{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_48431/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_48431","id":"gutenberg_48431","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/48431","summary":null,"tags":["Category: German Literature","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Egoism","Philosophy, German"],"text":"Note: Images of the original pages are available through\n      Internet Archive. See\n      https://archive.org/details/egotismingerman00santuoft\n\n\nTranscriber's note:\n\n      Page numbers enclosed in square brackets (example: [Pg 5])\n      have been included to facilitate the use of the index.\n\n\n\n\n\nEGOTISM IN GERMAN PHILOSOPHY\n\nby\n\nG. SANTAYANA\n\nLate Professor of Philosophy in Harvard University\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLondon and Toronto\nJ. M. Dent & Sons Limited\nNew York: Charles Scribner's Sons\n1916\n\n\n\n\n[Pg 5]\nPREFACE\n\n\nThis book is one of the many that the present war has brought forth,\nbut it is the fruit of a long gestation. During more than twenty years,\nwhile I taught philosophy at Harvard College, I had continual occasion\nto read and discuss German metaphysics. From the beginning it wore in\nmy eyes a rather questionable shape. Under its obscure and fluctuating\ntenets I felt something sinister at work, something at once hollow and\naggressive. It seemed a forced method of speculation, producing more\nconfusion than it found, and calculated chiefly to enable practical\nmaterialists to call themselves idealists and rationalists to remain\ntheologians. At the same time the fear that its secret might be eluding\nme, seeing that by blood and tradition I was perhaps handicapped in the\nmatter, spurred me to great and prolonged efforts to understand what\nconfronted me so bewilderingly. I wished to be as clear and just about\nit as I could--more clear and just, indeed, than it ever was about\nitself.\n\nFor the rest, German philosophy was never my chief interest, and I\nwrite frankly as an outsider, with no professorial pretensions; merely\nusing my common [Pg 6] reason in the presence of claims put forth by\nothers to a logical authority and a spiritual supremacy which they are\nfar from possessing.\n\nA reader indoctrinated in the German schools is, therefore, free not\nto read further. My object is neither to repeat his familiar arguments\nin their usual form, nor to refute them; my object is to describe them\nintelligibly and to judge them from the point of view of the layman,\nand in his interests. For those who wish to study German philosophy,\nthe original authors are at hand: all I would give here is the aroma of\nGerman philosophy that has reached my nostrils. If the reader has smelt\nsomething of the kind, so much the better: we shall then understand\neach other. The function of history or of criticism is not passively\nto reproduce its subject-matter. One real world, with one stout corpus\nof German philosophy, is enough. Reflection and description are things\nsuperadded, things which ought to be more winged and more selective\nthan what they play upon. They are echoes of reality in the sphere\nof art, sketches which may achieve all the truth appropriate to them\nwithout belying their creative limitations: for their essence is to be\nintellectual symbols, at once indicative and original.\n\nEgotism--subjectivity in thought and wilfulness in\nmorals--which is the soul of German philosophy, [Pg 7] is\nby no means a gratuitous thing. It is a genuine expression of the\npathetic situation in which any animal finds itself upon earth, and\nany intelligence in the universe. It is an inevitable and initial\ncircumstance in life. But like every material accident, it is a thing\nto abstract from and to discount as far as possible. The perversity of\nthe Germans, the childishness and sophistry of their position, lies\nonly in glorifying what is an inevitable impediment, and in marking\ntime on an earthly station from which the spirit of man--at least\nin spirit--is called to fly.\n\nThis glorified and dogged egotism, which a thousand personal and\ntechnical evidences had long revealed to me in German philosophy,\nmight now, I should think, be evident to the whole world. Not that\nthe German philosophers are responsible for the war, or for that\nrecrudescence of corporate fanaticism which prepared it from afar. They\nmerely shared and justified prophetically that spirit of uncompromising\nself-assertion and metaphysical conceit which the German nation is now\nreducing to action. It is a terrible thing to have a false religion,\nall the more terrible the deeper its sources are in the human soul.\nLike many a false religion before it, this which now inspires the\nGermans has made a double assault upon mankind, one with the secular\narm, and another by solemn asseverations and sophistries. This\nassault, [Pg 8] though its incidental methods may be dubious, has been\nbold and honest enough in principle. It has been like those which\nall conquerors and all founders of militant religions have made at\nintervals against liberty or reason. And the issue will doubtless be\nthe same. Liberty may be maimed, but not killed; reason may be bent,\nbut not broken. The dark aggression is to be repelled, if possible, by\nforce of arms; but failing that, it will be nullified in time by the\nindomitable moral resistance which maturer races, richer in wisdom, can\nexert successfully against the rude will of the conqueror.\n\n\n\n[Pg 9]\nCONTENTS\n\n     I.  THE GENERAL CHARACTER OF GERMAN PHILOSOPHY\n    II.  THE PROTESTANT HERITAGE\n   III.  TRANSCENDENTALISM\n    IV.  HINTS OF EGOTISM IN GOETHE\n     V.  SEEDS OF EGOTISM IN KANT\n    VI.  TRANSCENDENTALISM PERFECTED\n   VII.  FICHTE ON THE MISSION OF GERMANY\n  VIII.  THE EGOTISM OF IDEAS\n    IX.  EGOTISM AND SELFISHNESS\n     X.  THE BREACH WITH CHRISTIANITY\n    XI.  NIETZSCHE AND SCHOPENHAUER\n   XII.  THE ETHICS OF NIETZSCHE\n  XIII.  THE SUPERMAN\n   XIV.  HEATHENISM\n    XV.  GERMAN GENIUS\n   XVI.  EGOTISM IN PRACTICE\n         INDEX\n\n\nEGOTISM IN GERMAN PHILOSOPHY\n\n\n\n[Pg 11] CHAPTER I\n\n\nTHE GENERAL CHARACTER OF GERMAN PHILOSOPHY\n\n\nWhat I propose in these pages to call German philosophy is not\nidentical with philosophy in Germany. The religion of the Germans is\nforeign to them; and the philosophy associated with religion before\nthe Reformation, and in Catholic circles since, is a system native to\nthe late Roman Empire. Their irreligion is foreign too; the sceptical\nand the scientific schools that have been conspicuous in other\ncountries have taken root in Germany as well. Thus, if we counted the\nCatholics and the old-fashioned Protestants on the one hand, and the\nmaterialists (who call themselves monists) on the other, we should very\nlikely discover that the majority of intelligent Germans held views\nwhich German philosophy proper must entirely despise, and that this\nphilosophy seemed as strange to them as to other people.\n\nFor an original and profound philosophy has arisen in Germany, as\ndistinct in genius and method from [Pg 12] Greek and Catholic\nphilosophy as this is from the Indian systems. The great characteristic\nof German philosophy is that it is deliberately subjective and limits\nitself to the articulation of self-consciousness. The whole world\nappears there, but at a certain remove; it is viewed and accepted\nmerely as an idea framed in consciousness, according to principles\nfetched from the most personal and subjective parts of the mind, such\nas duty, will, or the grammar of thought. The direction in which German\nphilosophy is profound is the direction of inwardness. Whatever we may\nthink of its competence in other matters, it probes the self--as\nunaided introspection may--with extraordinary intentness and\nsincerity. In inventing the transcendental method, the study of\nsubjective projections and perspectives, it has added a new dimension\nto human speculation.\n\nThe foreign religion and the foreign irreligion of Germany are both\nincompatible with German philosophy. This philosophy cannot accept any\ndogmas, for its fundamental conviction is that there are no existing\nthings except imagined ones: God as much as matter is exhausted by\nthe thought of him, and entirely resident in this thought. The notion\nthat knowledge can _discover_ anything, or that anything previously\nexisting can be revealed, is discarded altogether: for there is nothing\nto discover, and even [Pg 13] if there was, the mind could not reach\nit; it could only reach the idea it might call up from its own depths.\nThis idea might be perhaps justified and necessary by virtue of its\nsubjective roots in the will or in duty, but never justified by its\nsupposed external object, an object with which nobody could ever\ncompare it. German philosophy is no more able to believe in God than in\nmatter, though it must talk continually of both.\n\nAt the same time this subjectivism is not irreligious. It is mystical,\nfaithful, enthusiastic: it has all the qualities that gave early\nProtestantism its religious force. It is rebellious to external\nauthority, conscious of inward light and of absolute duties. It is\nfull of faith, if by faith we understand not definite beliefs held on\ninadequate evidence, but a deep trust in instinct and destiny.\n\nRather than religious, however, this philosophy is romantic. It accepts\npassionately the aims suggested to it by sentiment or impulse. It\ndespises prudence and flouts the understanding. In _Faust_ and in _Pier\nGynt_ we have a poetic echo of its fundamental inspiration, freed from\ntheological accommodations or academic cant. It is the adventure of a\nwild, sensitive, boyish mind, that now plays the fairy prince and now\nthe shabby and vicious egoist; a rebel and an enthusiast, yet often\na sensualist to [Pg 14] boot by way of experiment; a man eager for\nexperience but blind to its lessons, vague about nature, and blundering\nabout duty, but confident that he can in some way play the magician and\nbring the world round to serve his will and spiritual necessities.\n\nHappiness and despair are alike impossible with such a temperament.\nIts empiricism is perennial. It cannot lose faith in the vital impulse\nit expresses; all its fancy, ingenuity, and daring philosophy are\nembroideries which it makes upon a dark experience.\n\nIt cannot take outer facts very seriously; they are but symbols of its\nown unfathomable impulses. So pensive animals might reason. The just\nand humble side of German philosophy--if we can lend it virtues\nto which it is deeply indifferent--is that it accepts the total\nrelativity of the human mind and luxuriates in it, much as we might\nexpect spiders or porpoises to luxuriate in their special sensibility,\nmaking no vain effort to peep through the bars of their psychological\nprison.\n\nThis sort of agnosticism in a minor key is conspicuous in the _Critique\nof Pure Reason_. In a major key it reappears in Nietzsche, when he\nproclaims a preference for illusion over truth. More mystically\nexpressed it pervades the intervening thinkers. The more profound they\nare the more content and even delighted they are to consider nothing\nbut their own [Pg 15] creations. Their theory of knowledge proclaims\nthat knowledge is impossible. You know only your so-called knowledge,\nwhich itself knows nothing; and you are limited to the autobiography of\nyour illusions.\n\nThe Germans express this limitation of their philosophy by calling\nit idealism. In several senses it fully deserves this name. It is\nidealistic psychologically in that it regards mental life as groundless\nand all-inclusive, and denies that a material world exists, except as\nan idea necessarily bred in the mind. It is idealistic, too, in that\nit puts behind experience a background of concepts, and not of matter;\na ghostly framework of laws, categories, moral or logical principles\nto be the stiffening and skeleton of sensible experience, and to\nlend it some substance and meaning. It is idealistic in morals also,\nin that it approves of pursuing the direct objects of will, without\nlooking over one's shoulder or reckoning the consequences. These direct\nobjects are ideals, whereas happiness, or any satisfaction based on\nrenunciation and compromise, seems to these spirited philosophers the\naim of a degraded, calculating mind. The word idealism, used in this\nsense, should not mislead us; it indicates sympathy with life and its\npassions, particularly the learned and political ones; it does not\nindicate any distaste for material goods or material agencies. The\nGerman moral imagination is in its first or dogmatic [Pg 16] stage,\nnot in the second or critical one. It is in love with life rather than\nwith wisdom.\n\nThere is accordingly one sense of the term idealism--the original\none--in which this philosophy knows nothing of it, the Platonic\nand poetic sense in which the ideal is something _better_ than\nthe fact. The Platonic idealist is the man by nature so wedded to\nperfection that he sees in everything not the reality but the faultless\nideal which the reality misses and suggests. Hegel, indeed, drew an\noutline portrait of things, according to what he thought their ideal\nessence; but it was uglier and more dreary than the things themselves.\nPlatonic idealism requires a gift of impassioned contemplation, an\nincandescent fancy that leaps from the things of sense to the goals\nof beauty and desire. It spurns the earth and believes in heaven, a\nform of religion most odious to the Germans. They think this sort\nof idealism not only visionary but somewhat impious; for their own\nreligion takes the form of piety and affection towards everything\nhomely, imperfect, unstable, and progressive. They yearn to pursue\nthe unattainable and encounter the unforeseen. This romantic craving\nhangs together with their taste for the picturesque and emphatic\nin the plastic arts, and for the up-welling evanescent emotions of\nmusic. Yet their idealism is a religion of the actual. It rejects\nnothing [Pg 17] in the daily experience of life, and looks to nothing\nessentially different beyond. It looks only for more of the same thing,\nbelieving in perpetual growth, which is an ambiguous notion. Under the\nfashionable name of progress what these idealists sincerely cherish is\nthe vital joy of transition; and usually the joy of this transition\nlies much more in shedding their present state than in attaining a\nbetter one. For they suffer and wrestle continually, and by a curious\nand deeply animal instinct, they hug and sanctify this endless struggle\nall the more when it rends and bewilders them, bravely declaring it to\nbe absolute, infinite, and divine.\n\nSuch in brief is German philosophy, at least, such it might be said\nto be if any clear account of it did not necessarily falsify it; but\none of its chief characteristics, without which it would melt away, is\nambiguity. You cannot maintain that the natural world is the product\nof the human mind without changing the meaning of the word mind and\nof the word human. You cannot deny that there is a substance without\nturning into a substance whatever you substitute for it. You cannot\nidentify yourself with God without at once asserting and denying the\nexistence of God and of yourself. When you speak of such a thing as\nthe consciousness of society you must never decide whether you mean\nthe consciousness [Pg 18] individuals have of society or a fabled\nconsciousness which society is to have of itself: the first meaning\nwould spoil your eloquence, and the second would betray your mythology.\n\nWhat is involved in all these equivocations is not merely a change\nof vocabulary, that shifting use of language which time brings with\nit. No, the persistence of the old meanings alone gives point to the\nassertions that change them and identify them with their opposites.\nEverywhere, therefore, in these speculations, you must remain in\nsuspense as to what precisely you are talking about. A vague, muffled,\ndubious thought must carry you along as on a current. Your scepticism\nmust not derange your common sense; your conduct must not express your\nradical opinions; a certain afflatus must bear you nobly onward through\na perpetual incoherence. You must always be thinking not of what you\nare thinking of but of yourself or of \"something higher\" Otherwise you\ncannot live this philosophy or understand it from within.\n\nThe mere existence of this system, as of any other, proves that a\nprovocation to frame it is sometimes found in experience or language\nor the puzzles of reflection. Not that there need be any solidity in\nit on that account. German philosophy is a sort of religion, and like\nother religions it may be capable [Pg 19] of assimilating a great\namount of wisdom, while its first foundation is folly. This first folly\nitself will not lack plausible grounds; there is provocation enough in\na single visit to a madhouse for the assertion that the mind can know\nnothing but the ideas it creates; nevertheless the assertion is false,\nand such facile scepticism loses sight of the essence of knowledge. The\nmost disparate minds, since they do not regard themselves, may easily\nregard the same object. Only the maniac stares at his own ideas; he\nconfuses himself in his perceptions; he projects them into the wrong\nplaces, and takes surrounding objects to be different from what they\nare. But perceptions originally have external objects; they express\na bodily reaction, or some inward preparation for such a reaction.\nThey are reports. The porpoise and the spider are not shut up in their\nself-consciousness; however foreign to us may be the language of their\nsenses, they know the sea and air that we know, and have to meet the\nsame changes and accidents there which we meet--and they even\nhave to meet us, sometimes, to their sorrow. Their knowledge does not\nend in acquaintance with that sensuous language of theirs, whatever\nit may be, but flies with the import of that language and salutes the\nforces which confront them in action, and which also confront us. In\nfocussing these forces through the lenses and veils [Pg 20] of sense\nknowledge arises; and to arrest our attention on those veils and\nlenses and say they are all we know, belies the facts of the case and\nis hardly honest. If we could really do that, we should be retracting\nthe first act of intelligence and becoming artificial idiots. Yet this\nsophistication is the first principle of German philosophy (borrowed,\nindeed, from non-Germans), and is the thesis supposed to be proved in\nKant's _Critique of Pure Reason_.\n\n\n\n\n[Pg 21] CHAPTER II\n\nTHE PROTESTANT HERITAGE\n\nThe German people, according to Fichte and Hegel, are called by the\nplan of Providence to occupy the supreme place in the history of the\nuniverse.\n\nA little consideration of this belief will perhaps lead us more surely\nto the heart of German philosophy than would the usual laborious\napproach to it through what is called the theory of knowledge. This\ntheory of knowledge is a tangle of equivocations; but even if it were\ncorrect it would be something technical, and the technical side of\na great philosophy, interesting as it may be in itself, hardly ever\ndetermines its essential views. These essential views are derived\nrather from instincts or traditions which the technique of the system\nis designed to defend; or, at least, they decide how that technique\nshall be applied and interpreted.\n\nThe moment we hear Fichte and Hegel mentioning a providential plan of\nthe world, we gather that in their view the history of things is not\ninfinite and endlessly various, but has a closed plot like a drama in\nwhich one nation (the very one to which these [Pg 22] philosophers\nbelong) has the central place and the chief r\u00f4le: and we perceive at\nonce that theirs is a revealed philosophy. It is the heir of Judaism.\nIt could never have been formed by free observation of life and\nnature, like the philosophy of Greece or of the Renaissance. It is\nProtestant theology rationalised. The element of religious faith, in\nthe Protestant sense of the word faith, is essential to it. About the\nwitness of tradition, even about the witness of the senses, it may be\nas sceptical as it likes. It may reduce nature and God to figments\nof the mind; but throughout its criticism of all matters of fact it\nwill remain deeply persuaded that the questioning and striving spirit\nwithin is indefeasible and divine. It will never reduce all things,\nincluding the mind, to loose and intractable appearances, as might a\nfree idealism. It will employ its scepticism to turn all things into\nideas, in order to chain them the more tightly to the moral interests\nof the thinker. These moral interests, human and pathetic as they may\nseem to the outsider, it will exalt immeasurably, pronouncing them to\nbe groundless and immutable; and it will never tolerate the suspicion\nthat all things might not minister to them.\n\nFrom the same tenet of Fichte and Hegel we may also learn that in\nthe plan of the world, as this revealed philosophy conceives it, the\nprincipal figures [Pg 23] are not individuals, like the Creator, the\nRedeemer, and one's own soul, but nations and institutions. It is of\nthe essence of Protestantism and of German philosophy that religion\nshould gradually drop its supernatural personages and comforting\nprivate hopes and be absorbed in the duty of living manfully and\nconscientiously the conventional life of this world.\n\nNot the whole life of the world, however, since gay religions and many\nother gay things are excluded, or admitted only as childish toys.\nPositive religion, in fact, disappears, as well as the frivolous sort\nof worldliness, and there remains only a consecrated worldliness that\nis deliberate and imposed as a duty.\n\nJust as in pantheism God is naturalised into a cosmic force, so in\nGerman philosophy the Biblical piety of the earlier Protestants is\nsecularised into social and patriotic zeal.\n\nGerman philosophy has inherited from Protestantism its earnestness and\npious intention; also a tendency to retain, for whatever changed views\nit may put forward, the names of former beliefs. God, freedom, and\nimmortality, for instance, may eventually be transformed into their\nopposites, since the oracle of faith is internal; but their names may\nbe kept, together with a feeling that what will now bear those names\nis much more satisfying than what they originally stood for. If it\nshould seem that [Pg 24] God came nearest to us, and dwelt within us,\nin the form of vital energy, if freedom should turn out really to mean\npersonality, if immortality, in the end, should prove identical with\nthe endlessness of human progress, and if these new thoughts should\nsatisfy and encourage us as the evanescent ideas of God, freedom, and\nimmortality satisfied and encouraged our fathers, why should we not\nuse these consecrated names for our new conceptions, and thus indicate\nthe continuity of religion amid the flux of science? This expedient is\nnot always hypocritical. It was quite candid in men like Spinoza and\nEmerson, whose attachment to positive religion had insensibly given,\nway to a half-mystical, half-intellectual satisfaction with the natural\nworld, as their eloquent imagination conceived it. But whether candid\nor disingenuous, this habit has the advantage of oiling the wheels of\nprogress with a sacred unction. In facilitating change it blurs the\nconsciousness of change, and leads people to associate with their new\nopinions sentiments which are logically incompatible with them. The\nattachment of many tender-minded people to German philosophy is due to\nthis circumstance, for German philosophy is not tender.\n\nThe beauty and the torment of Protestantism is that it opens the door\nso wide to what lies beyond it. This progressive quality it has fully\ntransmitted [Pg 25] to all the systems of German philosophy. Not that\neach of them, like the earlier Protestant sects, does not think itself\ntrue and final; but in spite of itself it suggests some next thing. We\nmust expect, therefore, that the more conservative elements in each\nsystem should provoke protests in the next generation; and it is hard\nto say whether such inconstancy is a weakness, or is simply loyalty\nto the principle of progress. Kant was a puritan; he revered the rule\nof right as something immutable and holy, perhaps never obeyed in the\nworld. Fichte was somewhat freer in his Calvinism; the rule of right\nwas the moving power in all life and nature, though it might have been\nbetrayed by a doomed and self-seeking generation. Hegel was a very free\nand superior Lutheran; he saw that the divine will was necessarily and\ncontinuously realised in this world, though we might not recognise the\nfact in our petty moral judgments. Schopenhauer, speaking again for\nthis human judgment, revolted against that cruel optimism, and was\nan indignant atheist; and finally, in Nietzsche, this atheism became\nexultant; he thought it the part of a man to abet the movement of\nthings, however calamitous, in order to appropriate its wild force and\nbe for a moment the very crest of its wave.\n\nProtestantism was not a reformation by accident, [Pg 26] because it\nhappened to find the church corrupt; it is a reformation essentially,\nin that every individual must reinterpret the Bible and the practices\nof the church in his own spirit. If he accepted them without renewing\nthem in the light of his personal religious experience, he would never\nhave what Protestantism thinks living religion. German philosophy has\ninherited this characteristic; it is not a cumulative science that\ncan be transmitted ready made. It is essentially a reform, a revision\nof traditional knowledge, which each neophyte must make for himself,\nunder pain of rendering only lip-service to transcendental truth,\nand remaining at heart unregenerate. His chief business is to be\nconverted; he must refute for himself the natural views with which he\nand all other men have begun life. And still these views--like\nthe temptations of Satan--inevitably form themselves afresh\nin each generation, and even in the philosopher, between one spell\nof introspective thought and another, so that he always has to\nrecapitulate his saving arguments from the beginning. Each new idealist\nin each of his books, often in every lecture and every chapter, must\nrun back to refute again the same homely opponents--materialism,\nnaturalism, dualism, or whatever he may call them. Dead as each day\nhe declares these foes to be, he has to fight them again in his own\nsoul on the morrow. [Pg 27] Hence his continual preoccupation lest he\nfall away, or lest the world should forget him. To preserve his freedom\nand his idealism he must daily conquer them anew. This philosophy is\nsecondary, critical, sophistical; it has a perennial quarrel with\ninevitable opinions.\n\nProtestantism, in spite of its personal status, wished to revert\nto primitive Christianity. In this desire it was guided partly\nby a conventional faith in the Scriptures, and partly by a deep\nsympathy with experimental religion. German religion and philosophy\nare homesick: they wish to be quite primitive once more. And they\nactually remain primitive in spirit, spontaneous and tentative, even\nin the midst of the most cumbrous erudition, as a composition of\nD\u00fcrer's, where flesh, fish, and fowl crowd every corner, still remains\nprimitive, puzzled, and oppressed. Such a na\u00efve but overloaded mind\nis lost in admiration of its own depth and richness; yet, in fact, it\nis rather helpless and immature; it has not learned to select what\nsuffices, or to be satisfied with what is best.\n\nFaith for the Germans must be a primitive and groundless assurance,\nnot knowledge credibly transmitted by others whose experience may\nhave been greater than our own. Even philosophy is not conceived as a\nreasonable adjustment to what may have [Pg 28] been discovered to be\nthe constitution of the world; it is in the first instance a criticism,\nto dissolve that reputed knowledge, and then, when primitive innocence\nis happily restored, it is a wager or demand made beyond all evidence,\nand in contempt of all evidence, in obedience to an innate impulse.\nOf course, it is usual, as a concession to the weaker brethren,\nto assume that experience, in the end, will seem to satisfy these\ndemands, and that we shall win our bets and our wars; but the point of\nprinciple, borrowed by German philosophy from Protestantism, is that\nthe authority of faith is intrinsic and absolute, while any external\ncorroboration of it is problematical and not essential to the rightness\nof the assumptions that faith makes. In this we have a fundamental\ncharacteristic of the school. Carried (as it seldom is) to its logical\nconclusion, it leads to the ultra-romantic and ultra-idealistic\ndoctrine that the very notion of truth or fact is a fiction of, the\nwill, invented to satisfy our desire for some fixed point of reference\nin thought. In this doctrine we may see the culmination of the\nProtestant rebellion against mediation in religion, against external\nauthority, and against dogma.\n\nThe Protestant precept to search the Scriptures, and the sense\nthat every man must settle the highest questions for himself, have\ncontributed to the zeal [Pg 29] with which science and scholarship\nhave been pursued in Germany. In no other country has so large, so\nindustrious, and (amid its rude polemics) so co-operative a set of\nprofessors devoted itself to all sorts of learning. But as the original\nmotive was to save one's soul, an apologetic and scholastic manner\nhas often survived: the issue is prejudged and egotism has appeared\neven in science. For favourable as Protestantism is to investigation\nand learning, it is almost incompatible with clearness of thought and\nfundamental freedom of attitude. If the controlling purpose is not\npolitical or religious, it is at least \"philosophical,\" that is to say,\narbitrary.\n\nWe must remember that the greater part of the \"facts\" on which theories\nare based are reported or inferred facts_--all_ in the historical\nsciences, since the documents and sources must first be pronounced\ngenuine or spurious by the philosophical critic. Here presumptions and\nprivate methods of inference determine what shall be admitted for a\nfact, to say nothing of the interpretation to be given to it. Hence a\npiece of Biblical or Homeric criticism, a history of Rome or of Germany\noften becomes a little system of egotistical philosophy, posited and\ndefended with all the parental zeal and all the increasing conviction\nwith which a prophet defends his supernatural inspirations.\n\n[Pg 30] The distinction between Mary and Martha is not a German\ndistinction: in Germany the rapt idealist is busy about many things,\nso that his action is apt to be heady and his contemplation perturbed.\nOnly the principle is expected to be spiritual, the illustrations must\nall be material and mundane. There is no paradox in German idealism\nturning to material science, commerce, and war for a fresh field\nof operation. No degeneracy is implied in such an extension of its\nvocation, especially when the other ideals of the state--pure\nlearning, art, social organisation--are pursued at the same time\nwith an equal ardour. The test of a genuine German idealist is that he\nshould forget and sink his private happiness in whatever service the\nstate may set him to do.\n\nIn view of this political fidelity the changing opinions of men are all\nindifferent to true religion. It is not a question of _correctness_ in\nopinion or conduct, since for the idealist there can be no external\nstandard of truth, existence, or excellence on which such correctness\ncould depend. Ideas are so much real experience and have no further\nsubject-matter. Thought is simply more or less rich, elaborate, or\nvehement, like a musical composition, and more or less consistent\nwith itself. It is all a question of depth and fulness of experience,\nobtained by hacking one's way through this visionary and bewitched [Pg\n31] existence, the secret purpose of which is to serve the self in its\ndevelopment. In this philosophy imagination that is sustained is called\nknowledge, illusion that is coherent is called truth, and will that is\nsystematic is called virtue.\n\nEvidently the only sanction or vindication that such a belief will\nlook for is the determination to reassert it. Religion is here its own\nheaven, and faith the only proof of its own truth. What is harmonised\nin the end is not the experience through which people have actually\npassed but only the echoes of that experience chiming in the mystic\near. Memory too can play the egotist. Subjectivism can rule even within\nthe subject and can make him substitute his idea of himself, in his\nmost self-satisfied moment, for the poor desultory self that he has\nactually been.\n\nThe German philosophers have carried on Protestantism beyond itself.\nThey have separated the two ingredients mingled in traditional\nreligions. One of these ingredients--the vital faith or self-trust\nof the animal will--they have retained. The other--the lessons of\nexperience--they have rejected. To which element the name of religion\nshould still be given, if it is given to either, is a matter of\nindifference.\n\nThe important thing is that, call it religion or irreligion, we should\nknow what we are clinging to.\n\n\n\n\n[Pg 32] CHAPTER III\n\nTRANSCENDENTALISM\n\nFichte called Locke the worst of philosophers, but it was ungrateful\nof him, seeing that his own philosophy was founded on one of Locke's\nerrors. It was Locke who first thought of looking into his own breast\nto find there the genuine properties of gold and of an apple; and it\nis clear that nothing but lack of consecutiveness and courage kept\nhim from finding the whole universe in the same generous receptacle.\nThis method of looking for reality in one's own breast, when practised\nwith due consecutiveness and courage by the Germans, became the\ntranscendental method; but it must be admitted that the German breast\nwas no longer that anatomical region which Locke had intended to probe,\nbut a purely metaphysical point of departure, a migratory ego that\ncould be here, there, and everywhere at once, being present at any\npoint from which thought or volition might be taken to radiate. It was\nno longer so easy to entrap as the soul of Locke, which he asserted\ntravelled with him in his coach from London to Oxford. But the practice\nof [Pg 33] looking for all things within one's own breast, in the\nsubtler sense of searching for them in one's memory and experience,\nbegat in time the whole romantic and subjective school of philosophy.\n\nLeibniz, the first of German philosophers, although an enemy of Locke's\nsensualism and of his slackness in logic, was even more explicit in\nassigning a mental seat to all sensible objects. The soul, he said,\nhad no windows and, he might have added, no doors; no light could\ncome to it from without; and it could not exert any transitive force\nor make any difference beyond its own insulated chamber. It was a\n_camera obscura_, with a universe painted on its impenetrable walls.\nThe changes which went on in it were like those in a dream, due to the\ncharge of pent-up energies and fecundities within it; for the Creator\nhad wound it up at the creation like a clock, destined to go for ever,\nstriking infinite hours, with ever richer chimes.\n\nHere, in miniature, with a clearness and beauty never afterwards\nequalled, we have the nature and movement of the transcendental self\nset forth before us: a closed circle of experience, admitting of no\nrelations with anything beyond, but infinite in its own potential\ndevelopments, and guided by an inner force, according to an innate\nunconscious plan. All duties, all principles of interpretation, all\ndata, all [Pg 34] visioned objects, operated within this single life,\ndiversifying its field of view, and testifying to its secret endowment.\n\nNevertheless, the later idealists, ungrateful to Locke for their\nfirst principle, were ungrateful also to Leibniz for their ultimate\nconception, anticipated by him in all its completeness. There\nwere reasons, of course, for this ingratitude. Leibniz, like the\ntranscendentalists, had supposed that the objects of sense, as\nexperience reveals them, were begotten out of the latent nature of the\nsoul; but he had also conceived that there were many souls, as many as\natoms in the physical world, and that the images arising in each were\nsigns of the presence and actual condition of its companions. Thus\nperception, while yielding directly only an idea, as in a dream, was\nindirectly symbolic of an outer reality, like a dream significant and\ncapable of interpretation. And being an undaunted rationalist, Leibniz\nassumed that the sooth-sayer capable of reading this dream was reason,\nand that whatever reason conceived to be right and necessary actually\nmust be true in the great outer world.\n\nIt was at this point that Kant deviated into his radical\nsubjectification of knowledge. His mind had been more open than that\nof Leibniz to the influences of English psychology, it had stewed\nlonger in its [Pg 35] own juice, and he could not help asking how, if\nthe senses could reveal only ideas of sense, reason was ever able to\nreveal anything but ideas of reason. Those inferences about the vast\nworld outside, which Leibniz had allowed his spirits to make in their\nsolitary confinement, were reduced by the more scrupulous Kant to\nscribblings upon their prison walls. These scribblings he officially\ntermed the ideas of pure--that is, of unsupported--reason;\nbut in his private capacity he gently continued to agree with Leibniz\nand to believe them true.\n\nThere was no anomaly, according to Kant, in this situation. An idea\nmight by chance be the image of a reality, but we could never know that\nit was. For the proof would have to be supplied by a further idea, and\nwould terminate in that. The hypothesis and the corroboration would\nalike be mental, since experience was of ideas and could envisage\nnothing but the vicissitudes of the mind.\n\nIf you had asked Leibniz what determined the order in which perceptions\ncame into any mind, he would doubtless have answered that the Creator\ndid so, or (translating that symbol into its analytic equivalent in his\nsystem) that what did so was the innate destiny or predisposition of\nthat mind to develop in harmony with the best possible universe. Here\nis a very remarkable unconscious principle of [Pg 36] evolution seated\nin the spirit and presiding over all its experience. This is precisely\nwhat is meant by a transcendental principle.\n\nThis principle, unconscious as it is, sometimes betrays its mighty\nworkings to consciousness. Besides the incidental multitude of ideas\nwhich it breeds, it makes itself felt in subterranean strains and\nrumblings, in the sense of movement and of longing. This darker but\ndeeper manifestation of the transcendental clock-work Leibniz called\nappetition, and under the name of Will it has played a great part\nin later German systems. To call it Will is, of course, to speak\nimproperly and mythologically, for actual willing requires an idea of\nwhat is willed. When we say a man doesn't know what he wants, we mean\nthat he can will nothing, for lack of a clear idea of his interests\nand situation, although he doubtless wants or lacks many specific\nthings, the absence of which is rendering him unhappy and restless.\nThese instinctive appetitions for objects of which the mind is ignorant\nmay, by a figure of speech, be called unconscious Will; a phrase\nwhich would be a contradiction in terms if this word Will (which I\nwrite with a capital letter) were not used metaphorically. From this\nmetaphor, when its boldness seems to be dulled by use, we may pass\ninsensibly to giving the name of Will to that whole transcendental\npotency [Pg 37] of the soul which, like the mainspring of a watch,\nlay coiled up tightly within it from the beginning of time. A man's\ntranscendental Will can then be called the source of everything that\never happens to him--his birth, his character, his whole life,\nand his death--all that he most detests and most emphatically\ndoes not will, like his nightmares, being an expression of the\noriginal pregnancy of his spirit, and its transcendental principle of\ndevelopment.\n\nThere is but one thing to add touching a point often left by these\nphilosophers in the most hopeless obscurity. In Leibniz the number\nof spirits was infinite: in the later systems they are reduced to\none. This difference seems greater than it is, for when such terms\nas Spirit or Will are used metaphorically, standing for unconscious\nlaws of continuity or development, and when the Will or Spirit present\nin me now may be said to have presided over the destinies of my soul\ninfinite ages before I was born, there seems to be no good reason why\nthe same Spirit or Will should not preside over all the inhabitants of\nthe universe at all times, be they gods or humming-birds. Such a Spirit\nor Will resembles the notion of Providence, or the law of evolution,\nor the pre-established harmony of Leibniz far more than it resembles a\nmind. Those philosophers, intent on proving that the Spirit can be only\none, might [Pg 38] have proceeded, therefore, by urging that a Spirit\nwas at best a formal and abstract law, covering such disparate facts,\nthat all flesh and fowl, all demons and angels, might just as well be\nanimated by a single Spirit. As it takes all sorts of things to make a\nworld, it might take all sorts of things to express a Spirit.\n\nThis cool and consciously verbal way of making all one, however, is\nnot the way of the Germans. No doubt in practice the unity of the\nSpirit or Will in their systems amounts to nothing more, yet their\nintention and illusion is rather that whenever two things can be called\nmanifestations of one Spirit in the loosest and most metaphorical\nsense of this word they are thereby proved to be data in one spirit in\nthe most intimate and psychological sense of the same. So that what\nreally happens to transcendentalists is not that they unite all the\ntranscendental units of Leibniz into one even looser transcendental\nunit, but that they limit the universe to what in Leibniz was one of\nan infinite number of parallel careers. Nay, they limit even that one\ncareer to the experience present at one point, that of the most intense\nand comprehensive self-consciousness.\n\nThe unity they desire and believe in is accordingly an actual and\nintense unity. All its elements are to be viewed at once, bound and\nmerged together by [Pg 39] the simultaneous intuition of all their\nrelations, and this in a single, unchanging, eternal moment of thought,\nor rather of unutterable feeling. The union is, therefore, real,\npsychic, mystical, and so close that everything that was to be united\nthere, by a curious irony, remains outside.\n\nWhat can lead serious thinkers, we may ask, into such pitfalls\nand shams? In this case, a powerful and not unworthy motive. All\ntranscendentalism takes the point of view of what it calls knowledge;\nwhenever it mentions anything--matter, God, oneself--it means\nnot that thing but the idea of it. By knowledge it understands the\nimage or belief, the fact of cognition. Whatever is thought of exists,\nor can exist, in this philosophy, only for thought; yet this thought\nis called not illusion but knowledge, because knowledge is what the\nthought feels that it is.\n\nEvidently on this principle none of Leibniz's spirits could know any\nother, nor could any phase of the same spirit know any other phase.\nThe unbridgeable chasm of want of experience would cut off knowledge\nfrom everything but its \"content,\" the ideas it has of its objects.\nThose fabled external objects would be brought back into my ideas, and\nidentified with them; my ideas in turn would be drawn in and identified\nwith the fact that I entertain them and this fact itself would condense\ninto the [Pg 40] more intimate and present fact that intensely,\nvaguely, deeply I feel that I am, or am tending to be, something or\nother. My Will or Spirit, the rumble of my unconscious appetitions,\nthus absorbs my ideas, my ideas absorb their objects, and these objects\nabsorb the world, past, present, and future. Earth and heaven, God and\nmy fellowmen are mere expressions of my Will, and if they were anything\nmore, I could not now be alive to their presence. My Will is absolute.\nWith that conclusion transcendentalism is complete.\n\nIs such transcendentalism impossibly sceptical? Is it absurdly\narrogant? Is it wonderfully true?\n\nIn so complex a world as this, there is room for a great number of\ncross-vistas: when all has been surveyed from one point of view\nand in one set of terms, nothing excludes the same reality from\nbeing surveyed from a different centre and expressed in a different\nnotation. To represent a man, sculpture is apparently exhaustive; yet\nit does not exclude painting, or the utterly disparate description\nof the man in words; surveys in which there need be no contradiction\nin the deliverance, though there is the widest diversity and even\nincommensurability in the methods. Each sort of net drawn through\nthe same sea catches a different sort of fish; and the fishermen may\nquarrel about what the sea contained, if each regards his draught as\nexhaustive. Yet the sea [Pg 41] contained all their catches, and also\nthe residue, perhaps infinite, that escaped them all.\n\nNow one net which every intelligent being casts over things is that of\nhis own apprehension, experience, and interests. He may not reflect\noften on his personal principle of selection and arrangement; he\nmay be so interested in the movements he sees through his glass as\nnever to notice the curious circular frame, perhaps prismatic, which\nhis glass imposes on the landscape. Yet among all the properties of\nthings, the adventitious properties imputed to them in apprehension\nare worth noting too; indeed, it chastens and transforms our whole\nlife if we have once noted them and taken them to heart. Not that this\ncircumstance implies for a moment what the dizziness of idealists has\ninferred, that things exist only as perceived or when we perceive\nthem. What follows is rather that, besides the things and in the\nmost interesting contrast to their movement, there is the movement\nof our minds in observing them. If, for instance, I happen not to\nknow the name of my great-grandfather, and am vexed at my ignorance,\nI may search the parish records and discover it, together with many\ncircumstances of his life. This does not prove that my interest in\ngenealogy created my great-grandfather, as a consistent egotist would\nassert; but it does show how my interest was a [Pg 42] nucleus for my\ndiscoveries and for the terms, such as great-grandfather, in which I\nexpress them--for it was no intrinsic property of that worthy man\nthat he was to become my great-grandfather after his death, or that I\nwas to discover him.\n\nThis vortex which things, as apprehension catches them, seem to form\nround each whirling spectator, is the fascinating theme of lyric\npoetry, of psychological novels, and of German philosophy. Dominated\nas this philosophy is by the transcendental method, it regards views,\nand the history and logic of views, as more primitive and important\nthan the objects which these views have in common. The genial Professor\nPaulsen of Berlin (whose pupil I once had the advantage of being) had\na phrase that continually recurred in his lectures: _Man kann sagen_,\nas much as to say, Things will yield the following picture, if one\ncares to draw it. And he once wrote an article in honour of Kant very\npertinently entitled: _Was uns Kant sein kann_; because no veritable\ndisciple of Kant accepts what Kant taught as he taught it, but each\nrises from the study of the master having irresistibly formed one or\nmore systems of his own. To take what views we will of things, if\nthings will barely suffer us to take them, and then to declare that\nthe things are mere terms in the views we take of them--that is\ntranscendentalism.\n\n\n\n\n[Pg 43] CHAPTER IV\n\nHINTS OF EGOTISM IN GOETHE\n\nAll transcendentalists are preoccupied with the self, but not all\nare egotists. Some regard as a sad disability this limitation of\ntheir knowledge to what they have created; they are humble, and\nalmost ashamed to be human, and to possess a mind that must cut them\noff hopelessly from all reality. On the other hand there are many\ninstinctive egotists who are not transcendentalists, either because\ntheir attention has not been called to this system, or because they\ndiscredit all speculation, or because they see clearly that the senses\nand the intellect, far from cutting us off from the real things that\nsurround us, have the function of adjusting our action to them and\ninforming our mind about them. Such an instinctive egotist does not\nallege that he creates the world by willing and thinking it, yet he is\nmore interested in his own sensations, fancies, and preferences than\nin the other things in the world. The attention he bestows on things\nseems to him to bathe in light their truly interesting side. What he\nchiefly considers is his own experience--what he [Pg 44] cared\nfor first, what second, what he thinks to-day, what he will probably\nthink to-morrow, what friends he has had, and how they have lost\ntheir charm, what religions he has believed in, and in general what\ncontributions the universe has made to him and he to the universe. His\ninterest in personality need not be confined to his own; he may have a\ndramatic imagination, and may assign their appropriate personality to\nall other people; every situation he hears of or invents may prompt him\nto conceive the thrilling passions and pungent thoughts of some _alter\nego_, in whom latent sides of his own nature may be richly expressed.\nAnd impersonal things, too, may fascinate him, when he feels that they\nstir his genius fruitfully; and he will be the more ready to scatter\nhis favours broadcast in that what concerns him is not any particular\ntruth or person (things which might prove jealous and exclusive), but\nrather the exercise of his own powers of universal sympathy.\n\nSomething of this sort seems to appear in Goethe; and although his\ncontact with philosophical egotism was but slight, and some of his wise\nmaxims are incompatible with it, yet his romanticism, his feeling for\ndevelopment in everything, his private life, the nebulous character of\nhis religion, and some of his most important works, like _Faust_ and\n_Wilhelm Meister_, are all so full of the spirit of German [Pg 45]\nphilosophy, that it would be a pity not to draw some illustration for\nour subject from so pleasant a source.\n\nThere are hints of egotism in Goethe, but in Goethe there are hints of\neverything, and it would be easy to gather an imposing mass of evidence\nto the effect that he was not like the transcendentalists, but far\nsuperior to them. For one thing he was many-sided, not encyclop\u00e6dic; he\nwent out to greet the variety of things, he did not pack it together.\nHe did not even arrange the phases of his experience (as he did those\nof Faust) in an order supposed to be a progress, although, as the\ncommentators on _Faust_ inform us, not a progress in mere goodness.\nHegel might have _understood_ all these moral attitudes, and described\nthem in a way not meant to appear satirical; but he would have\ncriticised and demolished them, and declared them obsolete--all\nbut the one at which he happened to stop. Goethe _loved_ them all;\nhe hated to outgrow them, and if involuntarily he did so, at least\nhe still honoured the feelings that he had lost. He kept his old age\ngenial and green by that perennial love. In order to hold his head\nabove water and be at peace in his own heart, he did not need to be a\nChristian, a pagan, or an epicurean; yet he lent himself unreservedly,\nin imagination, to Christianity, paganism, and sensuality--three\nthings [Pg 46] your transcendental egotist can never stomach: each in\nits way would impugn his self-sufficiency.\n\nNevertheless the sympathies of Goethe were only romantic or \u00e6sthetic;\nthey were based on finding in others an interesting variation from\nhimself, an exotic possibility, rather than an identity with himself in\nthought or in fate. Christianity was an atmosphere necessary to certain\nfigures, that of Gretchen, for instance, who would have been frankly\nvulgar without it; paganism was a learned masque, in which one could be\nat once distinguished and emancipated; and sensuality was a sentimental\nand scientific licence in which the free mind might indulge in due\nseason. The sympathy Goethe felt with things was that of a lordly\nobserver, a traveller, a connoisseur, a philanderer; it was egotistical\nsympathy.\n\nNothing, for instance, was more romantic in Goethe than his classicism.\nHis _Iphigenie_ and his _Helena_ and his whole view of antiquity were\nfull of the pathos of distance. That pompous sweetness, that intense\nmoderation, that moral somnambulism were too intentional; and Goethe\nfelt it himself. In _Faust_, after Helen has evaporated, he makes\nthe hero revisit his native mountains and revert to the thought of\nGretchen. It is a wise home-coming, because that craze for classicism\nwhich Helen symbolised alienated the mind from real life and led [Pg\n47] only to hopeless imitations and lackadaisical poses. Gretchen's\ngarden, even the _Walpurgisnacht_, was in truth more classical. This\nis only another way of saying that in the attempt to be Greek the\ntruly classical was missed even by Goethe, since the truly classical\nis not foreign to anybody. It is precisely that part of tradition\nand art which does not alienate us from our own life or from nature,\nbut reveals them in all their depth and nakedness, freed from the\nfashions and hypocrisies of time and place. The effort to reproduce\nthe peculiarities of antiquity is a proof that we are not its natural\nheirs, that we do not continue antiquity instinctively. People can\nmimic only what they have not absorbed. They reconstruct and turn into\nan arch\u00e6ological masquerade only what strikes them as outlandish. The\ngenuine inheritors of a religion or an art never dream of reviving it;\nits antique accidents do not interest them, and its eternal substance\nthey possess by nature.\n\nThe Germans are not in this position in regard to the ancients. Whether\nsympathetic like Goethe, or disparaging like Burckhardt, or both\nat once, like Hegel, they have seen in antiquity its local colour,\nits mannerisms, its documents, and above all its contrasts with the\npresent. It was not so while the traditions of antiquity were still\nliving and [Pg 48] authoritative. But the moderns, and especially the\nGermans, have not a humble mind. They do not go to school with the\nGreeks unfeignedly, as if Greek wisdom might possibly be true wisdom,\na pure expression of experience and reason, valid essentially for us.\nThey prefer to take that wisdom for a phase of sentiment, of course\noutgrown, but still enabling them to reconstruct learnedly the image of\na fascinating past. This is what they call giving vitality to classical\nstudies, turning them into _Kulturgeschichte_. This is a vitality lent\nby the living to the dead, not one drawn by the young and immature from\na perennial fountain. In truth classical studies were vital only so\nlong as they were still authoritative morally and set the standard for\nletters and life. They became otiose and pedantic when they began to\nserve merely to recover a dead past in its trivial detail, and to make\nus grow sentimental over its remoteness, its beauty, and its ruins.\n\nHow much freer and surer was Goethe's hand when it touched the cord of\nromanticism! How perfectly he knew the heart of the romantic egotist!\nThe romantic egotist sets no particular limits to the range of his\ninterests and sympathies; his programme, indeed, is to absorb the\nwhole world. He is no wounded and disappointed creature, like Byron,\nthat takes to sulking and naughtiness because things [Pg 49] taste\nbitter in his mouth. He finds good and evil equally digestible. The\npersonal egotism of Byron or of Musset after all was humble; it knew\nhow weak it was in the universe. But absolute egotism in Goethe, as in\nEmerson, summoned all nature to minister to the self: all nature, if\nnot actually compelled to this service by a human creative fiat, could\nat least be won over to it by the engaging heroism of her favourite\nchild. In his warm pantheistic way Goethe felt the swarming universal\nlife about him; he had no thought of dragooning it all, as sectarians\nand nationalists would, into vindicating some particular creed or\nnation. Yet that fertile and impartial universe left each life free and\nin uncensored competition with every other life. Each creature might\nfeed blamelessly on all the others and become, if it could, the focus\nand epitome of the world. The development of self was the only duty, if\nonly the self was developed widely and securely enough, with insight,\ncalmness, and godlike irresponsibility.\n\nGoethe exhibited this principle in practice more plainly, perhaps,\nthan in theory. His family, his friends, his feelings were so many\nstepping-stones in his moral career; he expanded as he left them\nbehind. His love-affairs were means to the fuller realisation of\nhimself. Not that his love-affairs were sensual or his infidelities\ncallous; far from it. They [Pg 50] often stirred him deeply and\nunsealed the springs of poetry in his heart; that was precisely their\nfunction. Every tender passion opened before him a primrose path into\nwhich his inexorable genius led him to wander. If in passing he must\ntread down some flower, that was a great sorrow to him; but perhaps\nthat very sorrow and his inevitable remorse were the most needful and\nprecious elements in the experience. Every pathetic sweetheart in\nturn was a sort of Belgium to him; he violated her neutrality with a\nsigh; his heart bled for her innocent sufferings, and he never said\nafterwards in self-defence, like the German Chancellor, that she was\nno better than she should be. But he must press on. His beckoning\ndestiny, the claims of his spiritual growth, compelled him to sacrifice\nher and to sacrifice his own lacerated feelings on the altar of duty\nto his infinite self. Indeed, so truly supreme was this vocation that\nuniversal nature too, he thought, was bound to do herself some violence\nin his behalf and to grant him an immortal life, that so noble a\nprocess of self-expansion might go on for ever.\n\nGoethe's perfect insight into the ways of romantic egotism appears\nalso in _Faust_, and not least in the latter parts of it, which are\ncuriously prophetic. If the hero of that poem has a somewhat incoherent\ncharacter, soft, wayward, emotional, yet at the same [Pg 51] time\nstubborn and indomitable, that circumstance only renders him the fitter\nvehicle for absolute Will, a metaphysical entity whose business is to\nbe vigorous and endlessly energetic while remaining perfectly plastic.\nFaust was at first a scholar, fervid and grubbing, but so confused\nand impatient that he gave up science for magic. Notwithstanding\nthe shams of professional people which offended him, a private and\ncandid science was possible, which might have brought him intellectual\nsatisfaction; and the fact would not have escaped him if he had been a\nsimple lover of truth. But absolute Will cannot be restricted to any\nsingle interest, much less to the pursuit of a frigid truth in which\nit cannot believe; for the Will would not be absolute if it recognised\nany truth which it had to discover; it can recognise and love only the\ntruth that it makes. Its method of procedure, we are told, consists in\nfirst throwing out certain assumptions, such perhaps as that everything\nmust have a cause or that life and progress must be everlasting; and\nthe truth is then whatever conforms to these assumptions. But since\nevidently these assumptions might be utterly false, it is clear that\nwhat interests absolute Will is not truth at all, but only orthodoxy.\nA delightful illustration of this is given by Faust when, emulating\nLuther for a moment, he undertakes to translate the [Pg 52] first\nverse of Saint John--that being the Gospel that impresses him\nmost favourably. The point is not prosaically to discover what the\nEvangelist meant, but rather what he must and shall have meant. _The\nWord_ will never do; _the Sense_ would be somewhat better; but _In the\nbeginning was Force_ would have even more to recommend it. Suddenly,\nhowever, what absolute Will demands flashes upon him, and he writes\ndown contentedly: _In the beginning was the Deed_:\n\n    Auf einmal seh' ich Rat\n    Und schreibe getrost: Im Anfang war die That!\n\nYet even in this exciting form, the life of thought cannot hold him\nlong. He aches to escape from it; not that his knowledge of the\nsciences, as well as his magic, will not accompany him through life;\nhe will not lose his acquired art nor his habit of reflection, and in\nthis sense his career is really a progress, in that his experience\naccumulates; but the living interest is always something new. He turns\nto miscellaneous adventures, not excluding love; from that he passes to\nimperial politics, a sad mess, thence to sentimental classicism, rather\nan unreality, and finally to war, to public works, to trade, to piracy,\nto colonisation, and to clearing his acquired estates of tiresome\nold natives, who insist on ringing church bells and are impervious\nto the new _Kultur_. These public [Pg 53] enterprises he finds more\nsatisfying, perhaps only because he dies in the midst of them.\n\nAre these hints of romantic egotism in Goethe mere echoes of his youth\nand of the ambient philosophy, echoes which he would have rejected if\nconfronted with them in an abstract and doctrinal form, as he rejected\nthe system of Fichte? Would he not have judged Schopenhauer more\nkindly? Above all, what would he have thought of Nietzsche, his own\nwild disciple? No doubt he would have wished to buttress and qualify in\na thousand ways that faith in absolute Will which they emphasised so\nexclusively, Schopenhauer in metaphysics and Nietzsche in morals. But\nthe same faith was a deep element in his own genius, as in that of his\ncountry, and he would hardly have disowned it.\n\n\n\n\n[Pg 54] CHAPTER V\n\nSEEDS OF EGOTISM IN KANT\n\nKant is remarkable among sincere philosophers for the pathetic\nseparation which existed between his personal beliefs and his official\ndiscoveries. His personal beliefs were mild and half orthodox and\nhardly differed from those of Leibniz; but officially he was entangled\nin the subjective criticism of knowledge, and found that the process\nof knowing was so complicated and so exquisitely contrived to make\nknowledge impossible, that while the facts of the universe were there,\nand we might have, like Leibniz, a shrewd and exact notion of what they\nwere, officially we had no right to call them facts or to allege that\nwe knew them. As there was much in Kant's personal belief which this\ncritical method of his could not sanction, so there were implications\nand consequences latent in his critical method which he never absorbed,\nbeing an old man when he adopted it. One of these latent implications\nwas egotism.\n\nThe fact that each spirit was confined to its own perceptions condemned\nit to an initial subjectivity and agnosticism. What things might exist\nbesides his ideas he could never know. That such things [Pg 55]\nexisted was not doubted; Kant never accepted that amazing principle of\ndogmatic egotism that nothing is able to exist unless I am able to know\nit. On the contrary he assumed that human perceptions, with the moral\npostulates which he added to them, were symbols of a real world of\nforces or spirits existing beyond. This assumption reduced our initial\nidiotism to a constitutional taint of our animal minds, not unlike\noriginal sin, and excluded that romantic pride and self-sufficiency in\nwhich a full-fledged transcendentalism always abounds.\n\nTo this contrite attitude of Kant's agnosticism his personal character\nand ethics corresponded. A wizened little old bachelor, a sedentary\nprovincial scribe, scrupulous and punctual, a courteous moralist who\nwould have us treat humanity in the person of another as an end and\nnever merely as a means, a pacifist and humanitarian who so revered the\nmoral sense according to Shaftesbury and Adam Smith that, after having\nabolished earth and heaven, he was entirely comforted by the sublime\ntruth that nevertheless it remained wrong to tell a lie--such a\nfigure has nothing in it of the officious egotist or the superman.\nYet his very love of exactitude and his scruples about knowledge,\nmisled by the psychological fallacy that nothing can be an object of\nknowledge except some idea in the mind, led him [Pg 56] in the end\nto subjectivism; while his rigid conscience, left standing in that\nunnatural void, led him to attribute absoluteness to what he called the\ncategorical imperative. But this void outside and this absolute oracle\nwithin are germs of egotism, and germs of the most virulent species.\n\nThe categorical imperative, or unmistakable voice of conscience, was\noriginally something external enough--too external, indeed, to\nimpose by itself a moral obligation. The thunders of Sinai and the\nvoice from the whirlwind in Job fetched their authority from the\nsuggestion of power; there spoke an overwhelming physical force of\nwhich we were the creatures and the playthings, a voice which far from\ninterpreting our sense of justice, or our deepest hopes, threatened to\ncrush and to flout them. If some of its commandments were moral, others\nwere ritual or even barbarous; the only moral sanction common to them\nall came from our natural prudence and love of life; our wisdom imposed\non us the fear of the Lord. The prophets and the gospel did much to\nidentify this external divine authority with the human conscience;\nan identification which required a very elaborate theory of sin and\npunishment and of existence in other worlds, since the actual procedure\nof nature and history can never be squared with any ideal of right.\n\n[Pg 57] In Kant, who in this matter followed Calvin, the independence\nbetween the movement of nature, both within and without the soul, and\nthe ideal of right was exaggerated into an opposition. The categorical\nimperative was always authoritative, but perhaps never obeyed. The\ndivine law was far from being like the absolute Will in Fichte, Hegel,\nand Schopenhauer, a name for a universal metaphysical force, or even\nfor the flux of material substance. On the contrary the sublimity of\nthe categorical imperative lay precisely in the fact that, while matter\nand life moved on in their own unregenerate way, a principle which they\n_ought_ to follow, overarched and condemned them, and constrained them\nto condemn themselves. Human nature was totally depraved and incapable\nof the least merit, nor had it any power of itself to become righteous.\nIts amiable spontaneous virtues, having but a natural motive, were\nsplendid vices. Moral worth began only when the will, transformed at\nthe touch of unmerited grace, surrendered every impulse in overwhelming\nreverence for the divine law.\n\nThis Calvinistic doctrine might seem to rebuke all actual inclinations,\nand far from making the will morally absolute, as egotism would, to\nraise over against it an alien authority, what _ought_ to be willed.\nSuch was, of course, Kant's ostensible intention; but [Pg 58] sublime\nas such a situation was declared to be, he felt rather dissatisfied in\nits presence. A categorical imperative crying in the wilderness, a duty\nwhich nobody need listen to, or suffer for disregarding, seemed rather\na forlorn authority. To save the face of absolute right another world\nseemed to be required, as in orthodox Christianity, in which it might\nbe duly vindicated and obeyed.\n\nKant's scepticism, by which all knowledge of reality was denied us,\nplayed conveniently into the hands of this pious requirement. If the\nwhole natural world, which we can learn something about by experience,\nis merely an idea in our minds, nothing prevents any sort of real\nbut unknown world from lying about us unawares. What could be more\nplausible and opportune than that the categorical imperative which the\nhuman mind, the builder of this visible world, had rejected, should in\nthat other real world be the head stone of the corner?\n\nThis happy thought, had it stood alone, might have seemed a little\nfantastic; but it was only a laboured means of re-establishing the\ntheology of Leibniz, in which Kant privately believed, behind the\ntranscendental idealism which he had put forward professorially. The\ndogmatic system from which he started seemed to him, as it stood,\nlargely indefensible and a little oppressive. To purify it he [Pg 59]\nadopted a fallacious principle of criticism, namely, that our ideas are\nall we can know, a principle which, if carried out, would undermine\nthat whole system, and every other. He, therefore, hastened to adopt\na corrective principle of reconstruction, no less fallacious, namely,\nthat conscience bids us assume certain things to be realities which\nreason and experience know nothing of. This brought him round to a\nqualified and ambiguous form of his original dogmas, to the effect that\nalthough there was no reason to think that God, heaven, and free-will\nexist, we ought to act as if they existed, and might call that wilful\naction of ours faith in their existence.\n\nThus in the philosophy of Kant there was a stimulating ambiguity in\nthe issue. He taught rather less than he secretly believed, and his\ndisciples, seizing the principle of his scepticism, but lacking his\nconservative instincts, believed rather less than he taught them.\nDoubtless in his private capacity Kant hoped, if he did not believe,\nthat God, free-will, and another life subsisted in fact, as every\nbeliever had hitherto supposed; it was only the method of proving their\nreality that had been illegitimate. For no matter how strong the usual\narguments might seem (and they did not seem very strong) they could\nconvey no transcendent assurance; on the contrary, the more proofs\nyou draw for anything from reason and [Pg 60] experience, the better\nyou prove that that thing is a mere idea in your mind. It was almost\nprudent, so to speak, that God, freedom, and immortality, if they had\nclaims to reality, should remain without witness in the sphere of\n\"knowledge,\" as inadvertently or ironically it was still called; but to\ncircumvent this compulsory lack of evidence God had at least implanted\nin us a veridical conscience, which if it took itself seriously (as it\nought to do, being a conscience) would constrain us to postulate what,\nthough we could never \"know\" it, happened to be the truth. Such was the\nway in which the good Kant thought to play hide-and-seek with reality.\n\nThe momentum of his transcendental method, however, led to a\nvery different and quite egotistical conclusion. An adept in\ntranscendentalism can hardly suppose that God, free-will, and heaven,\neven if he postulates them, need exist at all. Existence, for him, is\nan altogether inferior category. Even a specific moral law, thundering\nunalterable maxims, must seem to him a childish notion. What the ego\npostulates is nothing fixed and already existing, but only such ideal\nterms as, for the moment, express its attitude. If it is striving to\nremember, it posits a past; if it is planning, it posits a future; if\nit is consciously eloquent, it posits an audience. These things do not\nand cannot exist otherwise than in [Pg 61] their capacity of things\nposited by the ego. All, therefore, that the categorical imperative\ncan mean for the complete transcendentalist is that he should live\nas if all things were real which are imaginatively requisite for\nhim, if he is to live hard: this intensity of life in him being\nitself the only reality. At that stage of development at which Kant\nfound himself, God, freedom, and immortality may have been necessary\npostulates of practical reason. But to suppose that these imagined\nobjects, therefore, existed apart from the excellent philosopher\nwhose conscience had not yet transcended them, would be not to have\nprofited by his teaching. It would be merely to repeat it. A later\nand more advanced transcendentalist, instead of God, freedom, and\nimmortality, might just as dutifully posit matter, empire, and the\nbeauty of a warrior's death. His conscience might no longer be an echo\nof Christianity, but the trumpet-blast of a new heathenism. It is for\nthe ego who posits to judge what it should posit.\n\nThe postulates of practical reason, by which Kant hoped to elude the\nsubjectivity which he attributed to knowledge, are no less subjective\nthan knowledge, and far more private and variable. The senses and\nthe intellect, if they deceive us, seem to deceive us all in much\nthe same way, and the dream they [Pg 62] plunge us into in common\nseems to unite us; but what obscurity, diversity, hostility in the\nideals of our hearts! The postulates that were intended to save the\nKantian philosophy from egotism are the most egotistical part of it.\nIn the categorical imperative we see something native and inward to\nthe private soul, in some of its moods, quietly claiming to rule the\ninvisible world, to set God on his throne and open eternity to the\nhuman spirit. The most subjective of feelings, the feeling of what\nought to be, legislates for the universe. Egotism could hardly go\nfurther.\n\nBut this is not all. The categorical imperative, not satisfied with\nproclaiming itself secretly omnipotent, proclaims itself openly\nruthless. Kant expressly repudiated as unworthy of a virtuous will any\nconsideration of happiness, or of consequences, either to oneself or to\nothers. He was personally as mild and kindly as the Vicar of Wakefield\n(whose goodness he denied to be moral because it was natural), but his\nmoral doctrine was in principle a perfect frame for fanaticism. Give\nback, as time was bound to give back, a little flesh to this skeleton\nof duty, make it the voice not of a remote Mosaic decalogue, but of\na rich temperament and a young life, and you will have sanctified\nbeforehand every stubborn passion and every romantic crime. In the\nguise of an infallible [Pg 63] conscience, before which nothing has a\nright to stand, egotism is launched upon its irresponsible career.\n\nThe categorical imperative, as Kant personally conceived it, was\nthat of the conscience of the eighteenth century, which had become\nhumanitarian without ceasing to be Christian, the conscience of the\nPuritans passing into that of Rousseau. But the categorical principle\nin morals, like the ego in logic, can easily migrate. If to-day you are\nright in obeying your private conscience against all considerations\nof prudence or kindness (though you are prudent and kind by nature,\nso that this loyalty to a ruthless Duty is a sacrifice for you),\nto-morrow you may be right in obeying the categorical imperative\nof your soul in another phase, and to carry out no matter what\nirresponsible enterprise, though your heart may bleed at the victims\nyou are making. The principle of fanaticism is present in either case;\nand Kant provides, in his transcendental agnosticism, a means of\ncutting off all protests from experience or common sense, or a more\nenlightened self-interest. These protests, he thinks, are not only\nignoble, but they come from a deluded mind, since the world they regard\nis a creature of the imagination, whereas the categorical imperative,\nrevealed to the inner man, is a principle prior to all worlds and,\ntherefore, not to be corrected by any suasion which this particular\n[Pg 64] world, now imagined by us, might try to exercise on our free\nminds.\n\nThus it is from Kant, directly or indirectly, that the German\negotists draw the conviction which is their most tragic error. Their\nself-assertion and ambition are ancient follies of the human race; but\nthey think these vulgar passions the creative spirit of the universe.\nKant, or that soul within Kant which was still somewhat cramped in its\nexpression, was the prophet and even the founder of the new German\nreligion.\n\n\n\n\n[Pg 65] CHAPTER VI\n\nTRANSCENDENTALISM PERFECTED\n\nFichte purified the system of Kant of all its inconsistent and humane\nelements; he set forth the subjective system of knowledge and action in\nits frankest and most radical form. The ego, in order to live a full\nand free life, posited or feigned a world of circumstances, in the\nmidst of which it might disport itself; but this imagined theatre was\nmade to suit the play, and though it might seem to oppress the Will\nwith all sorts of hindrances, and even to snuff it out altogether, it\nwas really only a mirage which that Will, being wiser than it knew, had\nraised in order to enjoy the experience of exerting itself manfully.\n\nIt would seem obvious from this that the Will could never be defeated,\nand that in spite of its name it was identical with destiny or the laws\nof nature: and those transcendentalists who lean to naturalism, or\npass into it unawares, like Schelling or Emerson, actually understand\nthe absolute Will in this way. But not so Fichte, nor what I take to\nbe the keener and more heroic romantic school, whose last prophet\nwas Nietzsche. The Germans, in [Pg 66] the midst of their fantastic\nmetaphysics, sometimes surprise us by their return to immediate\nexperience: after all, it was in wrestling with the Lord that their\nphilosophy was begotten. As a matter of fact, the will is often\ndefeated--especially if we are stubborn in defining our will;\nand this tragic fact by no means refutes the Fichtean philosophy,\nwhich knows how to deal with it heroically. It conceives that what is\ninviolable is only what ought to be, the unconscious plan or idea of\nperfect living which is hidden in the depths of all life: a will not\nanimated in some measure by this idea cannot exist, or at least cannot\nbe noticed or respected by this philosophy. But when, where, how often\nand how far this divine idea shall be carried out is left unexplained.\nActual will may be feeble or wicked in any degree; and in consequence\nthe world that ought to be evoked in its maximum conceivable richness,\nmay dwindle and fade to nothing.\n\nThe Will may accordingly be defeated; not, indeed, by imagined\nexternal things, but by its own apathy and tergiversation. In this\ncase, according to the logic of this system (which is as beautifully\nthought out as that of Plotinus), the dissolving world will appear to\nbe overwhelmingly formidable and real. In expiring because we have no\nlonger the warmth to keep it alive, it will seem to be killing us; for\nthe passivity of the ego, says Fichte, is posited as activity [Pg 67]\nin the non-ego. That way of speaking is scholastic; but the thought, if\nwe take the egotistical point of view, is deep and true.\n\nSo any actual will may perish by defect and die out; but actual will\nmay also perish by sublimation. The true object of absolute Will is\nnot things or pleasures or length of life, but willing itself; and the\nmore intense and disinterested this willing is, the better it manifests\nabsolute Will. The heroic act of dashing oneself against overwhelming\nobstacles may, therefore, be the highest fulfilment of the divine idea.\nThe will dares to perish in order to have dared everything. In its\nmaterial ruin it remains ideally victorious. If we consider the matter\nunder the form of eternity, we shall see that this heroic and suicidal\nwill has accomplished what it willed; it has not only lived perilously\nbut perished nobly.\n\nIt is hardly necessary to point out how completely this theory\njustifies any desperate enterprise to which one happens to be wedded.\nIt justifies, for instance, any wilful handling of history and science.\nThe Will by right lays down the principles on which things must and\nshall be arranged. If things slip somehow from the traces, so much the\ngrander your \"scientific deed\" in striving to rein them in. After all,\nyou first summoned them into being only that you might drive them.\nIf they seem to run wild and upset you, [Pg 68] like the steeds of\nHippolytus, you will, at least, not have missed the glory, while you\nlived and drove, of assuming the attitude of a master. Call spirits\nfrom the vasty deep: if they do not come, what of it? That will only\nprove the absolute self-sufficiency of your duty to call them.\n\nWhat tightens this speculative bond between Fichte and the Nietzschean\nschool is that he himself applied his theory of absolute Will to\nnational life. This ego, which was identical with mind in general,\nhe identified also with the German people. If the Germans suffered\ntheir national will to be domesticated in the Napoleonic empire, the\ncreative spirit of the universe would be extinguished, and God himself,\nwho existed only when incarnate in mankind, would disappear. It was\nevidently one's duty to prevent this if possible; and Fichte poured out\nall the vehemence of his nature into the struggle for freedom. The mere\nstruggle, the mere protest in the soul, according to his system, would\nsecure the end desired: self-assertion, not material success, was the\ngoal. A happy equilibrium once established in human life would have\nbeen only a temptation, a sort of Napoleonic or Mephistophelian quietus\nfalling on the will to strive.\n\nI am not sure how far Fichte, in his romantic and puritan tension\nof soul, would have' relished the [Pg 69] present organisation of\nGermany. He was a man of the people, a radical and an agitator as much\nas a prophet of nationalism, and the shining armour in which German\nfreedom is now encased might have seemed to him too ponderous. He might\nhave discerned in victory the beginning of corruption.\n\nNevertheless we should remember that a perfected idealism has a\ntendency to change into its opposite and become a materialism for all\npractical purposes. Absolute Will is not a natural being, not anybody's\nwill or thought; it is a disembodied and unrealised genius which first\ncomes into operation when it begins to surround itself with objects\nand points of resistance, so as to become aware of its own stress\nand vocation. What these objects or felt resistances may be is not\nprejudged; or rather it is prejudged that they shall be most opposite\nto spirit, and that spirit shall experience its own passivity--one\nmode of its fated and requisite experience--in the form of an\ninfluence which it imputes to dead and material things.\n\nThe whole business of spirit may, therefore, well be with matter.\nScience might be mechanical, art might be cumbrous and material,\nall the instruments of life might be brutal, life itself might be\nhard, bitter, and obsessed, and yet the whole might remain a direct\nmanifestation of pure spirit, absolute freedom, and creative duty.\nThis speculative possibility [Pg 70] is worth noting: it helps us to\nunderstand modern Germany. It is no paradox that idealists should be so\nmuch at home among material things. These material things, according\nto them, are the offspring of their spirit. Why should they not sink\nfondly into the manipulation of philological details or chemical\nelements, or over-ingenious commerce and intrigue? Why should they\nnot dote on blood and iron? Why should these fruits of the spirit be\nuncongenial to it?\n\nA theoretical materialist, who looks on the natural world as on a soil\nthat he has risen from and feeds on, may perhaps feel a certain piety\ntowards those obscure abysses of nature that have given him birth; but\nhis delight will be rather in the clear things of the imagination,\nin the humanities, by which the rude forces of nature are at once\nexpressed and eluded. Not so the transcendentalist. Regarding his mind\nas the source of everything, he is moved to solemn silence and piety\nonly before himself: on the other hand, what bewitches him, what he\nloves to fondle, is his progeny, the material environment, the facts,\nthe laws, the blood, and the iron in which he conceives (quite truly,\nperhaps) that his spirit perfectly and freely expresses itself. To\ndespise the world and withdraw into the realm of mind, as into a\nsubtler and more congenial sphere, is quite contrary to his idealism.\nSuch a retreat might bring him [Pg 71] peace, and he wants war. His\nidealism teaches him that strife and contradiction, as Heraclitus said,\nare the parents of all things; and if he stopped striving, if he grew\nsick of ambition and material goods, he thinks he would be forsaking\nlife, for he hates as he would death what another kind of idealists\nhave called salvation.\n\nWe are told that God, when he had made the world, found it very good,\nand the transcendentalist, when he assumes the Creator's place, follows\nhis example. The hatred and fear of matter is perhaps not a sign of a\npure spirit. Even contemplatively, a divine mind may perfectly well\nfall in love with matter, as the Moon-goddess did with Endymion. Such\nmatter might be imagined only, as if Diana had merely dreamt of her\nswain; and the fond image might not be less dear on that account. The\nromantic poet finds his own spirit greeting him in rocks, clouds, and\nwaves; the musician pours out his soul in movement and tumult; why\nshould not the transcendental general, or engineer, or commercial\ntraveller find his purest ideal in trade, crafts, and wars? Grim work,\nabove all, is what absolute Will demands. It needs the stimulus of\nresistance to become more intensely conscious of Self, which is said\nto be its ultimate object in imagining a world at all. Acquisition\ninterests it more than possession, because the sense [Pg 72] of effort\nand power is then more acute. The more material the arts that engage\nit, and the more complicated and worldly its field of action, the more\nintense will be its exertion, and the greater its joy. This is no\nidealism for a recluse or a moping poet; it does not feel itself to be\nsomething incidental and fugitive in the world, like a bird's note,\nthat it should fear to be drowned in the crash of material instruments\nor to be forced to a hideous tension and shrillness: shrillness and\ntension are its native element. It is convinced that it has composed\nall the movements there are or can be in existence, and it feels all\nthe more masterful, the more numerous and thunderous is the orchestra\nit leads. It is entirely at home in a mechanical environment, which it\ncan prove transcendentally to be perfectly ideal. Its most congenial\nwork is to hack its way through to the execution of its World-Plan. Its\nmost adequate and soul-satisfying expression is a universal battle.\n\n\n\n\n[Pg 73] CHAPTER VII\n\n\nFICHTE ON THE MISSION OF GERMANY\n\n\nWhen the ancient Jews enlarged their conception of Jehovah so as to\nrecognise in him the only living God to whom all nature and history\nwere subject, they did not cease to regard the universal power as\nat the same time their special national deity. Here was a latent\ncontradiction. It was ingeniously removed by saying that Jehovah, while\nnot essentially a tribal deity, had chosen Israel for his people by a\nfree act of grace with no previous merit on their part; so that the\npride of the Jews was not without humility.\n\nNo humility, however, is mingled with the claim which the Germans now\nmake to a similar pre-eminence. \"Modern critics,\" says Max Stirner,\n\"inveigh against religion because it sets up God, the divine, or\nthe moral law over against man, regarding them as external things,\nwhereas the critics transform all these objects into ideas in the\nhuman mind. Nevertheless the essential mistake of religion, to assign\na mission to man at all, is not avoided by these critics, who continue\nto insist that man shall be divine, or ideally human, or what not;\nmorality, [Pg 74] freedom, humanity, etc., are his essence.\" Now a\ndivinity which is subjective or immanent evidently cannot choose any\nnation, save by dwelling and manifesting itself more particularly in\nthem. They can be highly favoured only in that they are intrinsically\nsuperior, and on that account may be figuratively called vessels of\nelection. Therefore, if the spirit which is in a nation is not one\nspirit among many in the world (as the primitive Hebrews supposed and\nas a naturalistic philosophy would maintain), but is the one holy and\nuniversal spirit, and if at the same time this spirit dwells in that\nnation pre-eminently, or even exclusively, humility on the part of this\nnation would evidently be out of place. Accordingly, the Germans cannot\nhelp bearing witness to the divine virtues and prerogatives which they\nfind in themselves, some of which are set forth by Fichte as follows:\n\nThe present age stands precisely in the middle of earthly time, between\nthe era in which men were still self-seeking, earthly, and impulsive,\nand the coming era in which they will live for the sake of pure ideals.\nThe Germans prefigure this better age, and are leading the rest of\nthe world into it. They have created the modern world by uniting the\npolitical heritage of classical Europe with the true religion that\nlingered in Asia, and they have raised [Pg 75] the two to a higher\nunity in their _Kultur_. From them is drawn the best blood of most\nother nations and the spiritual force that has fashioned them all.\n\nThe Germans have never forsaken their native land nor suffered\nseriously from immigration. Their language is primitive, and they have\nnever exchanged it for a foreign one. Hence German alone is truly\na mother-tongue. Its intellectual terms retain a vital and vivid\nconnection with sensible experience. True poetry and philosophy,\ntherefore, exist only in German. Captious persons who judge by mere\ncrude feeling may fancy that German is not very melodious; but these\nmatters cannot be rightly judged without reference to first principles,\nwhich in this case would prove that the sweetest language is that which\nexhausts all possible sounds and combines them in all available ways.\nWhether German or some other language comes nearest to this _a priori_\nideal of euphony must be left for empirical observation to decide.\n\nThe German nature, being pure, deep, earnest, and bold, has\ninstinctively seized upon the true essence of Christianity and\ndiscarded with abhorrence all the lies and corruption that obscured\nit. This essence is the imperative need of turning from the natural\nto the ideal life. The German knows that his own soul is safe; but\nthis is not enough for him [Pg 76] in his unselfishness. His zeal is\nkindled easily for warmth and light everywhere; and this zeal of his is\npatient and efficacious, taking hold on real life and transforming it.\nAs he presses on he finds more than he sought, for he has plunged into\nthe quick stream of life which forges ahead of itself and carries him\nforward with it. The dead heart of other nations may dream of gods in\nthe clouds, or of some perfect type of human life already exemplified\nin the past and only to be approached or repeated in the future. The\nspirit of the German is no coinage of earth; it is the living source of\nall the suns, and rushes to create absolutely new things for ever. The\nGerman mind is the self-consciousness of God.\n\nI do not see that the strain of war or the intoxication of victory\ncould add much to these boasts, uttered by Fichte when, for the moment,\nhe had abandoned all hope of military self-assertion on the part of\nhis country, and relied on education and philosophy alone to preserve\nand propagate German righteousness. Even in detail, what he says often\nseems strangely like what official Germany is now saying. Even the\nhysterical hatred of England is not absent. In England Fichte did not\nsee the champion of Protestantism, morality, and political liberty, nor\nthe constant foe of Napoleon, but only a universal commercial vampire.\nHis contempt for [Pg 77] the Latin races, too, was boundless. In\nthe matter of race, indeed, he entertained a curious idea that there\nmust have been, from all eternity until the beginning of history, a\nprimitive Normal People, a tribe of Adams and Eves; because according\nto a principle which he adopted from Calvinistic theology, if all men\nhad been originally slaves to nature none could ever have become free.\nThis Normal People were, of course, the ancestors of the Germans.\nEarth-born savage tribes must have existed also for the Normal People\nto subdue, since but for some such conquest the primitive equilibrium\nwould never have been broken, Eden and the jungle would never have been\nmerged together, and history, which is a record of novelties, would\nnever have begun. The theory of evolution has rendered the reasons\nfor such a view obsolete; but the idea that the bulk of mankind are\nmongrels formed by the union of blonde godlike creatures with some sort\nof anthropoid blacks, recurred later in Gobineau and has had a certain\nvogue in Germany.\n\nFichte, following Calvin and Kant, made a very sharp distinction\nbetween the life of nature and that of duty. The ideal must be pursued\nwithout the least thought of advantage. Trades, he says, must be\npractised spontaneously, without any other reward than longer vigils.\nThe young must never hear it [Pg 78] mentioned that any one could ever\nbe incited or guided in life by the thought of his own preservation or\nwell-being. Knowledge is no report of existing things or laws which\nhave happened to be discovered. Knowledge is the very life of God,\nand self-generated. It is \"an intellectual activity for its own sake,\naccording to rules for their own sake.\" In plain English, it is pure\nimagination. But the method to be imposed on this madness is fixed\ninnately, both for thought and for morals. Only frivolity can interfere\nwith a unanimous idealism.\n\nWe must not suppose that this prescription of austere and abstract aims\nimplies any aversion on Fichte's part to material progress, compulsory\n_Kultur_, or military conquest. German idealism, as we have seen, is\nnot Platonic or ascetic, that it should leave the world behind. On the\ncontrary, its mission is to consecrate the world and show that every\npart of it is an organ of the spirit. This is a form of piety akin\nto the Hebraic. Even the strictest Calvinists, who taught that the\nworld was totally depraved, were able, in every sense of the phrase,\nto make a very good thing of it. They reclaimed, they appropriated,\nthey almost enjoyed it. So Fichte gives us prophetic glimpses of an\nidealistic Germany conquering the world. The state does not aim at\nself-preservation, still less is it concerned to come to the aid\nof those [Pg 79] members of the human family that lag behind the\nmovement of the day. The dominion of unorganised physical force must be\nabolished by a force obedient to reason and spirit. True life consists\nin refashioning human relations after a model innate in the mind. The\nglorious destiny of Germany is to bring forth and establish the world\nanew. Natural freedom is a disgraceful thing, a mere medley of sensual\nand intellectual impulses without any principle of order. It is for the\nGermans to decide whether a providential progress exists by becoming\nthemselves the providence that shall bring progress about, or whether\non the contrary every higher thought is folly. If they should fail,\nhistory would never blame them, for in that case there would be no more\nhistory.\n\nThe sole animating principle of history is the tendency towards a\nuniversal Christian European monarchy. This tendency is deeper than\nthe plans of men and stronger than their intentions. \"That a state,\neven when on the very point of making war, should solemnly assert\nits love of peace and its aversion to conquest, is nothing; for in\nthe first place it must needs make this asseveration and so hide its\nreal intention if it would succeed in its design; and the well-known\nprinciple _Threaten war that thou mayst have peace_ may also be\ninverted in this way: _Promise peace that thou mayst begin war with\nadvantage_; and [Pg 80] in the second place the state may be wholly in\nearnest in its peaceful assurances, so far as its self-knowledge has\ngone; but let the favourable opportunity for aggrandisement present\nitself, and the previous good resolution is forgotten.\"\n\nIf the people are disinclined to obey the Idea, the government must\nconstrain them to do so. All the powers of all the citizens must be\nabsorbed in the state. Personal liberty could be turned to no good use\nwhen such individuality and variety of training as are good for the\nstate have been provided for by its regulations. Nor must any idleness\nbe tolerated. An ideal education must make men over so that they shall\nbe incapable of willing anything but what that education wills them to\nwill. The state may then rely upon its subjects, \"for whoever has a\nwell-grounded will, wills what he wills for all eternity.\"\n\nAs to foreign relations, the state, in obedience to its ideal mission,\nmust conquer the surrounding barbarians and raise them to a state of\nculture. It is this process almost exclusively that has introduced\nprogress into history. \"What impels the Macedonian hero ... to seek\nforeign lands? What chains victory to his footsteps and scatters\nbefore him in terror the countless hordes of his enemies? Is this\nmere fortune? No; it is an Idea.... The civilised must rule and the\nuncivilised must obey, if Right is to be the law [Pg 81] of the\nworld.... Tell me not of the thousands who fell round his path; speak\nnot of his own early death. After the realisation of his Idea, what was\nthere greater for him to do than to die?\"\n\nThis enthusiasm for Alexander (which Hegel shared) is not merely\nretrospective. \"At last in one nation of the world the highest, purest\nmorality, such as was never seen before among men, will arise and will\nbe made secure for all future time, and thence will be extended over\nall other peoples. There will ensue a transformation of the human race\nfrom earthly and sensual creatures into pure and noble spirits.\" \"Do\nyou know anything higher than death?... Who has a right to stand in the\nway of an enterprise begun in the face of this peril?\"\n\nIt may seem curious that an uncompromising puritan like Fichte, a\nprophet sprung from the people, a theoretical republican who quarrelled\nwith his students for forming clubs and fighting duels, a fierce\nidealist full of contempt for worldlings, should have so perfectly\nsupplied the Junkers and bankers with their philosophy. But the\nphenomenon is not new. Plato, divine and urbane as he was, supplied the\ndull Spartans with theirs. Men of idealistic faith are confident that\nthe foundations of things must be divine, and when, upon investigating\nthese foundations, they come upon sinister principles--blind\n[Pg 82] impulse, chance, murderous competition--they fanatically\nerect these very principles into sacred maxims. All strength, they are\nantecedently convinced, must come from God; therefore if deception,\nwilfulness, tyranny, and big battalions are the means to power, they\nmust be the chosen instruments of God on earth. In some such way the\nCatholic Church, too, for fear of impiety, is seen blessing many a\nform of deceit and oppression. Thus the most ardent speculation may\ncome to sanction the most brutal practice. The primitive passions so\nsanctioned, because they seem to be safe and potent, are probably too\nnarrowly organised to sustain themselves long; and meantime they miss\nand trample down the best things that mankind possesses. Nevertheless\nthey are a force like any other, a force not only vehement but\ncontagious, and capable of many victories though of no stable success.\nSuch passions, and the philosophies that glorify them, are sincere,\nabsorbing, and if frankly expressed irrefutable.\n\nThe transcendental theory of a world merely imagined by the ego, and\nthe will that deems itself absolute are certainly desperate delusions;\nbut not more desperate or deluded than many another system that\nmillions have been brought to accept. The thing bears all the marks\nof a new religion. The fact that the established religions of Germany\nare still forms [Pg 83] of Christianity may obscure the explicit and\nheathen character of the new faith: it passes for a somewhat faded\nspeculation, or for the creed of a few extremists, when in reality it\ndominates the judgment and conduct of the nation. No religious tyranny\ncould be more complete. It has its prophets in the great philosophers\nand historians of the last century; its high priests and pharisees\nin the government and the professors; its faithful flock in the\ndisciplined mass of the nation; its heretics in the socialists; its\ndupes in the Catholics and the liberals, to both of whom the national\ncreed, if they understood it, would be an abomination; it has its\nmartyrs now by the million, and its victims among unbelievers are even\nmore numerous, for its victims, in some degree, are all men.\n\n\n\n\n[Pg 84] CHAPTER VIII\n\nTHE EGOTISM OF IDEAS\n\nWhen we are discussing egotism need we speak of Hegel? The tone of this\nphilosopher, especially in his later writings, was full of contempt\nfor everything subjective: the point of view of the individual, his\nopinions and wishes, were treated as of no account unless they had been\nbrought into line with the providential march of events and ideas in\nthe great world. This realism, pronounced and even acrid as it was,\nwas still idealistic in the sense that the substance of the world was\nconceived not to be material but conceptual--a law or logic which\nanimated phenomena and was the secret of their movement. The world was\nlike a riddle or confused oracle; and the solution to the puzzle lay in\nthe romantic instability or self-contradiction inherent in every finite\nform of being, which compelled it to pass into something different.\nThe direction of this movement we might understand sympathetically in\nvirtue of a sort of vital dialectic or dramatic necessity in our own\nreflection. Hegel was a solemn sophist: he made discourse the key to\nreality.\n\n[Pg 85] This technical realism in Hegel was reinforced by his\nhistorical imagination, which continually produces an impression of\ndetachment, objectivity, and impersonal intelligence; he often seems to\nbe lost in the events of his story and to be plucking the very heart\nout of the world. Again, he adored the state, by which in his view\nthe individual should be entirely subjugated, not for the benefit of\nother individuals (that would be a sort of vicarious selfishness no\nless barren than private profit), but in the rapt service of common\nimpersonal ends.\n\nThe family was a first natural group in which the individual should be\nhappy to lose himself, the trade-guild was another, and the state was\nthe highest and most comprehensive of all; there was nothing worthy or\nreal in a man except his functions in society.\n\nNevertheless this denial of egotism is apparent only. It is a play\nwithin the play. On the smaller stage the individual--save for his\nlapses and stammerings--is nothing but the instrument and vehicle\nof divine decrees; in fact he is a puppet, and the only reality of him\nis the space he fills in the total spectacle. But that little stage is\nframed in by another, often overlooked, but ever present; and on this\nlarger and nearer stage the ego struts alone. It is I that pull the\nstrings, enjoy the drama, supply its plot and moral, and possess the\nfreedom and actuality which [Pg 86] my puppets lack. On the little\nstage the soul of a man is only one of God's ideas, and his whole worth\nlies in helping out the pantomime; on the big stage, God is simply my\nidea of God and the purpose of the play is to express my mind. The\nspectacle in which every individual dances automatically to the divine\ntune is only my dream.\n\nThe philosophy of Hegel is accordingly subjective and all its realism\nis but a pose and a tone wilfully assumed. That this is the truth of\nthe matter might be inferred, apart from many continual hints and\nimplications, from the fact that the system is transcendental and\nfounded on Kant. Objectivity can, therefore, be only a show, a matter\nof make-believe, something imputed to things and persons by the mind,\nwhose poetic energies it manifests. Everything must be set down as\na creation of mind, simply because it is an object of thought or\nknowledge.\n\nThis underlying subjectivism also explains the singular satisfaction of\nHegel, whose glance was comprehensive enough, with so strangely limited\na world as he describes to us. He described what he knew best or had\nheard of most, and felt he had described the universe. This illusion\nwas inevitable, because his principle was that the universe was created\nby description and resided in it. The mission of Hegel, as he himself\nconceived it, was not to [Pg 87] discover the real world or any part\nof it: in theory he retracted all belief in a real world and set in its\nplace his conception or knowledge of it--therefore quite adequate\nto its object. If China was the oldest country he had heard of, the\nworld began with China, and if Prussia was the youngest and he (as he\nhad to be) its latest philosopher, the world ended with Prussia and\nwith himself. This seems a monstrous egotism, but it is not arbitrary;\nin one sense it was the least pretentious of attitudes, since it was\nlimited to the description of a current view, not of a separate or\nprior object. The value of a philosophy could lie only in the fullness\nand fidelity with which it might focus the conceptions of the age in\nwhich it arose. Hegel hoped to do this for his own times; he did not\ncovet truth to anything further.\n\nThe same attitude explains the servility of his moral philosophy, which\nis simply an apology for the established order of things and for the\nprejudices of his time and country. His deepest conviction was that\nno system of ethics could be more, and if it tried to be more would\nbe less, because it would be merely personal. When, for instance,\nhe condemned harshly the Roman _patria potestas_ it was because it\noffended the individualism of the Protestant and modern conscience;\nand if in the next breath he condemned even more harshly the\nsentimentalists [Pg 88] who made tender feeling and good intentions the\ntest of virtue, it was because these individual consciences absolved\nthemselves from conformity to the established church and state. To\ninquire whether in itself or in respect to human economy generally,\nthe morality of Buddha, or Socrates, or Rousseau was the best would\nhave seemed to him absurd: the question could only be what approaches\nor contributions each of these made to the morality approved by the\nLutheran community and by the Prussian ministry of education and\npublic worship. The truth, then as now, was whatever every good German\nbelieved. This pious wish of Hegel's to interpret the orthodoxy of his\ngeneration was successful, and the modest hopes of his philosophy were\nfulfilled. Never perhaps was a system so true to its date and so false\nto its subject.\n\nThe egotism of Hegel appears also in his treatment of mathematical and\nphysical questions. The infinite he called the false infinite, so as to\navoid the dilemmas which it placed him in, such as why the evolution of\nthe Idea began six thousand years ago, or less; what more could happen\nnow that in his self-consciousness that evolution was complete; why it\nshould have gone on in this planet only, or if it had gone on elsewhere\nalso, why the Idea evolving there might not have been a different Idea.\nBut all such questions [Pg 89] are excluded when one understands that\nthis philosophy is only a point of view: the world it describes is a\nvista not separable from the egotistical perspectives that frame it in.\nThe extent of the world need not be discussed, because that extent is\nan appearance only; in reality the world has no extent, because it is\nonly my present idea.\n\nThe infinite thus lost its application; but the word was too idealistic\nto be discarded. Accordingly the title of true infinite was bestowed\non the eventual illusion of completeness, on an alleged system of\nrelations out of relation to anything beyond. That nothing existent,\nunless it was the bad infinite, could be absolute in this manner did\nnot ruffle Hegel, for the existent did not really concern him but\nonly \"knowledge,\" that is, a circle of present and objectless ideas.\nKnowledge, however limited in fact, always has the completeness in\nquestion for the egotist, whose objects are not credited with existing\nbeyond himself. Egotism could hardly receive a more radical expression\nthan this: to declare the ego infinite because it can never find\nanything that is beyond its range.\n\nThe favourite tenet of Hegel that everything involves its opposite is\nalso a piece of egotism; for it is equivalent to making things conform\nto words, not words to things; and the ego, particularly in [Pg 90]\nphilosophers, is a nebula of words. In defining things, if you insist\non defining them, you are constrained to define them by their relation\nto other things, or even exclusion of them. If, therefore, things are\nformed by your definitions of them, these relations and exclusions will\nbe the essence of things. The notion of such intrinsic relativity in\nthings is a sophism even in logic, since elementary terms can never be\ndefined yet may be perfectly well understood and arrested in intuition;\nbut what here concerns us is rather the egotistical motive behind that\nsophism: namely, that the most verbal and subjective accidents to which\nthe names of things are subject in human discourse should be deputed to\nbe the groundwork of the things and their inmost being.\n\nEgotistical, too, was Hegel's tireless hatred of what he called the\nabstract understanding. In his criticisms of this faculty and the\nopinions it forms there is much keenness and some justice. People\noften reason in the abstract, floating on words as on bladders: in\ntheir knowingness they miss the complexity and volume of real things.\nBut the errors or abuses into which verbal intelligence may fall\nwould never produce that implacable zeal with which Hegel persecutes\nit. What obsesses him is the fear that, in spite of its frivolity,\nthe understanding may some day understand: that it may correct its\ninadequacies, [Pg 91] trace the real movement of things, and seeing\ntheir mechanism lose that _effet d'ensemble_, that dramatic illusion,\nwhich he calls reason.\n\nImagine a landscape-painter condemned to have a naturalist always at\nhis elbow: soon it would not be merely the errors of the naturalist\nthat would irritate him, but the naturalist himself. The artist intent\non panoramic effects does not wish to be forced to look through a\nmicroscope; in changing his focus he loses his subjective object: not\nreality but appearance is the reality for him. Hegel, since it was his\nmission to substitute so-called knowledge for being, had to go further;\nhe had to convince himself, not only that the structure of nature\ndiscovered by the understanding was irrelevant to his own conceptual\nmythology, but that such a structure did not exist. He was not willing\nto confess (as the landscape-painter might) that he _was_ an egotist;\nthat it was the subjective that interested him, and that in so great a\nworld the subjective too has its place. No! he must pretend that his\negotism was not egotism, but identity with the absolute, and that those\nwho dared to maintain that the world wagged in its own way, apart from\nthe viewing mind, were devils, because they suggested that the viewing\nmind was not God.\n\nIt is this latent but colossal egotism that makes [Pg 92] plausible\nthe strange use which Hegel sometimes makes of the word substance. His\nsubstance is but his grammar of discourse; for he was not looking for\nsubstance, in which he could not consistently believe, but only for the\nultimate synthetic impression which he might gather from appearances.\nFor the theatre-goer, the function of scenery and actors is that they\nshould please and impress him: but what, in the end, impresses and\npleases him? The cumulative burden and force of the play; the enhanced\nlife which it has stimulated in himself. This, for that ruthless\negotist, the aesthete, is the _substance_ of all things theatrical. Of\ncourse, in fact, nothing could be falser, for the author and actors are\nreal people, with lives far outrunning their function in the theatre\nand truly grounding it. Even the stage machinery has its natural\nhistory, and the artisans who made it have theirs, both full of mute\ninglorious tragedies. These real substances behind his entertainment\nthe spectator, in his \u00e6sthetic egotism, laughs at as irrelevant; for\nhim, as for Hamlet, the play's the thing. What is most his own, his\nimaginative reaction on the spectacle, the terms in which he finds\nit easiest and most exciting to describe it, he calls the substance\nof it: a term which betrays the profound impudence of the deliberate\negotist; the deepest reality he will recognise is merely specious,\n[Pg 93] existing only for the mind that imagines it. What is supposed\nto rescue the system of Hegel from subjectivism is the most subjective\nof things--a dialectic which obeys the impulses of a theoretical\n_parti pris_, and glorifies a fixed idea.\n\nWhen we have understood all this, those traits of Hegel's which at\nfirst sight seem least egotistical--his historical insight and\nhis enthusiasm for organised society--take on a new colour.\nThat historical insight is not really sympathetic; it is imperious,\nexternal, contemptuous, feigned. If you are a modern reading the\nGreeks, especially if you read them in the romantic spirit of Goethe's\nclassicism, and know of them just what Hegel knew, you will think\nhis description wonderfully penetrating, masterly, and complete: but\nwould \u00c6schylus or Plato have thought it so? They would have laughed,\nor rather they would not have understood that such a description\nreferred to them at all. It is the legend of the Greeks, not the life\nof the Greeks, that is analysed by him. So his account of medi\u00e6val\nreligion represents the Protestant legend, not the Catholic experience.\nWhat we know little or nothing about seems to us in Hegel admirably\ncharacterised: what we know intimately seems to us painted with the eye\nof a pedantic, remote, and insolent foreigner. It is but an idea of his\nown that he is foisting upon us, calling it our soul. [Pg 94] He is\ncreating a world in his head which might be admirable, if God had made\nit.\n\nEvery one is subject to such illusions of perspective and to the pathos\nof distance, now favourable, now unfavourable to what he studies; but\nHegel, thinking he had the key to the divine design, fancied himself\ndeeply sympathetic because he saw in everything some fragment of\nhimself. But no part of the world was that; every part had its own\ninalienable superiority, which to transcend was to lose for ever. To\nthe omniscient egotist every heart is closed. The past will never give\naway its secret except to some self-forgetful and humble lover who by\nnature has a kindred destiny. The egotist who thinks to grasp it, so\nas to serve it up at his philosophic banquet, or exhibit it in his\nmuseum of antiquities, grasps only himself; and in that sense, to his\nconfusion, his egotism turns out true.\n\nThe egotism that appears in this lordly way of treating the past is\negotism of the imagination, the same that was expressed in the romantic\nlove of nature, which was really a very subtle, very studious, very\nobstinate love of self, intent on finding some reference and deference\nto oneself in everything. But there is also an egotism of passion,\nwhich in Hegel appears in his worship of the state. \"The passions\" is\nthe old and fit name for what the Germans call [Pg 95] ideals. The\npassions are not selfish in the sense in which the German moralists\ndenounce selfishness; they are not contrived by him who harbours them\nfor his ulterior profit. They are ideal, dangerous, often fatal. Even\ncarnal passions are not selfish, if by the self we understand the\nwhole man: they are an obsession to which he sacrifices himself. But\nthe transcendental philosophy with its migratory ego can turn any\nsingle passion, or any complex of passions, into a reputed centre of\nwill, into a moral personage. As the passion usurps more and more of\nthe man's nature it becomes a fierce egotist in his place; it becomes\nfanaticism or even madness.\n\nThis substitution of a passion for a man, when nobody thought the ego\nmigratory, seemed a disease. What folly, we said to the human soul,\nto sacrifice your natural life to this partial, transitory, visionary\npassion! But the German idealist recognises no natural life, no\nnatural individual. His ego can migrate into any political body or any\nsynthetic idea. Therefore, his passions, far from seeming follies to\nhim, seem divine inspirations, calls to sacrifice, fidelities to the\nideal.\n\nI am far from wishing to say that a German idealist is commonly just to\nall the passions and raises them in turn to be his highest and absolute\nwill. His passions are generally few and mental. Accidents of [Pg 96]\ntraining or limitations of temperament keep him respectable; but he is\nnever safe. Dazzle him with a sophism, such, for instance, as that \"the\nmore evil the more good,\" or hypnotise him with a superstition, such as\nthat \"organisation is an end in itself,\" and nothing more is needed to\nturn him into a romantic criminal.\n\nEven the absolute requires an enemy to whet its edge upon, and the\nstate, which according to Hegel is morally absolute, requires rival\nstates in order that its separate individuality may not seem to vanish,\nand with it the occasion for blessed and wholesome wars. Hegel rejects\nthe notion that nations have any duties to one another because, as\nhe asserts, there is no moral authority or tribunal higher than the\nstate, to which its government could be subject. This assertion is\nevidently false, since in the first place there is God or, if the\nphrase be preferred, there is the highest good of mankind, hedging\nin very narrowly the path that states should follow between opposite\nvices; and in the second place there is the individual, whose natural\nallegiance to his family, friends, and religion, to truth and to art,\nis deeper and holier than his allegiance to the state, which for the\nsoul of man is an historical and geographical accident. No doubt at\nthe present stage of civilisation there is more to be gained than lost\nby [Pg 97] co-operating loyally with the governments under which we\nhappen to live, not because any state is divine, but because as yet no\nless cumbrous machinery is available for carrying on the economy of\nlife with some approach to decency and security. For Hegel, however,\nthe life of the state was the moral substance, and the souls of men but\nthe accidents; and as to the judgment of God he asserted that it was\nnone other than the course of history. This is a characteristic saying,\nin which he seems to proclaim the moral government of the world, when\nin truth he is sanctifying a brutal law of success and succession.\nThe best government, of course, succumbs in time like the worst,\nand sooner; the dark ages followed upon the Roman Empire and lasted\ntwice as long. But Hegel's God was simply the world, or a formula\nsupposed to describe the world. He despised every ideal not destined\nto be realised on earth, he respected legality more than justice, and\nextant institutions more than moral ideals; and he wished to flatter a\ngovernment in whose policy war and even crime were recognised weapons.\n\nThis reign of official passion is not, let me repeat, egotism in the\nnatural man who is subject to it; it is the sacrifice of the natural\nman and of all men to an abstract obsession, called an ideal. The vice\nof absoluteness and egotism is transferred [Pg 98] to that visionary\nagent. The man may be docile and gentle enough, but the demon he\nlistens to is ruthless and deaf. It forbids him to ask, \"At what price\ndo I pursue this ideal? How much harm must I do to attain this good?\"\nNo; this imperative is categorical. The die is cast, the war against\nhuman nature and happiness is declared, and an idol that feeds on\nblood, the Absolute State, is set up in the heart and over the city.\n\n\n\n\n[Pg 99] CHAPTER IX\n\nEGOTISM AND SELFISHNESS\n\nIn a review of egotism in German philosophy it would hardly be\nexcusable to ignore the one notable writer who has openly adopted\negotism in name as well as in fact. The work of Max Stirner on the\nsingle separate person and what he may call his own hardly belongs\nto German philosophy as I have been using the words: it lacks the\ntranscendental point of departure, as well as all breadth of view,\nmetaphysical subtlety, or generous afflatus; it is a bold, frank, and\nrather tiresome protest against the folly of moral idealism, against\nthe sacrifice of the individual to any ghostly powers such as God,\nduty, the state, humanity, or society; all of which this redoubtable\ncritic called \"spooks\" and regarded as fixed ideas and pathological\nobsessions. This crudity was relieved by a strong mother-wit and a\ndogged honesty; and it is not impossible that this poor schoolmaster,\nin his solitary meditations, may have embodied prophetically a\nrebellion against polite and religious follies which is brewing in the\nworking classes--classes which to-morrow perhaps will absorb all\nmankind and give for the first time a plebeian tone to philosophy.\n\n[Pg 100] Max Stirner called the migratory ego back to its nest. He\nexorcised that \"spook\" which had been ascending and descending the\nladder of abstractions, lodged now in a single passion, now in a\npolitical body, now in a logical term, now in the outspread universe.\nThe only true ego, he insisted, was the bodily person, the natural\nindividual who is born and dies. No other organ or seat existed for\nthe mind, or for any of its functions. Personal interests were the\nonly honest interests a man could have, and if he was brow-beaten or\nindoctrinated into sacrificing them, that moral coercion was a scandal\nand a wrong. The indomitable individual should shake off those chains,\nwhich were only cobwebs, and come into his own.\n\nEgotism thus becomes individualism, and threatens to become\nselfishness. The logic of these positions does not seem to have been\nclear to Max Stirner. That the individual must _possess_ all his wishes\nand aspirations, even the most self-denying and suicidal, is obvious;\nhe is the seat of those very obsessions and superstitions which Max\nStirner deplored. The same thing is true of knowledge: a man can\nknow only what _he_ knows and what his faculties make him capable of\nknowing. This fact is the excuse for transcendentalism, and the element\nof truth in it. But the fact that volition and knowledge must have\ntheir [Pg 101] seat in some person prejudges nothing about the scope of\ntheir objects. The fallacy of egotism begins with the inference that,\ntherefore, a person can know only his ideas and can live only for his\nown benefit. On the contrary, what makes knowledge knowledge is that\nour sensibility may report something which is not merely our feeling;\nand our moral being arises when our interests likewise begin to range\nover the world. To deny that a man is capable of generosity because\nhis generosity must be his own, is insufferable quibbling. Even our\nvanities and follies are disinterested in their way; their egotism is\nnot a calculated selfishness. When a man orders his tomb according to\nhis taste, it is not in the hope of enjoying his residence in it.\n\nMax Stirner, while deprecating all subordination of the individual to\nsociety, expected people, even after they were emancipated, to form\nvoluntary unions for specific purposes, such as playing games. Did\nhe think that such companionship and co-operation would go without\ngregarious feelings and ideal interests? Would not a player wish his\nside to win? Would he not impose a rather painful strain upon himself\nat times for the sake of that \"spook,\" victory? All the sacrifices that\nsociety or religion imposes on a man, when they are legitimate, are\nbased on the same principle.\n\n[Pg 102] The protest of Max Stirner against sham ideals and aims forced\nupon us by social pressure should not then have extended to ideals\ncongenial to the natural man and founded on his instincts. Since the\nseat of our enthusiasms must be personal, their appeal should be so\ntoo, if they are to inspire us efficaciously; but every art and science\nshows that they may be utterly impersonal in their object. It was not\nin proposing ideal aims that the German philosophers were wrong: that\nwas the noble and heroic side of their doctrine, as well as a point in\nwhich their psychology was correct. Their error lay in defining these\naims arbitrarily and imposing them absolutely, trying to thrust into us\nideals like endless strife and absolute will, which perhaps our souls\nabhor. But if our souls abhor those things, it is because they love\nsomething else; and this other thing they love for its own sake, so\nthat the very refusal to sacrifice to those idols is a proof of faith\nin a true God.\n\nThe conclusion of Max Stirner, that because those idols are false,\nand the worship of them is cruel and superstitious, therefore we must\nworship nothing and merely enjoy in a piggish way what we may call our\nown, is a conclusion that misreads human nature. It overlooks the fact\nthat man lives by the imagination, that the imagination--when not\nchaotic and futile--is exercised in the arts of life, that the\nobjects [Pg 103] of these arts are impersonal, and that to achieve\nthese objects brings us a natural happiness.\n\nThe Germans are by nature a good stolid people, and it is curious that\ntheir moralists, of every school, are so fantastic and bad. The trouble\nlies perhaps in this, that they are all precipitate. They have not\ntaken the trouble to decipher human nature, which is an _endowment_,\nsomething many-sided, unconscious, with a margin of variation, and have\nstarted instead with the will, which is only an _attitude_, something\ncasual, conscious, and narrowly absolute. Nor have they learned\nto respect sufficiently the external conditions under which human\nnature operates and to which it must conform--God, the material\nworld, the nature and will of other men. Their morality consequently\nterminates in ideals, casual, conscious, and absolute expressions of\nthe passions, or else expires in a mysticism which renounces all moral\njudgment. A reasonable morality terminates instead in the arts, by\nwhich human ideals and passions are compounded with experience and\nadapted to the materials they must work in. The immaturity of the\nGerman moralists appears in their conception that the good is life,\nwhich is what an irrational animal might say: whereas for a rational\nbeing the good is only the good part of life, that healthy, stable,\nwise, kind, and beautiful sort of life which he calls happiness.\n\n\n\n\n[Pg 104] CHAPTER X\n\nTHE BREACH WITH CHRISTIANITY\n\nGerman philosophy has a religious spirit, but its alliance with\nChristianity has always been equivocal and external. Even in the\nspeculations of Leibniz, concerned as he was about orthodoxy, there was\na spirit of independence and absolutism which was rationalistic, not to\nsay heathen. The principle of sufficient reason, for instance, demands\nthat God and nature shall explain their existence and behaviour to us,\nas timid parents explain their behaviour to their censorious children.\nBy rendering everything necessary, even the acts of God, it takes the\nplace of God and makes him superfluous. Such frigid optimism as this\nprinciple involves, besides being fatalistic, is deeply discouraging to\nthat hope of deliverance which is the soul of Christianity: for if this\nis the best world possible, how poor must be that realm of possible\nworlds where everything is tainted, and there is no heaven! The theory,\ntoo, that each soul contains the seeds of its whole experience and\nsuffices for its own infinite development, destroys the meaning of\ncreation, revelation, miracles, sin, grace, and [Pg 105] charity. Thus\nwithout intending it, even the obsequious but incredibly intelligent\nLeibniz undermined all the doctrines of Christianity in the act of\nthinking them afresh, and insinuated into them a sort of magic heathen\nindividualism.\n\nKant, Fichte, and Hegel were less punctilious in their theology, but\nthey still intended to be or to seem Christians. They felt that what\nmade the sanctity of traditional religion and its moral force could\nbe recovered in a purer form in their systems. This feeling of theirs\nwas not unwarranted; at least, many religious minds, after the first\nshock of losing their realistic faith, have seen in transcendentalism\na means, and perhaps the only safe means, of still maintaining a sort\nof Christianity which shall not claim any longer to be a miraculous or\nexceptional revelation, but only a fair enough poetic symbol for the\nprinciples found in all moral life. That he who loses his life shall\nsave it, for instance, is a maxim much prized and much glossed by\nHegelians. They lend it a meaning of their own, which might, indeed,\nbe said to be the opposite of what the Gospel meant; for there the\nbeliever is urged to discard the very world with which Hegel asks him\nto identify himself. The idea is that if you surrender your private\ninterests to those of your profession, science, or country, you become\nthereby a good and important person, and [Pg 106] unintentionally a\nhappy one. You will then feel that the world shares your thoughts and\nrenders them perpetual, while you, being absorbed in ideal pursuits,\nforget your private miseries and mortality.\n\nIn this sort of moral psychology there is evidently some truth; but the\n\"law of experience\" which it points to is but a loose and ambiguous\nlaw, which disguises more facts than it expresses. Honest minds will\nrebel against the suggestion that when you outgrow a desire you have\nfulfilled it; and they will detect the furtive irony in bidding you\nlive hard in order not to feel the vanity of living. To drown sorrow\nin work, and to forget private failures in public interests, is\ncertainly possible, but it is only drugging yourself with hurry and\nroutine, which may not be more advantageous to others than it really\nis to yourself. Impersonal or \"ideal\" aims are not necessarily less\ndelusive or \"higher\" than personal ones; in fact there is far more\nlikelihood that they are conventional humbug. This pathological hygiene\nof idealism, which always stops at some uncriticised impulse, thinks it\nsecures health when perhaps it has only increased the dose of illusion.\n\nNevertheless transcendentalism has this important element in common\nwith Christianity and with the other Hebraic religions, that it regards\nhuman interests as the core of the universe and God as the [Pg 107]\nGod of man, who disposes all things for man's benefit. In its eyes\nthe sphere of providence and moral life is bounded by the history\nof a part of Europe and Asia for a few thousand years. So long as\ntranscendentalism is taken to imply some such philosophy of history it\ncan compound its differences with liberal Christianity, since they are\nat one in the cardinal point of their faith, which is the apotheosis of\nthe human spirit.\n\nYet this human egotism, which comforts so many minds, offends others,\nin their way no less religious. Of course, those who believe in the\ninfinity of the universe, be they mystics or naturalists, smile at\nsuch pettiness and fatuity. But even among transcendentalists, some\nare repelled; for the dominion which they attribute to their ego\nis a dominion over appearances only; they do not pretend that the\ngrammar of the human intellect can lay down the law for the world at\nlarge. At the same time, in their own house they wish to keep their\nfreedom. That prescribed evolution and that reversible optimism of\nthe absolute transcendentalists are repulsive to them; they resent\nthat such a precise and distasteful career should be imposed on their\ntranscendental individuality, and should swallow it up. It is these\nrebels that have carried romanticism and German philosophy into its\nlast phase. They have broken at [Pg 108] last with Christianity and at\nthe same time with the theological and cosmic transcendentalism that\nwas its treacherous ally, and hoped to be its heir.\n\nThe transcendentalism of Schopenhauer, sweeping as it was in its\nway, retained the modest and agnostic character it had had in Kant:\nhe proclaimed that the world was his idea, but meant only (what is\nundeniable) that his _idea_ of the world was his idea. The egotistical\ndoctrine that the whole universe is but the image of it created by the\nmind disappeared altogether in his system. The so-called Will which\nhe still placed behind everything was no longer his own will evolving\nexperience out of nothing; it was a fanciful name for whatever force\nor substance might lie behind experience, animating all its objects,\ndetermining their inherent life, and constituting them facts collateral\nwith himself. If his metaphysics remained idealistic, it was on\naccount of his romantic habit of assimilating the life of nature to\nthat of man, as hasty introspection reveals it; so that the universe\nis described in moral and poetical terms rather than in the terms of\nscience.\n\nThe consequences of this change were important. The Will became\ninfinite in what Hegel called the evil sense, that is, in the true one.\nIt was no longer possible to speak of a plan of creation, nor of a\ndramatic progress in history, with its beginning in [Pg 109] Eden and\nits end in Berlin. Life was seen to radiate, as it really does, from an\nelementary form into all sorts of disparate and incomparable growths,\ncapable of endless diversity. No limit, no forced co-operation, no\nstereotyped method was imputed to life. The pocket universe of Hegel\nopened out to the stars, so hateful to that philosopher. Man lost his\nimportance and at the same time the insufferable burden of his false\npretensions. In Schopenhauer frankness returned, and with frankness\nclearness. Yet he could not quite reconcile man to his actual place in\nnature. A deep prejudice still intervened.\n\nBoth Christianity and romanticism had accustomed people to disregard\nthe intrinsic value of things. Things ought to be useful for salvation,\nor symbols of other greater but unknown things: it was not to be\nexpected that they should be simply good in themselves. This life was\nto be justified, if justified at all, only as servile work or tedious\nbusiness may be justified, not as health or artistic expression justify\nthemselves. Unless some external and ulterior end could be achieved\nby living, it was thought that life would be vanity. Remove now the\nexpectation of a millennium or of a paradise in the sky, and it may\nseem that all serious value has disappeared from our earthly existence.\nYet this feeling is only a temporary after-image of a particular\neducation.\n\n[Pg 110] The romantic poets, through pride, restlessness, and longing\nfor vague impossible things, came to the same conclusion that the\nchurch had reached through censoriousness and hope. To be always\ndissatisfied seemed to that Faust-like age a mark of loftiness. To\nbe dissatisfied is, indeed, a healthy and promising thing, when what\ntroubles us can be set right; but the romantic mind despises such\nincidental improvements which far from freeing the wild egotistical\nsoul would rather fatten and harness it. It is beneath the romantic\npessimist to remember that people, in all ages, sometimes achieve what\nthey have set their hearts on, and that if human will and conduct\nwere better disciplined, this contentment would be more frequent and\nmore massive. On the contrary, he asserts that willing is always and\neverywhere abortive.\n\nHow can he persuade himself of something so evidently false? By that\nmystical misinterpretation of human nature which is perhaps the core\nof romanticism. He imagines that what is desired is not: this or\nthat--food, children, victory, knowledge, or some other specific\ngoal of a human instinct--but an abstract and perpetual happiness\nbehind all these alternating interests. Of course an abstract and\nperpetual happiness is impossible, not merely because events are\nsure to disturb any equilibrium we may think we have established in\nour lives, but for the [Pg 111] far more fundamental reason that we\nhave no abstract and perpetual instinct to satisfy. The desire for\nself-preservation or power or union with God is no more perpetual or\ncomprehensive than any other: it is commonly when we are in straits\nthat we become aware of such objects, and to achieve them, or imagine\nwe achieve them, will give us only a momentary satisfaction, like any\nother success. A highest good to be obtained apart from each and every\nspecific interest is more than unattainable; it is unthinkable. The\nromanticist, chasing wilfully that _ignis fatuus_, naturally finds his\nlife arduous and disappointing. But he might have learned from Plato or\nany sound moralist, if his genius could allow him to learn anything,\nthat the highest good of man is the sum and harmony of those specific\ngoods upon which his nature is directed. But because the romantic will\nwas unteachable, all will was declared to be foolish.\n\nSchopenhauer was led into his pessimism also by the spirit of\nopposition; his righteous wrath was aroused by the sardonic and\ninhuman optimism of Hegel, the arguments for which were so cogent, so\nCalvinistic, and so irrelevant that they would have lost none of their\nforce if they had been proposed in hell. The best possible world and\nthe worst possible world are, indeed, identical for that philosophy.\nSchopenhauer needed to change nothing in the [Pg 112] description of\nlife, as the other idealists conceived it, in order to prove that life\nwas a tragedy; for they were as romantic as himself and as far from\nfeeling the intrinsic value of happiness, and the possibility of real\nprogress. Real progress has little to do with perpetual evolution.\nIt occurs only in certain places and times, when nature or art comes\nto the assistance of some definite interest already embodied, as the\ninterest in security and mutual confidence, knowledge, or the fine arts\nis already embodied in mankind. Schopenhauer was not insensible to\nthese achievements; he felt by instinct the infinity and luxuriance of\nthe moral world. It was in part this secret sympathy with nature that\nalienated him from Christianity and from transcendental metaphysics.\nBut because natural goods cannot be desired or possessed for ever,\nhe thought their value was cancelled, even for those who desired and\npossessed them. The leaven of romanticism was still at work, forbidding\nhim to recognise a natural order, with which a vital harmony might be\nestablished. The ground of life, the Will in all things, was something\nlurid and tempestuous, itself a psychological chaos. The alternative to\ntheism in the mind of Schopenhauer was not naturalism but anarchy.\n\nThis romantic travesty of life and this conception of metaphysical\nanarchy were inherited by Nietzsche [Pg 113] and regarded by him as\nthe last word of philosophy. But he made the breach with Christianity\nstill wider. The grief of Schopenhauer in the presence of such a world,\nhis desperate and exotic remedy--the denial of the will--and\nhis love of contemplation were all evidences of a mind still half\nChristian: his pessimism itself was so much homage to the faith he\nhad lost. Such backward glances were not for the impetuous Nietzsche,\nwho felt he was a prophet of the future, and really was one. Romantic\nanarchy delighted him; and he crowned it with a rakish optimism, as\nwith the red cap of Liberty. He was in hearty sympathy with absolute\nWill; he praised it even for being vain and maleficent, if it was only\nproud enough to praise itself.\n\n\n\n\n[Pg 114] CHAPTER XI\n\nNIETZSCHE AND SCHOPENHAUER\n\nIt is hardly fair to a writer like Nietzsche, so poetical, fragmentary,\nand immature, to judge him as a philosopher; yet he wished to be so\njudged, and planned a system which was to be an emendation of that\nof Schopenhauer. The will to live would become the will to dominate;\npessimism founded on reflection would become optimism founded on\ncourage; the suspense of the will in contemplation would yield to a\nmore biological account of intelligence and taste; finally in the\nplace of pity and asceticism (Schopenhauer's two principles of morals)\nNietzsche would set up the duty of asserting the will at all costs and\nbeing cruelly but beautifully strong.\n\nThese points of difference from Schopenhauer cover the whole philosophy\nof Nietzsche. I will consider them in order, leaving the last for the\nnext chapter.\n\nThe change from \"the will to live\" to \"the will to be powerful\" is only\na change of metaphors: both are used merely to indicate the general\nmovement of nature. The choice of a psychological symbol for this\npurpose is indifferent scientifically, since the [Pg 115] facts in any\ncase remain the same and our knowledge of them is not enlarged; yet it\nis an interesting indication of the mind of the poet using it, because\nwhatever a man knows and loves best, that he takes his metaphors from.\nNietzsche had his reasons for liking to call the universal principle a\nlust for power. He believed he was the herald of two hundred years of\nwar, he was in love with the vague image of a military aristocracy, and\nhe was not without a certain biological acumen.\n\nAn acorn in the ground does not strive to persevere in the state it\nhappens to be in, but expands, absorbs surrounding elements, and\ntransforms them into its own substance, which itself changes its form.\nHere then is a will to grow, not simply a will to live or to preserve\noneself; in fact, as Nietzsche eloquently said, here is a will to\nperish. It is true that when the oak is full grown it seems to pass\nto the defensive and no longer manifests the will either to perish\nor to grow. Even while the will to grow is operating, its scope is\nnot indefinite. It would be grotesque to imagine that the acorn, like\nthe ego of German philosophy, tended to annex the whole earth and\nthe whole sky and to make a single oak of the universe. If we take a\nbroad view, perhaps the ancient myth that nature tends to re-embody\ncertain fixed types, though inaccurate, gives a better picture of the\nfacts than [Pg 116] the modern myth that she is striving to change in\none predetermined direction. Nevertheless, the fact that Nietzsche's\nattention was fascinated by the will to grow and to dominate shows that\nhe was in sympathy with young things, that his heart was big with the\nfuture, and that his age believed in progress.\n\nThe change from pessimism to optimism, verbally so complete, did not\nimply any divergence between Nietzsche and Schopenhauer in their\ndescription of the facts; it was all a matter of a little more spirit\nin the younger thinker and a little more conscience in the elder.\nRomantic poets and their heroes are well known to oscillate between\npassionate despair and passionate enterprise. Schopenhauer affected\npassionate despair, Nietzsche recommended passionate enterprise, each\nbeing wedded exclusively to one of those moods which Faust or Byron\ncould feel alternately and reduce to act with all the dashing tumult of\nanarchy. The value which the world has in the eyes of its inhabitants\nis necessarily mixed, so that a sweeping optimism or pessimism can be\nonly a theoretic pose, false to the natural sentiment even of those who\nassume it. Both are impressionistic judgments passed on the world at\nlarge, not perhaps without some impertinence.\n\nYet it is these poses or attitudes, or, if you like, these\nimpertinences, that give importance to [Pg 117] transcendental\nphilosophers; it is their representative and contagious side; their\nviews of things would concern us little, if it was the things\nthemselves that we wished to understand, but our whole study is a study\nin romanticism. The temper of the age ignored that man is a teachable\nanimal living in a natural world. All that was a vulgar convention; in\ntruth a disembodied Will was directed on any and every ideal at random,\nand when any of these fantastic objects seemed to be attained nothing\nwas really accomplished, nothing was accumulated or learned. The wish\nfor some other will-o'-the-wisp immediately succeeded, always equally\npassionate and equally foolish.\n\nIt is amazing that such a picture of human experience should have\nmet with anything but general derision; but when people read books\nthey compare them with other books, and when they turn to things they\nforget books altogether. Hence the most palpable falsehoods are held\nby general consent at certain moments, because they follow logically\nfrom what the books of the previous generation had maintained. This\nabsurdity of Schopenhauer's is a plausible variation of idealism; to\nsee how absurd it is you must remember the facts of life, the existence\nof any degree of civilisation or progress. In these the travail of\nhuman nature appears; for human nature is not [Pg 118] merely a name\nfor a certain set of passions known to literature; in that sense\nSchopenhauer fully acknowledged it, and even thought it immutable;\nit is rather the constitution of an animal capable of training and\ndevelopment. What is more patent than that a man may learn something by\nexperience and may be trained? But if he can be trained he is capable\nof adaptation and, therefore, of happiness, and the preposterous\nassertion that all desires are equally arbitrary and equally fruitless\nis blown to the winds.\n\nThe belief in a romantic chaos lends itself to pessimism, but it\nalso lends itself to absolute self-assertion. Kant had boasted that\nhe had removed knowledge in order to make room for faith; in other\nwords, he had returned to chaos in order to find freedom. The great\negotists, who detested the pressure of a world they had not posited\nor created, followed gladly in that path; but Schopenhauer was not\nan egotist. Like Goethe he was probably more selfish personally than\nthose other philosophers whom their very egotism had made zealous and\nsingle-minded; but in imagination and feeling he was, like Goethe,\ngenial and humane: the freedom and exuberance of nature impressed\nhim more than his own. Had he been an egotist, as Fichte, Hegel, and\nNietzsche were, he might have been an optimist like them. He was\nrather a happy man, hugely enjoying [Pg 119] a great many things,\namong them food and music; and he taught that music was a direct\ntranscript of the tormented will to live. How simple it would have been\nfor him, if he had been an egotist, to enjoy the spectacle of that\ntormented will as much as the music which was its faithful image! But\nno; such \u00e6sthetic cruelty, which was Nietzsche's delight, would have\nrevolted Schopenhauer. He thought tragedy beautiful because it detached\nus from a troubled world and did not think a troubled world good, as\nthose unspeakable optimists did, because it made such a fine tragedy.\nIt is pleasant to find that among all these philosophers one at least\nwas a gentleman.\n\nIf Will is the sole substance or force in the universe, it must be\npresent in everything that exists, yet Schopenhauer affirmed that it\nwas absent in \u00e6sthetic contemplation; and he looked to an ultimate\ndenial of the Will, which if it was to be an act and not merely a void\nwould evidently be impossible on his principles. The Will might well\nsay to those who attempted to deny it: \"They reckon ill who leave me\nout; when me they fly, I am the wings.\" In perceiving and correcting\nthis contradiction, Nietzsche certainly improved the technique of the\nsystem.\n\nYet that contradiction was not substantial; it was verbal merely, and\ndue to the fond use of the term [Pg 120] Will for what might more\nproperly be called matter, energy, or movement. Will taken in the\nmetaphorical sense can never be in abeyance, so long as anything is\ngoing on; but will taken in its proper sense is in abeyance often; and\nthis is what Schopenhauer saw and meant to say. Actual and conscious\nwill is a passing phenomenon; it is so little necessary to life that\nit always disappears when life is at its height. All pure pleasures,\nincluding those of seeing and thinking, are without it: they are\ningenuous, and terminate in their present object. A philosopher should\nhave learned from Aristotle, if not from his own experience, that at\nthe acme of life we live in the eternal, and that then, as Schopenhauer\nsaid, we no longer pry but gaze, and are freed from willing.\n\nThis is not to say that Nietzsche was not very happy and witty in his\ndescription of the passions that dominate artists and philosophers,\nand in urging that the life of the spirit was an impassioned thing. To\nprove it, he might have quoted Schopenhauer himself, in those moving\npassages where he describes the ecstasy of thought and the spell of\nbeauty. It is not the dead or the bloodless that have such feelings. Of\ncourse, if the operations of the brain, and the whole instinctive life\nof the soul, were interrupted neither these feelings nor any others\nwould arise. This was at bottom Schopenhauer's conviction. His [Pg 121]\ngreat intuition, the corner-stone of his philosophy, was precisely the\npriority of automatism and instinct over the intellect. His only error\ncame from having given to these underlying processes the name of Will,\nwhen properly the will is one expression of them only, as the intellect\nis.\n\nNietzsche, who adopted the same metaphor, was led by it into the very\nconfusion which he criticised in Schopenhauer. Nietzsche had no great\ntechnical competence: he saw the inconsistency only when he disliked\nthe result; when the result fell in with his first impressions he\nrepeated the inconsistency. He often condemned other moralists for\nbeing enemies to life: he reproached the greater part of mankind for\nloving inglorious ease and resenting the sufferings inseparable from\nthe will to be mighty and to perish. But this churlish attitude of the\nvulgar would be quite impossible if the heroic will to be powerful were\nthe essence of everybody and even of material things. If I am nothing\nbut the will to grow, how can I ever will to shrink?\n\nBut this inconsistency in Nietzsche, like that in Schopenhauer, was\nan honourable one that came of forgetting a false generalisation\nin the presence of a clear fact. That the will to be powerful is\neverywhere was a false generalisation; but it was a clear fact that\nsome people are pious Christians or Epicurean [Pg 122] philosophers,\nwho do not care at all about conquering the world. They want to be\nlet alone, and perhaps have a shrewd suspicion that no one lives\nunder such dire compulsions as he who undertakes to tyrannise over\nothers. This slave-morality of theirs might be called Will, though it\nis rather instinct and habit; but it is certainly not a will to be\npowerful: it is the opposite of that passion. Thus Nietzsche, by an\nhonest self-contradiction, pointed to people who denied the will to be\npowerful, in order to abuse them, just as Schopenhauer had pointed to\npeople who denied or suspended the will to live, in order to praise\nthem.\n\n\n\n\n[Pg 123] CHAPTER XII\n\nTHE ETHICS OF NIETZSCHE\n\nNietzsche occasionally spoke disparagingly of morality, as if the\nword and the thing had got a little on his nerves; and some of his\nbest-known phrases might give the impression that he wished to\ndrop the distinction between good and evil and transcend ethics\naltogether. Such a thought would not have been absurd in itself or even\nunphilosophical. Many serious thinkers, Spinoza for instance, have\nbelieved that everything that happens is equally necessary and equally\nexpressive of the will of God, be it favourable or unfavourable to\nour special interests and, therefore, called by us good or bad. A too\nreverent immersion in nature and history convinces them that to think\nany part of reality better or worse than the rest is impertinent or\neven impious. It is true that in the end these philosophers usually\nstultify themselves and declare enthusiastically that whatever is is\nright. This rapturous feeling can overcome anybody in certain moods,\nas it sometimes overcame Nietzsche; but in yielding to it, besides\ncontradicting all other moral judgments, these mystics break their\ndifficult resolution never to judge at all.\n\n[Pg 124] Nietzsche, however, was entirely free from this divine\nimpediment in morals. The courage to cling to what his soul\nloved--and this courage is the essence of morality--was\nconspicuous in him. He was a poet, a critic, a lover of form and of\ndistinctions. Few persons have ever given such fierce importance to\ntheir personal taste. What he disliked to think of, say democracy, he\ncondemned with the fulminations of a god; what he liked to think of,\npower, he seriously commanded man and nature to pursue for their single\nobject.\n\nWhat Nietzsche disparaged, then, under the name of morality was not\nall morality, for he had an enthusiastic master-morality of his own to\nimpose. He was thinking only of the Christian virtues and especially\nof a certain Protestant and Kantian moralism with which perhaps he\nhad been surfeited. This moralism conceived that duty was something\nabsolute and not a method of securing whatever goods of all sorts are\nattainable by action. The latter is the common and the sound opinion,\nmaintained, for instance, by Aristotle; but Nietzsche, who was not\nhumble enough to learn very much by study, thought he was propounding\na revolutionary doctrine when he put goods and evils beyond and above\nright and wrong: for this is all that his _Jenseits von Gut und B\u00f6se_\namounts to. Whatever seemed to him [Pg 125] admirable, beautiful,\neligible, whatever was good in the sense opposed not to _b\u00f6se_ but\nto _schlecht_, Nietzsche loved with jealous affection. Hence his ire\nagainst Christianity, which he thought renounced too much. Hence his\nhatred of moralism, which in raising duty to the irresponsible throne\nof the absolute had superstitiously sacrificed half the goods of life.\nNietzsche, then, far from transcending ethics, re-established it on its\ntrue foundations, which is not to say that the sketchy edifice which\nhe planned to raise on these foundations was in a beautiful style of\narchitecture or could stand at all.\n\nThe first principle of his ethics was that the good is power. But this\nword power seems to have had a great range of meanings in his mind.\nSometimes it suggests animal strength and size, as in the big blonde\nbeast; sometimes vitality, sometimes fortitude, sometimes contempt\nfor the will of others, sometimes (and this is perhaps the meaning he\nchiefly intended) dominion over natural forces and over the people,\nthat is to say, wealth and military power. It is characteristic of this\nwhole school that it confuses the laws which are supposed to preside\nover the movement of things with the good results which they may\ninvolve; so Nietzsche confuses his biological insight, that all life\nis the assertion of some sort of power--the power to breathe, for\ninstance--with the [Pg 126] admiration he felt for a masterful\negotism. But even if we identify life or any kind of existence with\nthe exertion of strength, the kinds of strength exerted will be\nheterogeneous and not always compatible. The strength of Lucifer does\nnot insure victory in war; it points rather to failure in a world\npeopled by millions of timid, pious, and democratic persons. Hence\nwe find Nietzsche asking himself plaintively, \"Why are the feeble\nvictorious?\" The fact rankled in his bosom that in the ancient world\nmartial aristocracies had succumbed before Christianity, and in the\nmodern world before democracy. By strength, then, he could not mean the\npower to survive, by being as flexible as circumstances may require.\nHe did not refer to the strength of majorities, nor to the strength of\nvermin. At the same time he did not refer to moral strength, for of\nmoral strength he had no idea.\n\nThe arts give power, but only in channels prescribed by their own\nprinciples, not by the will of untrained men. To be trained is to be\ntamed and harnessed, an accession of power detestable to Nietzsche.\nHis Zarathustra had the power of dancing, also of charming serpents\nand eagles: no wonder that he missed the power, bestowed by goodness,\nof charming and guiding men; and a Terpsichorean autocrat would be\nhard to imagine. A man intent on algebra [Pg 127] or on painting is\nnot striving to rule anybody; his dominion over painting or algebra is\nchiefly a matter of concentration and self-forgetfulness. So dominion\nover the passions changes them from attempts to appropriate anything\ninto sentiments of the mind, colouring a world which is no longer\ncoveted. To attain such autumnal wisdom is, if you like, itself a power\nof feeling and a kind of strength; but it is not helpful in conquering\nthe earth.\n\nNietzsche was personally more philosophical than his philosophy. His\ntalk about power, harshness, and superb immorality was the hobby of a\nharmless young scholar and constitutional invalid. He did not crave in\nthe least either wealth or empire. What he loved was solitude, nature,\nmusic, books. But his imagination, like his judgment, was captious;\nit could not dwell on reality, but reacted furiously against it.\nAccordingly, when he speaks of the will to be powerful, power is merely\nan eloquent word on his lips. It symbolises the escape from mediocrity.\nWhat power would be when attained and exercised remains entirely beyond\nhis horizon. What meets us everywhere is the sense of impotence and a\npassionate rebellion against it.\n\nThe phrases in which Nietzsche condensed and felt his thought were\nbrilliant, but they were seldom just. We may perhaps see the principle\nof his ethics [Pg 128] better if we forget for a moment the will to\nbe powerful and consider this: that he knew no sort of good except\nthe beautiful, and no sort of beauty except romantic stress. He was\na belated prophet of romanticism. He wrote its epitaph, in which he\npraised it more extravagantly than anybody, when it was alive, had had\nthe courage to do.\n\nConsider, for example, what he said about truth. Since men were\ngoverned solely by the will to be powerful, the truth for its own sake\nmust be moonshine to them. They would wish to cultivate such ideas,\nwhether true or false, as might be useful to their ambition. Nietzsche\n(more candid in this than some other pragmatists) confessed that truth\nitself did not interest him; it was ugly; the bracing atmosphere of\nfalsehood, passion, and subjective perspectives was the better thing.\nSometimes, indeed, a more wistful mood overtook him, and he wondered\nwhether the human mind would be able to endure the light of truth. That\nwas the great question of the future. We may agree that a mind without\npoetry, fiction, and subjective colouring would not be human, nor a\nmind at all; and that neither truth nor the knowledge of truth would\nhave any intrinsic value if nobody cared about it for its own sake.\nBut some men do care; and in ignoring this fact Nietzsche expresses\nthe false and pitiful notion that we can be [Pg 129] interested in\nnothing except in ourselves and our own future. I am solitary, says the\nromantic egotist, and sufficient unto myself. The world is my idea, new\nevery day: what can I have to do with truth?\n\nThis impulse to turn one's back on truth, whether in contempt or in\ndespair, has a long history. Lessing had said that he preferred the\npursuit of truth to the truth itself; but if we take this seriously\n(as possibly it was not meant) the pursuit of truth at once changes\nits character. It can no longer be the pursuit of truth, truth not\nbeing wanted, but only the pursuit of some fresh idea. Whether one of\nthese ideas or another comes nearer to the truth would be unimportant\nand undiscoverable. Any idea will do, so long as it is pregnant with\nanother that may presently take its place; and as presumably error will\nprecipitate new ideas more readily than truth, we might almost find\nit implied in Lessing's maxim that, as Nietzsche maintained, what is\nreally good is neither truth nor the pursuit of truth (for you might\nfind it, and what would you do then?), but rather a perpetual flux of\nerrors.\n\nThis view is also implied in the very prevalent habit of regarding\nopinions as justified not by their object but by their date. The\nintellectual ignominy of believing what we believe simply because of\nthe time and place of our birth, escapes many evolutionists. [Pg 130]\nFar from trying to overcome this natural prejudice of position, they\nraise it into a point of pride. They declare all opinions ever held\nin the past to be superseded, and are apparently content that their\nown should be superseded to-morrow, but meantime they cover you with\nobloquy if you are so backward or so forward as not to agree with them\nto-day. They accept as inevitable the total dominion of the point of\nview. Each new date, even in the life of an individual thinker, is\nexpected by them to mark a new phase of doctrine. Indeed, truth is an\nobject which transcendental philosophy cannot envisage: the absolute\nego must be satisfied with consistency. How should the truth, actual,\nnatural, or divine, be an expression of the living will that attempts,\nor in their case despairs, to discover it? Yet that everything, even\nthe truth, is an expression of the living will, is the corner-stone of\nthis philosophy.\n\nConsider further the spirit in which Nietzsche condemned Christianity\nand the Christian virtues. Many people have denounced Christianity on\nthe ground that it was false or tyrannical, while perhaps admitting\nthat it was comforting or had a good moral influence. Nietzsche\ndenounced it--and in unmeasured terms--on the ground that\n(while, of course, as true as any other vital lie) it was mean,\ndepressing, slavish, and plebeian. How beastly was [Pg 131] the\nprecept of love! Actually to love all these grotesque bipeds was\ndegrading. A lover of the beautiful must wish almost all his neighbours\nout of the way. Compassion, too, was a lamentable way of assimilating\noneself to evil. That contagious misery spoiled one's joy, freedom, and\ncourage. Disease should not be nursed but cauterised; the world must be\nmade clean.\n\nNow there is a sort of love of mankind, a jealous love of what man\nmight be, in this much decried maxim of unmercifulness. Nietzsche\nrebelled at the thought of endless wretchedness, pervasive mediocrity,\ncrying children, domestic drudges, and pompous fools for ever. _Die\nErde war zu lange schon ein Irrenhaus!_ His heart was tender enough,\nbut his imagination was impatient. When he praised cruelty, it was on\nthe ground that art was cruel, that it made beauty out of suffering.\nSuffering, therefore, was good, and so was crime, which made life\nkeener. Only crime, he said, raises a man high enough for the lightning\nto strike him. In the hope of sparing some obscure person a few groans\nor tears, would you deprive the romantic hero of so sublime a death?\n\nChristians, too, might say they had their heroes, their saints; but\nwhat sort of eminence was that? It was produced by stifling half the\npassions. A [Pg 132] sister of charity could not be an Arminius;\ndevotion to such remedial offices spoilt the glory of life. Holiness\nwas immoral; it was a half-suicide. _All_ experience, the ideal of\nFaust, was what a spirited man must desire. All experience would\ninvolve, I suppose, passing through all the sensations of a murderer,\na maniac, and a toad; even through those of a saint or a sister of\ncharity. But the romantic mind despises results; it is satisfied with\nposes.\n\nConsider, too, the romantic demand for a violent chiaroscuro, a\ndemand which blossoms into a whole system of ethics. Good and evil,\nwe are told, enhance one another, like light and shade in a picture;\nwithout evil there can be no good, so to diminish the one is to\nundermine the other, and the greatest and most heroic man is he who\nnot only does most good but also most harm. In his love of mischief,\nin his tenderness for the adventurer who boldly inflicts injury and\nsuffering on others and on himself, in order to cut a more thrilling\nand stupendous figure in his own eyes, Nietzsche gave this pernicious\ndoctrine its frankest expression; but unfortunately it was not wholly\nhis own. In its essence it belongs to Hegel, and under various\nsophistical disguises it has been adopted by all his academic followers\nin England and America. The arguments used to defend it are old\nsophisms borrowed from the Stoics, who [Pg 133] had turned the physical\ndoctrine of Heraclitus, that everything is a mixture of contraries,\ninto an argument for resignation to inevitable evils and detachment\nfrom tainted goods. The Stoics, who were neither romantic nor worldly,\nused these sophisms in an attempt to extirpate the passions, not to\njustify them. They were sufficiently refuted by the excellent Plutarch\nwhere he observes that according to this logic it was requisite and\nnecessary that Thersites should be bald in order that Achilles might\nhave leonine hair. The absurdity is, indeed, ludicrous, if we are\nthinking of real things and of the goods and evils of experience; but\negotists never think of that; what they always think of is the picture\nof those realities in their imagination. For the observer, effects of\ncontrast do alter the values of the elements considered; and, indeed,\nthe elements themselves, if one is very unsympathetic, may not have\nat all in contemplation the quality they have in experience: whence\n\u00e6sthetic cruelty. The respect which Hegel and Nietzsche have for those\nsophisms becomes intelligible when we remember what imperturbable\negotists they were.\n\nThis egotism in morals is partly mystical. There is a luxurious joy\nin healing the smart of evil in one's mind, without needing to remove\nor diminish the evil in the world. The smart may be healed by [Pg\n134] nursing the conviction that evil after all is good, no matter how\nmuch of it there is or how much of it we do. In part, however, this\negotism is romantic; it does not ask to be persuaded that evil, in\nthe end, is good. It feels that evil is good in the present; it is so\nintense a thing to feel and so exciting a thing to do. Here we have\nwhat Nietzsche wished to bring about, a reversal of all values. To do\nevil is the true virtue, and to be good is the most hopeless vice.\nMilk is for babes; your strong man should be soaked in blood and in\nalcohol. We should live perilously; and as material life is the power\nto digest poisons, so true excellence is the power to commit all manner\nof crimes, and to survive.\n\nThat there is no God is proved by Nietzsche pragmatically, on the\nground that belief in the existence of God would have made him\nuncomfortable. Not at all for the reason that might first occur to\nus: to imagine himself a lost soul has always been a point of pride\nwith the romantic genius. The reason was that if there had been any\ngods he would have found it intolerable not to be a god himself. Poor\nNietzsche! The laurels of the Almighty would not let him sleep.\n\nIt is hard to know if we should be more deceived in taking these\nsallies seriously or in not taking them so. On the one hand it all\nseems the swagger [Pg 135] of an immature, half-playful mind, like a\nchild that tells you he will cut your head off. The dreamy impulse,\nin its inception, is sincere enough, but there is no vestige of any\nunderstanding of what it proposes, of its conditions, or of its\nresults. On the other hand these explosions are symptomatic; there\nstirs behind them unmistakably an elemental force. That an attitude\nis foolish, incoherent, disastrous, proves nothing against the\ndepth of the instinct that inspires it. Who could be more intensely\nunintelligent than Luther or Rousseau? Yet the world followed them,\nnot to turn back. The molecular forces of society, so to speak, had\nalready undermined the systems which these men denounced. If the\nsystems have survived it is only because the reformers, in their\nintellectual helplessness, could supply nothing to take their place.\nSo Nietzsche, in his genial imbecility, betrays the shifting of great\nsubterranean forces. What he said may be nothing, but the fact that\nhe said it is all-important. Out of such wild intuitions, because the\nheart of the child was in them, the man of the future may have to build\nhis philosophy. We should forgive Nietzsche his boyish blasphemies. He\nhated with clearness, if he did not know what to love.\n\n\n\n\n[Pg 136] CHAPTER XIII\n\nTHE SUPERMAN\n\nIn his views on matters of fact Nietzsche, as becomes the na\u00efve\negotist, was quite irresponsible. If he said the course of history\nrepeated itself in cycles, it was because the idea pleased him; it\nseemed a symbol of self-approval on the world's part. If he hailed the\nadvent of a race of men superior to ourselves and of stronger fibre, it\nwas because human life as it is, and especially his own life, repelled\nhim. He was sensitive and, therefore, censorious. He gazed about him,\nhe gazed at himself, he remembered the disappointing frailties and\npomposity of the great man, Wagner, whom he had once idolised. His\noptimism for the moment yielded to his sincerity. He would sooner\nabolish than condone such a world, and he fled to some solitary\nhillside by the sea, saying to himself that man was a creature to be\nsuperseded.\n\nDissatisfaction with the actual is what usually leads people to frame\nideals at all, or at least to hold them fast; but such a negative\nmotive leaves the ideal vague and without consistency. If we could\nsuddenly have our will, we should very likely find the result trivial\nor horrible. So the superman of [Pg 137] Nietzsche might prove, if\nby magic he could be realised. To frame solid ideals, which would,\nin fact, be better than actual things, is not granted to the merely\nirritable poet; it is granted only to the master-workman, to the\nmodeller of some given substance to some given use--things which\ndefine his aspiration, and separate what is relevant and glorious in\nhis dreams from that large part of them which is merely ignorant and\npeevish. It was not for Nietzsche to be an artist in morals and to\ninstitute anything coherent, even in idea.\n\nThe superman of Nietzsche is rendered the more chimerical by the\nfact that he must contradict not only the common man of the present\nbut also the superior men, the half-superhuman men, of the past. To\ntranscend humanity is no new ambition; that has always been the effort\nof Indian and Christian religious discipline and of Stoic philosophy.\nBut this spiritual superiority, like that of artists and poets, has\ncome of abstraction; a superiority to life, in that these minds were\nengrossed in the picture or lesson of life rather than in living; and\nif they powerfully affected the world, as they sometimes did, it was\nby bringing down into it something supermundane, the arresting touch\nof an ulterior wisdom. Nietzsche, on the contrary, even more than most\nmodern philosophers, loved mere life with the pathetic intensity\nof [Pg 138] the wounded beast; his superman must not rise above our\ncommon condition by his purely spiritual resources, or by laying up\nhis treasure in any sort of heaven. He must be not a superior man but\na kind of physiological superman, a griffin in soul, if not in body,\nwho instead of labouring hands and religious faith should have eagle's\nwings and the claws of a lion. His powers should be superior to ours\nby resembling those of fiercer and wilder animals. The things that\nmake a man tame--Nietzsche was a retired professor living in a\nboarding-house--must be changed into their opposites. But man\nhas been tamed by agriculture, material arts, children, experience;\ntherefore these things are to be far from the superman. If he must\nresemble somebody, it will be rather the _condottieri_ of the\nrenaissance or the princes and courtiers of the seventeenth century;\nC\u00e6sar Borgia is the supreme instance. He must have a splendid presence\nand address, gallantry, contempt for convention, loyalty to no country,\nno woman, and no idea, but always a buoyant and lordly assertion of\ninstinct and of self. In the helter-skelter of his irritable genius,\nNietzsche jumbled together the ferocity of solitary beasts, the\nindifference and _hauteur_ of patricians, and the antics of revellers,\nand out of that mixture he hoped to evoke the rulers of the coming age.\n\n[Pg 139] How could so fantastic an ideal impose on a keen satirist\nlike Nietzsche and a sincere lover of excellence? Because true human\nexcellence seemed to him hostile to life, and he felt--this was\nhis strong and sane side, his lien on the future--that life must\nbe accepted as it is or may become, and false beliefs, hollow demands,\nand hypocritical, forced virtues must be abandoned. This new wisdom\nwas that which Goethe, too, had felt and practised; and of all masters\nof life Goethe was the one whom Nietzsche could best understand. But a\nmaster of life, without being in the least hostile to life, since he\nfulfils it, nevertheless uses life for ends which transcend it. Even\nGoethe, omnivorous and bland as he was, transcended life in depicting\nand judging and blessing it. The saints and the true philosophers have\nnaturally emphasised more this renunciation of egotism: they have seen\nall things in the light of eternity--that is, as they are in\ntruth--and have consequently felt a reasonable contempt for mere\nliving and mere dying; and in that precisely lies moral greatness.\nHere Nietzsche could not follow; rationality chilled him; he craved\nvehemence.\n\nHow life can be fulfilled and made beautiful by reason was never better\nshown than by the Greeks, both by precept and example. Nietzsche in his\nyouth was a professor of Greek literature: one would have [Pg 140]\nexpected his superman to be a sort of Greek hero. Something of the\nDorian harshness in beauty, something of the Pindaric high-born and\nsilent victor may have been fused into Nietzsche's ideal; certainly\nBacchic freedom and ardour were to enter in. But on the whole it\nis remarkable how little he learned from the Greeks, no modesty or\nreverence, no joy in order and in loveliness, no sense for friendship,\nnone for the sanctity of places and institutions. He repeated the\nparadoxes of some of their sophists, without remembering how their\nwise men had refuted them. For example, he gave a new name and a new\nprominence to the distinction between what he called the Dionysiac\nand the Apollonian elements in Greek genius. He saw how false was\nthat whitewashed notion of the Greek mind which young ladies derived\nfrom sketching a plaster cast of the Apollo Belvidere.[1] He saw that\na demonic force, as the generation of Goethe called it, underlay\neverything; what he did not see was that this demonic force was under\ncontrol, which is the secret of the [Pg 141] whole matter. The point\nhad been thoroughly elucidated by Plato, in the contrast he drew\nbetween inspiration and art. But Plato was rather ironical about\ninspiration, and had a high opinion of art; and Nietzsche, with, his\ncontrary instinct, rushes away without understanding the mind of the\nmaster or the truth of the situation. He thinks he alone has discovered\nthe divinity of Dionysus and of the Muses, which Plato took as a matter\nof course but would not venerate superstitiously. Inspiration, like\nwill, is a force without which reason can do nothing. Inspiration must\nbe presupposed; but in itself it can do nothing good unless it is in\nharmony with reason, or is brought into harmony with it. This two-edged\nwisdom that makes impulse the stuff of life and reason its criterion,\nis, of course, lost on Nietzsche, and with it the whole marvel of Greek\ngenius. There is nothing exceptional in being alive and impulsive; any\nsavage can run wild and be frenzied and enact histrionic passions: the\nvirtue of the Greeks lay in the exquisite firmness with which they\nbanked their fires without extinguishing them, so that their life\nremained human (indeed, remained infra-human, like that of Nietzsche's\nsuperman) and yet became beautiful: they were severe and fond of\nmaxims, on a basis of universal tolerance; they governed themselves\nrationally, with a careful freedom, while well aware [Pg 142] that\nnature and their own bosoms were full of gods, all of whom must be\nreverenced.\n\nAfter all, this defect in appreciation is inseparable from the\ntranscendental pose. The ancients, like everything else, never seem to\nthe egotist a reality co-ordinate with himself, from which he might\nstill have something to learn. They are only so much \"content\" for his\nself-consciousness, so much matter for his thought to transcend. They\ncan contain nothing for him but the part of his outgrown self which he\ndeigns to identify with them. His mind must always envelop them and be\nthe larger thing. No wonder that in this school learning is wasted for\nthe purposes of moral education. Whoever has seen the learned egotist\nflies at his approach. History in his hands is a demonstration of his\nphilosophy. Science is a quarry of proofs for his hobbies. If we do\nnot agree with him we are not merely mistaken (every philosopher tells\nus that), but we are false to ourselves and ignorant of our ideal\nsignificance. His ego gives us our place in the world. He informs us\nof what we mean, whatever we may say; and he raises our opinions, as\nhe might his food, to a higher unity in his own person. He is priest\nin every temple. He approaches a picture-gallery or a foreign religion\nin a dictatorial spirit, with his _a priori_ categories ready on his\nlips; pedantry and vanity speak in his [Pg 143] every gesture, and the\nlesson of nothing can reach his heart.\n\nNo, neither the philosophy inherited by Nietzsche nor his wayward\nimagination was fit to suggest to him a nobler race of men. On the\ncontrary, they shut him off from comprehension of the best men that\nhave existed. Like the utopias or ideals of many other satirists and\nminor philosophers, the superman is not a possibility, it is only a\nprotest. Our society is outworn, but hard to renew; the emancipated\nindividual needs to master himself. In what spirit or to what end\nhe will do so, we do not know, and Nietzsche cannot tell us. He\nis the jester, to whom all incoherences are forgiven, because all\nindiscretions are allowed. His mind is undisciplined, and his tongue\noutrageous, but he is at bottom the friend of our conscience, and full\nof shrewd wit and tender wisps of intuition. Behind his \"gay wisdom\"\nand trivial rhymes lies a great anguish. His intellect is lost in a\nchaos. His heart denies itself the relief of tears and can vent itself\nonly in forced laughter and mock hopes that gladden nobody, least of\nall himself.\n\n\n[1] I was about to say: How false was the notion of Winkelmann about\nthe grandeur and repose of the Greek spirit. But Winkelmann, if his\nsense for the chained monsters in the Greek soul was inadequate, was\nat least in real sympathy with what had inspired Greek sculpture, love\nand knowledge of the human body in the life, made gentle by discipline\nand kept strong by training. For that reason Winkelmann seems hardly a\nGerman: his learning was deficient and his heart was humble. He did\nnot patronise the ancients, he believed in them.\n\n\n\n\n[Pg 144] CHAPTER XIV\n\nHEATHENISM\n\nSchopenhauer somewhere observes that the word heathen, no longer\nin reputable use elsewhere, had found a last asylum in Oxford, the\nparadise of dead philosophies. Even Oxford, I believe, has now\nabandoned it; yet it is a good word. It conveys, as no other word can,\nthe sense of vast multitudes tossing in darkness, harassed by demons\nof their own choice. No doubt it implies also a certain sanctimony in\nthe superior person who uses it, as if he at least were not chattering\nin the general Babel. What justified Jews, Christians, and Moslems\n(as Mohammed in particular insisted) in feeling this superiority was\nthe possession of a Book, a chart of life, as it were, in which the\nmost important features of history and morals were mapped out for the\nguidance of teachable men. The heathen, on the contrary, were abandoned\nto their own devices, and even prided themselves on following only\ntheir spontaneous will, their habit, presumption, or caprice.\n\nMost unprejudiced people would now agree that the value of those sacred\nhistories and rules of life did not depend on their alleged miraculous\norigin, [Pg 145] but rather on that solidity and perspicacity in their\nauthors which enabled them to perceive the laws of sweet and profitable\nconduct in this world. It was not religion merely that was concerned,\nat least not that outlying, private, and almost negligible sphere to\nwhich we often apply this name; it was the whole fund of experience\nmankind had gathered by living; it was wisdom. Now, to record these\nlessons of experience, the Greeks and Romans also had their Books;\ntheir history, poetry, science, and civil law. So that while the\ntheologically heathen may be those who have no Bible, the morally and\nessentially heathen are those who possess no authoritative wisdom,\nor reject the authority of what wisdom they have; the untaught or\nunteachable who disdain not only revelation but what revelation stood\nfor among early peoples, namely, funded experience.\n\nIn this sense the Greeks were the least heathen of men. They were\nsingularly docile to political experiment, to law, to methodical art,\nto the proved limitations and resources of mortal life. This life they\nfound closely hedged about by sky, earth, and sea, by war, madness, and\nconscience with their in-dwelling deities, by oracles and local genii\nwith their accustomed cults, by a pervasive fate, and the jealousy of\ninvisible gods. Yet they saw that these divine forces were constant,\nand that they exercised [Pg 146] their pressure and bounty with so\nmuch method that a prudent art and religion could be built up in their\nmidst. All this was simply a poetic prologue to science and the arts;\nit largely passed into them, and would have passed into them altogether\nif the naturalistic genius of Greece had not been crossed in Socrates\nby a premature discouragement, and diverted into other channels.\n\nEarly Hebraism itself had hardly been so wise. It had regarded its\ntribal and moral interests as absolute, and the Creator as the champion\nand omnipotent agent of Israel. But this arrogance and inexperience\nwere heathen. Soon the ascendency of Israel over nature and history\nwas proclaimed to be conditional on their fidelity to the Law; and\nas the spirit of the nation under chastisement became more and more\npenitential, it was absorbed increasingly in the praise of wisdom.\nSalvation was to come only by repentance, by being born again with a\nwill wholly transformed and broken; so that the later Jewish religion\nwent almost as far as Platonism or Christianity in the direction\nopposite to heathenism.\n\nThis movement in the direction of an orthodox wisdom was regarded\nas a progress in those latter days of antiquity when it occurred,\nand it continued to be so regarded in Christendom until the rise of\nromanticism. The most radical reformers simply [Pg 147] urged that\nthe current orthodoxy, religious or scientific, was itself imperfectly\northodox, being corrupt, overloaded, too vague, or too narrow. As\nevery actual orthodoxy is avowedly incomplete and partly ambiguous,\na sympathetic reform of it is always in order. Yet very often the\nreformers are deceived. What really offends them may not be what is\nfalse in the received orthodoxy, but what though true is uncongenial to\nthem. In that case heathenism, under the guise of a search for a purer\nwisdom, is working in their souls against wisdom of any sort. Such is\nthe suspicion that Catholics would throw on Protestantism, naturalists\non idealism, and conservatives generally on all revolutions.\n\nBut if ever heathenism needed to pose as constructive reform, it is now\nquite willing and able to throw off the mask. Desire for any orthodox\nwisdom at all may be repudiated; it may be set down to low vitality\nand failure of nerve. In various directions at once we see to-day an\nintense hatred and disbelief gathering head against the very notion of\na cosmos to be discovered, or a stable human nature to be respected.\nNature, we are told, is an artificial symbol employed by life; truth\nis a temporary convention; art is an expression of personality; war\nis better than peace, effort than achievement, and feeling than\nintelligence; change is deeper than [Pg 148] form; will is above\nmorality. Expressions of this kind are sometimes wanton and only half\nthought out; but they go very deep in the subjective direction. Behind\nthem all is a sincere revulsion against the difficult and confused\nundertakings of reason; against science, institutions, and moral\ncompulsions. They mark an honest retreat into immediate experience\nand animal faith. Man used to be called a rational animal, but his\nrationality is something eventual and ideal, whereas his animality is\nactual and profound. Heathenism, if we consider life at large, is the\nprimal and universal religion.\n\nIt has never been my good fortune to see wild beasts in the jungle,\nbut I have sometimes watched a wild bull in the ring, and I can\nimagine no more striking, simple, and heroic example of animal faith;\nespecially when the bull is what is technically called noble, that\nis, when he follows the lure again and again with eternal singleness\nof thought, eternal courage, and no suspicion of a hidden agency that\nis mocking him. What the red rag is to this brave creature, their\npassions, inclinations, and chance notions are to the heathen. What\nthey will they will; and they would deem it weakness and disloyalty\nto ask whether it is worth willing or whether it is attainable. The\nbull, magnificently sniffing the air, surveys the arena with the cool\ncontempt and [Pg 149] disbelief of the idealist, as if he said: \"You\nseem, you are a seeming; I do not quarrel with you, I do not fear you.\nI am real, you are nothing.\" Then suddenly, when his eye is caught by\nsome bright cloak displayed before him, his whole soul changes. His\nwill awakes and he seems to say: \"You are my destiny; I want you, I\nhate you, you shall be mine, you shall not stand in my path. I will\ngore you. I will disprove you. I will pass beyond you. I shall be, you\nshall not have been.\" Later, when sorely wounded and near his end, he\ngrows blind to all these excitements. He smells the moist earth, and\nturns to the dungeon where an hour ago he was at peace. He remembers\nthe herd, the pasture beyond, and he dreams: \"I shall not die, for I\nlove life. I shall be young again, young always, for I love youth. All\nthis outcry is nought to me, this strange suffering is nought. I will\ngo to the fields again, to graze, to roam, to love.\"\n\nSo exactly, with not one least concession to the unsuspected reality,\nthe heathen soul stands bravely before a painted world, covets some\nbauble, and defies death. Heathenism is the religion of will, the faith\nwhich life has in itself because it is life, and in its aims because it\nis pursuing them.\n\nIn their tentative, many-sided, indomitable way, the Germans have been\ngroping for four hundred [Pg 150] years towards a restoration of their\nprimitive heathenism. Germany under the long tutelage of Rome had\nbeen like a spirited and poetic child brought up by very old and very\nworldly foster-parents. For many years the elfin creature may drink in\ntheir gossip and their maxims with simple wonder; but at last he will\nbegin to be restive under them, ask himself ominous questions, protest,\nsuffer, and finally break into open rebellion. Naturally he will not\nfind at first theories and precepts of his own to take the place of his\nwhole education; he will do what he can with his traditions, revising,\ninterpreting, and patching them with new ideas; and only if he has\ngreat earnestness and speculative power will he ever reach an unalloyed\nexpression of his oppressed soul.\n\nNow in Germany speculative power and earnestness existed in a high\ndegree, not, of course, in most people, but in the best and most\nrepresentative; and it was this _\u00e9lite_ that made the Reformation, and\ncarried it on into historical criticism and transcendental philosophy,\nuntil in the nineteenth century, in Schopenhauer, Wagner, and\nNietzsche, the last remnants of Christian education were discarded and\nthe spontaneous heathen morality of the race reasserted itself in its\npurity. That this assertion was not consistent, that it was thrown into\nthe language and images of some alien system, is not to be [Pg 151]\nwondered at; but the Christianity of Parsifal, like the Buddhism of the\ndenial of the will, is a pure piece of romanticism, an exotic setting\nfor those vacillations and sinkings which absolute Will may very well\nbe subject to in its absolute chaos.\n\nThe rebellion of the heathen soul is unmistakable in the Reformation,\nbut it is not recognised in this simple form, because those who feel\nthat it was justified do not dream that it was heathen, and those\nwho see that it was heathen will not admit that it was justified.\nExternally, of course, it was an effort to recover the original essence\nof Christianity; but why should a free and absolute being care for\nthat original essence when he has discovered it, unless his own mind\ndemanded that very thing? And if his mind demanded it, what need has\nhe to read that demand into an ancient revelation which, as a matter\nof fact, turned on quite other matters? It was simply the inertia\nof established prejudice that made people use tradition to correct\ntradition; until the whole substance of tradition, worn away by that\ninternal friction, should be dissolved, and impulse and native genius\nshould assert themselves unimpeded.\n\nJudaism and Christianity, like Greek philosophy, were singly inspired\nby the pursuit of happiness, in whatever form it might be really\nattainable: now [Pg 152] on earth if possible, or in the millennium,\nor in some abstracted and inward life, like that of the Stoics,\nor in the last resort, in a different life altogether beyond the\ngrave. But heathenism ignores happiness, despises it, or thinks it\nimpossible. The regimen and philosophy of Germany are inspired by this\ncontempt for happiness, for one's own happiness as well as for other\npeople's. Happiness seems to the German moralists something unheroic,\nan abdication before external things, a victory of the senses over\nthe will. They think the pursuit of happiness low, materialistic,\nand selfish. They wish everybody to sacrifice or rather to forget\nhappiness, and to do \"deeds.\"\n\nIt is in the nature of things that those who are incapable of happiness\nshould have no idea of it. Happiness is not for wild animals, who\ncan only oscillate between apathy and passion. To be happy, even to\nconceive happiness, you must be reasonable or (if Nietzsche prefers\nthe word) you must be tamed. You must have taken the measure of your\npowers, tasted the fruits of your passions and learned your place in\nthe world and what things in it can really serve you. To be happy you\nmust be wise. This happiness is sometimes found instinctively, and\nthen the rudest fanatic can hardly fail to see how lovely it is; but\nsometimes it comes of having learned something by experience (which\nempirical people never [Pg 153] do) and involves some chastening\nand renunciation; but it is not less sweet for having this touch of\nholiness about it, and the spirit of it is healthy and beneficent. The\nnature of happiness, therefore, dawns upon philosophers when their\nwisdom begins to report the lessons of experience: an _a priori_\nphilosophy can have no inkling of it.\n\nHappiness is the union of vitality with art, and in so far as vitality\nis a spiritual thing and not mere restlessness and vehemence, art\nincreases vitality. It obviates friction, waste, and despair. Without\nart, vitality is painful and big with monsters. It is hurried easily\ninto folly and crime; it ignores the external forces and interests\nwhich it touches. German philosophy does this theoretically, by\ndethroning the natural world and calling it an idea created by the ego\nfor its own purposes; and it does this practically also by obeying the\ncategorical imperative--no longer the fabled imperatives of Sinai\nor of K\u00f6nigsberg, but the inward and vital imperative which the bull\nobeys, when trusting absolutely in his own strength, rage, and courage,\nhe follows a little red rag and his destiny this way and that way.\n\n\n\n\n[Pg 154] CHAPTER XV\n\nGERMAN GENIUS\n\nIt is customary to judge religions and philosophies by their truth,\nwhich is seldom their strong point; yet the application of that\nunsympathetic criterion is not unjust, since they aspire to be true,\nmaintain that they are so, and forbid any opposed view, no matter\nhow obvious and inevitable, to be called true in their stead. But\nwhen religions and philosophies are dead, or when we are so removed\nfrom them by time or training that the question of their truth is\nnot a living question for us, they do not on that account lose all\ntheir interest; then, in fact, for the first time they manifest their\nvirtues to the unbeliever. He sees that they are expressions of human\ngenius; that however false to their subject-matter they may be, like\nthe conventions of art they are true to the eye and to the spirit that\nfashioned them. And as nothing in the world, not even the truth, is so\ninteresting as human genius, these incredible or obsolete religions and\nphilosophies become delightful to us. The sting is gone out of their\nerrors, which no longer threaten to delude us, and they have acquired\na beauty invisible to the eye of their authors, because [Pg 155] of\nthe very refraction which the truth suffered in that vital medium.\n\nGerman philosophy is a work of genius. To be heathen is easy; to have\nan absolute will and a belief in chaos--or rather a blind battle\nwith chance--is probably the lot of most animals; but to be\ncondemned to be learned, industrious, moral, and Christian, and yet,\nthrough that veil of unavoidable phenomena and conventions, to pierce\nto absolute will and freedom, and to set them forth persuasively as\nthe true reality, in spite of all the ordered appearances which do not\ncease to confront and to occupy us--that is a work of genius. It\nis a wonderful achievement, to have recovered atavistically the depths\nof the primitive soul, in the midst of its later sophistication. In\nthis philosophy the ancestral ego, the soul perplexed and incredulous\nat being born into this world, returns to haunt us in broad day-light\nand to persuade us with its ghostly eloquence that not that ego but\nthis world is the ghost.\n\nThe egotism which in German philosophy is justified by a theory in\nGerman genius is a form of experience. It turns everything it touches\ninto a part of its own life, personal, spontaneous, sincere, original.\nIt is young and self-sufficient; yet as a continual change of view is\nincompatible with art and learning, we see in Germany, even more than\nelsewhere, [Pg 156] a division of labour between genius and tradition;\nnowhere are the types of the young rebel and the tireless pedant so\ncommon and so extreme.\n\nThe notion that something that moves and lives, as genius does, can\nat the same time be absolute has some interesting implications. Such\na genius and all its works must be unstable. As it has no external\nsources and no external objects, as its own past can exercise no\ncontrol over it (for that would be the most lifeless of tyrannies), it\nis a sort of shooting star, with no guarantees for the future. This,\nfor the complete egotist, has no terrors. A tragic end and a multitude\nof enemies may seem good to the absolute hero and necessary to his\nperfect heroism. In the same way, to be without a subject-matter or an\naudience may seem good to the absolute poet, who sings to himself as he\ngoes, exclusively for the benefit of that glorious and fleeting moment.\nGenius could not be purer than that: although perhaps it might be hard\nto prove that it was genius.\n\nA kindred implication, which perhaps might be less welcome to the\negotist himself, is that an absolute genius is formless, and that the\nabsolute freedom with which it thinks it takes on now this form and\nnow that, is not really freedom at all, but subjection to unknown and\nperhaps ironical forces. Absolute Will, of which a perfectly free\ngenius is an expression, [Pg 157] cannot say specifically what it\ncraves, for essentially it should crave everything indiscriminately. In\npractice, however, it must seem to aim at this or that precise result.\nThese specific aims are suggested to it by circumstances, foisted upon\nit in its replete innocence; for it is all expectation, all vague\nheartiness and zeal for it knows not what. The logic it proclaims at\nany time and calls eternal is but the fashionable rhetoric of that\nhour. Absolute Will is a great dupe on whom fortune forces card after\ncard. Like Faust it is helpless before the most vulgar temptations.\nWhy should it not fulfil itself now by the pursuit of magic, now by\nthe seduction of a young girl, now by an arch\u00e6ological pose, now by\na piratical or an engineering enterprise? True, there are limits to\nits gullibility; there are suggestions from which it recoils. The\nGerman ego, after swallowing Christianity whole, will in Luther stick\nat Indulgences. Faust sometimes turns on Mephistopheles, as the worm\nwill turn: he says that he covets all experience, but in that he does\nhimself a great injustice; there are experiences he scorns. After all\nthis ego is not really absolute; it is specifically and pathetically\nhuman and directed upon a few natural ends. That is what saves it; for\na mind can have no distinction and a soul no honour if its only maxim\nis to live on. It may take up with enthusiasm [Pg 158] whatever it\ntakes up, but it will take up anything; and it may do mightily whatever\nit does, but it will not do it long.\n\nConsider, in this respect, the pathetic history of the German people.\nIt conquered the Roman empire and it became Roman, or wished to become\nso. It had had a mythology and a morality of its own (very like\nin principle to those it has since rediscovered), yet it accepted\nChristianity with the docility of a child. It began to feel, after some\ncenturies, how alien to its genius this religion was, but it could find\nrelief only in a fresh draught from the same foreign sources, or others\nmore remote. To cease to be Roman it tried to become Hebraic and Greek.\nIn studying these models, however, it came upon a new scent. What\npassed for revelation or for classical perfection was of human national\ngrowth, stratified like the rocks, and not divine or authoritative at\nall. If you only made hypotheses enough, you could prove how it all\narose according to necessary laws, logical, psychological, historical,\neconomical, and \u00e6sthetical. Above all, you could prove how nobody had\nunderstood anything properly before, and how the key to it all was in\nyour single hand.\n\nYet the triumphs of theory alone soon seemed unsatisfying. Wine,\nscience, and song once seemed to make Germany happy, but if a prince\nimposed [Pg 159] military discipline, might not that be an even better\nthing? For a time wistfulness, longing, and the feeling of Titanic\nloneliness and of a world to be evoked and snuffed out like a dream,\nseemed to fill the cup of intense living, and the greatest and happiest\nof Germans could cry--\n\n_Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt_ _weiss, was ich leide,_ _allein und\nabgetrennt_ _von aller Freude_.\n\nBut presently true intensity of life appeared to lie rather in being a\nvictorious general, or an ironmaster, or a commercial traveller, or a\nreveller in the Friedrich-strasse, or a spy and conspirator anywhere in\nthe world.\n\nAll these turbid and nondescript ambitions are in a sense artificial;\nthe Germans accept them now as a thousand years ago they accepted\nChristianity, because such things are suddenly thrust upon them. By\nnature they are simple, honest, kindly, easily pleased. There is no\nlatent irony or disbelief in their souls. The pleasures of sense, plain\nand copious, they enjoy hugely, long labour does not exasperate them,\nscience fills them with satisfaction, music entrances them. There ought\nto be no happier or more innocent nation in this world. Unfortunately\ntheir very goodness and simplicity render them helpless; they are what\nthey are dragooned to be. There is no social or intellectual disease\nto which, in spots, [Pg 160] they do not succumb, as to an epidemic:\ntheir philosophy itself is an example of this. They have the defects\nof the newly prosperous; they are far too proud of their possessions,\nesteeming them for being theirs, without knowing whether they are\ngood of their kind. Culture is a thing seldom mentioned by those who\nhave it. The real strength of the Germans lies not in those external\nachievements of which at this moment they make so much--for they\nmay outgrow this new materialism of theirs--it lies rather in what\nthey have always prized, their _Gem\u00fcth_ and their music.\n\nPerhaps these two things have a common root. Emotion is inarticulate,\nyet there is a mighty movement in it, and a great complexity of\ntransitions and shades. This intrinsic movement of the feelings is\nordinarily little noticed because people are too wide awake, or too\nimaginative. Everything is a fact or a picture to them, and their\nemotions seem to them little but obvious qualities of things. They\nroundly call _things_ beautiful, painful, holy, or ridiculous; they do\nnot speak of their _Gem\u00fcth_, although, of course, it is by virtue of\ntheir emotions that they pass such judgments. But when the occasions of\nour emotions, the objects that call them forth, are not so instantly\nfocussed, when we know better what we feel than why we feel it, then\nwe seem to have a richer and more massive sensibility. Our feelings\n[Pg 161] absorb our attention because they remain a thing apart: they\nseem to us wonderfully deep because we do not ground them in things\nexternal.\n\nNow music is a means of giving form to our inner feelings without\nattaching them to events or objects in the world. Music is articulate,\nbut articulate in a language which avoids, or at least veils the\narticulation of the world we live in; it is, therefore, the chosen art\nof a mind to whom the world is still foreign. If this seems in one way\nan incapacity, it is also a privilege. Not to be at home in the world,\nto prize it chiefly for echoes which it may have in the soul, to have a\nsoul that can give forth echoes, or that can generate internal dramas\nof sound out of its own resources--may this not be a more enviable\nendowment than that of a mind all surface, a sensitive plate only able\nto photograph this not too beautiful earth? In any case, for better or\nfor worse, inward sensibility, unabsorbed in worldly affairs, exists\nin some people; a life, as it were, still in the womb and not yet in\ncontact with the air. But let these inspired musicians, masters in\ntheir own infinite realms, beware of the touch of matter. Let them not\ncompose a system of the universe out of their _Gem\u00fcth,_ as they might a\nsymphony. Let them not raise their baton in the face of the stars or of\nthe nations, and think to lead them like an orchestra.\n\n\n\n\n[Pg 162] CHAPTER XVI\n\nEGOTISM IN PRACTICE\n\nTheories in their own ethereal essence can have no influence on events.\nBut the men who conceive and adopt a theory form, in doing so, certain\nhabits of discrimination and of reaction to things. In fact, they have\nconceived and adopted their theory because their habits of apprehension\nand action suggested it to them, or could be brought to suggest it: the\nexplicit theory is a symbol and omen of their practical attitude, of\ntheir way, as the phrase has it, of grasping the situation.\n\nAll philosophies have the common property of being speculative, and,\ntherefore, their immediate influence on those who hold them is in\nmany ways alike, however opposed the theories may be to one another:\nthey all make people theoretical. In this sense any philosophy, if\nwarmly embraced, has a moralising force, because, even if it belittles\nmorality, it absorbs the mind in intellectual contemplation, accustoms\nit to wide and reasoned comparisons, and makes the sorry escapades of\nhuman nature from convention seem even more ignominious than its ruling\nprejudices.\n\nThe particular theory of egotism arises from an [Pg 163] exorbitant\ninterest in ourselves, in the medium of thought and action rather than\nin its objects. It is not necessarily incorrect, because the self\nis actual and indispensable; but the insistence on it is a little\nabnormal, because the self, like consciousness, ought to be diaphanous.\nEgotism in philosophy is, therefore, a pretty sure symptom of excessive\npedantry and inordinate self-assertion.\n\nIn the lofty theory of egotism life is represented as a sort of game of\npatience, in which the rules, the cards, the table, and the empty time\non our hands, all are mere images created by the fancy, as in a dream.\nThe _sense_ of being occupied, though one really has nothing to do,\nwill then be the secret of the whole affair, and the sole good to be\nattained by living. Of course this fantastic theory is put forward only\non great occasions, when an extreme profundity is in place; but like\nother esoteric doctrines it expresses very well the spirit in which\nthose people live habitually who would appeal to it in the last resort.\nObviously such an egotist should in consistency be a man of principle.\nHe would feel it to be derogatory to his dignity, and contrary to his\nsettled purpose, to cheat at the game he has instituted. That luck\nshould sometimes go against him is pre-ordained by himself; otherwise\nthe game would have no zest, and to be interested, to be pressed, [Pg\n164] even to be annoyed seems the highest good to him in his great\ntedium. He will, therefore, be assiduous, patient, and law-abiding; and\nthe idea of ever abandoning his chosen game for anything less forced\nand less arbitrary will seem to him disloyalty to himself, and a great\nwickedness.\n\nIndeed, nothing beside his own purpose will have any value in his\neyes, or even any existence. He will therefore inevitably act without\nconsideration for others, without courtesy, without understanding.\nWhen he chooses to observe anything external--and he is\nstudious--his very attentions will be an insult; for he will\nassume that his idea of that external thing is the reality of it, and\nthat other people can have only such rights and only such a character\nas he is willing to assign to them. It follows from his egotistical\nprinciples that in judging others he should be officious and rude,\nlearned and mistaken.\n\nWhat the egotist calls his will and his ideals are, taken together,\nsimply his passions; but the passions of the egotist are turned into\na system and go unrebuked. A man who lowers his precepts to the level\nof his will may the more easily raise his practice to the level of his\nprecepts. He endows his life with a certain coherence, momentum, and\nintegrity, just because he has suppressed all vain aspiration and all\nuseless shame. He does not call himself a sinner; [Pg 165] he would be\nat a loss for a reason to think himself one; for really his standard of\nvirtue expresses nothing but his prevalent will. Is it not intelligible\nthat such a morality should be more efficacious, more unifying,\nheavier, and more convinced than one which begins by condemning our\nnatural passions and the habitual course of human life?\n\nIn fact, egotism in practice is a solemn and arduous business; there is\nnothing malicious about it and nothing gay. There is rather a stolid\nsurprise that such honest sentiments and so much enterprise should not\nmeet everywhere with applause. If other people are put thereby at a\ndisadvantage, why should they not learn their lesson and adopt in their\nturn the methods of the superman? If they are touched by the vanity\nand the charm of existence and neglect the intense pursuit of their\nabsolute will, why do they complain if they are jostled and beaten?\nOnly he deserves life and freedom, said Goethe, who is forced daily to\nwin them afresh.\n\nIf the egotist suffers passion to speak in his philosophy, it is\nperhaps because he has so little passion. Men of frank passions quickly\nsee the folly of them; but the passions of the egotist are muffled,\ndull, like the miserly passions of old men; they are diffused into\nsensuality and sentiment, or hardened into maxims. Egotistical lovers\ncan hold hands for hours [Pg 166] and chastely kiss each other for\nyears; such tokens of affection help to keep them in love and at the\nsame time are a sop to more troublesome impulses. Sentimentality and\ngush mark the absence of passion: the blood has been diluted to lymph.\nHence the egotist can the more easily mistake his passions for duties,\nand his cupidities for ideals. His devotion to these ideals is pure and\nenthusiastic; but in serving them he fattens steadily, as punctual at\nhis work as at his meals, as dutifully moved by the approved music as\nby the official patriotism, vicious when it seems manly to be vicious,\nbrutal when it seems politic to be brutal; he feels he is impeccable,\nand he must die in his sins. Nothing can ruffle the autonomous\nconscience of this kind of idealist, whose nature may be gross, but\nwhose life is busy and conventional, and who loudly congratulates\nhimself daily on all he knows and does.\n\nTurn the circumstances about as you like, the egotist finds only one\nultimate reason for everything. It is not a reason; it is absolute\nwill. Suppose we asked the ego, in the Fichtean system, why it posited\na material world to be its implacable enemy and rebellious toy, and why\nwithout necessity it raised this infinity of trouble for itself and for\nthe unhappy world which it created by its fiat. It could only reply:\n\"Because such is the categorical imperative [Pg 167] within me; because\nso I will, so I must, and so my absolute duty and its logic require. If\nthe consequences are tragic--and in the end I know they must be\ntragic--that only proves the sublime unselfishness of my egotism,\nthe purity of my sacred folly, the ideality of my groundless will. All\nreasons, all justifications which might appeal to me must be posterior\nto my will; my will itself can have no justification and no reason.\"\n\nLet us admire the sincerity of this searching confession. Virtue\nitself, if it relied on self-consciousness for its philosophy, could\nnot justify itself on other grounds. If the difference between virtue\nand vice is hereby obliterated, that only proves that the difference is\nnot founded on self-consciousness but on the circumstances and powers\nunder which we live. What self-consciousness can disclose is not the\nbasis of anything. All will is the expression of some animal I body,\nfrail and mortal, but teachable and rich in resource. The environment\nin which this will finds itself controls and rewards its various\nmovements, and establishes within it the difference between virtue and\nvice, wisdom and folly.\n\nThe whole transcendental philosophy, if made ultimate, is false, and\nnothing but a private perspective. The will is absolute neither in the\nindividual nor in humanity. Nature is not a product of [Pg 168] the\nmind, but on the contrary there is an external world, ages prior to\nany idea of it, which the mind recognises and feeds upon. There is a\nsteady human nature within us, which our moods and passions may wrong\nbut cannot annul. There is no categorical imperative but only the\noperation of instincts and interests more or less subject to discipline\nand mutual adjustment. Our whole life is a compromise, an incipient\nloose harmony between the passions of the soul and the forces of\nnature, forces which likewise generate and protect the souls of other\ncreatures, endowing them with powers of expression and self-assertion\ncomparable with our own, and with aims no less sweet and worthy in\ntheir own eyes; so that the quick and honest mind cannot but practise\ncourtesy in the universe, exercising its will without vehemence or\nforced assurance, judging with serenity, and in everything discarding\nthe word absolute as the most false and the most odious of words. As\nMontaigne observes, \"He who sets before him, as in a picture, this\nvast image of our mother Nature in her entire majesty; who reads in\nher aspect such universal and continual variety; who discerns himself\ntherein, and not himself only but a whole kingdom, to be but a most\ndelicate dot--he alone esteems things according to the just\nmeasure of their greatness.\"\n\n\n\n[Pg 169]\nINDEX\n\n\nAlexander the Great, a model for German idealists, 80, 81\nAristotle, 120, 124\n\nBelief in God, disproved pragmatically, 134\nBull-psychology, 148, 153\nBurckhardt, 47\nByron, 48, 49\n\nC\u00e6sar Borgia, a superman, 138\nCalvinism, in Kant, 57; in Fichte, 25, 77; in Hegel, 111\nCategorical imperative, its origin, 56; its prerogatives, 62;\n    its dangers, 63\nChancellor, the German, his chivalrous after-thought about Belgium, 50\nChristianity, foreign to Germany, 11;\n    undermined by German philosophy, 104, 105;\n    patronised by Goethe, 46;\n    abandoned by romantic individualists, 107;\n    denounced by Nietzsche, 130-132;\n    has one element in common with egotism, 106\nClassicism, romantic in Goethe, 46;\n    missed by Nietzsche, 139-142;\n    when truly vital, 48\nConquest, a sublime duty, 80, 81\nContraries, alleged to be inseparable, 89, 90\nCriticism, historical, has a transcendental basis, 29\n_Critique of Pure Reason_, its agnosticism, 14;\n    its sophistical foundation, 20\n\nDurer, 27\n\nEgotism, defined, 6;\n    distinguished from selfishness, 95-97, 100-102, 118;\n    based on error, 167;\n    implicit in the Kantian imperative and postulates, 62-64;\n    implies integrity, force, self-complacency, 163-166;\n    is odious in pedants, 142\nEmerson, 24, 49; quoted, 119\nEngland, judged by Fichte, 76\nEvil, justified, 123, 132-134\n\nFaith, German conception of it, 13, 27;\n    corroborated only by itself, 31, 68\nFaust, typical egotist, 13, 14;\n    prefigures the evolution of Germany, 50, 51, 157;\n    improves on Saint John, 52\nFichte, 65-83\n\n_Gem\u00fcth_, why self-conscious, 160\nGerman ethics, its faults, 103\nGerman language, its merits, 75\nGerman nation, its purity, 75;\n    its mission, 78, 79;\n    in what sense the chosen people, 73, 74;\n    necessary to the continued existence of God, 68;\n    and of history, 79; its fortunes, 158-160\nGerman philosophy, not all philosophy in Germany, 11;\n    primitive, 27; subjective, 12;\n    in what senses idealistic, 15;\n    in what sense not so, 16;\n    ambiguous, 17, 18;\n    a revelation, 22;\n    must continually be proved afresh, 26;\n    is a work of genius, 155\nGobineau, 77\nGoethe, 43-53; quoted, 159, 165\nGood and evil above right and wrong, 124\nGospel, amended by Faust, 52;\n    glossed by Hegelians, 105\n\nHappiness, not for the egotist, 14, 15;\n    he despises it, 152;\n    not abstract nor absolute, 110, 111;\n    attainable, 118; its nature, 152, 153\nHeathenism, use of the word, 144;\n    contrast with paganism, 145, 146;\n    its modern form, 147, 148\nHegel, 84-98\nHuman nature, 117, 118\n\nIdealism, meanings of the word, 15, 16;\n    fosters practical materialism, 5, 69-72, 78, 81, 82;\n    should be imposed on the young, 80;\n    its mystical issue, 38-40\nIdeals, when captious, when solid, 137\nInfinity, evaded by Hegel, 88, 89;\n    recognised again by Schopenhauer, 108, 109\n\nKant, 54-64; 25, 34, 35, 42\nKnowledge, assumed to be impossible, 15;\n    abuse of the term, 39, 60\n\nLeibniz, anticipates transcendentalism, 33;\n    his insidious theology, 104\nLessing, on truth, 129\nLocke, sets the ball rolling, 32\nLuther, 135, 157\n\nMax Stirner, 99-103; quoted, 73\nMontaigne, quoted, 168 Music, 16, 161\nMusset, 49\nMysticism, in knowledge, 38-40; in morals, 123\n\nNietzsche, 114-143\n\nOptimism, egotistical, 25, 111, 114, 116, 118, 119\n\nPassion, not naturally egotistical, 101;\n    may become so, 95, 98;\n    dull in egotists, 165, 166\nPaulsen, 42\nPerception, terminates in things not in ideas, 19\nPessimism, inherits disregard of intrinsic values, 109;\n    reacts against optimism, 25, 111;\n    is arbitrary, 116\nPier Gynt, typical egotist, 13, 14\nPlato, his idealism contrasted with the German, 16;\n    his oppressive politics, 81;\n    on inspiration, 141\nPostulates of practical reason, equivocal, 58-64\nPower, divers meanings of the word, 125-127\nPreservation, no law of nature, 115\nProgress, when illusory, 17; when real, 112\nProtestantism, 21-31, 151\n\nReligion in German philosophy, 7, 13, 75, 76, 82, 83\nRome and German genius, 150\n\nSchopenhauer, 108-122\nSelfishness, distinguished from egotism, 95, 97, 100-102, 118\nSociety, its alleged consciousness, 17, 18; a \"spook,\" 99\nSocrates, 146\nSpinoza, religious feeling transferred to nature, 24;\n    his mysticism in ethics, 123\nSpirit, its meanings, 37; its mystic unity, 38\nState, the absolute, an idol, 96-98\nSubstance, egotistical use of the term, 17, 92\nSuperman, 136-143\n\nTender minds, how attracted to German philosophy, 24\nTranscendentalism, 32-42\nTruth, a figment of the will, 28;\n    made in Germany, 88;\n    less valuable than illusion, 14, 128-130;\n    not the strong point of philosophies, 154\n\nUnderstanding, hostility of Hegel to the, 90, 91\n\nWagner, 136, 150\nWar, a boon, 96; how it should be started, 79;\n    is to rage for two hundred years, 115\nWilhelm Meister, 44\nWill, used metaphorically, 36, 114;\n    should be disinterested, 67;\n    may be fulfilled in defeat, 66, 67;\n    is unstable and indeterminate, 156-158;\n    may be denied, 119, 120\nWinkelmann, 140, note","title":"Egotism in German Philosophy","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":36778}