence of an all-seeing Deity has had a potent influence on the advance of morality. Ultimately man does not
accept the praise or blame of his fellows as his sole guide though few escape this influence, but his habitual
convictions, controlled by reason, afford him the safest rule. His conscience then becomes the supreme judge and
monitor. Nevertheless the first foundation or origin of the moral sense lies in the social instincts, including
sympathy; and these instincts no doubt were primarily gained, as in the case of the lower animals, through natural
selection.
The belief in God has often been advanced as not only the greatest but the most complete of all the distinctions
between man and the lower animals. It is however impossible, as we have seen, to maintain that this belief is
innate or instinctive in man. On the other hand a belief in all-pervading spiritual agencies seems to be universal,
and apparently follows from a considerable advance in man's reason, and from a still greater advance in his
faculties of imagination, curiosity and wonder. I am aware that the assumed instinctive belief in God has been
used by many persons as an argument for His existence. But this is a rash argument …The idea of a universal and
beneficent Creator does not seem to arise in the mind of man, until he has been elevated by long-continued
culture....
I am aware that the conclusions arrived at in this work will be denounced by some as highly irreligious; but he
who denounces them is bound to shew why it is more irreligious to explain the origin of man as a distinct species
by descent from some lower form, through the laws of variation and natural selection, than to explain the birth of
the individual through the laws of ordinary reproduction. The birth both of the species and of the individual are
equally parts of that grand sequence of events, which our minds refuse to accept as the result of blind chance. The
understanding revolts at such a conclusion, whether or not we are able to believe that every slight variation of
structure, - the union of each pair in marriage, - the dissemination of each seed, - and other such events, have all
been ordained for some special purpose.
Sexual selection depends on the success of certain individuals over others of the same sex, in relation to the
propagation of the species; whilst natural selection depends on the success of both sexes, at all ages, in relation to
the general conditions of life. The sexual struggle is of two kinds; in the one it is between the individuals of the
same sex, generally the males, in order to drive away or kill their rivals, the females remaining passive; whilst in
the other, the struggle is likewise between the individuals of the same sex, in order to excite or charm those of the
opposite sex, generally the females, which no longer remain passive, but select the more agreeable partners....
The main conclusion arrived at in this work, namely that man is descended from some lowly organised form, will,
I regret to think, be highly distasteful to many. But there can hardly be a doubt that we are descended from
barbarians. The astonishment which I felt on first seeing a party of Fuegians on a wild and broken shore will
never be forgotten by me, for the reflection at once rushed into my mind - such were our ancestors. These men
were absolutely naked and bedaubed with paint, their long hair was tangled, their mouths frothed with excitement,
and their expression was wild, startled, and distrustful. They possessed hardly any arts, and like wild animals
lived on what they could catch; they had no government, and were merciless to every one not of their own small
tribe. He who has seen a savage in his native land will not feel much shame, if forced to acknowledge that the
blood of some more humble creature flows in his veins. For my own part I would as soon be descended from that
heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper, or from that old
baboon, who descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of
astonished dogs - as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practises
infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest
superstitions.
Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very
summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed
there, may give him hope for a still higher destiny in the distant future. But we are not here concerned with hopes
or fears, only with the truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it; and I have given the evidence to the best
of my ability. We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities, with
sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the
humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of
the solar system - with all these exalted powers - Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his
lowly origin.
From Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (New York: Appleton and Co.,
1883), pp. 7, 609, 612-614, 618-619.
Samuel Wilberforce:
On Darwin's Origin of Species, 1860
He who is as sure as he is of his own existence that the God of truth is at once the God of nature and the God of
revelation, cannot believe it to be possible that His voice in either, rightly understood, can differ, or deceive His
creatures. To oppose facts in the natural world because they seem to oppose revelation, or to humor them so as to
compel them to speak its voice, is, he knows, but another form of the ever-ready feeble-minded dishonesty of
lying for God, and trying by fraud or falsehood to do the work of the God of truth. It is with another and a nobler
spirit that the true believer walks amongst the works of nature…
Few things have more deeply injured the cause of religion than the busy fussy energy with which men, narrow
and feeble alike in faith and in science, have bustled forth to reconcile all new discoveries in physics with the
word of inspiration. For it continually happens that some larger collection of facts, or some wider view of the
phenomena of nature, alter the whole philosophic scheme; whilst revelation has been committed to declare an
absolute agreement with what turns out after all to have been a misconception or an error. We cannot, therefore,
consent to test the truth of natural science by the word of revelation. But this does not make it the less important
to point out on scientific grounds scientific errors, when those errors tend to limit God's glory in creation, or to
gainsay the revealed relations of that creation to Himself. To both these classes of error, though, we doubt not,
quite unintentionally on his part, we think that Mr. Darwin's speculations directly tend.
Mr. Darwin writes as a Christian, and we doubt not that he is one. We do not for a moment believe him to be one
of those who retain in some corner of their hearts a secret unbelief which they dare not vent; and we therefore
pray him to consider well the grounds on which we brand his speculations with the charge of such a tendency.
First, then, he not obscurely declares that he applies his scheme of the action of the principle of natural selection
to man himself, as well as to the animals around him. Now, we must say at once, and openly, that such a notion is
absolutely incompatible not only with single expressions in the word of God on that subject of natural science
with which it is not immediately concerned, but, which in our judgment is of far more importance, with the whole
representation of that moral and spiritual condition of man which is its proper subject matter. Man's derived
supremacy over the earth; man's power of articulate speech; man's gift of reason; man's free will and
responsibility; man's fall and man's redemption; the incarnation of the Eternal Son; the indwelling of the Eternal
Spirit---all are equally and utterly irreconcilable with the degading notion of the brute origin of him who was
created in the image of God, and redeemed by the Eternal Son assuming to himself His nature. Equally
inconsistent, too, not with any passing expressions, but with the whole scheme of God's dealings with man as
recorded in His word, is Mr. Darwin's daring notion of man's further development into some unknown extent of
powers and shape, and size, through natural selection acting through that long vista of ages which He casts mistily
over the earth upon the most favored individuals of His species....
T. H. Huxley: The Method of Scientific Investigation, 1863
From a 1863 lecture series aimed at making science understandable to non-specialists. Extracted from
Darwiniana, 1893
The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of the necessary mode of working of
the human mind. It is simply the mode at which all phenomena are reasoned about, rendered precise and exact.
There is no more difference,…between the mental operations of a man of science and those…of a butcher
weighing out his goods in common scales, and the operations of a chemist in performing a difficult and complex
analysis by means of his balance…
You will understand this better, perhaps, if I give you some familiar example. You have all heard it repeated, I
dare say, that men of science work by means of induction and deduction, and that by the help of these operations,
they, in a sort of sense, wring from Nature certain other things, which are called natural laws, and causes, and that
out of these, by some cunning skill of their own, they build up hypotheses and theories. And it is imagined by
many, that the operations of the common mind can be by no means compared with these processes, and that they
have to be acquired by a sort of special apprenticeship to the craft.
Probably there is not one here who has not in the course of the day had occasion to set in motion a
complex train of reasoning, of the very same kind, as that which a scientific man goes through in tracing the
causes of natural phenomena. A very trivial circumstance will serve to exemplify this. Suppose you go into a
fruiterer's shop, wanting an apple,--you take up one, and, on biting it, you find it is sour; you look at it, and see
that it is hard and green. You take up another one, and that too is hard, green, and sour. The shopman offers you a
third; but, before biting it, you examine it, and find that it is hard and green, and you immediately say that you
will not have it, as it must be sour, like those that you have already tried.
Nothing can be more simple than that, you think; but if you will take the trouble to analyse and trace out
into its logical elements what has been done by the mind, you will be greatly surprised. In the first place you have
performed the operation of induction. You have found that, in two experiences, hardness and greenness in apples
went together with sourness. It was so in the first case, and it was confirmed by the second. True, it is a very small
basis, but still it is enough to make an induction from; you generalise the facts, and you expect to find sourness in
apples where you get hardness and greenness. You found upon that a general law that all hard and green apples
are sour; and that, as far as it goes, is a perfect induction. Well, having got your natural law in this way, when you
are offered another apple which you find is hard and green, you say, 'All hard and green apples are sour; this
apple is hard and green, therefore this apple is sour.'
Well now, suppose, having got your conclusion of the law, that at some time afterwards, you are
discussing the qualities of apples with a friend: you will say to him, 'It is a very curious thing,--but I find that all
hard and green apples are sour!' Your friend says to you, 'But how do you know that?' You at once reply, 'Oh,
because I have tried them over and over again, and have always found them to be so.' Well, if we were talking
science instead of common sense, we should call that an experimental verification.
And, if still opposed, you go further, and say, 'I have heard from the people in Somersetshire and
Devonshire, where a large number of apples are grown, that they have observed the same thing. It is also found to
be the case in Normandy, and in North America. In short, I find it to be the universal experience of mankind
wherever attention has been directed to the subject.' Whereupon, your friend, unless he is a very unreasonable
man, agrees with you, and is convinced that you are quite right in the conclusion you have drawn. He believes,
although perhaps he does not know he believes it, that the more extensive verifications are,--that the more
frequently experiments have been made, and the results of the same kind arrived at,--that the more varied the
conditions under which the same results are attained, the more certain is the ultimate conclusion. He sees that the
experiment has been tried under all sorts of conditions, as to time, place, and people, with the same result; and he
says with you, therefore, that the law you have laid down must be a good one, and he must believe it.
Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism is a belief, popular in the late Victorian era in England, America, and elsewhere,
which states that the strongest or fittest should survive and flourish in society, while the weak and unfit
should be allowed to die. The theory was chiefly expounded by Herbert Spencer, whose ethical
philosophies always held an elitist view and received a boost from the application of Darwinian ideas such
as adaptation and natural selection.
Spencer and Social Darwinism
Herbert Spencer, the father of Social Darwinism as an ethical theory, was thinking in terms of elitist,
"might makes right" sorts of views long before Darwin published his theory. However, Spencer quickly
adapted Darwinian ideas to his own ethical theories. The concept of adaptation allowed him to claim that
the rich and powerful were better adapted to the social and economic climate of the time, and the concept
of natural selection allowed him to argue that it was natural, normal, and proper for the strong to thrive at
the expense of the weak. After all, he claimed, that is exactly what goes on in nature every day. However,
Spencer did not just present his theories as placing humans on a parallel with nature. Not only was
survival of the fittest natural, but it was also morally correct. Indeed, some extreme Social Darwinists
argued that it was morally incorrect to assist those weaker than oneself, since that would be promoting the
survival and possible reproduction of someone who was fundamentally unfit.
Applications of Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism was used to justify numerous exploits which we classify as of dubious moral value
today. Colonialism was seen as natural and inevitable, and given justification through Social Darwinian
ethics - people saw natives as being weaker and more unfit to survive, and therefore felt justified in seizing
land and resources. Social Darwinism applied to military action as well; the argument went that the
strongest military would win, and would therefore be the most fit. Casualties on the losing side, of course,
were written off as the natural result of their unfit status. Finally, it gave the ethical nod to brutal colonial
governments who used oppressive tactics against their subjects.
Social Darwinism applied to a social context too, of course. It provided a justification for the more
exploitative forms of capitalism in which workers were paid sometimes pennies a day for long hours of
backbreaking labor. Social Darwinism also justified big business' refusal to acknowledge labor unions and
similar organizations, and implied that the rich need not donate money to the poor or less fortunate, since
such people were less fit anyway.
In its most extreme forms, Social Darwinism has been used to justify eugenics programs aimed at
weeding "undesirable" genes from the population; such programs were sometimes accompanied by
sterilization laws directed against "unfit" individuals. The American eugenics movement was relatively
popular between about 1910-1930, during which 24 states passed sterilization laws.
The Problem with Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism's philosophical problems are rather daunting, and fatal to it as a basic theory. First, it
makes the faulty assumption that what is natural is equivalent to what is morally correct. In other words, it
falls prey to the belief that just because something takes place in nature, it must be a moral paradigm for
humans to follow.
This problem in Social Darwinist thinking stems from the fact that the theory falls into the "naturalistic
fallacy", which consists of trying to derive an ought statement from an is statement. For example, the fact
that you stubbed your toe this morning does not logically imply that you ought to have stubbed your toe!
The same argument applies to the Social Darwinists' attempt to extend natural processes into human
social structures. Many negative reactions to Darwinism come from the confusion of Darwinism as a
scientific theory with Social Darwinism as an ethical theory. In reality, the two have very little in common,
aside from their name and a few basic concepts, which Social Darwinists misapplied.
The Words of Herbert Spencer
1) Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution, as not adequately supported by facts, seem quite to forget
that their own theory is supported by no facts at all. Like the majority of men who are born to a given belief, they
demand the most rigorous proof of any adverse belief, but assume that their own needs none.
"The Development Hypothesis", published in The Leader (20 March 1852)
2) All evil results from the non-adaptation of constitution to conditions. This is true of everything that lives. Does
a shrub dwindle in poor soil, or become sickly when deprived of light, or die outright if removed to a cold
climate? it is because the harmony between its organization and its circumstances has been destroyed.
Part I, Ch. 2 : The Evanescence of Evil, § 1.
3) The belief in human perfectibility merely amounts to the belief that, in virtue of this process, man will
eventually become completely suited to his mode of life.
Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity. Instead of civilization being artificial, it is part of nature;
all of a piece with the development of the embryo or the unfolding of a flower. The modifications mankind have
undergone, and are still undergoing, result from a law underlying the whole organic creation; and provided the
human race continues, and the constitution of things remains the same, those modifications must end in
completeness.
Pt. I, Ch. 2 : The Evanescence of Evil, concluding paragraph
4) It cannot but happen that those individuals whose functions are most out of equilibrium with the modified
aggregate of external forces, will be those to die; and that those will survive whose functions happen to be most
nearly in equilibrium with the modified aggregate of external forces.
But this survival of the fittest, implies multiplication of the fittest. Out of the fittest thus multiplied, there will, as
before, be an overthrowing of the moving equilibrium wherever it presents the least opposing force to the new
incident force.
The Principles of Biology, Vol. I (1864), Part III: The Evolution of Life, Ch. 7: Indirect Equilibration
5) With a higher moral nature will come a restriction on the multiplication of the inferior.
The Principles of Biology, Vol. II (1867), Part VI: Laws of Multiplication, ch. 8: Human Population in
the Future
6) We have unmistakable proof that throughout all past time, there has been a ceaseless devouring of the weak by
the strong.
Vol. I, Part III, Ch. 2 General Aspects of the Special-Creation-Hypothesis.
7) Under the natural course of things each citizen tends towards his fittest function. Those who are competent to
the kind of work they undertake, succeed, and, in the average of cases, are advanced in proportion to their
efficiency; while the incompetent, society soon finds out, ceases to employ, forces to try something easier, and
eventually turns to use.
Vol. 3, Ch. VII, Over-Legislation.
8) Every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man.
Ch. 6, The Formula of Justice.
Sigmund Freud: The Interpretation of Dreams (1900)
Freud's basic insight that our minds preserve memories and emotions which are not always consciously available
to us has transformed the way humanity views itself ever since. Freud said that there had been three great
humiliations in human history: Galileo's discovery that we were not the center of the universe, Darwin's
discovery that we were not the crown of creation, and his own discovery that we are not in control of our own
minds. The tendency of modern people to trace their problems to childhood traumas or other repressed emotions
begins with Freud. One of Freud's more important discoveries is that emotions buried in the unconscious surface
in disguised form during dreaming, and that the remembered fragments of dreams can help uncover the buried
feelings. Whether the mechanism is exactly as Freud describes it, many people have derived insights into
themselves from studying their dreams, and most modern people consider dreams emotionally significant, unlike
our ancestors who often saw them either as divine portents or as the bizarre side-effects of indigestion. Freud
argues that dreams are wish-fulfillments, and will ultimately argue that those wishes are the result of repressed
or frustrated sexual desires. The anxiety surrounding these desires turns some dreams into nightmares.
Dreams are not comparable to the spontaneous sounds made by a musical instrument struck rather by some
external force than by the hand of a performer; they are not meaningless, not absurd, they do not imply that one
portion of our stockpile of ideas sleeps while another begins to awaken. They are a completely valid
psychological phenomenon, specifically the fulfillment of wishes; they can be classified in the continuity of
comprehensible waking mental states; they are constructed through highly complicated intellectual activity.
It is easy to demonstrate that dreams often have the character of blatant wish-fullfillments; so much so that one
wonders why the language of dreams was not understood long ago. For instance, there is a dream that I can
experience at will, experimentally, as it were. When I eat sardines, olives, or other strongly salted foods in the
evening, I am awakened in the night by thirst. But the awaking is always preceded by a dream with the same
content: I gulp the water down; and it tastes delicious to me as only a cool drink can when one is dying of thirst;
and then I wake up and really have to drink. The cause of this simple dream is the thirst which I feel when I
awaken. This feeling causes the desire to drink, and the dream shows me this desire fulfilled. It thereby serves a
function which I can easily guess. I am a good sleeper, unaccustomed to being awakened by any need. If I can
slake my thirst by dreaming that I am drinking, I don't need to wake up in order to be satisfied. Thus this is a
convenience dream. The dream is substituted for action, as so often in life.
Recently this same dream occurred in a somewhat modified form. I had become thirsty even before sleeping and
drained the glass of water which was standing on the nightstand next to my bed. A few hours later during the
night I had a new attack of thirst which was more inconvenient. In order to get some water I would have had to
get up and take the glass standing on my wife's nightstand. I dreamed therefore that my wife gave me a drink out
of a vessel. This vessel was an Etruscan funerary urn which I had brought back from a trip to Italy and had since
given away. However, the water in it tasted so salty (plainly because of the ashes) that I had to wake up. It is easy
to see how neatly this dream arranged matters; since it its only aim was wish-fulfillment, it could be completely
egotistical. A love of convenience is not really compatible with consideration for others. The introduction of the
funerary urn is probably another wish-fulfillment; I was sorry that I didn't own the vessel any more--just as the
water glass beside my wife was inaccessible. The urn also fit the growing salty taste which I knew would force
me to wake up.
It is just as easy to discover wish-fulfillment in some other dreams that I have collected from normal people. A
friend who knows my dream theory and had shared it with his wife said to me one day, "I must tell you that my
wife dreamed yesterday that she had her period. You know what that means." Certainly I knew; since the young
woman had dreamed that she had her period, it meant that her period had not come. I could well believe that she
would liked to have enjoyed her freedom a little longer before beginning the burdens of motherhood. It was a
clever way of announcing the onset of her pregnancy. Another friend writes me that his wife recently dreamed
that she noticed drops of milk on her blouse front. This is always a sign of pregnancy, but not a first pregnancy;
the young mother wanted to have more milk for the second child than she had had for the first. . . .
There still remain nightmares as a special subdivision of dreams with a painful content whose interpretation as
wish-fulfillment dreams will be most unwillingly accepted by the unenlightened. However, I can deal briefly with
anxiety dreams here; they do not represent another aspect of the problems posed by dreams; rather it is a matter of
understanding above all neurotic anxiety. The anxiety that we feel in dreams is only apparently explained by the
dream's content. When we try to discover the meaning of a dream's content, we note that the anxiety felt in a
dream is no better explained by its content than the anxiety felt in a phobia is explained by the mental image
which induces the phobia. For instance, is it quite true that one may fall out of a window, and therefore one may
reasonably exert a certain amount of caution around a window; but this does not explain why in its phobic form
the fear is so powerful and the sufferer pursued by the fear far beyond its cause. The same explanation is valid for
phobias as for anxiety dreams. The anxiety is in both cases only loose ly linked to the association, and actually
derives from another source.
Since dream anxiety is intimately related to neurotic anxiety is must explain the first by reference to the second.
In a short publication on anxiety neurosis . . . I argued that neurotic anxiety derives from sexual life, and is the
expression of unsatisfied desire which has been diverted from its goal. This formula has since then been proven
valid. It enables us now to say that the sexual content of anxiety dreams is the result of transformation of sexual
desire.
Nietzsche: Parable of the Madman
THE MADMAN----Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the
market place, and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!"---As many of those who did not believe in God
were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a
child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated?---Thus they yelled
and laughed
The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you.
We have killed him---you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the
sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this
earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging
continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as
through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night
continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the
noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods,
too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.
"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the
world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for
us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the
greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There
has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us---for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher
history than all history hitherto."
Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in
astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too
early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet
reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though
done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars--and yet they have done it themselves.
It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck
up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: "What
after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?"
Nietzche: Thoughts and Commentary
Morality
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 development of new and better customs: it
makes stupid.
Nietzsche's Daybreak,s. 19.
Whoever has overthrown an existing law of custom has always first been accounted a bad man: but when, as did
happen, the law could not afterwards be reinstated and this fact was accepted, the predicate gradually changed; history treats almost exclusively of these bad men who subsequently became good men!
Nietzsche's Daybreak,s. 20
Will to Power
The stronger becomes master of the weaker, in so far as the latter cannot assert its degree of independence — here
there is no mercy, no forbearance, even less a respect for "laws."
Sec. 630 (Notebook W I 4. June - July 1885, KGW VII, 3.283, KSA 11.559).
My idea is that every specific body strives to become master over all space and to extend its force (--its will to
power:) and to thrust back all that resists its extension. But it continually encounters similar efforts on the part of
other bodies and ends by coming to an arrangement ("union") with those of them that are sufficiently related to it:
thus they then conspire together for power. And the process goes on-The Will to Power, s.636,
[Anything which] is a living and not a dying body... will have to be an incarnate will to power, it will strive to
grow, spread, seize, become predominant - not from any morality or immorality but because it is living and
because life simply is will to power... 'Exploitation'... belongs to the essence of what lives, as a basic organic
function; it is a consequence of the will to power, which is after all the will to life.
Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, s.259,
What does not kill me, makes me stronger.
Maxims and Arrows, 8.
Truth and Knowledge
There are no facts, only interpretations.
Nietzsche's Nachlass, A. Danto translation.
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
Nietzsche's Human, all too Human, s.483
Mystical explanations are considered deep. The truth is that they are not even superficial.
Nietzsche's The Gay Science, s.126
What then is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms -- in short, a sum of human
relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after
long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that
is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures
and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.
'On truth and lie in an extra-moral sense'
What are man's truths ultimately? Merely his irrefutable errors.
Nietzsche's The Gay Science, s.265
He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze
long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.
"Beyond Good and Evil", Aphorism 146 (1886).
In the mountains of truth you will never climb in vain: either you will get up higher today or you will exercise
your strength so as to be able to get up higher tomorrow.
Maxim 358