Why I am So Wise

1

THE fortunateness of my existence, its uniqueness perhaps, lies in its fatality: to express it in the form of a riddle, as my father I have already died, as my mother I still live and grow old. This twofold origin, as it were from the highest and the lowest rung of the ladder of life, at once décadent and beginning - this if anything explains that neutrality, that freedom from party in relation to the total problem of life which perhaps distinguishes me. I have a subtler sense for signs of ascent and decline than any man has ever had, I am the teacher par excellence in this matter - I know both, I am both. - My father died at the age of thirty-six: he was delicate, lovable and morbid, like a being destined to pay this world only a passing visit - a gracious reminder of life rather than life itself. In the same year in which his life declined mine too declined: in the thirty-sixth year of my life I arrived at the lowest point of my vitality - I still lived, but without being able to see three paces in front of me. At that time - it was 1879 - I relinquished my Basel professorship, lived through the summer like a shadow in St Moritz and the following winter, the most sunless of my life, as a shadow in Naumburg. This was my minimum: 'The Wanderer and his Shadow' came into existence during the course of it. I undoubtedly knew all about shadows in those days... In the following winter, the first winter I spent in Genoa, that sweetening and spiritualization which is virtually inseparable from an extreme poverty of blood and muscle produced 'Daybreak'. The perfect brightness and cheerfulness, even exuberance of spirit reflected in the said work is in my case compatible not only with the profoundest physiological weakness, but even with an extremity of pain. In the midst of the torments which attended an uninterrupted three-day headache accompanied by the laborious vomiting of phlegm - I possessed a dialectical clarity par excellence and thought my way very cold-bloodedly through things for which when I am in better health I am not enough of a climber, not refined, not cold enough. My readers perhaps know the extent to which I regard dialectics as a symptom of décadence, for example in the most famous case of all: in the case of Socrates. - All morbid disturbances of the intellect, even that semistupefaction consequent on fever, have remained to this day totally unfamiliar things to me, on their nature and frequency I had first to instruct myself by scholarly methods. My blood flows slowly. No one has ever been able to diagnose fever in me. A doctor who treated me for some time as a nervous case said at last: 'No! there is nothing wrong with your nerves, it is only I who am nervous.' Any kind of local degeneration absolutely undemonstrable; no organically originating stomach ailment, though there does exist, as a consequence of general exhaustion, a profound weakness of the gastric system. Condition of the eyes, sometimes approaching dangerously close to blindness, also only consequence, not causal: so that with every increase in vitality eyesight has also again improved. - Convalescence means with me a long, all too long succession of years - it also unfortunately means relapse, deterioration, periods of a kind of décadence. After all this do I need to say that in questions of décadence I am experienced? I have spelled it out forwards and backwards. Even that filigree art of grasping and comprehending in general, that finger for nuances, that psychology of 'looking around the corner' and whatever else characterizes me was learned only then, is the actual gift of that time in which everything in me became more subtle, observation itself together with all the organs of observation. To look from a morbid perspective towards healthier concepts and values, and again conversely to look down from the abundance and certainty of rich life into the secret labour of the instinct of décadence - that is what I have practised most, it has been my own particular field of experience, in this if in anything I am a master. I now have the skill and knowledge to invert perspectives: first reason why a 'revaluation of values' is perhaps possible at all to me alone. -

2

Setting aside the fact that I am a décadent, I am also its antithesis. My proof of this is, among other things, that in combating my sick conditions I always instinctively chose the right means: while the décadent as such always chooses the means harmful to him. As summa summarum I was healthy, as corner, as speciality I was décadent. That energy for absolute isolation and detachment from my accustomed circumstances, the way I compelled myself no longer to let myself be cared for, served, doctored - this betrayed an unconditional certainty of instinct as to what at that time was needful above all else. I took myself in hand, I myself made myself healthy again: the precondition for this - every physiologist will admit it - is that one is fundamentally healthy. A being who is typically morbid cannot become healthy, still less can he make himself healthy; conversely, for one who is typically healthy being sick can even be an energetic stimulant to life, to more life. Thus in fact does that long period of sickness seem to me now: I discovered life as it were anew, myself included, I tasted all good and even petty things in a way that others could not easily taste them - I made out of my will to health, to life, my philosophy... For pay heed to this: it was in the years of my lowest vitality that I ceased to be a pessimist: the instinct for self-recovery forbade to me a philosophy of indigence and discouragement... And in what does one really recognize that someone has turned out well! In that a human being who has turned out well does our senses good: that he is carved out of wood at once hard, delicate and sweet-smelling. He has a taste only for what is beneficial to him; his pleasure, his joy ceases where the measure of what is beneficial is overstepped. He divines cures for injuries, he employs ill chances to his own advantage; what does not kill him makes him stronger. Out of everything he sees, hears, experiences he instinctively collects together his sum: he is a principle of selection, he rejects much. He is always in his company, whether he traffics with books, people or landscapes: he does honour when he chooses, when he admits, when he trusts. He reacts slowly to every kind of stimulus, with that slowness which a protracted caution and a willed pride have bred in him - he tests an approaching stimulus, he is far from going out to meet it. He believes in neither 'misfortune' nor in 'guilt': he knows how to forget - he is strong enough for everything to have to turn out for the best for him. Very well, I am the opposite of a décadent: for I have just described myself.

3

I consider the fact that I had such a father as a great privilege: the peasants he preached to - for, after he had lived for several years at the court of Altenburg, he was a preacher in his last years - said that the angels must look like he did. And with this I touch on the question of race. I am a pure-blooded Polish nobleman, in whom there is no drop of bad blood, least of all German. When I look for my profoundest opposite, the incalculable pettiness of the instincts, I always find my mother and my sister - to be related to such canaille would be a blasphemy against my divinity. The treatment I have received from my mother and my sister, up to the present moment, fills me with inexpressible horror: there is an absolutely hellish machine at work here, operating with infallible certainty at the precise moment when I am most vulnerable - at my highest moments... for then one needs all one's strength to counter such a poisonous viper... physiological contiguity renders such a disharmonia praestabilita possible... But I confess that the deepest objection to the 'Eternal Recurrence', my real idea from the abyss, is always my mother and my sister. - But even as a Pole I am a monstrous atavism. One would have to go back centuries to find this noblest of races that the earth has ever possessed in so instinctively pristine a degree as I present it. I have, against everything that is today called noblesse, a sovereign feeling of distinction - I wouldn't award to the young German Kaiser the honour of being my coachman. There is one single case where I acknowledge my equal - I recognize it with profound gratitude. Frau Cosima Wagner is by far the noblest nature; and, so that I shouldn't say one word too few, I say that Richard Wagner was by far the most closely related man to me... The rest is silence... All the prevalent notions of degrees of kinship are physiological nonsense in an unsurpassable measure. The Pope still deals today in this nonsense. One is least related to one's parents: it would be the most extreme sign of vulgarity to be related to one's parents. Higher natures have their origins infinitely farther back, and with them much had to be assembled, saved and hoarded. The great individuals are the oldest: I don't understand it, but Julius Caesar could be my father - or Alexander, this Dionysos incarnate... At the very moment that I am writing this the post brings me a Dionysos-head.

4

I have never understood the art of arousing enmity towards myself - this too I owe to my incomparable father - even when it seemed to me very worthwhile to do so. However unchristian it may seem, I am not even inimical towards myself, one may turn my life this way and that, one will only rarely, at bottom only once, discover signs that anyone has borne ill will towards me - perhaps, however, somewhat too many signs of good will... My experiences even of those of whom everyone has bad experiences speak without exception in their favour; I tame every bear, I even make buffoons mind their manners. During the seven years in which I taught Greek to the top form of the Basel grammar school I never once had occasion to mete out a punishment; the laziest were industrious when they were with me. I am always up to dealing with any chance event; I have to be unprepared if I am to be master of myself. Let the instrument be what it will, let it be as out of tune as only the instrument 'man' can become out of tune - I should have to be ill not to succeed in getting out of it something listenable. And how often have I heard from the 'instruments' themselves that they had never heard themselves sound so well... Most beautifully perhaps from that Heinrich von Stein who died so unpardonably young and who, after cautiously obtaining permission, once appeared for three days at Sils-Maria, explaining to everyone that he had not come for the Engadin. This excellent man, who with the whole impetuous artlessness of a Prussian Junket had waded into the Wagnerian swamp (- and into the swamp of Dühring in addition!), was during those three days as if transported by a storm-wind of freedom, like one suddenly raised to his own heights and given wings. I kept telling him it was the result of the fine air up here, that everyone felt the same, that you could not stand 6,000 feet above Bayreuth and not notice it - but he would not believe me... If, this notwithstanding, many great and petty misdeeds have been committed against me, it was not 'will', least of all ill will that was the cause of it: I could complain, rather - I have just suggested as much - of the good will which has caused me no little mischief in my life. My experiences give me a right to a general mistrust of the so-called 'selfless' drives, of the whole 'love of one's neighbour' which is always ready with deeds and advice. It counts with me as weakness, as a special case of the incapacity to withstand stimuli - it is only among décadents that pity is called a virtue. My reproach against those who practise pity is that shame, reverence, a delicate feeling for distance easily eludes them, that pity instantly smells of mob and is so like bad manners as to be mistaken for them - that the hands of pity can under certain circumstances intrude downright destructively into a great destiny, into a solitariness where wounds are nursed, into a privilege for great guilt. I count the overcoming of pity among the noble virtues: I have, as 'Zarathustra's Temptation', invented a case in which a great cry of distress reaches him, in which pity like an ultimate sin seeks to attack him, to seduce him from allegiance to himself. To remain master here, here to keep the elevation of one's task clean of the many lower and more shortsighted drives which are active in socalled selfless actions, that is the test, the final test perhaps, which a Zarathustra has to pass - the actual proof of his strength...

5

In yet another point I am merely my father once more and as it were the continuation of his life after an all too early death. Like anyone who has never lived among his equals and to whom the concept 'requital' is as inaccessible as is for instance the concept 'equal rights', I forbid myself in cases where a little or very great act of folly has been perpetrated against me any countermeasure, any protective measure - also, as is reasonable, any defence, any 'justification'. My kind of requital consists in sending after the piece of stupidity as quickly as possible a piece of sagacity: in that way one may perhaps overtake it. To speak in a metaphor. I dispatch a pot of jam to get rid of a sour affair... Let anyone harm me in any way, I 'requite' it, you may be sure of that: as soon as I can I find an opportunity of expressing my thanks to the 'offender' (occasionally even for the offence) - or of asking him for something, which can be more courteous than giving something... It also seems to me that the rudest word, the rudest letter are more good-natured, more honest than silence. Those who keep silent almost always lack subtlety and politeness of the heart; silence is an objection, swallowing down necessarily produces a bad character - it even ruins the stomach. All those given to silence are dyspeptic. - One will see that I would not like to see rudeness undervalued, it is the most humane form of contradiction by far and, in the midst of modern tendermindedness, one of our foremost virtues. - If one is rich enough, it is even fortunate to be in the wrong. A god come to earth ought to do nothing whatever but wrong: to take upon oneself, not the punishment, but the guilt - only that would be godlike.

6

Freedom from ressentiment, enlightenment over ressentiment - who knows the extent to which I ultimately owe thanks to my protracted sickness for this too! The problem is not exactly simple: one has to have experienced it from a state of strength and a state of weakness. If anything whatever has to be admitted against being sick, being weak, it is that in these conditions the actual curative instinct, that is to say the defensive and offensive instinct in man becomes soft. One does not know how to get free of anything, one does not know how to have done with anything, one does not know how to thrust back - everything hurts. Men and things come importunately close, events strike too deep, the memory is a festering wound. Being sick is itself a kind of ressentiment. - Against this the invalid has only one great means of cure - I call it Russian fatalism, that fatalism without rebellion with which a Russian soldier for whom the campaign has become too much at last lies down in the snow. No longer to take anything at all, to receive anything, to take anything into oneself - no longer to react at all... The great rationality of this fatalism, which is not always the courage to die but can be life-preservative under conditions highly dangerous to life, is reduction of the metabolism, making it slow down, a kind of will to hibernation. A couple of steps further in this logic and one has the fakir who sleeps for weeks on end in a grave... Because one would use oneself up too quickly if one reacted at all, one no longer reacts: this is the logic. And nothing bums one up quicker than the affects of ressentiment. Vexation, morbid susceptibility, incapacity for revenge, the desire, the thirst for revenge, poison-brewing in any sense - for one who is exhausted this is certainly the most disadvantageous kind of reaction: it causes a rapid expenditure of nervous energy, a morbid accretion of excretions, for example of gall into the stomach. Ressentiment is the forbidden in itself for the invalid - his evil: unfortunately also his most natural inclination. - This was grasped by that profound physiologist Buddha. His 'religion', which one would do better to call a system of hygiene so as not to mix it up with such pitiable things as Christianity, makes its effect dependent on victory over ressentiment: to free the soul of that - first step to recovery. 'Not by enmity is enmity ended, by friendship is enmity ended': this stands at the beginning of Buddha's teaching - it is not morality that speaks thus, it is physiology that speaks thus. - Ressentiment, born of weakness, to no one more harmful than to the weak man himself - in the opposite case, where a rich nature is the presupposition, a superfluous feeling to stay master of which is almost the proof of richness. He who knows the seriousness with which my philosophy has taken up the struggle against the feelings of vengefulness and vindictiveness even into the theory of 'free will' - my struggle against Christianity is only a special instance of it - will understand why it is precisely here that I throw the light on my personal bearing, my sureness of instinct in practice. In periods of décadence I forbade them to myself as harmful; as soon as life was again sufficiently rich and proud for them I forbade them to myself as beneath me. That 'Russian fatalism' of which I spoke came forward in my case in the form of clinging tenaciously for years on end to almost intolerable situations, places, residences, company, once chance had placed me in them - it was better than changing them, than feeling them as capable of being changed - than rebelling against them... In those days I took it deadly amiss if I was disturbed in this fatalism, if I was forcibly awakened from it - and to do this was in fact every time a deadly dangerous thing. - To accept oneself as a fate, not to desire oneself 'different' - in such conditions this is great rationality itself.

7

War is another thing. I am by nature warlike. To attack is among my instincts. To be able to be an enemy, to be an enemy - that perhaps presupposes a strong nature, it is in any event a condition of every strong nature. It needs resistances, consequently it seeks resistances: the aggressive pathos belongs as necessarily to strength as the feeling of vengefulness and vindictiveness does to weakness. Woman, for example, is vengeful: that is conditioned by her weakness, just as is her susceptibility to others' distress. - The strength of one who attacks has in the opposition he needs a kind of gauge; every growth reveals itself in the seeking out of a powerful opponent - or problem: for a philosopher who is warlike also challenges problems to a duel. The undertaking is to master, not any resistances that happen to present themselves, but those against which one has to bring all one's strength, suppleness and mastery of weapons - to master equal opponents... Equality in face of the enemy - first presupposition of an honest duel. Where one despises one cannot wage war; where one commands, where one sees something as beneath one, one has not to wage war. - My practice in warfare can be reduced to four propositions. Firstly: I attack only causes that are victorious - under certain circumstances I wait until they are victorious. Secondly: I attack only causes against which I would find no allies, where I stand alone - where I compromise only myself... I have never taken a step in public which was not compromising: that is my criterion of right action. Thirdly: I never attack persons - I only employ the person as a strong magnifying glass with which one can make visible a general but furtive state of distress which is hard to get hold of. That was how I attacked David Strauss, more precisely the success with German 'culture' of a senile book - I thus caught that culture red-handed... That was how I attacked Wagner, more precisely the falseness, the hybrid instincts of our 'culture' which confuses the artful with the rich, the late with the great. Fourthly: I attack only things where any kind of personal difference is excluded, where there is no background of bad experience. On the contrary, to attack is with me a proof of good will, under certain circumstances of gratitude. I do honour, I confer distinction when I associate my name with a cause, a person: for or against - that is in this regard a matter of indifference to me. If I wage war on Christianity I have a right to do so, because I have never experienced anything disagreeable or frustrating from that direction - the most serious Christians have always been well disposed towards me. I myself, an opponent of Christianity de rigueur, am far from bearing a grudge against the individual for what is the fatality of millennia. -

8

May I venture to indicate one last trait of my nature which creates for me no little difficulty in my relations with others? I possess a perfectly uncanny sensitivity of the instinct for cleanliness, so that I perceive physiologically - smell - the proximity or - what am I saying? - the innermost parts, the 'entrails', of every soul... I have in this sensitivity psychological antennae with which I touch and take hold of every secret: all the concealed dirt at the bottom of many a nature, perhaps conditioned by bad blood but whitewashed by education, is known to me almost on first contact. If I have observed correctly, such natures unendurable to my sense of cleanliness for their part also sense the caution of my disgust: they do not thereby become any sweeter-smelling... As has always been customary with me - an extreme cleanliness in relation to me is a presupposition of my existence, I perish under unclean conditions - I swim and bathe and splash continually as it were in water, in any kind of perfectly transparent and glittering element. This makes traffic with people no small test of my patience; my humanity consists, not in feeling for and with man, but in enduring that I do feel for and with him... My humanity is a continual self-overcoming. - But I have need of solitude, that is to say recovery, return to myself, the breath of a free light playful air... My entire Zarathustra is a dithyramb on solitude or, if I have been understood, on cleanliness... Fortunately not on pure folly. - He who has eyes for colours will call it diamond. - Disgust at mankind, at the 'rabble', has always been my greatest danger... Do you want to hear the words in which Zarathustra speaks of redemption from disgust?



Yet what happened to me? How did I free myself from disgust? Who rejuvenated my eyes? How did I fly to the height where the rabble no longer sit at the well?

Did my disgust itself create wings and water-diving powers for me? Truly, I had to fly to the extremest height to find again the fountain of delight!

Oh, I have found it, my brothers! Here, in the extremest height, the fountain of delight gushes up for me! And here there is a life at which no rabble drinks with me!

You gush up almost too impetuously, fountain of delight! And in wanting to fill the cup, you often empty it again.

And I still have to learn to approach you more discreetly: my heart still flows towards you all too impetuously:-

my heart, upon which my summer burns, a short, hot, melancholy, over-joyful summer: how my summer-heart longs for your coolness!

Gone is the lingering affliction of my spring! Gone the snowflakes of my malice in June! Summer have I become entirely, and summer-noonday -

- a summer at the extremest height with cold fountains and blissful stillness: oh come, my friends, that the stillness may become more blissful yet!

For this is our height and our home: we live too nobly and boldly here for all unclean men and their thirsts.

Only cast your pure eyes into the well of my delight, friends! You will not dim its sparkle! It shall laugh back at you with its purity.

We build our nest in the tree Future: eagles shall bring food to us solitaries in their beaks!

Truly, food in which no unclean men could join us! They would think they were eating fire and bum their mouths.

Truly, we do not prepare a home here for unclean men! Their bodies and their spirits would call our happiness a cave of ice!

So let us live above them like strong winds, neighbours of the eagles, neighbours of the snow, neighbours of the sun: that is how strong winds live.

And like a wind will I one day blow among them and with my spirit take away the breath of their spirit: thus my future will have it.

Truly, Zarathustra is a strong wind to all flatlands; and he offers this advice to his enemies and to all that spews and spits: take care not to spit against the wind!...

Why I am So Clever

1

WHY do I know a few more things? Why am I so clever altogether? I have never reflected on questions that are none - I have not squandered myself. - I have, for example, no experience of actual religious difficulties. I am entirely at a loss to know to what extent I ought to have felt 'sinful'. I likewise lack a reliable criterion of a pang of conscience: from what one hears of it, a pang of conscience does not seem to me anything respectable... I should not like to leave an act in the lurch afterwards, I would as a matter of principle prefer to leave the evil outcome, the consequences, out of the question of values. When the outcome is evil one can easily lose the true eye for what one has done: a pang of conscience seems to me a kind of 'evil eye'. To honour to oneself something that went wrong all the more because it went wrong - that rather would accord with my morality. - 'God', 'immortality of the soul', 'redemption', 'the Beyond', all of them concepts to which I have given no attention and no time, not even as a child - perhaps I was never childish enough for it? - I have absolutely no knowledge of atheism as an outcome of reasoning, still less as an event: with me it is obvious by instinct. I am too inquisitive, too questionable, too high spirited to rest content with a crude answer. God is a crude answer, a piece of indelicacy against us thinkers - fundamentally even a crude prohibition to us: you shall not think!... I am interested in quite a different way in a question upon which the 'salvation of mankind' depends far more than it does upon any kind of quaint curiosity of the theologians: the question of nutriment. One can for convenience' sake formulate it thus: 'how to nourish yourself so as to attain your maximum of strength, of virtù in the Renaissance style, of moraline-free virtue?' - My experiences here are as bad as they possibly could be; I am astonished that I heard this question so late, that I learned 'reason' from these experiences so late. Only the perfect worthlessness of our German education - its 'idealism' - can to some extent explain to me why on precisely this point I was backward to the point of holiness. This 'education' which from the first teaches one to lose sight of realities so as to hunt after altogether problematic, so-called 'ideal' objectives, 'classical education' for example - as if it were not from the first an utterly fruitless undertaking to try to unite 'classical' and 'German' in one concept! It is, moreover, mirth-provoking - just think of a 'classically educated' Leipziger! - Until my very maturest years I did in fact eat badly - in the language of morals 'impersonally', 'selflessly', 'altruistically', for the salvation of cooks and other fellow Christians. With the aid of Leipzig cookery, for example, which accompanied my earliest study of Schopenhauer (1865), I very earnestly denied my 'will to live'. To ruin one's stomach so as to receive inadequate nutriment - the aforesaid cookery seems to me to solve this problem wonderfully well. But German cookery in general - what does it not have on its conscience! Soup before the meal (in Venetian cookery books of the sixteenth century still called alla tedesca); meat cooked to shreds, greasy and floury vegetables; the degeneration of puddings to paperweights! If one adds to this the downright bestial dinner-drinking habits of the ancient and by no means only the ancient Germans one will also understand the origin of the German spirit - disturbed intestines... The German spirit is an indigestion, it can have done with nothing. - But to the English diet too, which compared with the Germans, even with the French, is a kind of 'return to nature', that is to say to cannibalism, my own instinct is profoundly opposed; it seems to me to give the spirit heavy feet - the feet of Englishwomen... The best cookery is that of Piedmont. Alcoholic drinks are no good for me; a glass of wine or beer a day is quite enough to make life for me a 'Vale of Tears' - Munich is where my antipodes live. Granted I was a little late to grasp this - I experienced it really from childhood onwards. As a boy I believed wine-drinking to be, like tobacco-smoking, at first only a vanity of young men, later a habit. Perhaps the wine of Naumburg is in part to blame for this austere judgement. To believe that wine makes cheerful I would have to be a Christian, that is to say believe what is for precisely me an absurdity. Oddly enough, while I am put extremely out of sorts by small, much diluted doses of alcohol, I am almost turned into a sailor when it comes to strong doses. Even as a boy I showed how brave I was in this respect. To write a long Latin essay in a single night's sitting and then go on to make a fair copy of it, with the ambition in my pen to imitate in severity and concision my model Sallust, and to pour a quantity of grog of the heaviest calibre over my Latin, was even when I was a pupil of venerable Schulpforta in no way opposed to my physiology, nor perhaps to that of Sallust - however much it might have been to venerable Schulpforta... Later, towards the middle of life, I decided, to be sure, more and more strictly against any sort of 'spirituous' drink: an opponent of vegetarianism from experience, just like Richard Wagner, who converted me, I cannot advise all more spiritual natures too seriously to abstain from alcohol absolutely. Water suffices... I prefer places in which there is everywhere opportunity to drink from flowing fountains (Nice, Turin, Sils); a small glass runs after me like a dog. In vino veritas: it seems that here too I am again at odds with all the world over the concept 'truth' - with me the spirit moves over the water... A couple more signposts from my morality. A big meal is easier to digest than one too small. That the stomach comes into action as a whole, first precondition of a good digestion. One has to know the size of one's stomach. For the same reason those tedious meals should be avoided which I call interrupted sacrificial feasts, those at the table d'hôte. - No eating between meals, no coffee: coffee makes gloomy. Tea beneficial only in the morning. Little, but strong: tea very detrimental and sicklying o'er the whole day if it is the slightest bit too weak. Each has here his own degree, often between the narrowest and most delicate limits. In a very agaçant climate it is inadvisable to start with tea: one should start an hour earlier with a cup of thick oil-free cocoa. - Sit as little as possible; credit no thought not born in the open air and while moving freely about - in which the muscles too do not hold a festival. All prejudices come from the intestines. - Assiduity - I have said it once before - the actual sin against the holy spirit. -

2

Most closely related to the question of nutriment is the question of place and climate. No one is free to live everywhere; and he who has great tasks to fulfil which challenge his entire strength has indeed in this matter a very narrow range of choice. The influence of climate on the metabolism, its slowing down, its speeding up, extends so far that a blunder in regard to place and climate can not only estrange anyone from his task but withhold it from him altogether: he never catches sight of it. His animalic vigor never grows sufficiently great for him to attain to that freedom overflowing into the most spiritual domain where he knows: that I alone can do... A never so infinitesimal sluggishness of the intestines grown into a bad habit completely suffices to transform a genius into something mediocre, something 'German'; the German climate alone is enough to discourage strong and even heroic intestines. The tempo of the metabolism stands in an exact relationship to the mobility or lameness of the feet of the spirit; the 'spirit' itself is indeed only a species of this metabolism. Make a list of the places where there are and have been gifted men, where wit, refinement, malice are a part of happiness, where genius has almost necessarily made its home: they all possess an excellent dry air. Paris, Provence, Florence, Jerusalem, Athens - these names prove something: that genius is conditioned by dry air, clear sky - that is to say by rapid metabolism, by the possibility of again and again supplying oneself with great, even tremendous quantities of energy. I have in mind a case in which a spirit which might have become significant and free became instead narrow, withdrawn, a grumpy specialist, merely through a lack of instinctive subtlety in choice of climate. And I myself could in the end have become this case if sickness had not compelled me to reason, to reflect on reason in reality. Now, when from long practice I read climatic and meteorological effects off from myself as from a very delicate and reliable instrument and even on a short journey, from Turin to Milan for instance, verify on myself physiologically the change in degrees of humidity, I recall with horror the uncanny fact that my life up to the last ten years, the years when my life was in danger, was spent nowhere but in wrong places downright forbidden to me. Naumburg, Schulpforta, Thuringia in general, Leipzig, Basel, Venice - so many ill-fated places for my physiology. If I have no welcome memories at all of my whole childhood and youth, it would be folly to attribute this to so-called 'moral' causes - the undeniable lack of adequate company, for instance: for this lack exists today as it has always existed without preventing me from being brave and cheerful. Ignorance in physiologis - accursed 'idealism' - is the real fatality in my life, the superfluous and stupid in it, something out of which nothing good grows, for which there is no compensation, no counter-reckoning. It is as a consequence of this 'idealism' that I elucidate to myself all the blunders, all the great deviations of instinct and 'modesties' which led me away from the task of my life, that I became a philologist for example - why not at least a physician or something else that opens the eyes? In my time at Basel my entire spiritual diet, the division of the day included, was a perfectly senseless abuse of extraordinary powers without any kind of provision for covering this consumption, without even reflection on consumption and replacement. Any more subtle selfishness, any protection by a commanding instinct was lacking, it was an equating of oneself with everyone else, a piece of 'selflessness', a forgetting of one's distance - something I shall never forgive myself. When I was almost done for, because I was almost done for, I began to reflect on this fundamental irrationality of my life - 'idealism'. It was only sickness that brought me to reason. -

3

Selectivity in nutriment; selectivity in climate and place; - the third thing in which one may at no cost commit a blunder is selectivity in one's kind of recreation. Here too the degree to which a spirit is sui generis makes ever narrower the bounds of what is permitted, that is to say useful to him. In my case all reading is among my recreations: consequently among those things which free me from myself, which allow me to saunter among strange sciences and souls - which I no longer take seriously. It is precisely reading which helps me to recover from my seriousness. At times when I am deeply sunk in work you will see no books around me: I would guard against letting anyone speak or even think in my vicinity. And that is what reading would mean... Has it really been noticed that in that state of profound tension to which pregnancy condemns the spirit and fundamentally the entire organism, any chance event, any kind of stimulus from without has too vehement an effect, 'cuts' too deeply? One has to avoid the chance event, the stimulus from without, as much as possible; a kind of self-walling-up is among the instinctual sagacities of spiritual pregnancy. Shall I allow a strange thought to climb secretly over the wall? - And that is what reading would mean... The times of work and fruitfulness are followed by the time of recreation: come hither, you pleasant, you witty, you clever books! Will they be German books?... I have to reckon back half a year to catch myself with a book in my hand. But what was it? - An excellent study by Victor Brochard, les sceptiques Grecs, in which my Laertiana are also well employed. The Sceptics, the only honourable type among the two- and five-fold ambiguous philosophical crowd! ... Otherwise I take flight almost always to the same books, really a small number, those books which have proved themselves precisely to me. It does not perhaps lie in my nature to read much or many kinds of things: a reading room makes me ill. Neither does it lie in my nature to love much or many kinds of things. Caution, even hostility towards new books is rather part of my instinct than 'tolerance', 'largeur du coeur' and other forms of 'neighbour love'... It is really only a small number of older Frenchmen to whom I return again and again: I believe only in French culture and consider everything in Europe that calls itself 'culture' a misunderstanding, not to speak of German culture... The few instances of high culture I have encountered in Germany have all been of French origin, above all Frau Cosima Wagner, by far the first voice I have heard in questions of taste. - That I do not read Pascal but love him, as the most instructive of all sacrifices to Christianity, slowly murdered first physically then psychologically, the whole logic of this most horrible form of inhuman cruelty; that I have something of Montaigne's wantonness in my spirit, who knows? perhaps also in my body; that my artist's taste defends the names Molière, Corneille and Racine, not without wrath, against a disorderly genius such as Shakespeare: this does not ultimately exclude my finding the most recent Frenchmen also charming company. I cannot at all conceive in which century of history one could haul together such inquisitive and at the same time such delicate psychologists as one can in contemporary Paris: I name as a sample - for their number is by no means small, Messrs Paul Bourget, Pierre Loti, Gyp, Meilhac, Anatole France, Jules Lemaitre, or to pick out one of the stronger race, a genuine Latin to whom I am especially attached, Guy de Maupassant. Between ourselves, I prefer this generation even to their great teachers, who have all been ruined by German philosophy (M. Taine for example by Hegel, whom he has to thank for this misunderstanding of great human beings and ages). As far as Germany extends it ruins culture. It was only the war that 'redeemed' the spirit in France... Stendhal, one of the fairest accidents of my life - for whatever marks an epoch in my life has been brought to me by accident, never by a recommendation - is utterly invaluable with his anticipating psychologist's eye, with his grasp of facts which reminds one of the proximity of the greatest man of the factual (ex ungue Napoleonem -); finally not least as an honest atheist, a rare, almost undiscoverable species in France - with all deference to Prosper Mérimée... Perhaps I am even envious of Stendhal? He robbed me of the best atheist joke which precisely I could have made: 'God's only excuse is that he does not exist'... I myself have said somewhere: what has hitherto been the greatest objection to existence? God...

4

The highest conception of the lyric poet was given me by Heinrich Heine. I seek in vain in all the realms of millennia for an equally sweet and passionate music. He possesses that divine malice without which I cannot imagine perfection - I assess the value of people, of races according to how necessarily they are unable to separate the god from the satyr. - And how he employs German! It will one day be said that Heine and I have been by far the first artists of the German language - at an incalculable distance from everything which mere Germans have done with it. - I must be profoundly related to Byron's Manfred: I discovered all these abysses in myself - I was ripe for this work at thirteen. I have no words, only a look for those who dare to say the word Faust in the presence of Manfred. The Germans are incapable of any conception of greatness: proof Schumann. Expressly from wrath against this sugary Saxon, I composed a counter-overture to Manfred, of which Hans von Bülow said he had never seen the like on manuscript paper: it constituted a rape on Euterpe. - When I seek my highest formula for Shakespeare I find it always in that he conceived the type of Caesar. One cannot guess at things like this - one is it or one is not. The great poet creates only out of his own reality - to the point at which he is afterwards unable to endure his own work... When I have taken a glance at my Zarathustra I walk up and down my room for half an hour unable to master an unendurable spasm of sobbing. - I know of no more heartrending reading than Shakespeare: what must a man have suffered to need to be a buffoon to this extent! - Is Hamlet understood? It is not doubt, it is certainty which makes mad... But to feel in this way one must be profound, abyss, philosopher... We all fear truth... And, to confess it: I am instinctively certain that Lord Bacon is the originator, the self-tormentor of this uncanniest species of literature: what do I care about the pitiable charter of American shallow-pates and muddle-heads? But the power for the mightiest reality of vision is not only compatible with the mightiest power for action, for the monstrous in action, for crime - it even presupposes it... We do not know nearly enough about Lord Bacon, the first realist in every great sense of the word, to know what he did, what he wanted, what he experienced within himself... And the devil take it, my dear critics! Supposing I had baptized my Zarathustra with another name, for example with the name of Richard Wagner, the perspicuity of two millennia would not have sufficed to divine that the author of 'Human, All Too Human' is the visionary of Zarathustra...

5

Here where I am speaking of the recreations of my life, I need to say a word to express my gratitude for that which of all things in it has refreshed me by far the most profoundly and cordially. This was without any doubt my intimate association with Richard Wagner. I offer all my other human relationships cheap; but at no price would I relinquish from my life the Tribschen days, those days of mutual confidences, of cheerfulness, of sublime incidents - of profound moments... I do not know what others may have experienced with Wagner: over our sky no cloud ever passed. - And with that I return again to France - I cannot spare reasons, I can spare a mere curl of the lip for Wagnerians et hoc genus omne who believe they are doing honour to Wagner when they find him similar to themselves... Constituted as I am, a stranger in my deepest instincts to everything German, so that the mere presence of a German hinders my digestion, my first contact with Wagner was also the first time in my life I ever drew a deep breath: I felt, I reverenced him as a being from outside, as the opposite, the incarnate protest against all 'German virtues'. - We who were children in the swamp-air of the fifties are necessarily pessimists regarding the concept 'German'; we cannot be anything but revolutionaries - we shall acquiesce in no state of things in which the bigot is on top. It is a matter of complete indifference to me if today he plays in different colours, if he dresses in scarlet and dons the uniform of a hussar... Very well Wagner was a revolutionary - he fled from the Germans... As an artist one has no home in Europe except in Paris: the delicatesse in all five senses of art which Wagner's art presupposes, the fingers for nuances, the psychological morbidity, is to be found only in Paris. Nowhere else does there exist such a passion in questions of form, this seriousness in mise en scène - it is the Parisian seriousness par excellence. There is in Germany absolutely no conception of the tremendous ambition which dwells in the soul of a Parisian artist. The German is good-natured - Wagner was by no means good-natured... But I have already said sufficient as to where Wagner belongs, in whom he has his closest relatives: the French late romantics, that high-flying and yet exhilarating kind of artists such as Delacroix, such as Berlioz, with a fond of sickness, of incurability in their nature, sheer fanatics for expression, virtuosi through and through... Who was the first intelligent adherent of Wagner? Charles Baudelaire, the same as was the first to understand Delacroix, that typical décadent in whom an entire race of artists recognized themselves - he was perhaps also the last... What I have never forgiven Wagner? That he condescended to the Germans - that he became reichsdeutsch... As far as Germany extends it ruins culture. -

6

All in all I could not have endured my youth without Wagnerian music. For I was condemned to Germans. If one wants to get free from an unendurable pressure one needs hashish. Very well, I needed Wagner. Wagner is the counter-poison to everything German par excellence - still poison, I do not dispute it... From the moment there was a piano score of Tristan - my compliments, Herr von Bülow! - I was a Wagnerian. The earliest works of Wagner I saw as beneath me - still too common, too 'German' ... But I still today seek a work of a dangerous fascination, of a sweet and shuddery infinity equal to that of Tristan - I seek in all the arts in vain. All the strangenesses of Leonardo da Vinci lose their magic at the first note of Tristan. This work is altogether Wagner's non plus ultra; he recuperated from it with the Meistersinger and the Ring. To become healthier - that is retrogression in the case of a nature such as Wagner... I take it for a piece of good fortune of the first rank to have lived at the right time, and to have lived precisely among Germans, so as to be ripe for this work: my psychologist's inquisitiveness goes that far. The world is poor for him who has never been sick enough for this 'voluptuousness of hell': to employ a mystic's formula is permissible, almost obligatory, here. I think I know better than anyone what tremendous things Wagner was capable of, the fifty worlds of strange delights to which no one but he had wings; and as I am strong enough to turn even the most questionable and most perilous things to my own advantage and thus to become stronger, I call Wagner the great benefactor of my life. That in which we are related, that we have suffered more profoundly, from one another also, than men of this century are capable of suffering, will eternally join our names together again and again; and as surely as Wagner is among Germans merely a misunderstanding, just as surely am I and always will be. - Two centuries of psychological and artistic discipline first, my Herr Germans!... But one cannot catch up that amount. -

7

I shall say another word for the most select ears: what I really want from music. That it is cheerful and profound, like an afternoon in October. That it is individual, wanton, tender, a little sweet woman of lowness and charm... I shall never admit that a German could know what music is. What one calls German musicians, the greatest above all, are foreigners, Slavs, Croats, Italians, Netherlanders - or Jews: otherwise Germans of the strong race, extinct Germans, like Heinrich Schütz, Bach and Handel. I myself am still sufficient of a Pole to exchange the rest of music for Chopin; for three reasons I exclude Wagner's Siegfried Idyll, perhaps also a few things by Liszt, who excels all other musicians in the nobility of his orchestral tone; finally all that has grown up beyond the Alps - this side... I would not know how to get on without Rossini, even less without my south in music, the music of my Venetian maestro Pietro Gasti. And when I say beyond the Alps I am really saying only Venice. When I seek another word for music I never find any other word than Venice. I do not know how to distinguish between tears and music - I do not know how to think of happiness, of the south, without a shudder of faintheartedness.



Lately I stood at the bridge

in the brown night.

From afar there came a song:

a golden drop, it swelled

across the trembling surface.

Gondolas, lights, music -

drunken it swam out into the gloom...

My soul, a stringed instrument,

touched by invisible hands

sang to itself in reply a gondola song,

and trembled with gaudy happiness.

- Was anyone listening?



8

In all this - in selection of nutriment, of place and climate, of recreation - there commands an instinct of self-preservation which manifests itself most unambiguously as an instinct for self-defence. Not to see many things, not to hear them, not to let them approach one - first piece of ingenuity, first proof that one is no accident but a necessity. The customary word for this self-defensive instinct is taste. Its imperative commands, not only to say No when Yes would be a piece of 'selflessness', but also to say No as little as possible. To separate oneself, to depart from that to which No would be required again and again. The rationale is that defensive expenditures, be they never so small, become a rule, a habit, lead to an extraordinary and perfectly superfluous impoverishment. Our largest expenditures are our most frequent small ones. Warding off, not letting come close, is an expenditure - one should not deceive oneself over this - a strength squandered on negative objectives. One can merely through the constant need to ward off become too weak any longer to defend oneself. - Suppose I were to step out of my house and discover, instead of calm and aristocratic Turin, the German provincial town: my instinct would have to blockade itself so as to push back all that pressed upon it from this flat and cowardly world. Or suppose I discovered the German metropolis, that builded vice where nothing grows, where every kind of thing, good and bad, is dragged in. Would I not in face of it have to become a hedgehog? - But to have spikes is an extravagance, a double luxury even if one is free to have no spikes but open hands...

Another form of sagacity and self-defence consists in reacting as seldom as possible and withdrawing from situations and relationships in which one would be condemned as it were to suspend one's 'freedom', one's initiative, and become a mere reagent. I take as a parable traffic with books. The scholar, who really does nothing but 'trundle' books - the philologist at a modest assessment about 200 a day - finally loses altogether the ability to think for himself. If he does not trundle he does not think. He replies to a stimulus (- a thought he has read) when he thinks - finally he does nothing but react. The scholar expends his entire strength in affirmation and denial, in criticizing what has already been thought - he himself no longer thinks... The instinct for self-defence has in his case become soft; otherwise he would defend himself against books. The scholar - a décadent. - This I have seen with my own eyes: natures gifted, rich and free already in their thirties 'read to ruins', mere matches that have to be struck if they are to ignite - emit 'thoughts'. - Early in the morning at the break of day, in all the freshness and dawn of one's strength, to read a book - I call that vicious! -

9

At this point I can no longer avoid actually answering the question how one becomes what one is. And with that I touch on the masterpiece in the art of self-preservation - of selfishness... For assuming that the task, the vocation, the destiny of the task exceeds the average measure by a significant degree, there wouldbe no greater danger than to catch sight of oneself with this task. That one becomes what one is presupposes that one does not have the remotest idea what one is. From this point of view even the blunders of life - the temporary sidepaths and wrong turnings, the delays, the 'modesties', the seriousness squandered on tasks which lie outside the task - have their own meaning and value. They are an expression of a great sagacity, even the supreme sagacity: where nosce to ipsum would be the recipe for destruction, self-forgetfulness, self-misunderstanding, self-diminution, -narrowing, -mediocratizing becomes reason itself. Expressed morally: love of one's neighbour, living for others and other things can be the defensive measure for the preservation of the sternest selfishness. This is the exceptional case in which I, contrary to my rule and conviction, take the side of the 'selfless' drives: here they work in the service of selfishness, self-cultivation. - The entire surface of consciousness - consciousness is a surface - has to be kept clear of any of the great imperatives. Even the grand words, the grand attitudes must be guarded against! All of them represent a danger that the instinct will 'understand itself' too early - -. In the meantime the organizing 'idea' destined to rule grows and grows in the depths - it begins to command, it slowly leads back from sidepaths and wrong turnings, it prepares individual qualities and abilities which will one day prove themselves indispensable as means to achieving the whole - it constructs the ancillary capacities one after the other before it gives any hint of the dominating task, of the 'goal', 'objective', 'meaning'. - Regarded from this side my life is simply wonderful. For the task of a revaluation of values more capacities perhaps were required than have dwelt together in one individual, above all antithetical capacities which however are not allowed to disturb or destroy one another. Order of rank among capacities; distance; the art of dividing without making inimical; mixing up nothing, 'reconciling' nothing; a tremendous multiplicity which is none the less the opposite of chaos - this has been the precondition, the protracted secret labour and artistic working of my instinct. The magnitude of its higher protection was shown in the fact I have at no time had the remotest idea what was growing within me - that all my abilities one day leapt forth suddenly ripe, in their final perfection. I cannot remember ever having taken any trouble - no trace of struggle can be discovered in my life, I am the opposite of an heroic nature. To 'want' something, to 'strive' after something, to have a 'goal', a 'wish' in view - I know none of this from experience. Even at this moment I look out upon my future - a distant future! - as upon a smooth sea: it is ruffled by no desire. I do not want in the slightest that anything should become other than it is; I do not want myself to become other than I am... But that is how I have always lived. I have harboured no desire. Someone who after his forty-fourth year can say he has never striven after honours, after women, after money! - Not that I could not have had them... Thus, for example, I one day became a university professor - I had never had the remotest thought of such a thing, for I was barely twenty-four years old.

10

- I shall be asked why I have really narrated all these little things which according to the traditional judgement are matters of indifference: it will be said that in doing so I harm myself all the more if I am destined to fulfil great tasks. Answer: these little things - nutriment, place, climate, recreation, the whole casuistry of selfishness - are beyond all conception of greater importance than anything that has been considered of importance hitherto. It is precisely here that one has to begin to learn anew. Those things which mankind has hitherto pondered seriously are not even realities, merely imaginings, more strictly speaking lies from the bad instincts of sick, in the profoundest sense injurious natures - all the concepts 'God', 'soul', 'virtue', 'sin', 'the Beyond', 'truth', 'eternal life'... But the greatness of human nature, its 'divinity', has been sought in them... All questions of politics, the ordering of society, education have been falsified down to their foundations because the most injurious men have been taken for great men - because contempt has been taught for the 'little' things, which is to say for the fundamental affairs of life... Now, when I compare myself with the men who have hitherto been honoured as pre-eminent men the distinction is palpable. I do not count these supposed 'preeminent men' as belonging to mankind at all - to me they are the refuse of mankind, abortive offspring of sickness and vengeful instincts: they are nothing but pernicious, fundamentally incurable monsters who take revenge on life... I want to be the antithesis of this: it is my privilege to possess the highest subtlety for all the signs of healthy instincts. Every morbid trait is lacking in me; even in periods of severe illness I did not become morbid; a trait of fanaticism will be sought in vain in my nature. At no moment of my life can I be shown to have adopted any kind of arrogant or pathetic posture. The pathos of attitudes does not belong to greatness; whoever needs attitudes at all is false... Beware of all picturesque men! - Life has been easy for me, easiest when it demanded of me the most difficult things. Anyone who saw me during the seventy days of this autumn when I was uninterruptedly creating nothing but things of the first rank which no man will be able to do again or has done before, bearing a responsibility for all the coming millennia, will have noticed no trace of tension in me, but rather an overflowing freshness and cheerfulness. I never ate with greater relish, I never slept better. - I know of no other way of dealing with great tasks than that of play: this is, as a sign of greatness, an essential precondition. The slightest constraint, the gloomy mien, any kind of harsh note in the throat are all objections to a man, how much more to his work!... One must have no nerves... To suffer from solitude is likewise an objection - I have always suffered only from the 'multitude'... At an absurdly early age, at the age of seven, I already knew that no human word would ever reach me: has anyone ever seen me sad on that account? - Still today I treat everyone with the same geniality, I am even full of consideration for the basest people: in all this there is not a grain of arrogance, of secret contempt. He whom I despise divines that I despise him: through my mere existence I enrage everything that has bad blood in its veins... My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be other than it is, not in the future, not in the past, not in all eternity. Not merely to endure that which happens of necessity, still less to dissemble it - all idealism is untruthfulness in the face of necessity - but to love it...

Why I Write Such Good Books

1

I AM one thing, my writings are another. - Here, before I speak of these writings themselves, I shall touch on the question of their being understood or not understood. I shall do so as perfunctorily as is fitting: for the time for this question has certainly not yet come. My time has not yet come, some are born posthumously. - One day or other institutions will be needed in which people live and teach as I understand living and teaching: perhaps even chairs for the interpretation of Zarathustra will be established. But it would be a complete contradiction of myself if I expected ears and hands for my truths already today: that I am not heard today, that no one today knows how to take from me, is not only comprehensible; it even seems to me right. I do not want to be taken for what I am not - and that requires that I do not take myself for what I am not. To say it again, little of 'ill will' can be shown in my life; neither would I be able to speak of barely a single case of 'literary ill will'. On the other hand all too much of pure folly!... It seems to me that to take a book of mine into his hands is one of the rarest distinctions anyone can confer upon himself - I even assume he removes his shoes when he does so - not to speak of boots... When Doctor Heinrich von Stein once honestly complained that he understood not one word of my Zarathustra, I told him that was quite in order: to have understood, that is to say experienced, six sentences of that book would raise one to a higher level of mortals than 'modern' man could attain to. How could I, with this feeling of distance, even want the 'modern men' I know - to read me! - My triumph is precisely the opposite of Schopenhauer's - I say 'non legor, non legar'. - Not that I should like to underestimate the pleasure which the innocence in the rejection of my writings has given me. This very summer just gone, at a time when, with my own weighty, too heavily weighty literature, I was perhaps throwing all the rest of literature off its balance, a professor of Berlin University kindly gave me to understand that I ought really to avail myself of a different form: no one read stuff like mine. - In the end it was not Germany but Switzerland which offered me the two extreme cases. An essay of Dr V. Widmann in the Bund on 'Beyond Good and Evil' under the title 'Nietzsche's Dangerous Book', and a general report on my books as a whole on the part of Herr Karl Spitteler, also in the Bund, constitute a maximum in my life - of what I take care not to say... The latter, for example, dealt with my Zarathustra as an advanced exercise in style, with the request that I might later try to provide some content; Dr Widmann expressed his respect for the courage with which I strive to abolish all decent feelings. - Through a little trick of chance every sentence here was, with a consistency I had to admire, a truth stood on its head: remarkably enough, all one had to do was to 'revalue all values' in order to hit the nail on the head with regard to me - instead of hitting my head with a nail... All the more reason for me to attempt an explanation. - Ultimately, no one can extract from things, books included, more than he already knows. What one has no access to through experience one has no ear for. Now let us imagine an extreme case: that a book speaks of nothing but events which lie outside the possibility of general or even of rare experience - that it is the first language for a new range of experiences. In this case simply nothing will be heard, with the acoustical illusion that where nothing is heard there is nothing... This is in fact my average experience and, if you like, the originality of my experience. Whoever believed he had understood something of me had dressed up something out of me after his own image - not uncommonly an antithesis of me, for instance an 'idealist'; whoever had understood nothing of me denied that I came into consideration at all. - The word 'superman' to designate a type that has turned out supremely well, in antithesis to 'modern' men, to 'good' men, to Christians and other nihilists - a word which, in the mouth of a Zarathustra, the destroyer of morality, becomes a very thoughtful word - has almost everywhere been understood with perfect innocence in the sense of those values whose antithesis makes its appearance in the figure of Zarathustra: that is to say as an 'idealistic' type of higher species of man, half 'saint', half 'genius'... Other learned cattle caused me on its account to be suspected of Darwinism; even the 'hero cult' of that great unconscious and involuntary counterfeiter Carlyle which I rejected so maliciously has been recognized in it. He into whose ear I whispered he ought to look around rather for a Cesare Borgia than for a Parsifal did not believe his ears. - That I am utterly incurious about discussions of my books, especially by newspapers, will have to be forgiven me. My friends, my publishers know this and do not speak to me about such things. In a particular instance I once had a sight of all the sins that had been committed against a single book - it was 'Beyond Good and Evil'; I could tell a pretty story about that. Would you believe it that the 'Nationalzeitung' - a Prussian newspaper, for my foreign readers - I myself read, if I may say so, only the Journal des Débats - could in all seriousness understand the book as a 'sign of the times', as the real genuine Junker philosophy for which the 'Kreuzzeitung' merely lacked the courage?...

2

This was said for Germans: for I have readers everywhere else - nothing but choice intelligences of proved character brought up in high positions and duties; I have even real geniuses among my readers. In Vienna, in St Petersburg, in Stockholm, in Copenhagen, in Paris and New York - I have been discovered everywhere: I have not been in Europe's flatland Germany... And to confess it, I rejoice even more over my non-readers, such as have never heard either my name or the word philosophy; but wherever I go, here in Turin for example, every face grows more cheerful and benevolent at the sight of me. What has flattered me the most is that old marketwomen take great pains to select together for me the sweetest of their grapes. That is how far one must be a philosopher... It is not in vain that the Poles are called the French among the Slavs. A charming Russian lady would not mistake for a moment where I belong. I cannot succeed in becoming solemn, the most I can achieve is embarrassment... To think German, to feel German - I can do everything, but that is beyond my powers... My old teacher Ritschl went so far as to maintain that I conceived even my philological essays like a Parisian romancier - absurdly exciting. In Paris itself there is astonishment over 'toutes mes audaces et finesses' - the expression is Monsieur Taine's -; I fear that with me there is up to the highest forms of the dithyramb an admixture of that salt which never gets soggy -'German' - esprit... I cannot do otherwise, so help me God! Amen. - We all know, some even know from experience, what a longears is. Very well, I dare to assert that I possess the smallest ears. This is of no little interest to women - it seems to me they feel themselves better understood by me?... I am the anti-ass par excellence and therewith a world-historical monster - I am, in Greek and not only in Greek, the Anti-Christ...

3

I know my privileges as a writer to some extent; in individual cases it has been put to me how greatly habituation to my writings 'ruins' taste. One can simply no longer endure other books, philosophical ones least of all. To enter this noble and delicate world is an incomparable distinction - to do so one absolutely must not be a German; it is in the end a distinction one has to have earned. But he who is related to me through loftiness of will experiences when he reads me real ecstasies of learning: for I come from heights no bird has ever soared to, I know abysses into which no foot has ever yet strayed. I have been told it is impossible to put a book of mine down - I even disturb the night's rest... There is altogether no prouder and at the same time more exquisite kind of book than my books - they attain here and there the highest thing that can be attained on earth, cynicism; one needs the most delicate fingers as well as the bravest fists if one is to master them. Any infirmity of soul excludes one from them once and for all, any dyspepsia, even, does so: one must have no nerves, one must have a joyful belly. Not only does the poverty, the hole-and-corner air of a soul exclude it from them - cowardice, uncleanliness, secret revengefulness in the entrails does so far more: a word from me drives all bad instincts into the face. I have among my acquaintances several experimental animals on whom I bring home to myself the various, very instructively various reactions to my writings. Those who want to have nothing to do with their contents, my so-called friends for example, become 'impersonal': they congratulate me on having 'done it' again - progress is apparent, too, in a greater cheerfulness of tone... The completely vicious 'spirits', the 'beautiful souls', the thoroughly and utterly mendacious have no idea at all what to do with these books - consequently they see the same as beneath them, the beautiful consistency of all 'beautiful souls'. The horned cattle among my acquaintances, mere Germans if I may say so, give me to understand they are not always of my opinion, though they are sometimes... I have heard this said even of Zarathustra... Any 'feminism' in a person, or in a man, likewise closes the gates on me: one will never be able to enter this labyrinth of daring knowledge. One must never have spared oneself, harshness must be among one's habits, if one is to be happy and cheerful among nothing but hard truths. When I picture a perfect reader, I always picture a monster of courage and curiosity, also something supple, cunning, cautious, a born adventurer and discoverer. Finally: I would not know how to say better to whom at bottom alone I speak than Zarathustra has said it: to whom alone does he want to narrate his riddle?

To you, the bold venturers and adventurers, and whoever has embarked with cunning sails upon dreadful seas,

to you who are intoxicated with riddles, who take pleasure in twilight, whose soul is lured with flutes to every treacherous abyss -

for you do not desire to feel for a rope with cowardly hand; and where you can guess you hate to calculate...

4

I shall at the same time also say a general word on my art of style. To communicate a state, an inner tension of pathos through signs, including the tempo of these signs - that is the meaning of every style; and considering that the multiplicity of inner states is in my case extraordinary, there exists in my case the possibility of many styles - altogether the most manifold art of style any man has ever had at his disposal. Every style is good which actually communicates an inner state, which makes no mistake as to the signs, the tempo of the signs, the gestures - all rules of phrasing are art of gesture. My instinct is here infallible. - Good style in itself - a piece of pure folly, mere 'idealism', on a par with the 'beautiful in itself ', the 'good in itself', the 'thing in itself'... Always presupposing there are ears - that there are those capable and worthy of a similar pathos, that those are not lacking to whom one ought to communicate oneself. - My Zarathustra for example is at present still looking for them - alas! he will have to look for a long time yet! One has to be worthy of assaying him... And until then there will be no one who comprehends the art which has here been squandered: no one has ever had more of the new, the unheard-of, the really new-created in artistic means to squander. That such a thing was possible in the German language remained to be proved: I myself would previously have most hotly disputed it. Before me one did not know what can be done with the German language - what can be done with language as such. The art of grand rhythm, the grand style of phrasing, as the expression of a tremendous rise and fall of sublime, of superhuman passion, was first discovered by me; with a dithyramb such as the last of the third Zarathustra, entitled 'The Seven Seals', I flew a thousand miles beyond that which has hitherto been called poesy.

5

That out of my writings there speaks a psychologist who has not his equal, that is perhaps the first thing a good reader will notice - a reader such as I deserve, who reads me as good old philologists read their Horace. The propositions over which everybody is in fundamental agreement - not to speak of everybody's philosophers, the moralists and other hollow-heads and cabbage-heads - appear with me as naive blunders: for example that belief that 'unegoistic' and 'egoistic' are antitheses, while the ego itself is merely a 'higher swindle', an 'ideal'. There are neither egoistic nor unegoistic actions: both concepts are psychologically nonsense. Or the proposition 'man strives after happiness'... Or the proposition 'happiness is the reward of virtue'... Or the proposition 'pleasure and displeasure are opposites'... The Circe of mankind, morality, has falsified all psychologica to its very foundations - has moralized it - to the point of the frightful absurdity that love is supposed to be something 'unegoistic'... One has to be set firmly upon oneself, one has to stand bravely upon one's own two legs, otherwise one cannot love at all. In the long run the little women know that all too well: they play the deuce with selfless, with merely objective men... Dare I venture in addition to suggest that I know these little women? It is part of my Dionysian endowment. Who knows? perhaps I am the first psychologist of the eternal-womanly. They all love me - an old story: excepting the abortive women, the 'emancipated' who lack the stuff for children. - Happily I am not prepared to be torn to pieces: the complete woman tears to pieces when she loves... I know these amiable maenads... Ah, what a dangerous, creeping, subterranean little beast of prey it is! And so pleasant with it!... A little woman chasing after her revenge would over-run fate itself. - The woman is unspeakably more wicked than the man, also cleverer; goodness in a woman is already a form of degeneration ... At the bottom of all so-called 'beautiful souls' there lies a physiological disadvantage - I shall not say all I could or I should become medicynical. The struggle for equal rights is even a symptom of sickness: every physician knows that. - The more a woman is a woman the more she defends herself tooth and nail against rights in general: for the state of nature, the eternal war between the sexes puts her in a superior position by far. - Have there been ears for my definition of love? it is the only one worthy of a philosopher. Love - in its methods war, in its foundation the mortal hatred of the sexes. Has my answer been heard to the question how one cures - 'redeems' - a woman? One makes a child for her. The woman has need of children, the man is always only the means: thus spoke Zarathustra. - 'Emancipation of woman' - is the instinctive hatred of the woman who has turned out ill, that is to say is incapable of bearing, for her who has turned out well - the struggle against 'man' is always only means, subterfuge, tactic. When they elevate themselves as 'woman in herself', as 'higher woman', as 'idealist' woman, they want to lower the general level of rank of woman; no surer means for achieving that than grammar school education, trousers and the political rights of voting cattle. At bottom the emancipated are the anarchists in the world of the 'eternal-womanly', the under-privileged whose deepest instinct is revenge... An entire species of the most malevolent 'idealism' - which, by the way, also occurs in men, for example in the case of Henrik Ibsen, that typical old maid - has the objective of poisoning the good conscience, the naturalness in sexual love... And so as to leave no doubt as to my opinion in this matter, which is as honest as it is strict, I would like to impart one more clause of my moral code against vice: with the word vice I combat every sort of anti-nature or, if one likes beautiful words, idealism. The clause reads: 'The preaching of chastity is a public incitement to anti-nature. Every expression of contempt for the sexual life, every befouling of it through the concept "impure", is the crime against life - is the intrinsic sin against the holy spirit of life.'

6

To give an idea of me as a psychologist I take a curious piece of psychology which occurs in 'Beyond Good and Evil' - I forbid, by the way, any conjecture as to whom I am describing in this passage: 'The genius of the heart as it is possessed by that great hidden one, the tempter god and born pied piper of consciences whose voice knows how to descend into the underworld of every soul, who says no word and gives no glance in which there lies no touch of enticement, to whose mastery belongs knowing how to seem - not what he is but what to those who follow him is one constraint more to press ever closer to him, to follow him ever more inwardly and thoroughly... The genius of the heart who makes everything loud and self-satisfied fall silent and teaches it to listen, who smooths rough souls and gives them a new desire to savour - the desire to lie still as a mirror, that the deep sky may mirror itself in them... The genius of the heart who teaches the stupid and hasty hand to hesitate and grasp more delicately; who divines the hidden and forgotten treasure, the drop of goodness and sweet spirituality under thick and opaque ice, and is a divining-rod for every grain of gold which has lain long in the prison of much mud and sand... The genius of the heart from whose touch everyone goes away richer, not favoured and surprised, not as if blessed and oppressed with the goods of others, but richer in himself, newer to himself than before, broken open, blown upon and sounded out by a thawing wind, more uncertain perhaps, more delicate, more fragile, more broken, but full of hopes that as yet have no names, full of new will and current, full of new ill will and counter current...'

Why I am a Destiny

1

I KNOW my fate. One day there will be associated with my name the recollection of something frightful - of a crisis like no other before on earth, of the profoundest collision of conscience, of a decision evoked against everything that until then had been believed in, demanded, sanctified. I am not a man, I am dynamite. - And with all that there is nothing in me of a founder of a religion - religions are affairs of the rabble, I have need of washing my hands after contact with religious people... I do not want 'believers', I think I am too malicious to believe in myself, I never speak to masses... I have a terrible fear I shall one day be pronounced holy: one will guess why I bring out this book beforehand; it is intended to prevent people from making mischief with me... I do not want to be a saint, rather even a buffoon... Perhaps I am a buffoon... And none the less, or rather not none the less - for there has hitherto been nothing more mendacious than saints - the truth speaks out of me. - But my truth is dreadful: for hitherto the lie has been called truth. - Revaluation of all values: this is my formula for an act of supreme coming-to-oneself on the part of mankind which in me has become flesh and genius. It is my fate to have to be the first decent human being, to know myself in opposition to the men-daciousness of millennia... I was the first to discover the truth, in that I was the first to sense - smell - the lie as lie... My genius is in my nostrils... I contradict as has never been contradicted and am none the less the opposite of a negative spirit. I am a bringer of good tidings such as there has never been, I know tasks from such a height that any conception of them has hitherto been lacking; only after me is it possible to hope again. With all that I am necessarily a man of fatality. For when truth steps into battle with the lie of millennia we shall have convulsions, an earthquake spasm, a transposition of valley and mountain such as has never been dreamed of. The concept politics has then become completely absorbed into a war of spirits; all the power-structures of the old society have been blown into the air - they one and all reposed on the lie: there will be wars such as there have never yet been on earth. Only after me will there be grand politics on earth.

2

Does one want a formula for a destiny that has become man? It stands in my Zarathustra.



- and he who wants to be a creator in good and evil has first to be a destroyer and break values.

Thus the greatest evil belongs with the greatest good: this, however, is the creative good.



I am by far the most terrible human being there has ever been; this does not mean I shall not be the most beneficent. I know joy in destruction to a degree corresponding to my strength for destruction - in both I obey my dionysian nature, which does not know how to separate No-doing from Yes-saying. I am the first immoralist: I am therewith the destroyer par excellence. -

3

I have not been asked, as I should have been asked, what the name Zarathustra means in precisely my mouth, in the mouth of the first immoralist: for what constitutes the tremendous uniqueness of that Persian in history is precisely the opposite of this. Zarathustra was the first to see in the struggle between good and evil the actual wheel in the working of things: the translation of morality into the realm of metaphysics, as force, cause, end-in-itself, is his work. But this question is itself at bottom its own answer. Zarathustra created this most fateful of errors, morality: consequently he must also be the first to recognize it. Not only has he had longer and greater experience here than any other thinker - the whole of history is indeed the experimental refutation of the proposition of a so-called 'moral world-order' -: what is more important is that Zarathustra is more truthful than any other thinker. His teaching, and his alone, upholds truthfulness as the supreme virtue - that is to say, the opposite of the cowardice of the 'idealist', who takes flight in face of reality; Zarathustra has more courage in him than all other thinkers put together. To tell the truth and to shoot well with arrows: that is Persian virtue. - Have I been understood? The self-overcoming of morality through truthfulness, the self-overcoming of the moralist into his opposite - into me - that is what the name Zarathustra means in my mouth.

4

At bottom my expression immoralist involves two denials. I deny first a type of man who has hitherto counted as the highest, the good, the benevolent, beneficent; I deny secondly a kind of morality which has come to be accepted and to dominate as morality in itself - décadence morality, in more palpable terms Christian morality. The second contradiction might be seen as the decisive one, since the over-valuation of goodness and benevolence by and large already counts with me as a consequence of décadence, as a symptom of weakness, as incompatible with an ascending and affirmative life: denial and destruction is a condition of affirmation. - I deal first of all with the psychology of the good man. In order to assess what a type of man is worth one has to compute how much his preservation costs - one has to know the conditions of his existence. The condition for the existence of the good is the lie -: expressed differently, the desire not to see at any price what is the fundamental constitution of reality, that is to say not such as to call forth benevolent instincts at all times, even less such as to permit at all times an interference by short-sighted good-natured hands. To regard states of distress in general as an objection, as something that must be abolished, is the niaiserie par excellence, in a general sense a real disaster in its consequences, a fatality of stupidity - almost as stupid as would be the will to abolish bad weather - perhaps from pity to the poor... In the general economy of the whole the fearfulnesses of reality (in the affects, in the desires, in the will to power) are to an incalculable degree more necessary than any form of petty happiness, so-called 'goodness'; since the latter is conditioned by falsity of instinct one must even be cautious about granting it a place at all. I shall have a grand occasion of demonstrating the measurelessly uncanny consequences for the whole of history of optimism, that offspring of the homines optimi. Zarathustra, the first to grasp that optimism is just as décadent as pessimism and perhaps more harmful, says: good men never tell the truth. The good taught you false shores and false securities: you were born and kept in the lies of the good. Everything has been distorted and twisted down to its very bottom through the good. Fortunately the world has not been constructed for the satisfaction of instincts such as would permit merely good-natured herd animals to find their narrow happiness in it; to demand that everything should become 'good man', herd animal, blueeyed, benevolent, 'beautiful soul' - or, as Mr Herbert Spencer wants, altruistic, would mean to deprive existence of its great character, would mean to castrate mankind and to reduce it to a paltry Chinadom. - And this has been attempted!... Precisely this has been called morality... In this sense Zarathustra calls the good now 'the last men', now the 'beginning of the end'; above all he feels them to be the most harmful species of man, because they preserve their existence as much at the expense of truth as at the expense of the future.



The good - cannot create, they are always the beginning of the end -

- they crucify him who writes new values on new law-tables, they sacrifice the future to themselves, they crucify the whole human future!

The good - have always been the beginning of the end...

And whatever harm the world-calumniators may do, the harm the good do is the most harmful harm.

5

Zarathustra, the first psychologist of the good, is - consequently - a friend of the wicked. When a décadence-species of man has risen to the rank of the highest species of man, this can happen only at the expense of its antithetical species, the species of man strong and certain of life. When the herd-animal is resplendent in the glow of the highest virtue, the exceptional man must be devalued to the wicked man. When mendaciousness at any price appropriates the word 'truth' for its perspective, what is actually veracious must be discovered bearing the worst names. Zarathustra here leaves no doubt: he says that it was knowledge of precisely the good, the 'best', which made him feel horror at man in general; it was out of this repugnance that the wings grew which 'carried him to distant futures' - he does not dissemble that it is precisely in relation to the good that his type of man, a relatively superhuman type, is superhuman, that the good and just would call his superman a devil...



You highest men my eyes have encountered! This is my doubt of you and my secret laughter: I think you would call my superman - a devil!

Your souls are so unfamiliar with what is great that the superman would be fearful to you in his goodness...



It is at this point and nowhere else that one must make a start if one is to understand what Zarathustra's intentions are: the species of man he delineates delineates reality as it is: he is strong enough for it - he is not estranged from or entranced by it, he is reality itself, he still has all that is fearful and questionable in reality in him, only thus can man possess greatness...

6

- But there is also another sense in which I have chosen for myself the word immoralist as a mark of distinction and badge of honour; I am proud to possess this word which sets me off against the whole of humanity. No one has yet felt Christian morality as beneath him: that requires a height, a farsightedness, a hitherto altogether unheard-of psychological profundity and abysmalness. Christian morality has hitherto been the Circe of all thinkers - they stood in its service. - Who before me has entered the caverns out of which the poisonous blight of this kind of ideal - world-calumny! - wells up? Who has even ventured to suspect that these caverns exist? Who before me at all among philosophers has been a psychologist and not rather its opposite 'higher swindler', 'idealist'? Before me there was no psychology. - To be the first here can be a curse, it is in any case a destiny: for one is also the first to despise... Disgust at mankind is my danger...

7

Have I been understood? - What defines me, what sets me apart from all the rest of mankind, is that I have unmasked Christian morality. That is why I needed a word which would embody the sense of a challenge to everyone. Not to have opened its eyes here sooner counts to me as the greatest piece of uncleanliness which humanity has on its conscience, as self-deception become instinct, as a fundamental will not to observe every event, every cause, every reality, as false-coinage in psychologicis to the point of crime. Blindness in the face of Christianity is the crime par excellence - the crime against life... The millennia, the peoples, the first and the last, the philosophers and the old women - except for five or six moments of history, me as the seventh - on this point they are all worthy of one another. The Christian has hitherto been the 'moral being', a curiosity without equal - and, as 'moral being', more absurd, mendacious, vain, frivolous, harmful to himself than even the greatest despiser of mankind could have allowed himself to dream. Christian morality - the most malicious form of the will to the lie, the actual Circe of mankind: that which has ruined it. It is not error as error which horrifies me at the sight of this, not the millennia-long lack of 'good will', of discipline, of decency, of courage in spiritual affairs which betrays itself in its victory - it is the lack of nature, it is the utterly ghastly fact that anti-nature itself has received the highest honours as morality, and has hung over mankind as law, as categorical imperative!... To blunder to this extent, not as an individual, not as a people, but as mankind!... That contempt has been taught for the primary instincts of life; that a 'soul', a 'spirit' has been lyingly invented in order to destroy the body; that one teaches that there is something unclean in the precondition of life, sexuality; that the evil principle is sought in that which is most profoundly necessary for prosperity, in strict selfishness (- the very word is slanderous!); that on the other hand one sees in the typical signs of decline and contradictoriness of instinct, in the 'selfless', in loss of centre of gravity, in 'depersonalization' and 'love of one's neighbour' (- lust for one's neighbour!) the higher value, what am I saying! value in itself!... What! could mankind itself be in décadence? has it always been? - What is certain is that it has been taught only décadence values as supreme values. The morality of unselfing is the morality of decline par excellence, the fact 'I am perishing' translated into the imperative 'you all shall perish' - and not only into the imperative!... This sole morality which has hitherto been taught, the morality of unselfing, betrays a will to the end, it denies the very foundations of life. - Let us here leave the possibility open that it is not mankind which is degenerating but only that parasitic species of man the priest, who with the aid of morality has lied himself up to being the determiner of mankind's values - who divines in Christian morality his means to power... And that is in fact my insight: the teachers, the leaders of mankind, theologians included, have also one and all been décadents: thence the revaluation of all values into the inimical to life, thence morality... Definition of morality: morality - the idiosyncrasy of décadents with the hidden intention of avenging themselves on life - and successfully. I set store by this definition.

8

- Have I been understood? - I have not just now said a word that I could not have said five years ago through the mouth of Zarathustra. - The unmasking of Christian morality is an event without equal, a real catastrophe. He who exposes it is a force majeure, a destiny - he breaks the history of mankind into two parts. One lives before him, one lives after him... The lightning-bolt of truth struck precisely that which formerly stood highest: he who grasps what was then destroyed had better see whether he has anything at all left in his hands. Everything hitherto called 'truth' is recognized as the most harmful, malicious, most subterranean form of the lie; the holy pretext of 'improving' mankind as the cunning to suck out life itself and to make it anaemic. Morality as vampirism... He who unmasks morality has therewith unmasked the valuelessness of all values which are or have been believed in; he no longer sees in the most revered, even canonized types of man anything venerable, he sees in them the most fateful kind of abortion, fateful because they exercise fascination... The concept 'God' invented as the antithetical concept to life - everything harmful, noxious, slanderous, the whole mortal enmity against life brought into one terrible unity! The concept 'the Beyond', 'real world' invented so as to deprive of value the only world which exists - so as to leave over no goal, no reason, no task for our earthly reality! The concept 'soul', 'spirit', finally even 'immortal soul', invented so as to despise the body, so as to make it sick - 'holy' - so as to bring to all the things in life which deserve serious attention, the questions of nutriment, residence, cleanliness, weather, a horrifying frivolity! Instead of health 'salvation of the soul' - which is to say a folie circulaire between spasms of atonement and redemption hysteria! The concept 'sin' invented together with the instrument of torture which goes with it, the concept of 'free will', so as to confuse the instincts, so as to make mistrust of the instincts into second nature! In the concept of the 'selfless', of the 'self-denying' the actual badge of décadence, being lured by the harmful, no longer being able to discover where one's advantage lies, self-destruction, made the sign of value in general, made 'duty', 'holiness', the 'divine' in man! Finally - it is the most fearful - in the concept of the good man common cause made with everything weak, sick, illconstructed, suffering from itself, all that which ought to perish - the law of selection crossed, an ideal made of opposition to the proud and well-constituted, to the affirmative man, to the man certain of the future and guaranteeing the future - the latter is henceforth called the evil man... And all this was believed in as morality! - Ecrasez l'infâme! -

9

- Have I been understood? - Dionysos against the Crucified...

注释

'We strive after the forbidden' (Ovid).

Twilight of the Idols

or How to Philosophize with a Hammer

Maxims and Arrows

1. Idleness is the beginning of psychology. What? could psychology be - a vice?



2. Even the bravest of us rarely has the courage for what he really knows...



3. To live alone one must be an animal or a god - says Aristotle. There is yet a third case: one must be both - a philosopher.



4. 'All truth is simple' - Is that not a compound lie? -



5. Once and for all, there is a great deal I do not want to know. - Wisdom sets bounds even to knowledge.



6. It is by being 'natural' that one best recovers from one's unnaturalness, from one's spirituality...



7. Which is it? Is man only God's mistake or God only man's mistake? -



8. From the military school of life - What does not kill me makes me stronger.



9. Help thyself: then everyone will help thee too. Principle of Christian charity.



10. Let us not be cowardly in face of our actions! Let us not afterwards leave them in the lurch! - Remorse of conscience is indecent.



11. Can an ass be tragic? - To be crushed by a burden one can neither bear nor throw off?... The case of the philosopher.



12. If we possess our why of life we can put up with almost any how. - Man does not strive after happiness; only the Englishman does that.



13. Man created woman - but what out of? Out of a rib of his God, of his 'ideal'...



14. What? you are seeking? you want to multiply yourself by ten, by a hundred? you are seeking followers? - Seek noughts!



15. Posthumous men - like me, for instance - are not so well understood as timely men, but they are listened to better. More precisely: we are never understood - and hence our authority...



16. Among women. - 'Truth? Oh, you don't know the truth, do you! Is it not an outrage on all our pudeurs?' -



17. This is an artist as an artist should be, modest in his requirements: there are only two things he really wants, his bread and his art - panem et Circen...



18. He who does not know how to put his will into things at least puts a meaning into them: that is, he believes there is a will in them already (principle of 'belief').



19. What? you have chosen virtue and the heaving bosom, yet at the same time look with envy on the advantages enjoyed by those who live for the day? - But with virtue one renounces 'advantage'... (laid at the door of an anti-Semite).



20. The complete woman perpetrates literature in the same way as she perpetrates a little sin: as an experiment, in passing, looking around to see if someone notices and so that someone may notice...



21. To get into only those situations in which illusory virtues are of no use, but in which, like the tightrope-walker on his rope, one either falls or stands - or gets off...



22. 'Bad men have no songs' - How is it the Russians have songs?



23. 'German spirit': for eighteen years a contradictio in adjecta.



24. In order to look for beginners one becomes a crab. The historian looks backwards; at last he also believes backwards.



25. Contentment protects one even from catching a cold. Has a woman who knew she was well dressed ever caught a cold? - I am assuming she was hardly dressed at all.



26. I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity.



27. Women are considered deep - why? because one can never discover any bottom to them. Women are not even shallow.



28. If a woman possesses manly virtues one should run away from her; and if she does not possess them she runs away herself.



29. 'How much the conscience formerly had to bite on! what good teeth it had! - And today? what's the trouble?' - A dentist's question.



30. One seldom commits only one rash act. In the first rash act one always does too much. For just that reason one usually commits a second - and then one does too little...



31. When it is trodden on a worm will curl up. That is prudent. It thereby reduces the chance of being trodden on again. In the language of morals: humility. -



32. Hatred of lies and dissembling may arise out of a sensitive notion of honour; the same hatred may arise out of cowardice, in as much as lying is forbidden by divine command. Too cowardly to tell lies...



33. How little is needed for happiness! The note of a bagpipe. - Without music life would be a mistake. The German even thinks of God as singing songs.



34. On ne peut penser et écrire qu'assis (G. Flaubert). - Now I have you, nihilist! Assiduity is the sin against the holy spirit. Only ideas won by walking have any value.



35. There are times when we are like horses, we psychologists, and grow restive: we see our own shadow moving up and down before us. The psychologist has to look away from himself in order to see at all.



36. Whether we immoralists do virtue any harm? - As little as anarchists do princes. Only since they have been shot at do they again sit firmly on their thrones. Moral: one must shoot at morals.



37. You run on ahead? - Do you do so as a herdsman? or as an exception? A third possibility would be as a deserter... First question of conscience.



38. Are you genuine? or only an actor? A representative? or that itself which is represented? - Finally you are no more than an imitation of an actor... Second question of conscience.



39. The disappointed man speaks. - I sought great human beings, I never found anything but the apes of their ideal.



40. Are you one who looks on? or who sets to work? - or who looks away, turns aside... Third question of conscience.



41. Do you want to accompany? or go on ahead? or go off alone?... One must know what one wants and that one wants. - Fourth question of conscience.



42. For me they were steps, I have climbed up upon them - therefore I had to pass over them. But they thought I wanted to settle down on them...



43. What does it matter that I am proved right! I am too much in the right. - And he who laughs best today will also laugh last.



44. Formula of my happiness; a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal...

The Four Great Errors

1

The error of confusing cause and consequence. - There is no more dangerous error than that of mistaking the consequence for the cause: I call it reason's intrinsic form of corruption. None the less, this error is among the most ancient and most recent habits of mankind: it is even sanctified among us, it bears the names 'religion' and 'morality'. Every proposition formulated by religion and morality contains it, priests and moral legislators are the authors of this corruption of reason. - I adduce an example. Everyone knows the book of the celebrated Cornaro in which he recommends his meagre diet as a recipe for a long and happy life - a virtuous one, too. Few books have been so widely read; even now many thousands of copies are printed in England every year. I do not doubt that hardly any book (the Bible rightly excepted) has done so much harm, has shortened so many lives, as this curiosity, which was so well meant. The reason: mistaking the consequence for the cause. The worthy Italian saw in his diet the cause of his long life: while the prerequisite of long life, an extraordinarily slow metabolism, a small consumption, was the cause of his meagre diet. He was not free to eat much or little as he chose, his frugality was not an act of 'free will': he became ill when he ate more. But if one is not a bony fellow of this sort one does not merely do well, one positively needs to eat properly. A scholar of our day, with his rapid consumption of nervous energy, would kill himself with Cornaro's regimen. Credo experto. -

2

The most general formula at the basis of every religion and morality is: 'Do this and this, refrain from this and this - and you will be happy! Otherwise...' Every morality, every religion is this imperative - I call it the great original sin of reason, immortal unreason. In my mouth this formula is converted into its reverse - first example of my 'revaluation of all values': a well-constituted human being, a 'happy one', must perform certain actions and instinctively shrinks from other actions, he transports the order of which he is the physiological representative into his relations with other human beings and with things. In a formula: his virtue is the consequence of his happiness... Long life, a plentiful posterity is not the reward of virtue, virtue itself is rather just that slowing down of the metabolism which also has, among other things, a long life, a plentiful posterity, in short Cornarism, as its outcome. - The Church and morality say: 'A race, a people perishes through vice and luxury'. My restored reason says: when a people is perishing, degenerating physiologically, vice and luxury (that is to say the necessity for stronger and stronger and more and more frequent stimulants, such as every exhausted nature is acquainted with) follow therefrom. A young man grows prematurely pale and faded. His friends say: this and that illness is to blame. I say: that he became ill, that he failed to resist the illness, was already the consequence of an impoverished life, an hereditary exhaustion. The newspaper reader says: this party will ruin itself if it makes errors like this. My higher politics says: a party which makes errors like this is already finished - it is no longer secure in its instincts. Every error, of whatever kind, is a consequence of degeneration of instinct, disgregation of will: one has thereby virtually defined the bad. Everything good is instinct - and consequently easy, necessary, free. Effort is an objection, the god is typically distinguished from the hero (in my language: light feet are the first attribute of divinity).

3

The error of a false causality. - We have always believed we know what a cause is: but whence did we derive our knowledge, more precisely our belief we possessed this knowledge? From the realm of the celebrated 'inner facts', none of which has up till now been shown to be factual. We believed ourselves to be causal agents in the act of willing; we at least thought we were there catching causality in the act. It was likewise never doubted that all the antecedentia of an action, its causes, were to be sought in the consciousness and could be discovered there if one sought them - as 'motives': for otherwise one would not have been free to perform it, responsible for it. Finally, who would have disputed that a thought is caused? that the ego causes the thought?... Of these three 'inner facts' through which causality seemed to be guaranteed the first and most convincing was that of will as cause; the conception of a consciousness ('mind') as cause and later still that of the ego (the 'subject') as cause are merely after-products after causality had, on the basis of will, been firmly established as a given fact, as empiricism... Meanwhile, we have thought better. Today we do not believe a word of it. The 'inner world' is full of phantoms and false lights: the will is one of them. The will no longer moves anything, consequently no longer explains anything - it merely accompanies events, it can also be absent. The so-called 'motive': another error. Merely a surface phenomenon of consciousness, an accompaniment to an act, which conceals rather than exposes the antecedentia of the act. And as for the ego! It has become a fable, a fiction, a play on words: it has totally ceased to think, to feel and to will!... What follows from this? There are no spiritual causes at all! The whole of the alleged empiricism which affirmed them has gone to the devil! That is what follows! - And we had made a nice misuse of that 'empiricism', we had created the world on the basis of it as a world of causes, as a world of will, as a world of spirit. The oldest and longest-lived psychology was at work here - indeed it has done nothing else: every event was to it an action, every action the effect of a will, the world became for it a multiplicity of agents, an agent ('subject') foisted itself upon every event. Man projected his three 'inner facts', that in which he believed more firmly than in anything else, will, spirit, ego, outside himself - he derived the concept 'being' only from the concept 'ego', he posited 'things' as possessing being according to his own image, according to his concept of the ego as cause. No wonder cause-creating drive; we want to have a reason for feeling as we do - for feeling well or for feeling ill. It never suffices us simply to establish the mere fact that we feel as we do: we acknowledge this fact - become conscious of it - only when we have furnished it with a motivation of some kind. - The memory, which in such a case becomes active without our being aware of it, calls up earlier states of a similar kind and the causal interpretations which have grown out of them - not their causality. To be sure, the belief that these ideas, the accompanying occurrences in the consciousness, were causes is also brought up by the memory. Thus there arises an habituation to a certain causal interpretation which in truth obstructs and even prohibits an investigation of the cause.

5

Psychological explanation. - To trace something unknown back to something known is alleviating, soothing, gratifying and gives moreover a feeling of power. Danger, disquiet, anxiety attend the unknown - the first instinct is to eliminate these distressing states. First principle: any explanation is better than none. Because it is at bottom only a question of wanting to get rid of oppressive ideas, one is not exactly particular about what means one uses to get rid of them: the first idea which explains that the unknown is in fact the known does so much good that one 'holds it for true'. Proof by pleasure ('by potency') as criterion of truth. - The cause-creating drive is thus conditioned and excited by the feeling of fear. The question 'why?' should furnish, if at all possible, not so much the cause for its own sake as a certain kind of cause - a soothing, liberating, alleviating cause. That something already known, experienced, inscribed in the memory is posited as cause is the first consequence of this need. The new, the unexperienced, the strange is excluded from being cause. - Thus there is sought not only some kind of explanation as cause, but a selected and preferred kind of explanation, the kind by means of which the feeling of the strange, new, unexperienced is most speedily and most frequently abolished - the most common explanations. - Consequence: a particular kind of causeascription comes to preponderate more and more, becomes concentrated into a system and finally comes to dominate over the rest, that is to say simply to exclude other causes and explanations. - The banker thinks at once of 'business', the Christian of 'sin', the girl of her love.

6

The entire realm of morality and religion falls under this concept of imaginary causes. - 'Explanation' of unpleasant general feelings. They arise from beings hostile to us (evil spirits: most celebrated case - hysterics misunderstood as witches). They arise from actions we cannot approve of (the feeling of 'sin', of 'culpability' foisted upon a physiological discomfort - one always finds reasons for being discontented with oneself). They arise as punishments, as payment for something we should not have done, should not have been (generalized in an impudent form by Schopenhauer into a proposition in which morality appears for what it is, the actual poisoner and calumniator of life: 'Every great pain, whether physical or mental, declares what it is we deserve; for it could not have come upon us if we had not deserved it.' World as Will and Idea Ⅱ 666). They arise as the consequences of rash actions which have turned out badly (- the emotions, the senses assigned as 'cause', as 'to blame'; physiological states of distress construed, with the aid of other states of distress, as 'deserved'). - 'Explanation' of pleasant general feelings. They arise from trust in God. They arise from the consciousness of good actions (the so-called 'good conscience', a physiological condition sometimes so like a sound digestion as to be mistaken for it). They arise from the successful outcome of undertakings (- naïve fallacy: the successful outcome of an undertaking certainly does not produce any pleasant general feelings in a hypochondriac or a Pascal). They arise from faith, hope and charity - the Christian virtues. - In reality all these supposed explanations are consequential states and as it were translations of pleasurable and unpleasurable feelings into a false dialect: one is in a state in which one can experience hope because the physiological basic feeling is once more strong and ample; one trusts in God because the feeling of plenitude and strength makes one calm. - Morality and religion fall entirely under the psychology of error: in every single case cause is mistaken for effect; or the effect of what is believed true is mistaken for the truth; or a state of consciousness is mistaken for the causation of this state.

7

The error of free will. - We no longer have any sympathy today with the concept of 'free will': we know only too well what it is - the most infamous of all the arts of the theologian for making mankind 'accountable' in his sense of the word, that is to say for making mankind dependent on him... I give here only the psychology of making men accountable. - Everywhere accountability is sought, it is usually the instinct for punishing and judging which seeks it. One has deprived becoming of its innocence if being in this or that state is traced back to will, to intentions, to accountable acts: the doctrine of will has been invented essentially for the purpose of punishment, that is of finding guilty. The whole of the old-style psychology, the psychology of will, has as its precondition the desire of its authors, the priests at the head of the ancient communities, to create for themselves a right to ordain punishments - or their desire to create for God a right to do so... Men were thought of as 'free' so that they could become guilty: consequently, every action had to be thought of as willed, the origin of every action as lying in the consciousness (- whereby the most fundamental falsification in psychologicis was made into the very principle of psychology)... Today, when we have started to move in the reverse direction, when we immoralists especially are trying with all our might to remove the concept of guilt and the concept of punishment from the world and to purge psychology, history, nature, the social institutions and sanctions of them, there is in our eyes no more radical opposition than that of the theologians, who continue to infect the innocence of becoming with 'punishment' and 'guilt' by means of the concept of the 'moral world-order'. Christianity is a hangman's metaphysics...

8

What alone can our teaching be? - That no one gives a human being his qualities: not God, not society, not his parents or ancestors, not he himself (- the nonsensical idea here last rejected was propounded, as 'intelligible freedom', by Kant, and perhaps also by Plato before him). No one is accountable for existing at all, or for being constituted as he is, or for living in the circumstances and surroundings in which he lives. The fatality of his nature cannot be disentangled from the fatality of all that which has been and will be. He is not the result of a special design, a will, a purpose; he is not the subject of an attempt to attain to an 'ideal of man' or an 'ideal of happiness' or an 'ideal of morality' - it is absurd to want to hand over his nature to some purpose or other. We invented the concept 'purpose': in reality purpose is lacking... One is necessary, one is a piece of fate, one belongs to the whole, one is in the whole - there exists nothing which could judge, measure, compare, condemn our being, for that would be to judge, measure, compare, condemn the whole... But nothing exists apart from the whole! - That no one is any longer made accountable, that the kind of being manifested cannot be traced back to a causa prima, that the world is a unity neither as sensorium nor as 'spirit', this alone is the great liberation - thus alone is the innocence of becoming restored... The concept 'God' has hitherto been the greatest objection to existence... We deny God; in denying God, we deny accountability: only by doing that do we redeem the world. -

The Hammer Speaks

'Why so hard?' the charcoal once said to the diamond; 'for are we not close relations?'

Why so soft? O my brothers, thus I ask you: for are you not - my brothers?

Why so soft, unresisting and yielding? Why is there so much denial and abnegation in your hearts? So little fate in your glances?

And if you will not be fates, if you will not be inexorable: how can you - conquer with me?

And if your hardness will not flash and cut and cut to pieces: how can you one day - create with me?

For all creators are hard. And it must seem bliss to you to press your hand upon millennia as upon wax,

bliss to write upon the will of millennia as upon metal - harder than metal, nobler than metal. Only the noblest is perfectly hard.

This new law-table do I put over you, O my brothers: Become hard!

目 录

中文目录

英文目录

企鹅口袋书系列·伟大的思想

看不见的手

(英汉双语)





[英]亚当·斯密 著

      马睿 译











中国出版集团

中国对外翻译出版公司

1

论劳动分工

人类劳动生产力最显著的提高,以及人们在进行劳动、应用劳动时所体现出来的绝大部分技能、熟练性和决断力,似乎都是劳动分工的结果。

要了解劳动分工在社会的一般事务中的作用,比较容易的方法是考察在某些具体的制造业中是如何进行劳动分工的。人们普遍认为,在某些微不足道的制造业中,劳动分工是最细的;或许并不是这些微不足道的制造业真的要比那些更为重要的制造业分工更细,而是在那些只须满足少数人的少量需求的微小制造业中,工人的总数必然很少,整个工作过程中各个不同部门雇用的人员往往可以聚集在同一个车间,我们可以一下子就看见他们。相反,在那些满足大多数人的大量需求的大型制造业中,工作过程中每一个不同的工作部门都会雇用很多人,所以不可能将他们集中在一个车间干活。除了在同一个部门干活的人之外,我们很少能一次看见很多人。因此,尽管和那些微小的制造业相比,这类制造业中的劳动实际上划分要细致得多,分成很多部门,但其分工并不是特别明显,因而不太会被人注意。

故试举一个非常微小的制造业,在该制造业中人们往往能够注意到劳动分工的例子,比如别针制造业。一个没有受过任何职业培训(劳动分工使之成为一种专门的职业),也不熟悉该职业所使用的机械如何应用(同样,这类机械的发明很可能是劳动分工的结果)的人或许无论怎样吃苦耐劳,勤勤恳恳,也不一定能一天做出一枚别针,更不能做20枚了。但是该行业发展到今天,不仅整个工作已成为专门的职业,而且这种职业又分成了许多部门,其中大部分部门又逐渐成为专门的职业。一个人抽出铁丝,另一个人将其拉直,第三个人将其切断,第四个人将其一端削尖,第五个人将另一端打磨好以便装上圆头;制作圆头则另需要三种不同的操作;装圆头、把针涂白,以及把针装到纸盒里都已经是专门的职业。这样,别针制造这样一个重要的职业就被分成大约18种不同的工序。在有些工厂中,这18种不同的工序分别由18个人操作,而在其他工厂,有时会有一个人担任两三种不同的操作。我见过一间这种类型的小工厂,只雇用了10个人,其中有几个人从事两三种不同的操作。尽管他们很穷而根本不考虑购买必要的机械设备,但他们如果勤勉努力,仍然能够每天制造12磅重的别针。中等大小的别针,1磅最多可达4000枚。以此计算,这10个人一天最多可以生产48000枚别针,每个人的生产量为这一总数的1/10,这样我们可以大致推断出,每人每天可以制造4800枚别针。但是如果所有这些人分开独立工作,且其中没有人受过该行业的专门培训的话,则每人每天制造的别针数量不会达到20枚,甚至有可能1枚也制造不出来;那样一来,他们每天的工作量或许不及现今工作量的1/240,甚至不及现今工作量的1/4800,相比之下,如今的高效正是合理分工和不同工种之间协同合作的结果。

别针制造虽然是微不足道的行业,但就劳动分工的效果来说,其他各种工艺和制造业与其没有什么差别,尽管许多行业中的劳动分工没有这么细,也不可能简化成如此简单的操作。然而一旦可以进行劳动分工,则必然可以在每一种工艺中相应地提高劳动生产力。各个行业之所以各自分立,雇用不同的员工,似乎也是因为劳动分工能够带来这样的裨益。那些工业水平和劳动生产力水平极高的国家,其行业分工的程度也很高;在较为原始的社会中由一个人完成的工作,在较为现代的国家则一般需要好几个人协作完成。在每一个进步的社会中,农民一般只是单纯的农民,而制造业者也只是单纯的制造业者。而且任何一件完整的制造业产品也几乎总是必须由许多人共同完成。以制麻业和毛织业为例,从亚麻和羊毛的生产到麻布的漂白和烫平,再到麻布的染色和浆纱,各部门使用了许多不同的技艺。和制造业相比,农业的性质的确不容许有这么多精细的劳动分工,各种工作彼此也不像制造业那样完全独立分开。我们不可能将养畜人和谷物种植者的工作截然分立,但是木匠和铁匠所从事的工艺则完全不同。纺纱和织布几乎是完全不同的两个行当,而犁耕、耙掘、播种和收割经常可以由同一个人进行。农业对这些不同种类劳动的需要是随着一年中季节的变化而变换的,因此不可能雇用一个人经常性地来从事其中任何一种劳动。或许正因为不能雇用完全不同的人来从事不同类型的农业劳动,农业生产力的提高总是不能够与工业同步。的确,一般来说最富有的国家在农业和制造业方面都要优于邻国,然而相对于农业而言,这些国家在制造业方面的优越性通常更为明显和突出。在这些富有的国家,土地的耕种情况更好,所投入的劳动力和资本也更多,在土地面积和肥沃程度相同的情况下,也能有更多的产出。因而其农产品产量上的优越程度很少能与劳动力和资本投入上的优越程度成正比。在农业方面,富国和穷国劳动力的生产力水平差异并不一定很大;或至少不会像制造业的生产力水平差异那么大。因此,如果质量相同的话,富国生产的谷物价格不一定会比穷国低廉。在质量相同的情况下,波兰生产的谷物价格可能会和法国一样,尽管后者的富裕和社会进步程度要优于前者。在法国那些生产谷物的省份,谷物的质量和英国的谷物完全没有差别,在大多数年份中其价格也与英国谷物持平,尽管法国的富裕和社会进步程度或许要逊于英国。然而就田地的耕种水平来说,英国要高于法国,据说法国的耕种水平也大大高于波兰。不过尽管在耕种水平较为低下的穷国,谷物的价格和质量可以在一定程度上与富国媲美,但在制造业方面则根本不能妄想;至少在富国的土壤、气候和天然条件适合这些制造业的时候,情况是这样。法国的丝绸比英国的更物美价廉,因为至少在当前生丝进口关税如此之高的情况下,法国的气候比英国更适宜丝绸生产。然而英国的五金器具和生羊毛无论从哪一方面来说都远胜于法国,在质量相同的前提下,其价格也比法国便宜。据说波兰除了少数几种家庭用品制造业外几乎没有什么制造业,这少数几种还都是些较为原始的,任何国家都不可或缺的制造业。

有了劳动分工,单位数量的人在单位时间内可以从事的工作比过去多得多,主要有三个原因:首先,每一个工人的劳动熟练程度提高了;其次,由一个工种转到另一个工种通常要损失很多时间,现在这些时间省下了;最后,大量提高劳动效率、精简劳动强度的机器的发明,使得如今一个人可以做过去许多人做的工作。

先看第一个原因。工人劳动熟练程度的提高必然会增加他可以从事的劳动的数量;劳动分工将每一个人的业务简化为某一种简单的操作,这又使这一操作成为此人一生所从事的唯一职业,由此必然会大大提高工人的劳动熟练程度。一个惯于使用铁锤却从不曾练习如何制作铆钉的铁匠,一旦遭遇某种特殊情况必须试着制作铆钉,我坚信他每天可能最多制作两三枚,且铆钉的质量还低劣不堪。即便是经常制作铆钉的铁匠,如果铆钉制作不是他唯一或主要的工作,即使他竭尽全力,也很难在一天之内制作出800或1000枚铆钉。我见过几个不到20岁的青年,他们除了制作铆钉外没有练习过其他技艺,这些人如果竭尽全力,则每人每天最多可以制作2300枚铆钉。然而制作铆钉绝不是最为简单的操作。同一个人要拉风箱,要在必要时调整火力,要将铁烧热,锤打铆钉的每一部分;在锻造钉头时他还不得不换工具。如果将制作一枚别针或一个金属钮扣的整个工序细分成不同的操作,所有的操作就要简单得多,如果一个人以其中的某一种操作作为一生的职业的话,其劳动的熟练程度就要高得多。制造业中某些工序的完成速度极其快,在那些从未亲眼见过的人看来,人类的双手根本不可能可以达到这样的速度。

第二,由一个工种转换到另一个工种通常要损失很多时间,而节省这段时间所带来的好处也绝不是我们一开始就能够想到的。人们不可能从一个工种很快转换到另一个位于不同地点且需要完全不同的工具进行操作的工种。一个乡间的织工同时耕种一小片耕地,离开织机走到田间就需要一段时间,从田间回到织机还需要一段时间。诚然,如果可以在同一个车间进行两种业务操作,所花费的时间无疑会减少很多,但即使是这样,浪费仍然是巨大的。人们从一个工作转到另一个工作,一般都会休息或闲逛一会儿,很难在刚开始一项新工作时就精力集中地全情投入;这时他们总是难免心不在焉,因此有一段时间与其说他们在工作,不如说他们在虚晃时间。每一个农村劳动者因为每半个小时就要更换工作和工具,一生中几乎每天都要做20种不同的工作,自然而且一定会养成这种闲逛和懒散的习惯,这常常会导致农村劳动者总是懒惰散漫,即使时间紧迫,他们也不能够全身心地投入工作。这样看来,先不说他是否技艺娴熟,单此一个原因,就大大降低了他的工作效率。

第三,也是最后一个原因。每个人都知道应用适当的机械设备能够在某种程度上提高劳动效率、简化劳动工序,再举例论证难免多余。因此我在这里只需讨论一下,所有那些提高效率、简化工序的机器之所以被发明问世,起因也都是劳动分工。只有人们不再在各种工序和工具的转换中浪费时间,而是全身心地投入到一个目标上时,才更有可能发现更加简单和快速地达到该目标的方法。而分工的结果,正是每个人都自然而然地把全部注意力投注在某一种很单一的目标上。因此只要工作的性质还有改良的余地,在每一个具体劳动部门从事具体劳动的人自然会很快发现新的方法,使其自身的工作更加简单,完成起来也更容易。在劳动分工最细的制造业中使用的大多数机器,最初都是由普通工人发明的,他们受雇从事某些很简单的操作,自然会考虑如何找到更加简单和快速的方法来执行这些操作。那些常去这类制造业参观的人一定会经常看到这类设计相当巧妙的机器,它们就是这类工人为了改进和提高各自特定工作的效率而发明的。在最早的蒸汽机中,本来需要雇用一个男孩根据活塞的升降不断转换开关,连接和断开锅炉和汽缸之间的通路。其中一个男孩因为贪玩,发现在开关该通路的阀门把手处系上一根绳子,阀门即可自行开关,这样他就能跑去和玩伴们游戏了。这是自蒸汽机发明以来人们对其做出的最大改进之一,而这一改进正是一个希望节省劳动的小男孩发现的。

然而,绝不是所有机械设备的改进都是有机会使用这些机器的人发明的。许多改进是出于机械制造师的聪明才智,而所谓的机械制造师,正是在机械制造成为一个专门行业之后形成的;有些则是所谓的哲学家或思想者的智慧结晶,他们并非每日身体力行地做事,而是以观察万物为业;因此,这些人往往能够将一些完全不同且毫不相干的事物的力量结合起来加以利用。和其他各个行业一样,随着社会的逐渐进步,哲学或思考也成为某一类公民主要或唯一的职业。同样,和其他各个行业一样,哲学也被细分为大量不同的分支,每一个分支又为一群或一类哲学家提供专门职业;哲学行业的分工,也和所有其他行业的细致分工一样,提高了人们的技艺熟练程度,节约了时间。每个人更加专精于自己所从事的那份工作。这样一来,从总体而言,就能做更多的工作,从而大大提高了这门学问的整体质量。

在一个治理得很好的社会中,正是劳动分工使得所有不同行业的生产力水平大为提高,为整个社会带来了普遍财富,最底层的人也能够享受到这种普遍财富带来的利益。每个工人在自己的工作中所创造的产品大大超出了他自己的需要;所有其他人的情况也完全一样,能用大量自己的产品换得大量他人生产的产品或等价物品。他大量提供给他人所需要的产品,后者也同样大量满足他个人的需要;整个社会的所有阶层就普遍富裕起来。

考察一下一个文明和繁荣国家中最普通的工匠或临时工的生活用品,你就会知道,为了使他们能享用到这些生活用品,那些行业中的人必须提供自己生产的一部分,但这样的人却多得难以计数。以临时工身上穿的羊毛外衣为例,无论看起来多么粗制滥造,也是许许多多工人共同劳动的成果。牧羊人、选毛人、梳毛人、染工、梳理工、纺工、织工、漂洗工、裁缝工,等等,必须将这些人的工作结合起来,才能够完成如此简单朴素的一件产品。加之这些劳动者的住处往往相隔很远,在彼此之间运送材料,又需要多少商人和运输工人啊!染工所使用的染料往往来自世界另一端某个遥远的角落,要将各种不同的染料汇集在一起,又需要多少商人、运输工,加上船工、水手、帆布和绳索制造者的辛勤工作!还有,这些工人手中拿的哪怕是最简单的工具,又需要多少不同的劳动工种相互协作!水手的船只、漂洗工的作坊,甚至织工的织机这类复杂的机械姑且不论,单说那无比简单的器具,牧羊人修剪羊毛的剪刀,都需要许多种不同的劳动才能制成。为了生产这样一把简单的剪刀,就需要把采矿工、熔炉制造工、伐木工、熔矿炉所用焦炭的烧炭工、制砖工、泥瓦匠、锅炉工、作坊建造者、锻工、铁匠等所有人各自不同的技艺全部结合起来才行。如果我们以同样的方式再考察一下他身上穿的所有衣服或家里的所有家具,他贴身穿的粗麻衬衫、脚上穿的鞋子、家里睡的床,乃至这张床的不同部件、他在厨房做饭用的炉子、他做饭所用的煤炭(那可是从地下深处挖掘出来,或许经过很远的水路和陆路运输才到达他这里),乃至厨房里的其他各种用具、桌子上的所有用具、刀叉、盛放和分发食物用的陶瓷盘子和锡盘子,为他制作面包和啤酒要用到多少工种、雇用多少工人,他房间里保温、采光、遮风挡雨用的玻璃窗——那华美而令人愉快的发明中凝聚着多少知识和艺术,没有玻璃,整个北半球大概没有一处适宜人们舒适地居住——再想一想,为生产所有这些生活用品所雇用的人手中又要拿着多少种不同的工具;总之,如果我们考察一下所有这些物品,想一想其中每一件物品要雇用多少劳动力才能制成,就能够理解,在文明社会中,如果没有成千上万人的协助和合作,普通工人就不可能得到他通常所能得到的那些按照我们的理解,平常而又简单的生活用品。诚然,和大人物豪华奢侈的生活相比,普通工人的生活用品看上去当然无比简单;不过,这可是真的,欧洲某国王子的生活用品并非总是远超一个勤劳节俭的农民的生活用品,而后者的生活用品却超过了许多非洲君主的生活用品,要知道这些大人物可是成千上万赤裸草民生命和自由的绝对主宰啊!

2

劳动分工的原理

尽管人类智慧地预见到劳动分工能够带来普遍富裕,并希望利用它来实现这一目的,劳动分工,乃至其产生的诸多裨益,却不是人类智慧的结晶。它是人性中某种倾向的必然结果——尽管产生这种结果需要经历一个缓慢而渐进的过程,而其本身也未曾期待有如此广泛的效用——那就是物物交换、以物易物和互相交易的倾向。

这种倾向到底是人性中最原始又无法进一步解释说明的原则之一,还是听起来更接近于事实,是人类理性和言语能力的必然结果,并不是我们当前探究的话题。这种倾向人人皆有,亦为人所特有,其他动物不会拥有,其他动物似乎不懂得订立任何形式的契约——包括这种交换在内。两只猎犬在追逐同一只野兔时,有时会出现某种意义上的协同行为:将猎物驱往对方的方向,或者在猎物被逐至己方时努力拦截。然而猎犬之间的彼此“配合”并非因为它们受到某种契约的约束,而是因为恰巧在那个特定时刻,它们对同一个目标产生了共同的渴望。我们从未见过两只狗公平谨慎地交换彼此的骨头,也从未见过有任何动物通过自己的肢体动作和叫声向同类示意这是我的,那是你的;我想用我的这根骨头来换你的那根。如果动物想从人或者其他动物那里得到什么,除了博取对方欢心之外,没有其他的说服手段。小狗若要吃奶,就得奉承讨好母狗;家犬若要得到食物,就得在主人就餐之时做出种种娇态引起注意。人类对其同伴有时也会采用同样的手段。当有求于他人又没有其他办法达到目的时,他会卑躬屈膝、阿谀奉承来博得他人的好感。然而一个人并不总是如此幸运。在文明社会,人们随时会需要他人的各种合作和帮助,虽倾其一生也难以结交到几个知己好友。在其他动物中,每个个体一旦发育成熟便完全独立,在自然状态下,并不需要其他动物的帮助。但是人却时常需要同伴的帮助,而单单指望对方的善心是徒劳无益的。如果能够影响他们,利用其利己之心,使其明白此时提供帮助完全符合其自身的利益,那么达到目的可能性就要大一些。任何一个希望和他人进行交易的人都会这样提议。这种提议的要义在于:给我我想要的,你就能得到你想要的。正是通过这种方式,彼此得到了自己所需要的绝大部分服务。我们的一日三餐并非来自屠夫、酿酒师或面包烘焙师的恩惠,而是来源于他们对自身利益的考虑。我们不是向他们乞求仁慈,而是诉诸他们的利己之心;我们不谈论我们的需要,而只谈对他们的好处。除了乞丐,不会有人选择把大部分希望寄托于他人的恩惠,即使乞丐也并不全依赖于此。乐善好施之人的施舍的确为乞丐提供了全部生存必需品。由此,尽管乞丐通过这种方法最终获得了他的全部生活所需,但他没有,也不可能在每当有需要的时候得到自己想要的东西。和其他人一样,他也要通过协定、交换和购买来满足自己平时绝大多数的需求。他用某人施舍的钱买来了食物;用另一个人赠予的旧衣物换来适合自己尺寸的旧衣物,或栖身之所,或一餐食物,或者他把旧衣卖掉,用得来的钱随时购买自己需要的食物、衣服或住所。

正如人们通过协定、交换和买卖等方式彼此获得了自己需要的绝大部分服务,也正是这种相互交易的倾向最初引发了劳动分工。例如在以狩猎或游牧为生的部落,有人擅于打造弓弩,其技艺之娴熟超过其他族人。他便经常用自己制作的弓弩和族人交易,换得家禽和兽肉。并且他后来发现,通过交换得来的家禽和兽肉要比自己亲自去狩猎得到的更多。因此,出于个人利益之考虑,弓弩制作逐渐成为他的主要营生,如此他就成了最初意义上的弓弩制作师。另有人擅于制作棚屋或活动房的屋架和屋顶。他已习惯用自己的这门手艺,给族人制作屋架和屋顶来交换家禽和兽肉,直到后来他发现全力以赴于这门手艺符合他自身的利益,因此他也就成了最初的木匠。就这样,有人以同样的方式成为铁匠或铜匠,还有人成为毛皮或皮革(这是原始人类主要的衣料)硝皮人或鞣革人。因此,当人们确定能够用自己的劳动产品中自己消费不掉的所有剩余部分去交换自己需要的他人劳动产品的剩余部分时,便得到了鼓励,开始从事各自擅长的某一专门职业,并不断改进和完善自己为了从事这些专门职业的资质或才能。

事实上,不同的人在天赋才能上的差异比我们想象的要小得多,而且,促使人们最终从事不同职业的天赋差异,在其发展成熟之时,多半并非劳动分工的原因,而是分工的结果。两个特性全然不同的人,比如一个哲学家和一个普通的街头搬运工,与其说是天分有差异,倒不如说是后天的习惯、风俗和教育起到了很大的作用。在他们刚来到这个世界上前六年或者八年,两者几乎没有什么不同,无论是各自的父母还是玩伴都察觉不到两者之间有任何明显差异。也就在那个年纪,或者紧接着的几年里,他们开始了截然不同的活动。此后他们才能的差异才得以凸显并逐渐扩大,直到最后,哲学家的虚荣心使他不愿承认自己与搬运工之间存在任何相同之处。但是如果没有物物交换、以物易物和互相交易的倾向,每一个人都必须自己设法获得需要的生活必要品和便利品。所有的人都必须行使同样的职责,干同样的工作,那么,就没有什么职业上的差别,产生巨大才能差异的唯一根源也就不复存在了。

交换的倾向造就了才能的不同——不同职业者在才能上的差异看来极其显著——也正是这种倾向使得这种差异能够为人所用。要知道许多被认为属于同一族的动物在自然界中生存所产生的天资差异,要远远大于人类在未受习俗熏陶和教育影响时的天赋差异。就其本性而言,一个哲学家与一个街头搬运工在天资和性情上的差异,一点也不会比大獒犬与灰毛犬,或者灰毛犬与长毛犬,或者长毛犬与牧羊犬之间的差别更大。不过那些不同种类的动物,尽管都属于同一族,却很少能够对彼此有用。大獒犬以力大取胜,绝不会从灰毛犬的敏捷、长毛犬的聪明或牧羊犬的温顺中得到助益和激励。动物的这些天资与才能的差异,因为缺少易物或交换的能力和倾向,无法被摆放在同一个平台上加以利用,因而也就无法对改进生存条件和生存实利产生任何裨益。动物依然必须依靠个体的力量单枪匹马地存活和防卫,丝毫没有受益于自然界所赋予它们的个体差异。而人类则相反,即使是天分差别最大的人也会对彼此有用,可以说,人类利用各自才能生产的不同产品,通过交易,易物和交换这种普遍倾向,被摆放在同一个平台上。每个人在这里,可以根据自己的需要购买到他人利用其聪明才智生产的任何产品。

3

商业体系的原理

通常认为,政治经济学是经济学的一个分支,是政治家或立法者的经济学,它提出了两个明确的目标:其一,为该国征缴足量的税收或维持国民生存的钱款,更确切地讲,国民要能够为该国缴纳足量的税收或维持自身生存的钱款。其二,要为整个国家或全体国民提供足够的收入,使公共服务得以维系。简单地说,政治经济学的目标就是国富民强。

谈到国民的富足,各国在不同时期所经历的迈向富强之路各不相同,由此产生了两种迥异的政治经济体系:其一可谓商业体系,其二则是农业体系。

[……]

一个普遍的概念是,财富的多少是用货币或金银这两种贵金属的数量来衡量的,这源于货币的双重职能——既是交易工具又是价值尺度。鉴于货币的第一重性质,我们无需借助其他商品便可随时以货币换得自己需要的物品。人们总是觉得挣钱乃是大事,只要有钱,想买什么都轻而易举。而鉴于货币的第二重性质,我们一般会根据交换所用的货币数量来估量商品的价值。正因为如此,我们称富人价值千金,说穷人不名一文。我们说节俭吝啬或迫切渴望变富的人喜爱钱财,认为那些大大咧咧、出手大方,或生活富足的人不那么贪恋钱财。富有即是钱多,简单来讲,财富和货币在一般人的语言中没有丝毫差别。

正如富人腰缠万贯,富足之国理应储存大量的货币;无论哪个国家,走向富强的最便捷的途径莫过于积累大量金银。在发现美洲之后的一段时间里,西班牙人每登陆一个陌生的海岸,首先要做的,就是查看能否在附近找到金银。然后再根据搜集得来的相关信息判断该地是否值得定居,抑或该国是否值得征服。修道士普拉诺·卡尔比诺受法国教廷派遣前去拜见一代天骄成吉思汗的后人时就曾谈到,鞑靼人过去经常会问他法兰西王国是否牛羊遍野。鞑靼人的询问和西班牙人的实地调查有着同样的目的——都希望了解该国富裕的程度,从而判断是否值得征服。和任何其他游牧国家一样,鞑靼人通常并不清楚货币有何功用,取而代之成为交换媒介和价值尺度的是牛羊。因此,正如西班牙人认为金银的数量决定财富的多少,鞑靼人认为牛群的数量是衡量财富的决定因素。就这两种不同的观念而言,或许鞑靼人的想法更加接近事实。

洛克 【1】 先生曾评论过货币与其他动产的不同之处。他说,所有其他动产在本质上都容易消耗,因此其内含的价值并不十分可靠。一个国家可能在某一年对某种动产的拥有量十分充足,但即使没有任何出口,这种动产也很有可能仅仅因为国人的浪费或消耗而在下一年成为紧缺物品。与之相反,货币则十分稳定。在流通过程中,货币可能流经多方,但只要不流失到国外,它便不大可能被浪费或消耗。因此,按照洛克先生的说法,一个国家的可流通财富中最为可靠和真实的莫过于金银,那么根据这一点,增加国家对这两种金属的储备在他看来便是一国政治经济学的重要目标。

也有人认为,如果一个国家可以独立于全世界,那么该国国内流通的货币多少也就无关紧要了。使用该货币进行流通只不过是用一种消费品换得数量或多或少的另一种消费品,而在这些人看来,这个国家是真正富有还是贫穷将全然取决于那些可消费物品的多寡。但是另一方面,他们认为,如果一国要与他国建立联系、被迫与他国作战,或者必须维持远在他乡的军舰和军队开销,情况就完全不同了。这时只能向国外大量运送货币,而其前提就是该国国内拥有足量的货币储备。因此,所有这类国家都应该在和平年代竭力积累黄金白银,这样一旦战争爆发,它才能有强大的财力后盾。

由于深受这些通行观念的影响,欧洲各国都曾仔细研究如何通过各种途径在本国最大数量地储备金银,尽管这类研究几乎没有什么实际的收获。欧洲绝大部分金银矿藏位于西班牙和葡萄牙,向全欧输送金银的也主要是这两个国家。但两国或明令禁止金银输出,违者严惩,或课以高额关税。欧洲其他各国自古以来也都将类似禁令视为国策的一部分,甚至最出乎我们意料的,是古代苏格兰的某些议会法案也严厉禁止携带黄金白银出境,违者重罚。古时英法两国也都颁发过类似的法令。

然而,当那些国家成为商业国时,此禁令就会在许多情况下给商人带来诸多不便。无论是买进别国商品还是将本国商品出口到其他国家,金银在交易中都要比其他商品占据极大的优势。于是商人以不利于本国贸易为由,抵制这项禁令。

首先,他们声称以购买外国商品为目的输出金银不一定会减少本国的金银储量,恰恰相反,此举倒有可能增加金银储量。因为如果本国对该商品的消费不因进口而增加,则可以通过将其转售给其他国家获得更多利润,由此所得的金银收益或许要大大高于起初购买这些进口商品的支出。托马斯·孟 【2】 先生将国际贸易的这一运作方式比作农业中的播种和收割。他说:“如果我们只看到播种时农夫大把大把地将好玉米扔到地里,我们会认为他是个疯子。但是考虑到在他一年忙碌结束后的丰收,我们就会发现他当初的劳作不但应当应分,还能够产生更多的价值。”

商人们抵制该禁令的理由之二,是该禁令根本无法限制金银的输出,与其蕴含的巨大价值相比,金银的体积并不大,偷运到他国实为易事。用这些商人的话说,要想防止偷运走私成风,唯一的做法是适度地关注商人们所谓的“贸易差额”。如果一国的出口额大于进口额,则其他国家需要向其支付一部分贸易差额,这部分差额必然以金银的形式支付,因而该国的金银储量就会相应增加。而当该国贸易进口大于出口时,它就需要向其他国家支付国际贸易差额,因为同样需用金银支付,该国的金银储备就会相应减少。在这种情况下,禁止金银输出不仅不能达到预期效果,反而会因运输的风险增加而导致金银的价格高涨。他们还说,这样一来,整个贸易对于那些应支付贸易差额的国家更加不利;商人在他国交易需要从发行货币的银行那里购买汇票,不但要承担往那里运送货币本身的风险、麻烦和费用,还要承担该禁令带来的额外风险。而贸易越是对一国不利,这部分贸易差额对于应收取该差额的国家而言价值就越小。举英国和荷兰两国的贸易为例,如果英国的进口比出口多了5%,就需要用英国的105盎司白银在荷兰购买相当于100盎司白银的汇票:因而英国的这105盎司白银在荷兰将贬值到100盎司,只能购买价值100盎司的荷兰商品;而荷兰的100盎司白银在英国却升值到105盎司,且能购买价值105盎司的英国商品。英国商品在荷兰出售的价格相对便宜,荷兰商品在英国出售的价格相对昂贵,二者与正常价格的差距正是两国的贸易差额。相应的,英国货物所换回的荷兰货币量相对减少,荷兰货物所换回的英国货币相对增多,其减少和增多的幅度也相当于两国的贸易差额。因此,这种贸易差额必然会对英国造成相应程度的不利,必须将更多的金银运往荷兰,以弥补差额。

以上争论在某种程度上不无道理,在某种程度上也多少有些强词夺理。说其不无道理是,因为他们断言贸易中金银的输出可能往往对国家裨益颇多。同时也是因为,当个体国民发现输出金银能为他们带来好处时,任何禁令都将是一纸空文。谓之强词夺理是因为他们认为,保有或增加金银的数量,相对于保有或增加任何其他有用商品的数量而言,更需要政府关注;因为自由贸易完全能够确保其他商品的适量供应,无需政府给予过多的关心。谓之强词夺理还在于他们断言,兑换中的高价格必然会扩大所谓的贸易逆差,造成更多的金银出口。兑换中的高价格对用本国货币在他国支付的商人来说实为不利,商人们为购买本国银行在那些国家发行的汇票所支付的价格更高,高出的部分正是兑换差价。但是尽管禁令引发的风险可能会为银行引发额外费用,却未必需要将更多的货币输往该国。一般而言,这笔费用是在走私货币时在国内支付的,除了所汇出的实际金额外,私运者不会多输出一文钱。高汇率也自然会使商人努力平衡其出口和进口,以便尽可能少地以高汇率付款。此外,兑换中的高价格必定会起到类似课税的作用,因为它提高了他国商品的价格,减少了这些商品的消费。因此,兑换中的高价格不但不会增加这些商人所谓的贸易逆差,反而会使之缩小,并最终减少了金银的输出。

尽管如此,此番言论却使听者深信不疑。深谙商道的商人提出这些言论说服国家议会、亲王参事和贵族乡绅,暗喜后者对此一无所知。和商人们一样,乡绅贵族仅凭经验即可得知对外贸易可以富国,却对其如何富国的具体原理所知甚少。商人非常清楚对外贸易让他们自身致富的原理,这是他们的本分,至于如何富国却并绝非其分内之事。除了在他们有机会要求国家对有关对外贸易的法律进行一些调整之时,这个问题从来不在他们的考虑范围之内。只有在那时,他们才有必要谈及对外贸易的裨益,以及现行法律如何对这些裨益构成了障碍。在就此事做出决策的法官们听来这可真是再恰当不过的陈述:如对外贸易如何能够源源不断地为本国带来货币收入,而当前讨论的法律形成了障碍;如果没有该法律,对外贸易带来的收入将会更高,等等。论证最终达到了预期效果。在法国和英国,本国的铸币严禁输出,他国铸币和金条银块则可以自由出口。在荷兰和其他的一些地方,甚至本国的铸币也可以自由输出。政府关注的焦点不再是防范金银输出,而是转而关注贸易差额,以此作为可能引发国内金银增加或减少的唯一原因。对于前者的关注本是徒劳,而新的关注焦点看似更为错综复杂,却同样无济于事。《英国得自对外贸易的财富》,托马斯·孟先生这部著作的标题不仅成为英国政治经济学遵循的基本准则,也适用于任何其他商业国家。最重要的是,内陆贸易或国内贸易——在这种贸易中,同样数量的资本可以产生最大的收入,同时也为本国人民创造了最多的就业机会——却沦为国际贸易的附属品。人们认为,国内贸易既不能把货币带入国内,也不能把货币带到国外,国家也不可能因为国内贸易而变得更加富强或贫穷,除非国内贸易的兴旺与否会间接影响到国际贸易的形势。

好比没有葡萄园的人若要饮酒就只能与人交易,没有金银矿藏的国家无疑只能和他国交易获得金银。然而,对于国内和国际贸易,政府也似乎没有必要偏重两者之中的任何一种。一个人只要有购买葡萄酒的钱就能够随时买到葡萄酒,一个国家只要有购买金银的货币也就永远不会缺金少银。金银和其他商品一样,也有自己的价格;既然金银可以用来购买任何商品,任何商品也都可以用来购买金银。我们可以确信,即使没有政府的关注,贸易的自由总能在我们亟需好酒时及时供应好酒;同样我们也要深信,贸易的自由总能为我们提供用于商品流通或其他用途中用于购买或使用的全部金银。

在任何国家,人类劳动所能购买或生产的每一种商品的数量,都可以根据实际需求自我调节,这种需求也可以理解为那些愿意支付生产和出售该商品所需支付的全部地租、劳动力和利润的人的需求。但是没有哪一种商品能像金银这样根据实际需求容易做出准确的自我调节,这是因为金银这两种贵金属有限的体积蕴含了巨大的价值,比其他任何商品都更容易地周转于异地之间——从价格较低的地方周转至价格较高的地方,从金银供给充盈的地方周转至金银不足的地方。例如,如果英国需要一批额外数量的黄金,一艘邮船即可从里斯本或任何供应黄金的地方运来50吨黄金,可铸成500多万几尼 【3】 。但是如果需要同样价值的谷物,按1吨谷物价值5几尼计算,总共需要运送100万吨,假设每艘邮船的承载量为1000吨,则需要1000艘邮船。如此这般,英国海军全部用来运输都是不够的。

当一国进口金银的数量超出实际需求时,无论政府如何警惕小心,金银的出口都无法避免。西班牙和葡萄牙所有严苛残暴的法律都未能保住其国内的金银储量。西葡两国陆续从秘鲁和巴西进口的金银超出了两国的实际需求,导致两国金银价格低于周边国家。相反,如果任何国家的金银储量不能满足实际需求,从而使其价格高于邻国,政府就无需费心进口金银。即使政府想要费心去禁止进口金银,亦决不会奏效。当斯巴达人有足够的能力购买金银时,无论莱克格斯 【4】 制定怎样的法典设置障碍都无济于事,自有大量黄金白银源源不断地流入拉塞德蒙 【5】 。再严苛的关税法都挡不住从荷兰和戈登堡东印度公司进口茶叶,因为这些公司的茶叶比英国公司的便宜。不过另一方面,1磅茶叶的市价通常以白银计算,即使按最高价格,即16先令,这1磅茶叶的体积也相当于这16先令白银体积的100倍;如果用黄金,则相当于等价值的黄金体积的2000倍。走私茶叶的难度相对于走私金银,自然也须按此比例增加。

在某种程度上,正是由于金银比较容易从充足的市场转运到短缺的市场,这两种贵金属的价格不像其他大部分商品的价格那样不断上下波动,许多商品因为体积太大,很难在市场存货过多或过少时做出灵活反应。固然,金银的价格也并非完全稳定,但其可能发生的变动一般来说都是缓慢、渐进、统一的。举例来说,欧洲有些人认为——或许这样想并没有太多根据——在本世纪和上一个世纪,由于人们不断从西属西印度群岛进口金银,这两种贵金属一直在不断贬值,尽管贬值的过程是渐进的。然而要想使金银的价格发生突然变化,从而使得所有其他商品的货币价格立即发生合理而巨大的涨落,则需要像发现美洲所带来的那样的商业革命。

尽管如此,一个有财力购买金银的国家如果在什么时候短缺金银,补足这两种贵金属的供应几乎要比补足其他任何商品都更加方便。如果制造业的原料不足,工业必陷于停顿;如果食物供给不足,人们就要为饥饿所苦;但如果货币不足,易货贸易就可以代替用货币交换商品,只不过可能会有诸多不便。另一种方法是赊账买卖,交易各方每月或每年结算一次,互相补偿赊欠,这种方法就比易货贸易方便一些。如果能够利用一种调控得当的纸币,则不但没有任何不便,在某些情况下还能带来一些裨益。所以无论从哪个方面来说,任何国家的政府都绝对没有必要花费心思去关注货币数量的保有或增加问题。

然而,“货币稀缺”始终是我们最常听到的抱怨。货币和葡萄酒一样,对那些既无财力购买又没有信用赊购的人,永远是紧缺之物,而只要拥有财力或信用二者之一,就很少会在需要的时候感到匮乏。不过对货币稀缺的抱怨并不仅限于没有远虑的挥霍之人,有时整个商业城镇及附近地区会普遍感到货币短缺,过度贸易是造成这一现象的常见原因。即使足够稳重冷静的人,如果不按照当前的资金情况制定营运计划,也可能会像入不敷出的挥霍之人一样,既没有购买货币的资力,也缺乏借贷的信用。在计划完成之前,他们的财力就已经耗光,信用也跟着没有了,这时他们只有四处借贷,而人人都会说没钱借给他们。即使我们到处听到人们说货币短缺,也并不一定就证明国内流动的金银数量比通常减少了,而只表明许多人想要得到金银却无力支付罢了。贸易利润高于通常情况时,无论大小商人都会犯过度贸易的通病。此时他们输往国外的货币不一定比平常多,而是在国内外赊账购买非常大量的商品,并将其运往遥远的市场,期望在付款期限之内收到货款。一旦不能在付款期限之内收到货款,他们会既没有财力购买货币,也没有可靠的借贷担保。如此看来,对货币稀缺的普遍抱怨,根本不是由于金银的稀缺,而是在于债务人难于借贷,债权人又难于收回借款所致。

如果我们在此一针见血地论证财富并不在于金钱或金银的多少,而取决于可以用手中的金钱购买多少商品——也就是说,金钱只有在购买时才有价值,未免过于简单。货币无疑是国家资本的一个组成部分,但我们已经证明,它只是国家资本的一小部分,甚至始终是最无利可图的那一小部分。

商人之所以觉得用货币购买商品要比用商品购买货币更加划算,不是因为货币是财富更为重要的组成部分,而是因为众所周知,货币是已知并确立的交易工具,容易与一切货物交换,而要得到能交换一切货物的货币却未必那么容易。此外,大多数商品要比货币更容易损坏,因此保存这些商品可能经常需要承担大得多的损失。而且,当商人有商品在手上时,他更有可能需要钱进行周转,毕竟什么都不如把已经获得的回报锁在自己的保险箱里来得安全,而最重要的是,卖比买利润来得更直接。因为所有这些原因,商人一般总是更急于出售商品换得货币,而不是用货币来交换商品。不过尽管一个商人在仓库中存有大量存货时,会因为无法及时出售这些存货而最终破产,而一个国家却不大可能有这样的遭遇。商人的全部资本中有易破损的商品和预计用于换取货币的商品,而国家的土地和劳动产品的年产量却只有很少一部分用于和邻国交换获取金银,绝大部分都是在国内流通和消费的;即使在运往国外的剩余产品中,绝大多数通常也是用于交换和购买外国的其他商品。因此,国家即使不能用预计用于购买金银的商品换得足够的金银,也不至于濒临破产。诚然,国家的确会面临一些损失和不便,且可能不得不采取一些必要的权宜之计来替代货币供应,然而其土地和劳动产品的年产量与往常相比没有变化,或者几乎没有变化,因为可以花费同样多或几乎同样多的消费资本来维系这一产量。尽管用商品交换货币没有用货币交换商品那样容易,从长远来看,前者却比后者更加必要。商品除了用于交换货币之外还有许多其他用途,而货币除用于购买商品外别无它用。因此,货币必然要追求商品,而商品却并不一定要追求货币或者根本没有这个必要,购买的人并不一定要转手出售,而常常是为了使用或消费,而出售的人却永远都是为了换取货币再次买入。前者在买入之后往往就完成了整个过程,而后者在卖出货物之后,最多只完成了整个过程的一半。人们渴望货币并不是为了它本身,而是为了可以用货币买来的一切。

有人说可消费品很快会被损坏,而金银的耐久性更强一些,因此如果不是要持续出口,金银可以积累很长时间,这样国家的真正财富就会有极大的增加。所以,一般人就会认为,对一个国家最不利的,就是其主要贸易行为是用耐久性较强的商品去换取比较容易损毁的商品。然而,我们不能想当然地认为,用英国的五金器具去换取法国的葡萄酒就是对英国贸易不利;尽管五金器具是耐久性很强的商品,如果不是因为持续出口,可以在国内积累很长时间,到时整个英国的铁锅就会多得惊人了。不过一般来说,无论在哪个国家,这类五金器具的数量必然受到其需求的限制;如果一个国家所拥有的铁锅数量大于其烹制食物所需,未免有点超乎情理了;如果食物的总量增加了,则铁锅的数量也很容易随之增加,所增加的食物总量中有一部分是用来购买铁锅的,或者说是为多出来的那部分生产铁锅的工人维持生计所需的。同样我们也很容易理解,任何国家的金银数量也应受其需要所限;这些贵金属的用途包括铸成硬币当作流通的货物,以及制成器皿当作家具;每个国家的铸币数量应受到在国内流动的商品价值的调节:一旦该价值增加,就立即会有一部分被输往国外有金银铸币的国家,换得国内流通所需的更多铸币:而金银器皿的数量则要受到国内喜好奢华的家庭数目和财富的支配,这类家庭的财富增加了,很有可能其中一部分要用于向有剩余金银器皿的国家购买:任何国家,为了增加财富就输入或在国内保留超过需求量的金银都是荒谬的,就像家庭也不能依靠购入不必要的厨具来增加其佳肴美酒,这是因为出资购买不必要的厨具不但不会增加,反而会减少家庭必需品的数量和质量;同样,任何国家出资购买不必要的金银,也必定会减少维持国民衣食住行所需的财富。切要牢记:金银,无论其形状是铸币还是盘盏,无非只是用具而已,在这一点上,它们和厨房用具没有区别。如果增加金银的用途,增加靠金银来流通、支配和制造的消费品,自然可以增加金银的数量;但是如果希望通过非常方法增加金银数量,必将减少金银的用途,甚至会减少金银的数量,因为这两种贵金属的数量必然会受到其用途的限制。一旦金银的积累超出了需求,就很容易被转运,而由于闲置不用会造成极大损失,所以任何法律也无法阻止它们被立即输往境外。

一个国家要进行对外战争,维持远在海外的海军和陆军所需,并不一定要积累金银。维持海军和陆军依靠的不是金银,而是可消费商品。因此,只要一国的国内工业年产量,也就是土地、劳动和消费品存量所产生的年收入使它有能力在远离边境的国外购买足够的消费品,它就能够维持在那里打战。

一个国家可以通过三种不同的方式向远在国外的军队运送粮饷和物资:一是若干其所积累的不同的金银;二是若干其制造业年产物;三是若干其农产品年产物。

我们可以合理地认为,任何国家积累或存储的金银都可以分成三部分:一是用于流通的货币;二是家用的金银器皿;最后则是经过多年节俭积累,存在国库中的货币。

国内用于流通的货币很少能够节省下来,因为这方面不可能有太多的盈余。在任何国家,一年之内买卖的商品的价值需要一定数量的货币进行流通并将其分配给不同的消费者,因此货币的使用不能过量。流通渠道必定会吸引来充足的货币量,但不能容纳更多的货币。然而在国家进行对外战争时,一般会从该渠道抽取一定数量的货币。由于大量人口远在境外,在国内维持生计的人口数量相对减少;在国内流通的商品数量减少了,也就不需要那么多货币进行流通了。这时国家通常会大量发行各种纸币,诸如英国的财政部证券、海军债券和银行票据,以此替代流通的金银,以便将更大数量的金银输往境外。不过,对外战争花费浩大,且旷日持久,以上这些财政来源是远不够维持的。

无论在何种情况下,熔化私家金银器皿都于事无补,法国在上一次战争开始使用过这种办法,不过收获并不大,还不够补偿铸造带来的损失,结果得不偿失。

过去,王室积累的财宝曾提供大得多并持续更久的资源;而在今时,除了普鲁士国王之外,积累财宝似乎不再是欧洲王室的政策了。

本世纪各国用于维持对外战争的资金——或许已经创造了人类有史以来战争花费的最高记录——似乎已经很少再依赖流通货币或输出家用金银器皿,抑或国库积累的财物了。在上一次对法战争中,英国的花费超过了9000万英镑,其中不仅包括7500万英镑新募的国债,还包括为每英镑土地税征收的两个先令的附加税,以及每年从还债基金中借用的款项。这笔巨额费用中有2/3花费在遥远的境外国度:德国、葡萄牙、美国、地中海各港口、东印度和西印度群岛。英国的各位国王没有积累财宝,我们未曾听说有超量金银器皿被熔化铸币这样的事情,当时人们认为,国内流通的金银不会超过1800万英镑,然而自最后一次金币改革以来,人们开始觉得他们过低估计了国内的金银流通量。所以,让我们姑且根据我亲眼所见抑或听说过的最夸大的算法,假设当时国内流通的金银共值3000万英镑,假如战争全部用的是英国自己的货币,那么即使根据这样夸张的算法,在六七年的时间内,英国的全部货币必然会全部运出并运回至少两次。如果这种假设成立的话,那么它所能证明的最具决定性意义的观点就是,政府根本没有必要监管货币的保存,因为根据这个假定,国内的所有货币必然要在这么短的时间内在国境内外来回往返两回,且整个过程无人察觉,可见对任何人都没有什么影响。然而事实是,在这段时期内,流通渠道似乎根本没有显得比平时更空虚,那些有财力换取货币的人几乎没有感到货币匮乏。在整个战争期间,尤其是在战争将要结束时,对外贸易的利润比以往更大了,这种情况当然导致了全英国各个地区普遍的过度贸易;而过度扩张营运的结果,和惯常一样,是人们又开始抱怨货币短缺。许多需要货币的人既没有办法购买货币又没有信用借贷;而一旦借贷者感觉到很难借贷,对于放贷者来说,收回欠款也变得困难了。不过拥有能换取金银价值的人,基本上都能够按金银的价值换取金银。

所以,用来支付上一场战争巨额支出的,一定不是国内输出的金银,而是英国出口的这样那样的商品。当政府或代表政府行事的人士与某一个商人签约汇款到国外时,该商人会向与其来往的国外联系人寄送一张期票,而他也一定会尽力以商品而不是金银来支付该期票。如果英国的商品不是该国所需,他将设法将其运往其他国家,购买一张期票,来支付所欠国家的款项。只要是市场所需,商品的运输总是能够产生可观的利润,而金银的运输就很难产生什么利润了。为了购买国外商品而将金银运往国外,商人获取的利润并非来自购买商品,而是来自销售运回国后的商品;但是如果仅仅为了支付债务而将其运往国外,就不会有任何商品运回,商人自然也就得不到任何利润,因此,他自然会绞尽脑汁,用出口商品而非出口金银的办法来偿还国外债务。于是《英国现状》一书的作者指出,在上一次战争期间,英国出口了大量商品,却没有任何商品被运回国内。

除了上述三种金银之外,在所有商业大国中还有大量金条银块交替地输入输出,为对外贸易提供方便。这些金条银块在不同商业国家之间的流通与每一个国家内部的硬币流通方式一样,因而可以被看作是一个由不同国家组成的大商业共和国的货币。国内硬币的流通及其方向受到每个国家境内流通商品的支配:该商业共和国的货币则要受到不同国家之间流通商品的支配。无论在单独一个国家还是这个大型商业共和国,使用货币都是为了促进交换,前者是一个国家内部不同个人之间的交换,后者是不同国家之间的交换。该大型商业共和国的一部分货币可能已经,或者说很可能的确被用于上一次战争的支出了。在全面发生战争时期,人们自然会认为货币的流通及其流通方向因为受到战争的影响而与和平时期不同;认为在战事发生地点附近的流通量应该更大,交战国军队所需的饷给和物资都需要在那里及邻近国家购买。但是就这一大商业共和国的货币来说,无论英国每年需要以这种方式使用多少,它每年都必须用英国商品或其他可用于交换该货币的东西购得;所以归根结底,进行战争所需要的资源仍然是商品,是国内每年的土地和劳动产品。的确,人们很容易联想到,这样巨大的年支出一定需要极大的年产量才能够支付。例如,1761年的支出高达1900多万,任何金银的积累都无法支持每年这样巨大的费用,即便是金银本身,年产量也达不到这样的程度。根据最可靠的统计,每年输往西班牙和葡萄牙的金银总量一般不超过600万英镑,在上一次战争的某些年份,这个数目都不够支付四个月的费用。

最适合运往遥远的境外,在当地购买军队所需的粮饷和物资,或用于购买大商业共和国的一部分货币,进而购买这些粮饷和物资的商品,似乎应该是制造得更加精巧的工业品,如体积小价值高,能以最小的费用输出到千里之外的制造品。因此,如果一个国家每年生产的此类工业品有大量剩余,并将其出口到国外,它就能够将非常昂贵的对外战争持续多年,此时它不需要输出任何可观数量的金银,甚至也没有这样大量的金银可以输出。诚然,每年剩余的制造品中有很大一部分必须在这种情况下输出,而它虽给商人带回利润,却不会给国家带来任何回报,因为政府向商人购买外国期票,以便在外国购买军队所需的饷给和物资。不过,总有一部分剩余制造品的输出是可以产生利润的。在战争期间,对制造业将有双重需求:首先,国家需要生产足够的商品运往境外,支付其为了供应军队饷给和物资而向国外购买的期票;其二,国内通常所需的普通外国商品,也必须由国内生产足够的商品来购买。如此说来,在最具破坏性的对外战争期间,大部分制造业可能会大大繁荣,相反,在和平时期其利润可能会下降。制造业可能在国家走向毁灭的过程中繁荣一时,而一旦国家重新繁荣,制造业就可能衰败下去。英国制造业的许多不同部门在上一次战争期间,乃至战争结束后一段时间的不同景况,正是我们刚刚所得结论的一个例证。

对任何国家来说,出口土地原产品显然无法很好地支持费用浩大而旷日持久的对外战争,将一部分土地原产品输往国外,用它来购买军队所需的饷给和物资,费用太过昂贵。很少有国家生产的原产品远远超过可以维持国民生计所需的量,因此,将大量此类原产品运往国外,无异于夺取国民生活所需的必要生活资料。而工业制造品的出口就是另一回事了。制造业工人的生活资料仍然保留在国内,所输出的仅仅是他们劳动所产生的剩余部分。休谟先生屡次提到,古代英国的国王们无法不间断地为任何旷日持久的战争提供资助:那个年代的英国人没有能力在外国购买其军队所需的饷给和物资,农业原产品没有办法从国内消费中大量节省下来,少量最粗糙的制造品又和农产品一样,运输费用过于昂贵。这种情况并非源于货币短缺,而是因为那时缺乏更加精细的工业制造品。那时的英国和现在一样,买卖都是通过货币进行交易的,当时的货币流通量与买卖的数量和价值之间的比例必然与现在相同,或者比现在更大,因为那时没有纸币,而现在纸币已经在很大程度上替代了金银。在那些对商业和制造业所知甚少的国家,一旦遇到非常事件,君主很少能够从国民那里获得大的帮助,具体原因我将在下文中说明。因此,正是在这类国家,君主通常会竭力积聚财富,因为那是应对紧急事件的唯一资金来源,即使没有这种必要,在当时那种条件下,君主也会自然地倾向于为累积财富而躬行节俭。在那样一种简朴的状态下,即便君主的花费也不受喜好宫廷豪华生活的虚荣心支配,而是用于赏赐佃户、款待家臣;虽然虚荣心几乎总是导致浪费,但赏赐和款待却很少如此。因此,每一个鞑靼酋长都有财宝。据说,查理十二世著名的同盟——乌克兰哥萨克酋长马捷帕就拥有大量财宝,梅罗文加王朝的法兰西国王也个个都有财宝,如果他们将王国分封给不同的子嗣,也会分给他们相应的财宝。撒克逊君王以及征服之后的最初几个国王,似乎也一样聚集过财宝。每一个新王朝所做的第一件事,通常都是夺取前一个国王的财宝,那是保有王位的最有效手段。先进的商业国家的君主却不再有必要积累财宝,因为他们一般都可以在非常时期从臣民那里获得很大帮助,他们也不再倾向于这样做。他们自然地,或许也是必然地,追随所处时代的流行趋势,在花费方面,君主和领土内所有其他大业主一样,受到追求奢华的虚荣心的支配。宫廷中精致到极细微处的华丽奢靡与日俱增,其巨额花费不仅让财富的积累不再可行,甚至往往会侵及原本用于更为必要之用途的资金。德西利达斯对波斯宫廷的评价或许同样适合好几个欧洲君主的宫廷,他说他在那里感受到的更多是奢华而不是力量,看到的更多是奴仆而不是战士。

金银的输入绝不是国家从对外贸易中获取的主要利益,更不是对外贸易的唯一利益。无论对外贸易在哪两个地区间进行,国家都可以从中获得两种不同的利益:它将其土地和劳动力所生产产品的剩余部分,即国内不再需要的部分输出,作为交换,带回国内需要的其他东西。对外贸易使得剩余产品获得了价值,可以用来换取其他东西,从而满足国内的一部分需求,增加享受。有了对外贸易,国内市场的有限性就难以阻碍任何工艺或制造业部门的劳动分工极其完善的发展。这样就为劳动产品中超出国内消费的那一部分拓展了新的市场,从而鼓励劳动者提高生产力,最大限度地增加年产量,也进而增加了全社会的实际收入和财富。对于彼此间进行对外贸易的所有不同国家,对外贸易都在持续不断地起到极其显著而重要的作用。所有国家都从对外贸易中大大受益,不过商人所在的国家获得的利益最大,因为一般来说,商人总是更加关注供应他人之所需,并将他所在国家的剩余产品运出境外。将金银输入那些因为没有矿藏而缺乏这些贵金属的国家无疑是对外贸易业务的一个组成部分,但它只是最微不足道的一部分:如果一个国家只因为这样一个原因而开展对外贸易,恐怕一个世纪也很难有机会装满一船金银。

美洲的发现之所以让欧洲走向富裕,也并非源于金银的进口。因为美洲富藏金银矿,这两样贵金属的价格反而降低了,与15世纪相比,如今购买金银器皿所需的谷物,或者劳动,大概只有那时的1/3,也就是说,以同样的劳动和商品支出,欧洲每年可以购买的金银器皿的数量是那时的3倍。但是如果某一商品的售价仅相当于通常售价的1/3,则不但原先的买主现在购买的数量可以达到先前的3倍,而且由于价格下降,可以出价购买的买主数量也较先前多出许多,或许买主数量增加至先前的10倍多,甚至高达20倍以上。因此,欧洲现有的金银器皿数量,不仅要比美洲金银矿没有发现之时——即使在其现有的进步状态下——多出3倍,或许更是前者的20—30多倍,直到目前为止,欧洲无疑得到了真正的便利,尽管那的确只是非常微不足道的便利。金银的价格下降导致这两种金属不如先前那样适合用作货币了:为了进行同样的购买活动,我们必须携带更大量的金银,对于以往价值4便士就能购得的物品,如今我们得在口袋里装1个先令。要说这种不便可以忽略不计,上述与之相对的便利怕也不比它重要多少,两者都不会对欧洲目前的状况造成任何重大的影响。然而,美洲的发现的确对欧洲产生了极为重大的影响。它为欧洲所有商品开辟了一个全新而永不枯竭的市场,它为新的劳动分工和工艺改进创造了机会,而在古代商业的狭窄范围内,由于大部分产品缺乏市场,这是绝对不可能发生的。劳动者的生产力提高了,欧洲所有国家的劳动产品增加了,各国国民的真实收入和财富也就随之增加。欧洲的商品对于美洲来说几乎是前所未有的,同样,美洲的许多商品对于欧洲来说也是新鲜事物。因此,一系列之前从未有人预见过的交换开始了。事实证明,这既然一定会对旧大陆有利,也自然会对新大陆同样有利。当然,欧洲人颇为野蛮的不公行径使得一桩本来对所有方都有利的事件,变成了几个不幸国家的灭顶之灾。

大约同时,欧洲人发现了经由好望角前往东印度的道路,尽管其距离比美洲更加遥远,却为欧洲人或许打开了比美洲更为广阔的对外贸易市场,整个美洲只有两个国家在各个方面比蛮荒之地稍强一些,这两个国家在美洲发现不久就被消灭了,其他的都不过是蛮荒之地。而中国、印度、日本等帝国以及东印度的其他几个国家即使金银矿藏不如美洲富足,却在其他所有方面都要比墨西哥或秘鲁更加富裕,农业耕种水平更高,所有工艺和制造业也都更加先进。就算这样说无异于相信了西班牙作家们关于那些帝国往昔状况的夸大记载,我们也必须承认这些事实,而那些记载显然是不足置信的。不过,富裕文明的国家彼此之间进行交易,其价值要远远大于与未开化的野蛮人做交易,而截止到此时,欧洲与东印度各个帝国商业往来获得的利益却大大低于与美洲经商获得的利益。葡萄牙垄断东印度贸易约一个世纪之久,其他欧洲国家从东印度购入任何商品,或将任何商品输入该国,都只能间接通过葡萄牙人之手。上世纪初荷兰人开始侵入这片商业领地时,将整个东印度公司的商务全部交由一家公司独家经营。英国人、法国人、瑞典人和丹麦人都纷纷效法,此时,没有一个欧洲大国能够享受到对东印度进行自由商业贸易的利益。仅此一个原因就能够解释,为什么对东印度的贸易根本没有对美洲贸易那样有利,美洲贸易,即欧洲几乎每一个国家与其殖民地之间的贸易,对其所有臣民都是自由开放的。而那些东印度公司的专营特权和巨大财富,以及从各自的政府那里获取的惠益和保护,招来了不少嫉妒。这种嫉妒心理往往使人们觉得其贸易是完全有害的,因为它们每年需要从其进行贸易的国家输出大量白银。有关方面回答说,这种持续的白银输出的确有可能导致整个欧洲陷于贫困,但从事贸易的具体国家却不受此影响;因为通过将一部分用白银购回的商品输出到欧洲的其他国家,它实际获得的白银数量远比输出的多得多。反对者和辩驳者所持观点的依据都是我刚刚讨论过的普遍观点,因此我也没有必要就此多做论述。因为每年向东印度输出白银,欧洲的金银器皿价格很可能比以往更贵一些;而银币所能购买的劳动力和商品或许也比以往更多。在这两种影响中,前者不是什么大损失,后者也并非巨大收益,二者都微不足道,因而没有引发公众的广泛关注。与东印度的贸易为欧洲商品打开了一个新的市场,或者换一种说法,为那些商品所能购买的金银开辟了一个新市场,因而必然增加欧洲商品的年产量,从而增加欧洲的实际财富和收入总额。至于到目前为止所增加的数量甚少,则或许要归咎于那种贸易处处受到限制。

在这里,我觉得有必要详细考察一下关于财富的多少主要取决于金钱或者金银数量的大小这一通行概念,尽管这未免显得冗长繁琐。如我在上文所述,在一般人的概念中,金钱总是财富的象征,这种表达上的模棱两可使得此概念深入人心,以至于那些已经确信其荒谬无稽的人也常常会忘记自己的原则,在推理的过程中想当然将其作为一条确定无疑、不可否认的真理。英国商业界有几个数一数二的作家往往会在他们的文章开头论述道,一个国家的财富多少不仅在于所拥有的金银的数量,也在于拥有土地、房屋和各种可消费商品的数量。然而在推理过程中,他们似乎将土地、房屋和可消费商品统统抛到脑后,论证的核心往往变成了所有财富即在于金银,增加这两种贵金属的数量乃是国家工商业的最重要目标。

但是如果这两个原则都成立,即财富的多少取决于金银的数量,且缺乏这两种贵金属矿藏的国家只能通过贸易差额,或者说使出口大大多于进口来收入金银,那么政治经济学的目的必然变成了尽可能减少进口外国商品用于本国消费,并尽可能增加本土工业品的出口,因而国家致富的两大手段就变成了限制进口和鼓励出口。

对进口的限制包括两种。

首先,凡能够由本土生产的国内消费品,无论从什么国家进口,都一律加以限制。

其次,如果本国与某些国家的贸易差额对本国不利,则对那些国家几乎所有商品的进口加以限制。

限制的方式也各有不同,有时采用高关税,有时则采用绝对禁止的办法。

而鼓励出口的办法,有时是退税,有时是政府奖励,有时是与外国签订有利的通商条约,有时是在遥远的境外建立殖民地。

退税的情形一般有两种:对于已缴纳关税或国产税的国产商品,在出口时往往会返还全部或部分税款;而对于已征收进口税的外国商品,如果进口目的是为了加工后出口,有时会在出口时返还全部或部分进口税。

政府奖励要么是为了鼓励某些新兴制造业,要么是为了奖励政府认为应给予特殊照顾的某些工业。

通过建立有利的通商条约,本国的货物和商人可以在某一境外国家获得别国货物和商人所没有的特权。

而通过在遥远的境外建立殖民地,宗主国的货物和商人不仅可以获得特权,而且还可以获得垄断地位。

上述两种对进口的限制,连同四种鼓励出口的做法,乃是商业主义所倡导的各国扭转贸易逆差,使之对己有利,从而增加金银数量的六种主要手段。我将在以下各章分别对其进行论述,关于这六种手段能够给国内带来金钱的说法,我就不再关注了,而重点考察它们各自可能对国内工业年产量产生何种影响。如果这些手段能够提高或降低国内工业年产量的话,也必然能够增加或降低国家的实际财富和收入。

注释

【1】  即John Locke。——译者注

【2】  即Thomas Mun。——译者注

【3】  英国在1663到1813年间发行的金币,价值相当于1镑1先令。——译者注

【4】  古斯巴达法典的制定者。——译者注

【5】  即斯巴达。——译者注

4

对于商品进口实施的限制

通过征收高关税或绝对禁止的方式,限制可以由本国生产的商品从外国进口,在一定程度上保证了生产这些商品的国内工业对于国内市场的垄断。因此,禁止从外国进口活牲畜和腌制食品,确保了英国畜牧业者对国内肉类市场的垄断;对谷物进口课以高关税,也让英国的谷物种植者得到了相同的利益,因为在谷物丰收的年份里高额关税相当于禁止进口。禁止进口外国羊毛制品,同样对国内羊毛制品生产商有利;英国的丝绸制造商曾经完全依靠外国原材料,但最近它们也开始得到同样的好处;麻织品制造商尚未得到什么好处,不过他们正在大踏步地朝着这一方向迈进。英国的许多其他产业制造商也以同样的方式获得了针对国人的全部或几乎全部垄断权。英国绝对或在某种条件下限制进口的商品种类之多,对于不十分熟悉关税法律的人来说,已经大大超出了他们的想象。

这种对国内市场的垄断总是能够给予享受垄断的行业很大的鼓励,因此往往能够使得更大份额的劳动力和社会资源转向该行业,这是毋庸置疑的。但是它是否能够增加整个社会的财富,或者使之朝着最有利的方向发展,或许就算不得什么不证自明的真理了。

社会全部产业的总和绝不会超过社会总资本所能维持的限度;正如任何个人所能雇用的工人数量必须与他所拥有的资本保持一定比例,整个社会所有成员持续雇用的工人数量也必须与该社会的资本总量保持一定比例,并绝不能超过该比例。任何商业调控都不可违反这一常识,增加社会产业的总量,使之超出其资本所能维持的限度。商业调控只能改变其中部分产业的导向;至于这种人为的方向调整是否就要比产业根据自身条件自然发展更为有利,则纯属不确定因素。

每个人都会持续不断地竭力为自己所拥有的资本找到最合适的用途;诚然,在这样做的时候,他考虑的是自己的利益而不是整个社会的利益,但他在仔细考察自己的利益之后,自然,或者说必然会倾向于选择那些最有利于社会的用途。

首先,只要资本获利的程度与一般水平持平,或者至少不太低于一般水平,所有个人都倾向于在距离自己最近的地方使用自己的资本,这样的结果是,他会尽可能地将自己的所有资本都用于维持国内产业。

因此,在利润相等或接近相等的情况下,每一个批发商自然宁愿经营消费品国内贸易也不愿经营对外贸易,宁愿经营消费品对外贸易也不愿意经营转口贸易。与对外贸易相比,经营国内贸易时,资本总是在他的可控范围之内。他能够更好地了解所信托之人的品行和境况,万一不小心被骗,他也更熟悉国内的法律,知道如何从中获得补偿。在转口贸易中,商人的资本可以说是被分割在两个境外国家,而这两部分资本都不一定会回到国内,也就是回到他可以监管和支配的范围之内。譬如,一个阿姆斯特丹商人将俄国哥尼斯堡的玉米运往里斯本,将里斯本的水果和葡萄酒运往哥尼斯堡,一般来说,他必须有一半的资本投在哥尼斯堡,另一半投在里斯本,两部分资本似乎都没有必要回到阿姆斯特丹。这样一个商人自然应该住在哥尼斯堡或里斯本,只有在非常特殊的情况下,他才会选择居住在阿姆斯特丹。不过,因为距离自己的资本太远使商人深感不安,他们一般都会从原定运往里斯本市场的哥尼斯堡货物和原定运往哥尼斯堡的里斯本货物中,分出一部分运往阿姆斯特丹;尽管这必然会带来装载和卸载的双重费用,且需要支付一些税金和关税,但为了让一部分资本始终处于自己的监控和管理之下,他们愿意支付这部分额外费用;正因为如此,每个从事大量转口贸易的国家最后都会成为一个大型综合市场,那里交易着来自转口贸易相关各国的货物。为了避免二次装载和卸载,商人总是想方设法尽可能多地在本国市场上出售来自所有国家的货物,也就是尽其所能地将转口贸易转化为消费品的对外贸易。同样,从事消费品对外贸易的商人,在收集货物运往国外市场时,在利润相等或接近相等的情况下,也总是更愿意尽可能地将大部分货物在国内出售。为了规避出口的风险和麻烦,他总是尽其所能地将消费品的对外贸易转化为国内贸易。于是,如果我可以这样说的话,本国总是成为每个国家的居民不断流通其资本的中心,各国居民总是更愿意让资本流向国内,只是由于特殊原因资本才会远离该中心,在较远处付诸使用。不过事实不断证明,相对于消费品对外贸易中使用的同等数量的资本,国内贸易中使用的资本总是能够启动更多的国内产业,增加国内更多居民的收入和就业机会;而用于消费品对外贸易的资本,与用于转口贸易的等量资本相比,也有同样的裨益。因此,在利润相等或接近相等的前提下,个人正确使用资本,自然会给予国内产业最大的支持,并使自己国家的最大多数人口在收入和就业方面获利。

其次,任何人只要利用自己的资本支持国内产业,就必然会竭尽全力,力求使该产业的产量达到最大值。

产业的产量是指它为产业主体或劳动中所使用的原材料增加的价值。随着产业产量价值的增加或减少,雇主所得的利润也会按比例增减。然而,任何人利用自己的资本支持产业都只是为了赚取利润;因此,他必然会竭尽全力利用自己的资本支持那些能够产生最大价值的产业,或者用它换取最大数量的货币或其他商品。

但是任何社会的年收入总是与其产业的年总产量的可交换价值绝对相等,也就是说,年收入与年总产量的可交换价值完全是同一回事。由此看来,既然所有个人都会尽可能地利用自己的资本支持国内产业,并竭尽全力使该产业产生最大价值,所有个人也必然会尽可能地利用劳动为社会创造最大收入。当然,他既不是在为公众谋福利,也全然不知自己为公众贡献了多少福利。他宁可支持国内产业也不愿支持对外贸易,因而我们说他只关心自己的安全;他全力引导产业,使其产量达到最大价值,我们说他只是为自己赚取利润,在种种情形下,他都是由一只看不见的手引导着,不由自主地去达到并非出于本意希望达到的目的;当然,并非出于本意而达到目的,对社会来说不一定就有害。在为自己谋福利的过程中,他往往能够比出于本意更有效地促进整个社会的福利。我没有听说过有哪些假装以为公众谋福利为名义做生意的人真正为社会做出过什么大的贡献。当然,这种刻意作秀的做法在商人中并不常见,也用不着多费唇舌去劝阻他们这样做。

至于应该将自己的资本用在国内哪些产业中,以及哪些产业有可能获得最大价值,显然,任何个人都能够在其自身的具体条件下做出判断,且比任何政治家或立法者所能提供的建议都更显合理。如果有哪一个政治家希望知道个人应该如何使用自己的资本,那不但是全无必要地自寻烦恼,而且是在攫取一种权力,社会在任何时候都不会放心地给予任何个人或任何形式的委员会或参议会这种权力,让一个虚伪荒唐、自以为能够担此大任的人拥有这种权力则是再危险不过的了。

让国内产业中任何特定的工艺或制造业产品垄断国内市场,在某种程度上无异于指导个体国民应该如何使用他们的资本,几乎在任何情况下,这都是一种毫无用处或颇为有害的调控。如果国内产品的价格能够像外国产品一样便宜,这样的调控显然没有用处;如果不能,那么一般来说,这种调控必然是有害的。任何一个明智的一家之主,都应该坚持这样一个原则,即如果自行制作的成本高于从别处购买,就绝不选择前者。裁缝不会尝试自己做鞋,而是从鞋匠那里买鞋;同样,鞋匠也不会尝试自己做衣服,而是请裁缝帮着做;农夫既不做鞋也不做衣服,就花钱请手艺人来做。从以上种种例子可以看出,所有人都知道,将所有精力投注在自己比他人更有优势的领域,并用其部分产品去购买,或者换句话说,用其产品的部分价格去购买他们偶尔需要的东西,这种做法符合个人的最大利益。

如果某种行为对于一个家庭来讲是审慎明智的,那么对于一个大国来说,它也错不到哪里去。如果某一外国可以提供我们某一种商品,其价格要比我们自己生产更加便宜,那么更明智的做法显然是用我们自己的部分产品来购买,因为我们在生产后一种产品的产业中具有某种优势。国家的劳动总量既然一定和维持它所用的资本成正比,就不会因此而减少,正如上文提到的各类手工制造业者的劳动不会减少一样;人们只会因此而找到能够产生更大价值的使用资本的方法。因而我们说,使用资本来生产一种物品,生产的成本却高于购买的价格,则资本必然不能够产生最大价值。如果投入劳动力去生产那些显然不能产生更多价值的商品,则一定会或多或少地减损一个国家年产物的总价值。根据这一假设,从外国购买商品要比在本国制造更加便宜。这样,如果按照其自然发展方向的话,使用以同样的资本在本国产业中所生产商品的一部分,或者换句话说,用这些在本国产业中所生产商品价格的一部分,即可以购买到外国商品。所以,上述调控的结果是,将国家的劳动从较为有利的用途转为较为不利的用途,其年产量的可交换价值不但没有像立法者原先设想的那样有所增加,反而因为有了此等调控而有所减少。

诚然,有了此类调控,某一特定的制造业可能要比没有调控时更快地确立起来,且经过一段时间之后,特定商品在国内的生产成本也将不再高于国外的生产成本。然而尽管社会中某一产业可以因为获利而更加快速地进入某一特定轨道,但无论是劳动还是收入总额,都绝不会因为有了此类调控而增加。社会中劳动的增加必须与资本的增加成正比,而其资本的增加必须取决于社会收入中逐渐节省出来的那一部分。但是每一个此类调控的直接后果都是减少社会收入,而凡是减少收入的措施,自然不会迅速增加社会的资本,无论是社会的资本还是劳动都只能在自然状态下才能够很快增加。

虽然某种特定的制造业因为缺少这样的调控无法在社会上确立起来,但社会在其发展的任何一段时间内并不会因这一原因变得贫穷。在其发展的每一个时期,社会的总资本和劳动的使用或许仍然是当时最有利的,只是在不同的时期,社会发展的目标不尽相同。在每一个特定时期,社会收入可能都是其资本所能支持的最大收入,资本和收入的增长速度也是该社会当时所能够达到的最大速度。

一个国家在生产特定商品方面相对于其他国家的自然优势有时非常突出,全世界都承认无法与之竞争。通过嵌玻璃、设温床、建温壁,苏格兰也能栽种极好的葡萄,并用来生产上等的葡萄酒,只是与从其他国家购买的品质不逊的葡萄酒相比,其制作费用差不多高达30倍。如此说来,如果单单为了鼓励苏格兰制造波尔多和勃艮第葡萄酒而发布禁令,禁止进口一切外国葡萄酒,这种做法难道合理吗?但是如果人人都能看出,在需要特定数量的某种商品时,使用比从外国进口高出30倍的本国资本和劳动来生产的做法无比荒谬,那么即使所使用的资本和劳动只不过高出了1/30,甚或3%,也是一样的不合情理,只不过没有那么荒唐可笑就是了。一个国家在这方面的优势究竟是天然的还是后来拥有的,无关紧要;只要它有那些优势,而另一个国家又缺乏优势,则就后一个国家来说,从前者购买就要比自己生产更具优势。一个手工业制造者对于从事另一个行业的人而言,其优势只能是后天获得的;然而他们两人都会发现,从彼此那里购买要比制造不属于自己行业的产品更为有利。

商人和制造业者是这种国内市场垄断中最大的获利者。禁止从外国进口牲畜或腌制品,加之以对外国谷物征收较高关税——在一般的丰年这就相当于禁止——为英国畜牧业者和农场主带来的利益,远远低于英国商人和制造业者因其他此类禁令所得的利益。制造业者,特别是较精细产品的制造业者,其产品在各国之间的运输要比谷物或牛羊更加容易。因此,对外贸易的主要业务是做制造品贸易。在制造业,很小的利益就能够让外国人倾销自己工人的产品,即使在国内市场上也是如此;而对于土地的原产品来说,这样做的成本就很高,需要有很大利益才有人肯做。如果允许外国制造品自由输入,就会有好几家国内制造业者受到重创,甚至或许还有一些会倒闭,而这时该制造业使用的很大一部分资本和劳动就不得不重新寻找新的用途。但是即使国家允许土地原产品完全自由输入,也不会对国内的农业产生这样巨大的影响。

举例来说,即使对外国牲畜的进口完全开放,进口的数目也非常少,英国的畜牧业不会受到多大影响。活牲畜或许是唯一一种海运比陆地运输更加昂贵的商品了;因为牲畜能够行走,使用陆地运输的话,它们自己就能走向目标市场;而海运不但要运送它们自身,还要运送它们需要的粮食和水,费用昂贵,且无比麻烦。爱尔兰和英国之间的海程距离很短,的确使得爱尔兰牲畜的运输容易一些,最近只在一段时间内对牲畜进口实施了开放政策,然而即使永久放开进口牲畜,对于英国畜牧业者的利益也不会产生太大影响。英国靠近爱尔兰海的部分全都是畜牧养殖的乡村。进口的爱尔兰牲畜绝不会为那里的人们所用,必然是要经过那里转运到很远的地方,要经过很大一番周折才能到达适当的市场,费用不低,且麻烦不小。肥牲畜无法走这么远的路途,因而就只能进口瘦牲畜,这不会损害到那些从事牲畜养殖或育肥的乡村的利益,而只能损害到从事牲畜繁殖的地方的利益,因为对于前者而言,瘦牲畜的价格下降,事实上对他们是有利的。自从允许进口爱尔兰牲畜以来,从爱尔兰进口牲畜数量不大,瘦牲畜的价格一直卖得不错,这样看起来,似乎连英国那些繁殖牲畜的地方也不会因为进口放开而受到太大影响。据说爱尔兰的普通民众经常诉诸暴力反对出口牲畜,然而如果出口商看到继续该贸易有任何大的好处,而法律又在他们一边的话,他们完全可以轻易战胜这种民众的反对。

除此之外,从事牲畜繁殖和育肥的地方必定都是土地经过大大改良的地方,而繁殖牲畜的地方一般都是未经开垦的荒地。瘦牲畜价格高,加上未经开垦荒地的价值,这无异于一项重奖,鼓励人们不要开荒改良。因为在任何整个土地经过高度改良的地方,进口瘦牲畜都要比自己繁殖更加有利;据说现在荷兰就信奉此理。的确,苏格兰、威尔士和诺森伯兰郡的山区都是无法进行土地高度改良的地方,似乎自然条件注定了这些地方只能是英国境内繁殖牲畜的地方。完全开放进口外国牲畜的唯一结果就是,使那些繁殖牲畜的地方无法从牲畜数量增加和国内其他地方的土地改良中获益,无法无休止地提高繁殖牲畜的价格,要知道如果可以随意提高繁殖牲畜的价格,实际上就相当于给国内致力于开垦和改良的地方加收了一道税。

同样,如果说进口活牲畜对于英国畜牧业者的影响尚且有限,那么完全放开进口腌制品对于英国畜牧业者利益的影响更是微乎其微。腌制品也是体积很大的商品,而且这种商品不但品质不如新鲜畜肉,且因为其中所含的劳动较多、成本较高,价格也更高,因此,根本无法与新鲜畜肉竞争,不过倒是可以和本国的腌制品竞争。腌制品可以用于为远航的船只供应食物等用途,不过决不可能成为人们食物供应中举足轻重的一部分。自从准许腌制品自由进口以来,从爱尔兰进口的腌制品数量很少,这证实了我们畜牧业者丝毫不用担心该产品的进口。屠夫出售的生肉价格似乎根本不会因为腌制品进口而受到任何显著的影响。

即使是完全自由进口外国谷物对于英国农场主利益的影响也可以忽略不计。谷物的体积可要比屠夫卖的生肉大多了,用一个便士购买的一磅小麦在重量上相当于用四个便士购买的一磅生肉。即使在国内谷物最匮乏的年景,从外国进口的谷物数量仍然很少,这完全可以消除我国的农场主对于自由进口的恐惧感。根据见闻广博的谷物贸易研究者的论文,每年从国外进口谷物的平均数量不过只有23728夸特,不到我国年消费总量的1/571。不过由于谷物出口奖励使得丰年的出口量超过了实际耕种所允许的数量,必然导致在谷物歉收之年的进口量也超过实际耕种所需要的数量。这样一来,某一年的丰收不能够补偿另一年的歉收,而出口的平均数量必然会因为这种奖励而增加,因而进口的平均数量也必然会相应增加,超过实际耕种所需。如果不对谷物出口进行奖励,谷物的出口量会随之减少,那么按年份平均,谷物的进口量也会少于当前的水平了。谷物商人,那些在英国和境外各国之间贩运谷物的人因为业务量大大减少,可能会受到很大损失,但是国内的乡绅和农场主却不会受到什么影响。因此据我观察,最希望奖励制度持续下去的人不是乡绅和农场主,而是谷物商人。

乡绅和农场主算得上是最没有卑劣的独占心理的人,这是他们无上的光荣。一个大型制造工厂的经营者有时会因为附近20英里内新建了一所同样类型的工厂而警觉起来,在阿比维尔经营羊毛制造业的荷兰人规定,该城市周围方圆30里格 【1】 内不得兴建另一家同类制造厂。农场主和乡绅则相反,他们一般都倾向于鼓励而不是阻挠邻人开垦和改良农场和土地。他们没有大多数制造业者拥有的所谓商业秘密,一般都更愿意与邻人交流心得体会,希望自己刚刚发现的,能够带来裨益的最新做法传播得越远越好。老伽图就说过,“这是最受人尊敬的职业,从事这种职业的人,生活最为稳定,最不为人嫉恨,他们也最没有怨气。”乡绅和农场主们零星分布在国内各地,不像商人和制造业者那样容易合并,后者因为聚集在城镇中,习惯了那种普遍的排他性企业思维,自然都会在获得各自城镇居民所没有的专营权之后,竭力设法获得所有国人中唯一的专营权。这样看来,他们似乎是禁止外国商品进口的始作俑者,为的就是确保自身对国内市场的垄断。或许是为了模仿这些人,或许因为发现这些人企图压迫自己而要获得和这些人平起平坐的权利,英国的乡绅和农场主们忘记了自己原本应有的宽大之心,反而要求获得向国民供应谷物和生肉的独有特权。他们或许根本没有花时间认真思考一下,与那些他们奉为楷模的人相比,自由贸易对他们的影响实在是微乎其微。

要颁布一项永久的法律禁止进口外国谷物和牲畜,事实上就相当于规定:国内的人口和工业在任何时候都不能超过其土地原产品所能供养的限度。

然而,在以下两种情况下,通过对国外产业征收税负来鼓励国内产业看来是有利的。

首先,某些特定产业是为国防所需。例如,英国的国防在很大程度上取决于海员和船只的多少。因此,英国的航海法案试图确保英国的海员和船只在国内航海业的垄断地位是非常正确的,具体做法有时是绝对禁止,而有时是对外国的船只征收很高的税负。以下是该法案的几条主要的规定。

一、凡与英国居留地和殖民地通商或在英国沿海经商的船只,其船主及3/4船员必须为英国籍臣民,违者没收船舶及其所载的货物。

二、各种体积极大的进口商品,只能由上述船只或所购商品出产国的船只(其船主、船长及3/4船员为该国籍公民)输入英国;但由后一类船只输入的商品,必须加倍征收关税;若由其他国家的船只输入,则处以没收船只及其所载货物的惩罚。此法案颁布之时,荷兰人是欧洲海运业的巨头,到现在仍是欧洲海运业的巨头;但该法案颁布之后,他们再也不能以海运输送者的身份,将本国货物或欧洲其他各国的货物输入英国海域了。

三、各种体积极大的进口商品,只许由出产国的船只输入,连使用英国船只运送也在被禁止之列,违者没收船只及其所载货物。这项规定很可能也是专门针对荷兰人制定的。那时的荷兰和现在一样,是所有欧洲商品进行交易的大市场,有了这个条例,英国船只就不能在荷兰国内起运欧洲其他各国的货物了。

四、各种腌制咸鱼、鲸须、鲸鳍、鲸油和鲸脂,非由英国船只捕获并加工处理者,在输入英国时,须加倍征收关税。那时欧洲以捕鱼为业并供给他国的只有荷兰人,即使现在也仍然主要是荷兰人。该法案颁布之后,荷兰人向英国供给这类海产品就须缴纳极重的关税了。

航海法案制定之时,英、荷两国虽然实际上没有交战,然而两国之间的仇恨却已达到极点。这种仇恨在制定该法律的长期议会统治时期已经开始,不久以后,终于在护国公(即克伦威尔王朝)和查理二世王朝期间的荷兰战争中来了一次大爆发。所以,说这个著名法案中的几项条例是从民族仇恨出发的,也不是完全不可能;不过这些条例本身非常明智,很像是深思熟虑的结果。当时存在于两国间的民族仇恨,其目标与经过最明智的决策之后制定的目标别无二致,那就是削弱荷兰的海军力量,那是唯一可能危害英国安全的海上力量。

航海法案不利于对外贸易,或者说遏制了对外贸易带来的财富增长。一国在对外国的通商关系中所获得的利益,与个别商人在与他人做生意时一样,都力求最大程度地贱买贵卖。而完全自由贸易鼓励一切国家购买和输入所需要的商品,在这种情况下国家最有可能贱买;也是出于同一原因,由于大量买者麇集于该国市场,商品的售价可以尽量提高,因而也最有可能贵卖。诚然,航海法案对于前来输出英国产品的外国船只并没有课税;甚至之前原本需要对所有出口和进口商品征收关税,而航海法案之后颁布的好几个法案,则规定对大部分出口商品减免这部分关税。但是如果外国人因禁令或高关税的原因而不能来我国售卖,他们也不能来我国购买;因为如果空船来我国装货,单是从其本国来到我国的船费就是一笔损失。所以减少售卖者人数,必然也会减少购买者人数;这样,与贸易完全自由之时相比,我们可能在购买外国货物时付价更高,而在售卖本国货物时出价更低。但是,由于国防比国富重要得多,所以在英国所有通商条例中,航海法案或许是最明智的一项法案。

第二种通过对外国产业征收若干税负来鼓励国内产业,总体而言又能对国内有利的情况,是在国内对该产业的产品课税的时候。在这种情况下,对外国的同类产品课以同额的赋税,似乎也合情合理。这种方法不会造成国内该产业对于国内市场的垄断,也不会使流入某一特殊用途的资本与劳动大于其自然流动的情况。课税的唯一结果,不过是阻止了本来应流入该用途的任何一部分资本与劳动流入非自然的用途,而在课税之后,本国产业与外国产业仍然能在与课税前大致相同的条件下互相竞争。在英国,国内产业的产品被课以此等税负时,通常会同时对同类外国商品的进口课以高得多的关税,免得国内商人和制造业者吵吵嚷嚷地埋怨说,这些商品要在国内贱卖了。

有人认为,对于自由贸易的这第二种限制,在某些情况下,不应仅限于输入本国而与本国课税商品相竞争的那些外国商品,应该扩大并适用于许多外国商品。他们声称,如果在国内对生活必需品课税,那么不仅对从外国输入的同类生活必需品课税是正当的,对输入国内、与国内任何产业的产品竞争的各种外国商品课税也都是正当的。他们声称,这样课税必然会抬高生活必需品的价格;而随着劳动者生活品价格的提高,劳动价格也必定跟着提高。所以,本国产业所生产的各种商品虽然没有被直接课税,但其价格都将因此种课税而提高,因为生产这些商品的劳动的价格上升了。所以,他们说,这样虽然表面看来只对生活必需品课税,实际上却相当于对国内一切产业的一切商品课税。因此他们认为,为使国内产业与国外产业处于同等地位,有必要对输入本国而与本国任何商品竞争的任何外国商品加收税负,其额度应该相当于本国商品价格提高的额度。

生活必需品税,如英国的肥皂税、盐税、皮革税、蜡烛税等,是否必然提高劳动价格,从而提高一切其他商品的价格,我将在后面考察赋税时详细阐述。但是另一方面,假设这种赋税有此后果(它的确有此后果),则一切商品价格由于劳动价格上涨而普遍上涨的情况,在以下两个方面与特定商品由于直接课有特种税负而涨价的情况有所不同。

第一,关于特种税负能够使该特定商品的价格提高到什么程度,总可以作出很准确的判断;但劳动价格的普遍提高将在何种程度上影响每一种不同商品的价格,却根本不可能准确判断。因此,要按各种国内商品价格上涨的比例,对各种外国商品课以相当的税负,就不可能将额度确定得相当准确。

第二,生活必需品税对人民生活景况的影响,无异于土壤贫瘠和气候的恶劣对人民生活的影响。粮食价格因此变得比从前昂贵,正如在贫瘠的土壤和恶劣的气候之下,生产粮食需要付出额外的劳动和费用。在土壤和气候等条件导致自然资源贫乏的情况下,指导人民如何使用其资本与劳动无疑非常荒谬;同理,在生活必需品赋税人为地导致资源匮乏时,这么做也显得滑稽可笑。很明显,在上述两种情况下对人民最有利的做法,让他们尽可能地适应当前环境,为自己的劳动寻找合适的用途,使之即使在不利的情况下,也能在国内或国外市场上占有稍稍优越的地位。人民的捐税负担已经太重了,且已经为生活必需品支付了极为高昂的价格,如果再课以新税,要他们再为其他大部分商品也支付过高的价格,无疑是雪上加霜,此乃最为荒谬的补救办法。

这类赋税高到一定程度,所造成的祸害决不低于土壤贫瘠和天时险恶所造成的祸害;然而最普遍征收这类赋税的地方,却正是那些人民最富裕,也最勤勉的国家。其他国家经不起这么大的失调。只有最强健的身体,才能在饮食不卫生时也能存活并拥有健康;国家也是一样,只有当一个国家的各种产业都具有最大的先天和后天优势时,才能在这么重的苛捐杂税下继续存在并繁荣发展。在欧洲,这一类赋税最多的国家要算荷兰,而荷兰之所以继续繁荣,并不是像人们无端想象的那样,因为有了这类税负,而是由于荷兰本国的特殊情形,这类税负无法阻止其继续繁荣。

对外国产业课以关税负担,以此来鼓励本国产业的做法,总体而言在上述两种情况下是有利的,而在下述两种情况下,则需要斟酌考虑两个问题:其一,应在何种程度上继续允许自由进口某些外国商品;其二,应在何种程度上,或以何种方式,在自由进口中断一段时间之后再次恢复。

有时需要考虑应在何种程度上继续允许自由进口某些外国商品的情况是:某个境外国家通过高关税或禁令,抑制我国某些制造业产品进口到该国。在这种情况下,复仇之心自然会诱使我们实施报复,我们应该对该国的某些或全部制造业产品同样征收高关税或完全禁止进口。事实上,各国通常都是如此实施报复的。法国人为了庇护本国的制造业,特别喜欢用限制进口的办法,对付一切能和他们竞争的外国商品。这似乎是科尔贝尔先生政策的重要组成部分,科尔贝尔先生尽管才智超群,在这一点上却似乎被商人和制造业者的诡辩蒙骗了,他们总是要求获得针对其同胞的垄断权。如今,就连法国最有才智的人都认为,先生的这种做法对国家毫无裨益。这位财政大臣于1667年颁布关税法,对大多数外国制造业品课以极高的关税;荷兰人请求降低关税而不得,便于1671年颁布法令,禁止进口法国的葡萄酒、白兰地及制造业商品。两国之所以于1672年开战,部分原因就是这一商业纠纷。1678年的奈梅亨和约结束了战争,应荷兰人之请,降低了关税,荷兰人也撤销了进口法国商品的禁令。英法两国大约是在同一个时候开始使用同样的关税和禁令来抑制对方国家的产业的,不过首先采取行动的似乎是法国。从那时以来一直存在于两国之间的敌忾之心,使得双方都不肯降低关税。1697年,英国禁止进口弗兰德制造的梭结花边。弗兰德那时是西班牙领地,其政府立即宣布禁止进口英国毛织品,以示报复。1700年,英国撤回了禁止进口弗兰德梭结花边的禁令,条件是弗兰德必须撤销禁止进口英国毛织品的禁令。

为了要撤销各方实施的高关税或禁令而纷纷采用的报复政策,如果能够达到目的,则不啻为一记良策。一般来说,能够恢复较大的外国市场,不但完全可以抵消由于某些商品价格暂时昂贵而经历的暂时困难,还能带来额外补偿。要判断这种报复能否产生效果,与其说需要立法者的知识,不如说需要有所谓政治家或政客的技巧,前者的深思熟虑应该受到普遍的一般原理的指导,而那些狡猾的“动物”,即被俗称为政治家或政客的那些人,在考虑问题时一般都得随机应变、见风使舵。在没有可能撤销这种禁令的时候,为了要补偿我国某些阶层人民所受的伤害,从而使伤害到我们自身的利益,则除了本来受伤害的那些阶层,几乎所有阶层都会受到伤害,这似乎不是一个好办法。当邻国禁止进口我国某种制造品时,我们通常不但禁止进口该国的同种制造品,而且禁止进口其生产的其他几种制造品,因为仅仅禁止那一种制造品很少能够对他们造成显著的影响。这样做无疑可能会给我国某些生产部门的工人以鼓励,替他们排除一些竞争者,使他们能在国内市场上抬高价格。不过,我们那些因邻国禁令而蒙受损失的工人是决不会从这类禁令中获益的。反之,他们以及我国几乎所有其他阶层的人民,在购买某些商品时,都不得不支付比从前更为昂贵的价格。所以,每一项此类法律的实施,事实上都给整个国家的民众增加了税负,不仅不利于那些因邻国禁令而遭受损失的我国工人,也不利于我国其他各阶层的民众。

在外国商品的自由进口中断一段时间之后,应该在何种程度上,或以何种方式恢复自由进口,需要考虑这第二个问题的原因是,由于一切能与其竞争的外国商品都被课以高关税或禁止进口,我国的某些制造业大大扩充,雇用了无数的工人。在这种情况下,出于人道主义的考虑,也许应该一步一步、小心翼翼地恢复自由贸易。如果骤然撤销高关税与禁令,价格低廉的外国同类货物将迅速涌入国内市场,导致我国千千万万的人口失业,连日常的生活资料也无从获取。由此引发的混乱无疑非常可怕。不过由于以下两个原因,由此引发的混乱或许要比一般人想象的小得多。

第一,所有在无奖励金的情况下通常也可以出口到欧洲其他各国的制造品,都很少会受到外国商品自由进口的影响。这类制造品在输往外国时,其售价必须与同品质的同类其他外国商品同样低廉,因而在国内的售价必然更低。这样一来,它们仍然能够占有国内市场。即使有一些爱赶时髦的人有时只因为是外国货便趋之若鹜,本国制造的同类商品虽价廉物美,亦为他们所不取,然而根据自然规律,这种愚行总不会那么普及,所以对人们的就业不会产生显著的影响。在我国的毛织品制造业、鞣革业、铁器业中,就有很大一部分制造品每年不依赖奖励金而输往欧洲其他各国,而雇用职工人数最多的制造业,也恰恰就是这几种制造业。从自由贸易中受到最大损害的或许是丝绸制造业,其次是麻布制造业,不过后者所受的损失比前者少得多。

第二,这样恢复贸易自由,虽然会令许多人突然失业并丧失基本生活资料,但他们不会因此而彻底失业或了无生计。上次战争结束时,海陆军人数裁减了10万多,相当于国内最大的制造业所雇用的人数;他们顿时失去了平素的职业,无疑会感到种种不便,但他们并没有因此便被剥夺所有的职业和生计。水兵的较大部分或许会有机会逐渐转移到商船上提供服务。与此同时,被遣散的陆军士兵,都被吸收到广大民众中,受雇于各种职业。10万多惯于使用武器,而且其中有许多惯于劫掠的人,生活状况发生了那么大的变化,却不曾出现大的骚动,也不曾引起显著的混乱。在我国的任何地方,流氓的数目并未因此而显著增加,而且据我所知,除了水兵转为商船海员外,任何一种职业的劳动工资也未曾减少。但是要是我们将士兵的习惯和任何一种制造业工人的习惯放在一起做一比较,即可发现:与前者相比,后者总是有可能且有资格转而从事新的行业。这是因为士兵一向以依赖粮饷为生,而制造业工人则只能靠自己的劳动为生;前者倾向于怠惰与闲荡,而后者倾向于勤勉与刻苦。由一种辛勤劳动转而从事另一种辛勤劳动,当然要比由怠惰闲荡变为勤勉刻苦容易得多。此外我们在前面已经论及,大部分制造业都有与其性质相似的旁系制造业,所以工人很容易从这些制造业的一种转到另一种。而且这类工人中的大部分,偶尔还被雇用从事农业劳动。以前在特定制造业中雇用他们的资本仍将留在国内,以其他方式雇用同样数目的人。国家的资本和从前相同,对劳动的需求也和从前相同或大致相同,不过是用在不同地方和不同职业中罢了;的确如此,海陆军士兵被遣散后即拥有了自由,可以在英国或爱尔兰的任何城镇或任何地方从事任何职业。让我们恢复国王陛下的一切臣民选择任何职业的天赋自由,像海陆军士兵所享有的那样,换言之,摧毁同业组合的专营特权、废除学徒法令(此二者实际上都是对天赋自由的侵犯),再废除居住法,使贫穷工人在此地此业中失业之后,能够在彼地彼业中就业,无须担心被人检举,也无须担心被迫迁移,这样公众与个人,由于某特定制造业工人的偶然遣散而蒙受的损害,就不会大于士兵遣散所遭受的损害。我国的制造业工人无疑对国家有很大的功绩,但和以血肉保卫国家的士兵相比,他们的功绩就显得小些,因而也不奢望得到什么更好的待遇。

我们不能指望自由贸易在英国完全恢复,正如不能指望理想国或乌托邦在英国实现一样。不仅公众的偏见,还有更难克服的许多个人对私利的欲望,这些都是完全恢复自由贸易所面对的不可抗拒的阻力。如果军队的将领都像大制造业者反对每一个有关在国内市场增加其竞争者人数的法律一样,激烈地一致反对裁减兵力,都像制造业者鼓动工人以暴力攻击和伤害此类法律的提议者那样,激烈地一致鼓动他们的士兵以暴力攻击缩减兵力政策的提议者,那么要想缩编军队就会非常危险,正如我们现在想在任何方面减缩我国制造业者既得的有害于同胞的垄断权一样危险。这种垄断权已经在很大程度上增加了某些制造业的人数,他们像一个过于庞大的常备军一样,不但可以胁迫政府,而且往往可以胁迫立法机关。支持加强此种垄断权提案的议会成员不仅可以获得理解贸易的佳誉,而且可以在那种因为人数众多和财富庞大而占据重要地位的阶层中备受欢迎与拥护。反之,要是此人胆敢反对这类提案,或者甚而有权阻止这类提案,那么,即使他被公认为是最正直的人,有最高的地位、最大的社会功绩,恐怕仍不免遭受最不名誉的侮辱与诽谤,不免受到人身攻击,而且有时会面临实际的危险,因为愤怒和失望的垄断者有时会以无理的暴行来加害他。

大制造业经营者,如果由于在国内市场上突然遇到了外国竞争对手而不得不放弃原来的行业,损失无疑是巨大的。通常用来购买原材料和支付工资的那一部分资本,要另觅用途或许不会十分困难;但固定在工厂及职业工具上的那一部分资本,其处置却难免会造成相当大的损失。因此出于对这类人利益的公平考虑,就要求这种变革不要操之过急,而要徐缓、逐渐地在发出警告很久以后实行。要是立法机构能够深思熟虑,不为出于片面利益的嘈杂抱怨声所左右,而是为大众普遍利益的卓识远见所引导,那么就要特别小心,既要防止形成任何新的此类垄断,又不能让已经形成的垄断继续扩大。这样的法规会在一定程度上给国家的体制带来实际的混乱,而后来的补救措施也难免引发新的混乱。

至于在何种程度上可以适当地对进口外国商品课以关税,不是为了阻止进口,而是为政府筹集收入,我将在以后考察税负时详细探讨。但为了阻止甚至减少进口而强加的关税,显然是在破坏自由贸易,对国家税收也是有百害而无一利。

注释

【1】  长度单位,相当于3.0法定英里(4.8千米)。——译者注