heightened debt. Following this cue and remembering that, as already explained, creditor and debtor relations come to apply to the community and its individual members, it is easy to see how immorality in general, i.e., non-conformity to the community's mores, may be felt as guilt—i.e., how "bad conscience," in the customary moral sense of the phrase, may arise. In immorality of any kind there would come to be a certain "fearful looking for of judgment," and, the tendency to immorality being observed to be deep, it might easily be concluded that it had its roots in a guilty nature. This is a line of thought, however, which Nietzsche, oddly enough, does not follow up. He starts on it,[1] and then stops or switches off—and even proceeds to argue at length that punishment does not give the feeling of guilt, and rather works to harden, at best stimulating prudence and taming the transgressor (not making him better).[2] But has any one ever argued that punishment produced the sense of guilt?—the latter being obviously the direct result of violating an admitted standard. Surely, to call in something extraordinary and catastrophic to explain "bad conscience," because punishment does not account for it, seems strange and unnecessary. Yet this is what Nietzsche does. For directly after arguing the inefficacy of punishment, he broaches his own special view. This is that bad conscience had its origin in that most thoroughgoing of all the changes which man has experienced in the course of his history, the change consequent on coming definitively under the jurisdiction (Bann) of society and of peace. Up to this time—I need not say that Nietzsche is referring to a prehistoric period—he had been little more than a wild, roving animal, free to follow all his natural instincts, including those to pursue, surprise, injure, and kill. Suddenly, however, he found himself subjected to a social strait-jacket, and his old instincts were deprived of an outlet. With then no outer vent, but still fresh and strong, these instincts turned on their possessor—man became hostile, cruel to himself. "Enmity, cruelty, pleasure in pursuit, in
Page:Nietzsche the thinker.djvu/293
BAD CONSCIENCE
277
