shopkeeperâs scales and the desire to balance guilt and punishment. But shouldnât we be able to get beyond this? How relieved the general feeling of life would be if, together with the belief in guilt, we could also get rid of the ancient instinct of revenge, and if we even considered it a fine cleverness in a happy person to pronounce a blessing over his enemies, with Christianity, and if we benefited those who had offended us. Let us remove the concept of sin from the worldâand let us soon send the concept of punishment after it. May these banished monsters live somewhere else henceforth, not among men, if they insist on living at all and do not perish of their own disgust.
Meanwhile let us consider that the loss which society and individuals suffer from the criminal is just like the loss they suffer from the sick: the sick spread worry and discontent; they do not produce but consume the earnings of others; they require wardens, physicians, and amusement; and they live on the time and energy of the healthy. Nevertheless one would now designate as inhuman anyone who for these reasons would want to avenge himself against the sick. Formerly, to be sure, this was done; in crude stages of civilization, and even now among some savage peoples, the sick are, in fact, treated as criminals, as a danger to the community, and as the dwelling of some demonic being which has entered them in consequence of some guilt: every sick person is a guilty person. And weâshouldnât we be mature enough for the opposite view? Shouldnât we be able to say: every âguiltyâ person is a sick person?
No, the hour for that has not yet come. The physicians are still lacking, above all, for whom what we have hitherto called practical morality must be transformed into a piece of their art and science of therapy; as yet, that hungry interest in these things is lacking, but some day it may appear in a manner not unlike the storm and stress of those old religious agitations; as yet, the churches are not in the hands of the promoters of health; as yet, to teach about the body and the diet is not one of the obligations of all lower and higher schools; as yet, there are no quiet organizations of those who have accepted the common obligation to renounce the help of courts and punishment and revenge against their evildoers; as yet, no thinker has had the courage to measure the health of a society and of individuals by the number of parasites they can stand. . . .
Â
[205]
Of the people of Israel . Among the spectacles to which the next century invites us is the decision on the fate of the European Jews. . . . Every Jew has in the history of his fathers and grandfathers a mine of examples of the coldest composure and steadfastness in terrible situations. . . .
There has been an effort to make them contemptible by treating them contemptibly for two thousand years and by barring them from access to all honors and everything honorable, thus pushing them that much deeper into the dirtier trades; and under this procedure they have certainly not become cleaner. But contemptible? They themselves have never ceased to believe in their calling to the highest things, and the virtues of all who suffer have never ceased to adorn them. The way in which they honor their fathers and their children and the rationality of their marriages and marital customs distinguish them above all Europeans. In addition, they knew how to create for themselves a feeling of power and eternal revenge out of those very trades which were abandoned to them (or to which they were abandoned); one must say, in excuse even of their usury, that without this occasional, agreeable, and useful torture of their despisers they could scarcely have persevered so long in respecting themselves. For our self-respect depends on our ability to repay the good as well as the bad. Moreover, their revenge does not easily push them too far; for they all have that freemindedness, of
Meanwhile let us consider that the loss which society and individuals suffer from the criminal is just like the loss they suffer from the sick: the sick spread worry and discontent; they do not produce but consume the earnings of others; they require wardens, physicians, and amusement; and they live on the time and energy of the healthy. Nevertheless one would now designate as inhuman anyone who for these reasons would want to avenge himself against the sick. Formerly, to be sure, this was done; in crude stages of civilization, and even now among some savage peoples, the sick are, in fact, treated as criminals, as a danger to the community, and as the dwelling of some demonic being which has entered them in consequence of some guilt: every sick person is a guilty person. And weâshouldnât we be mature enough for the opposite view? Shouldnât we be able to say: every âguiltyâ person is a sick person?
No, the hour for that has not yet come. The physicians are still lacking, above all, for whom what we have hitherto called practical morality must be transformed into a piece of their art and science of therapy; as yet, that hungry interest in these things is lacking, but some day it may appear in a manner not unlike the storm and stress of those old religious agitations; as yet, the churches are not in the hands of the promoters of health; as yet, to teach about the body and the diet is not one of the obligations of all lower and higher schools; as yet, there are no quiet organizations of those who have accepted the common obligation to renounce the help of courts and punishment and revenge against their evildoers; as yet, no thinker has had the courage to measure the health of a society and of individuals by the number of parasites they can stand. . . .
Â
[205]
Of the people of Israel . Among the spectacles to which the next century invites us is the decision on the fate of the European Jews. . . . Every Jew has in the history of his fathers and grandfathers a mine of examples of the coldest composure and steadfastness in terrible situations. . . .
There has been an effort to make them contemptible by treating them contemptibly for two thousand years and by barring them from access to all honors and everything honorable, thus pushing them that much deeper into the dirtier trades; and under this procedure they have certainly not become cleaner. But contemptible? They themselves have never ceased to believe in their calling to the highest things, and the virtues of all who suffer have never ceased to adorn them. The way in which they honor their fathers and their children and the rationality of their marriages and marital customs distinguish them above all Europeans. In addition, they knew how to create for themselves a feeling of power and eternal revenge out of those very trades which were abandoned to them (or to which they were abandoned); one must say, in excuse even of their usury, that without this occasional, agreeable, and useful torture of their despisers they could scarcely have persevered so long in respecting themselves. For our self-respect depends on our ability to repay the good as well as the bad. Moreover, their revenge does not easily push them too far; for they all have that freemindedness, of
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