The Bicameral System of Culture 189instead a subjective consequence of the precepts governing objective
morality. Customs were meant not to provide advantages to particular
individuals but to preserve and develop an entire human cultural net-
work. Who is targeted in this process? Not the individual, not even the
ruling individual, but the subjecdess "subject" of the cultural process.
This subjecdess subject is embodied in the system of customs and
taboos. This system merits our attention regardless of any utilitarian
purpose. It provides the explanation for puzzling prohibitions that
appear to be altogether senseless and impractical. Prohibitions of this
sort inspired Nietzsche's observation that "among primitive peoples
there exists a species of customs whose purpose seems to be customs in
general" (3,29; D § 16). Nietzsche cited the example of a Mongolian
tribe, the Kamshadales, who are allegedly forbidden to scrape the snow
from their shoes with a knife, to skewer coal on a knife, or to put iron
into a fire. Any one of these transgressions is punishable by death.
Taboos of this sort evidendy have the sole function of "maintaining a
perpetual proximity of custom, the constant compulsion to adhere to
custom: to reinforce the mighty proposition with which civilization
commences. Any custom is better than no custom" (3,29).
Customs function as a system of directing our drives. One and the
same drive can be experienced under the pressure of particular customs
as a painful feeling of cowardice or as a "pleasurable feeling of humility"
(3,45; D § 38)—if, for example, it is dictated by Christian morality.
Drives do not have a moral character in and of themselves. This charac-
ter develops only gradually as a "second nature" (3,45). An agonistic cul-
ture such as that of ancient Greece did not consider envy offensive, in
contrast to cultures that placed a high value on equality. In ancient Israel,
wrath was considered proof of the greatest vitality, and for this reason
divine wrath was a prominent attribute of the Jewish God.
Across the various cultures, morality is regarded as a system that goes
beyond differentiating between good and evil and also extends to dis-
tinctions between truth and untruth. According to Nietzsche, moral sys-
tems are linked to an overt or implied metaphysics of self-legitimacy. In