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the impulse is widespread, and lurks in guises where we may not suspect it. Civilization refines, spiritualizes [shall I say? moralizes] it, rather than eradicates it.^[1] Christianity has been one of the spiritualizing influences. The idea of hell, the rack, courts of inquisition, auto-da-fés, are, whatever may be said against them, a great advance on the splendid, but half-idiotic slaughtering that went on in the Roman arenas.^[2] It is a step onward when men are content with spiritual instead of bodily sufferings, and with picturing them and no longer wishing to see them.^[3] One of the guises under which cruelty lurks is the desire for distinction—the unconscious or at least unconfessed motive being, Nietzsche thinks, to make others feel unpleasantly the contrast with ourselves. The artist, whose pleasure in forcing the envy of competitors does not allow his forces to sleep till he becomes great, the nun who looks with punishing eyes on women who live differently, the humble, very humble man who is not unaware of the reproaches which others must give themselves for not being like him, are instances. The original motives may be forgotten, but down at bottom a subtle cruelty has been at work.^{[4] f}

We may even be cruel to ourselves, in a subtle way. To criticise others is common—apparently it is an unfailing spring of pleasure for men and for women; but the philosopher—a rare species—criticises himself, and in a sense has pleasure in this also. He enjoys correcting his surface views, breaking up old satisfactions. It may sound nice to speak of excessive "honesty," "love of truth," "sacrifice for knowledge," but the individual himself, if schooled in introspection and strictly truthful, is apt to say, "There is something cruel in the propensity of my mind."^[5] All conquests of knowledge come from courage and from hardness to oneself.^[6] Nietzsche honors the English psychologists who know how to hold their heart as well as their

XIV, 82, § 163; Genealogy etc., I, § 7 (on the specific character of priestly revenge).

1. Genealogy etc., II, § 6.
2. Werke, XIII, 310, § 759.
3. Ibid., XII, 89, § 176.
4. Dawn of Day, §§ 30, 113.
5. Beyond Good and Evil, § 230. Cf., on the inability to see sublimated forms of a thing, Werke, XII, 87, § 172.
6. Will to Power, § 104.