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Third EssayWhat Do Ascetic Ideals Mean?13
But let`s go back. The sort of self-contradiction which seems to be present in ascetic people, "life opposing life," is - this much is clear - physiologically (and not only physiologically) considered - simply absurd. It can only be apparent. It must be some kind of temporary expression, an interpretation, formula, make up, a psychological misunderstanding of something whose real nature could not be understood for a long time, could not for a long time be described - a mere word, caught in an old gap in human understanding. So let me counter that briefly with the facts of the matter: the ascetic ideal arises out of the instinct for protection and salvation in a degenerating life seeking to keep itself going by any means and struggling for its existence. It indicates a partial physiological inhibition and exhaustion, against which those deepest instincts for living which still remain intact continuously fight on with new methods and innovations. The ascetic ideal is one such method. The facts are thus precisely the opposite of what those who honour this ideal claim - life is struggling in that ideal and by means of that ideal with death and against death: the ascetic ideal is a manoeuvre for the preservation of life.
To the extent that this ideal, as history teaches us, could prevail over men and become powerful, particularly wherever civilization and the taming of humans manifested themselves, it expresses an important fact: the pathological nature of the earlier form of human beings, at least those human beings who`d been tamed, and the physiological struggle of men against death (more precisely, against weariness with life, against exhaustion, against desire for the "end"). The ascetic priest is the incarnation of the desire for another state of being, a life somewhere else - indeed, the highest stage of this desire, its characteristic zeal and passion. But the very power of this desire is the chain which binds him here. That`s what turns him into a tool which has to work to create more favourable conditions for living here and for living as a human being. With this very power he keeps the whole herd of failures, discontents, delinquents, unfortunates, all sorts of people who inherently suffer, focused on existence, because instinctively he goes ahead of them as their herdsman. You understand already what I mean: this ascetic priest, this apparent enemy of living, this man who denies - he belongs with all the great conserving and affirming forces of life. . .
To what can we ascribe this pathology? For the human being is more ill, less certain, more changeable, more insecure than any other animal - there`s no doubt about that. He is the sick animal. Where does that come from? To be sure, he has also dared more, innovated more, defied more, and demanded more from fate than all the other animals combined. He is the great experimenter with himself, unhappy and dissatisfied, who struggles for ultimate mastery with animals, nature, and gods - still unconquered, always a man of the future, who never gets any rest from his own inner powers, so that his future relentlessly burrows like a thorn into the flesh of his present. Why should such a brave and rich animal also not be the animal in most danger, the one which, of all sick animals, suffers the most lengthy and intense illness? . . .
Human beings, often enough, get fed up: there are entire epidemics of this process of getting fed up (for example, around 1348, at the time of the dance of death). But even this disgust, this exhaustion, this dissatisfaction with himself - all this comes out of him so powerfully that it immediately becomes a new chain. The No which he speaks to life brings to light, as if through a magic spell, an abundance of more tender Yeses. Even when he injures himself, this master of destruction and self-destruction, it is the wound itself which later forces him to live on.
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