{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_48495/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_48495","id":"gutenberg_48495","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/48495","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Individualism","Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900"],"text":"NIETZSCHE\n\nAND OTHER EXPONENTS OF\n\nINDIVIDUALISM\n\nBY\n\nPAUL CARUS\n\nCHICAGO LONDON\n\nTHE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY\n\n1914\n\n\n[Illustration: Friedrich Nietzsche. Statue by Klein.]\n\n    TABLE OF CONTENTS\n\n    ANTI-SCIENTIFIC TENDENCIES\n    DEUSSEN'S RECOLLECTIONS\n    EXTREME NOMINALISM\n    A PHILOSOPHY OF ORIGINALITY\n    THE OVERMAN\n    ZARATHUSTRA\n    A PROTEST AGAINST HIMSELF\n    NIETZSCHE'S PREDECESSOR\n    EGO-SOVEREIGNTY\n    ANOTHER NIETZSCHE\n    NIETZSCHE'S DISCIPLES\n    THE PRINCIPLE OF VALUATION\n    INDIVIDUALISM\n    CONCLUSION\n    INDEX\n\n\n\nANTI-SCIENTIFIC TENDENCIES.\n\n\nPhilosophies are world-conceptions presenting three main features:\n(1) A systematic comprehension of the knowledge of their age; (2) An\nemotional attitude toward the cosmos; and (3) A principle that will\nserve as a basis for rules of conduct. The first feature determines the\nworth of the several philosophical systems in the history of mankind,\nbeing the gist of that which will last, and giving them strength and\nbackbone. The second one, however, appeals powerfully to the sentiments\nof those who are imbued with the same spirit and thus constitutes its\nimmediate acceptability; while the ethics of a philosophy becomes the\ntest by which its use and practicability can be measured.\n\nThe author's ideal has been to harmonize these three features by making\nthe first the regulator of the second and a safe basis of the third.\nWhat we need is truth; our fundamental emotion must be truthfulness,\nand our ethics must be a living of the truth. Truth is not something\nthat we can fashion according to our pleasure; it is not subjective;\nits very nature is objectivity. But we must render it subjective by a\nlove of truth; we must make it our own, and by doing so our conduct in\nlife will unfailingly adjust itself.\n\nFormer philosophies made the subjective element predominant, and thus\nevery philosopher worked out a philosophy of his own, endeavoring to\nbe individual and original. The aim of our own philosophy has been\nto reduce the subjective to its proper sphere, and to establish, in\nagreement with the scientific spirit of the age, a philosophy of\nobjective validity.\n\nIt is a well known experience that the march of progress does not\nadvance in a straight line but proceeds in epicycles. Man seems to tire\nof the rigor of truth. From time to time he wants fiction. A strict\nadherence to exact methods becomes monotonous to clever minds lacking\nthe power of concentration, and they gladly hail vagaries. Truth, they\nclaim, is relative, knowledge mere opinion, and poetry had better\nreplace science. Then they say: Error, be thou our guide; Error, thou\nart a liberator from the tyranny of truth. Glory be to Error!\n\nSimilar retrograde movements take place from time to time in art.\nClassical taste changes with romantic tendencies. Goethe, Schiller and\nLessing are followed by Schlegel and Tieck, Mozart and Beethoven by\nWagner.\n\nThe last half-century has been an age of unprecedented progress in\nscience and we would expect that with all the wonderful successes and\ntriumphs of scientific invention this age of science ought to find its\nconsummation in the adoption of a philosophy of science. But no! The\nmass of mankind is weary of science, and anti-scientific tendencies\ngrow up like mushrooms, finding spokesmen in philosophers like William\nJames and Henri Bergson who have the ear of large masses, proclaiming\nthe superiority of subjectivism over objectivism, and the advantages of\nanimal instinct over human reason.\n\nThese subjective philosophies if considered as expressions of\nsentiment, as sentimental attitudes toward the world, as poetical\neffusions of a semi-philosophical nature, are perfectly legitimate and\ncan be indulged in as well as the several religions which in allegories\nattune the minds of their followers toward the All of which they are\nparts. There is no need to condemn arts or emotions for they have a\nright to exist just as they are.\n\nWe protest against subjectivism in philosophy only when it denies the\npossibility of an objective philosophy. We do not deny that the masses\nof the world are not, cannot be and never will be scientific thinkers.\nScience is the prerogative of the few, and the large masses of mankind\nwill always be of a pragmatist type. If the pragmatist considered\nhimself as a psychologist pure and simple showing how the majority\nof mankind argues, how people are influenced by their own interest\nand how their thoughts are warped by what they wish the facts to be,\npragmatism would be a commendable branch of the science of the soul.\nPragmatism explains the errors of philosophy and we can learn much from\na consideration of its principles. It becomes objectionable only in so\nfar as it claims to be philosophy in the strict sense of the word.\n\nThe name philosophy is used in two senses, first as we defined it\nabove, as a world-conception based upon critically sifted knowledge;\nand secondly it is used in a vague general sense as wisdom in the\npractical affairs of life. And if pragmatism claims to be a philosophy\nin this second sense it ought not to deny that philosophy as a science\nis possible.\n\nPhilosophy as a science is philosophy _par excellence_. It is the only\nphilosophy of objective validity. All other philosophies are effusions\nof subjective points of view, of attitudes, of sentiment. But we must\ninsist that these two contrasts may exist side by side just as art does\nnot render mathematics supererogatory, and as a physicist who in his\nprofession devotes himself to a study of nature according to methods of\nan objective exactness may in his leisure hours paint a _Stimmungsbild_\nto give an artistic expression to a subjective mood.\n\nThis world is not merely the object of science. There are innumerable\ntendencies which exist and have a right to exist, but they ought not to\nbanish science, scientific enquiry and scientific ideals from the place\nthey hold; for science is the mariners' compass which guides us over\nthe ocean of life, and though the majority of the passengers do not\nand need not worry about it, science is after all the only means which\nmakes for progress and lifts mankind to higher and higher levels.\n\nIf we criticize men like James and Bergson and other philosophers of\nsubjectivism we do it as a defence of the indispensable character of\nthe objectivity of science as well as of philosophy as a science.\n\nJames and Bergson were by no means the originators of their method of\nphilosophizing. There have been many sages before them who deemed the\nspectacles through which they viewed the world to be the most important\nor even the only significant issue of life's problems. The Ionian\nphysicists were outdone by the sophists, and in modern times Friedrich\nNietzsche expressed the most sovereign contempt for science.\n\nAmong all the philosophies of modern times there is perhaps none which\nin its inmost principle is more thoroughly opposed to our own than\nNietzsche's, and yet there are some points of mutual contact which\nare well worth pointing out. The problem which is at the basis of\nNietzsche's thought is the same as in our philosophy, but our solution\nis radically different from his.\n\nFriedrich Nietzsche is a philosopher who astonishes his readers by the\nboldness with which he rebels against every tradition, tearing down\nthe holiest and dearest things, preaching destruction of all rule, and\nlooking with disdain upon the heap of ruins in which his revolutionary\nthoughts would leave the world.\n\nFor more than a century Germany has been the storm-center of\nphilosophical thought. The commotions that started in the Fatherland\nreached other countries, France, England, and the United States, after\nthey had lost their force at home. Kant's transcendentalism and Hegel's\nphenomenalism began to flourish among the English-speaking races after\nhaving become almost extinct in the home of their founders. Prof. R.\nM. Wenley of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich., expresses\nthis truth with his native Scotch wit in the statement which I do\nnot hesitate to endorse, that \"German professors when they die go to\nOxford,\" and we may add that from Oxford they travel west to settle for\na while in Concord, Boston, Washington, or other American cities.\n\nHegelianism had scarcely died out in the United States when\nSchopenhauer and Nietzsche began to become fashionable. The influence\nof the former has been felt in a quiet way for some time while the\nNietzsche movement is of more recent date and also of a more violent\ncharacter.\n\nNietzsche represents a type of most modern date. His was a genius after\nthe heart of Lombroso. He was eccentric and atypical.\n\nLombroso's psychology is an outgrowth of nominalism which does not\nrecognize an objective norm for truth, health, reason, or normality\nof any kind, and regards the average as the sole method of finding a\nnorm. If, however, the average type is the standard of measurement, the\nunusually excellent specimens, being rare in number, must be classed\ntogether with all other deviations from the average, and thus a genius\nis regarded as abnormal as much as a criminal--a theory which has found\nmany admirers in this age that is sicklied over with agnosticism, the\nmodern offshoot of nominalism. The truth is that true genius (not\nthe pseudo-genius of erratic minds, not the would-be genius of those\nwho make a failure of life) is uncommonly normal--I had almost said\n\"abnormally normal.\"\n\nA perfect crystal is rare; so the perfectly normal man is an exception;\nyet for all that he is a better representative of the ideal of his type\nthan the average.\n\nNietzsche was most assuredly very ingenious; he was unusually talented\nbut he was not a genius in the full sense of the word. He was abnormal,\ntitanic in his pretensions and aims, and erratic. Breaking down under\nthe burden of his own thought, he ended his tragical career in an\ninsane asylum.\n\nThe mental derangement of Nietzsche may be an unhappy accident but\nit appears to have come as the natural result of his philosophy.\nNietzsche, by nature modest and tractable, almost submissive, was, as a\nthinker, too proud to submit to anything, even to truth. Schopenhauer\nhad taught him that the intellect, with its comprehension of truth,\nis a mere slave of the will, ancilla voluntatis. Our cognition of the\ntruth has a purpose; it must accommodate itself to our own interest.\nBut the self is sovereign; the self wants to assert itself; the self\nalone has a right to exist; and the self that does not dare to be\nitself is a servile, menial creature. Therefore Nietzsche preaches the\nethics of self-assertion and pride. He is too proud to recognize the\nduty of inquiry, the duty of adapting his mind to the world, or of\nrecognizing the cosmic order of the universe as superior to his self.\nHe feels bigger than the cosmos; he is himself; and he wants to be\nhimself. His own self is sovereign; and if the world is not satisfied\nto submit to his will, the world may go to ruin. If the world breaks to\npieces, it will only cause him to laugh; on the other hand, if his very\nself is forced to the wall in this conflict, he will still, from sheer\npride, not suffer himself to abandon his principle of the absolute\nsovereignty of selfhood. He will not be a man, human and humane, but\nan overman (_Uebermensch_), a superhuman despiser of humanity and\nhumaneness. The multitudes are to him like cattle to be used, to be\nmilked, fleeced and butchered, and Nietzsche calls them herds, animals\nof the flock, _Heerdentiere_.\n\nNietzsche's philosophy is unique in being throughout the expression of\nan emotion--the proud sentiment of a self-sufficient sovereignty of\nself. It rejects with disdain both the methods of the intellect, which\nsubmit the problems of life to an investigation, and the demands of\nmorality, which recognize the existence of duty.\n\nOther philosophers have claimed that rights imply duties and duties,\nrights. Nietzsche knows of rights only. Nietzsche claims that there is\nno objective science save by the permission of the sovereign self, nor\nis there any \"ought,\" except for slaves and fools. He prides himself\non being \"the first Unmoralist,\" implying the absolute sovereignty of\nman--of the overman--and the foolishness as well as falsity of moral\nmaxims.\n\n\n\n\nDEUSSEN'S RECOLLECTIONS\n\n\nProfessor Paul Deussen, Sanskritist and philosopher of Kiel, was\nFriedrich Nietzsche's most intimate friend. They were chums together in\nschool in Schulpforta, and remained friends to the end of Nietzsche's\nlife. Nietzsche had come to Schulpforta in 1858, and Deussen entered\nthe next year in the same class. Once Nietzsche, who as the senior of\nthe class had to keep order among his fellow scholars during working\nperiods and prevent them from making a disturbance, approached Deussen\nwhile he sat in his seat peacefully chewing the sandwich he had brought\nfor his lunch and said, \"Don't talk so loud to your crust!\" using\nhere the boys' slang term for a sandwich. These were the first words\nNietzsche had spoken to Deussen, and Deussen says:[1] \"I see Nietzsche\nstill before me, how with the unsteady glance peculiar to extremely\nnear-sighted people, his eye wandered over the rows of his classmates\nsearching in vain for an excuse to interfere.\"\n\n[Illustration: FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE AS A PUPIL AT SCHULPFORTA IN THE\nYEAR 1861.]\n\nNietzsche and Deussen began to take walks together and soon became\nchums, probably on account of their common love for Anacreon, whose\npoems were interesting to both perhaps on account of the easy Greek in\nwhich they are written.\n\nIn those days the boys of Schulpforta addressed each other by the\nformal _Sie_; but one day when Deussen happened to be in the dormitory,\nhe discovered in the trunk under his bed a little package of snuff;\nNietzsche was present and each took a pinch. With this pinch they swore\neternal brotherhood. They did not drink brotherhood as is the common\nGerman custom, but, as Deussen humorously says, they \"snuffed it\"; and\nfrom that time they called each other by the more intimate _du_. This\nfriendship continued through life with only one interruption, and on\nLaetare Sunday in 1861, they stepped to the altar together and side by\nside received the blessing at their confirmation. On that day both were\novercome by a feeling of holiness and ecstasy. Thus their friendship\nwas sealed in Christ, and though it may seem strange of Nietzsche who\nwas later a most iconoclastic atheist, a supernatural vision filled\ntheir young hearts for many weeks afterwards.\n\nThere was a third boy to join this friendship--a certain Meyer, a\nyoung, handsome and amiable youth distinguished by wit and the ability\nto draw excellent caricatures. But Meyer was in constant conflict with\nhis teachers and generally in rebellion against the rules of the\nschool. He had to leave school before he finished his course. Nietzsche\nand Deussen accompanied him to the gate and returned in great sorrow\nwhen he had disappeared on the highway. What has become of Meyer is\nnot known. Deussen saw him five years later in his home at Oberdreis,\nbut at that time he was broken in health and courage, disgruntled with\nGod, the world and himself. Later he held a subordinate position in the\ncustom house, and soon after that all trace of him was lost. Probably\nhe died young.\n\nThis Meyer was attached to Nietzsche for other reasons than Deussen.\nWhile Deussen appreciated more the intellectuality and congeniality of\nhis friend, Meyer seems to have been more attracted by his erratic and\nwayward tendencies and this for some time endeared him to Nietzsche.\nThus it came to pass that the two broke with Deussen for a time.\n\nThe way of establishing a state of hostility in Schulpforta was to\ndeclare oneself \"mad\" at another, and to some extent this proved to be\na good institution, for since the boys came in touch with each other\ndaily and constantly in the school, those who could not agree would\nhave easily come to blows had it not been for this tabu which made\nit a rule that they were not on speaking terms. This state of things\nlasted for six weeks, and was only broken by an incidental discussion\nin a Latin lesson, when Nietzsche proposed one of his highly improbable\nconjectures for a verse of Virgil. The discussion grew heated, and\nwhen the professor after a long Latin disquisition finally asked\nwhether any one had something to say on the subject, Deussen rose and\nextemporized a Latin hexameter which ran thus:\n\n      \"_Nietzschius erravit, neque coniectura probanda est_\"\n\nOn account of the declared state of \"mad\"-ness, the debate was carried\non through the teacher, addressing him each time with the phrase: \"Tell\nNietzsche,\" \"Tell Deussen,\" \"Tell Meyer,\" etc., but in the heat of\nthe controversy they forgot to speak in the third person, and finally\naddressed their adversaries directly. This broke the spell of being\n\"mad\" and they came to an understanding and a definite reconciliation.\n\nNietzsche never had another friend with whom he became so intimate as\nwith Deussen. Deussen says (page 9): \"At that time we understood each\nother perfectly. In our lonely walks we discussed all possible subjects\nof religion, philosophy, poetry, art and music. Often our thoughts ran\nwild and when words failed us we would look into each other's eyes,\nand one would say to the other: 'We understand each other.' These\nwords became a standing phrase which forthwith we decided to avoid as\ntrivial, and we had to laugh when occasionally it escaped our lips in\nspite of us. The great ordeal of the final examination came. We had to\npass first through our written tests. In German composition, on the\n'advantages and dangers of wealth' Nietzsche passed with No. 1; also in\na Latin exercise _de bello Punico primo_; but in mathematics he failed\nwith the lowest mark, No. 4. This upset him and in fact he who was\nalmost the most gifted of us all was compelled to withdraw.\"\n\nWhile the two were strolling up and down in front of the schoolhouse,\nNietzsche unburdened his grief to his friend, and Deussen tried to\ncomfort him. \"What difference does it make,\" said he, \"if you pass\nbadly, if only you pass at all? You are and will always be more gifted\nthan all the rest of us, and will soon outstrip even me whom you now\nenvy. You must increase but I must decrease.\"\n\nThe course of events was as Deussen had predicted, for Nietzsche\nthough not passing with as much distinction as he may have deserved\nnevertheless received his diploma.\n\nWhen Deussen with his wife visited Nietzsche in August 1907 at\nSils-Maria, Nietzsche showed him a requiem which he had composed for\nhis own funeral, and he added: \"I do not believe that I will last much\nlonger. I have reached the age at which my father died, and I fear\nthat I shall fall a victim to the same disease as he.\" Though Deussen\nprotested vigorously against this sad prediction and tried to cheer him\nup, Nietzsche indeed succumbed to his sad fate within two years.\n\n[Illustration: FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE FROM PHOTOGRAPH IN THE POSSESSION OF\nPROFESSOR DEUSSEN.]\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nProfessor Deussen, though Nietzsche's most intimate friend, is by no\nmeans uncritical in judging his philosophy. It is true he cherishes\nthe personal character and the ideal tendencies of his old chum, but\nhe is not blind to his faults. Deussen says of Nietzsche: \"He was\nnever a systematic philosopher.... The great problems of epistemology,\nof psychology, of \u00e6sthetics and ethics are only tentatively touched\nupon in his writings.... There are many pearls of worth upon which he\nthrows a brilliant side light, as it were in lightning flashes....\nHis overwhelming imagination is always busy. His thoughts were\nalways presented in pleasant imagery and in language of dazzling\nbrilliancy, but he lacked critical judgment and was not controlled by a\nconsideration of reality. Therefore the creation of his pen was never\nin harmony with the actual world, and among the most valuable truths\nwhich he revealed with ingenious profundity there are bizarre and\ndistorted notions stated as general rules although they are merely rare\nexceptions, as is also frequently the case in sensational novels. Thus\nNietzsche produced a caricature of life which means no small danger for\nreceptive and inexperienced minds. His readers can escape this danger\nonly when they do what Nietzsche did not do, when they confront every\nthought of his step by step by the actual nature of things, and retain\nonly what proves to be true under the touchstone of experience.\"\n\nBetween the negation of the will and its affirmation Nietzsche granted\nto Deussen while still living in Basel, that the ennoblement of the\nwill should be man's aim. The affirmation of the will is the pagan\nideal with the exception of Platonism. The negation of the will is the\nChristian ideal, and according to Nietzsche the ennoblement of the will\nis realized in his ideal of the overman. Deussen makes the comment that\nNietzsche's notion of the overman is in truth the ideal of all mankind,\nwhether this highest type of manhood be called Christ or overman; and\nwe grant that such an ideal is traceable everywhere. It is called\n\"Messiah\" among the Jews; \"hero\" among the Greeks, \"Christ\" among\nthe Christians, and chi\u00fcn, the superior man, or to use Nietzsche's\nlanguage, \"the overman,\" among the Chinese; but the characteristics\nwith which Nietzsche endows his overman are unfortunately mere brutal\nstrength and an unscrupulous will to play the tyrant. Here Professor\nDeussen halts. It appears that he knew the peaceful character of his\nfriend too well to take his ideal of the overman seriously.\n\nWe shall discuss Nietzsche's ideal of the overman more fully further\ndown in a discussion of his most original thoughts, the typically\nNietzschean ideas.\n\n\n[1] See Dr. Paul Deussen's _Erinnerungen an Friedrich Nietzsche._\nLeipsic, 1901.\n\n\n\n\nEXTREME NOMINALISM\n\n\nAccording to Nietzsche, the history of philosophy from Plato to his\nown time is a progress of the idea that objective truth (a conception\nof \"the true world\") is not only not attainable, but does not exist\nat all. He expresses this idea in his Twilight of the Idols (English\nedition, pp. 122-123) under the caption, \"How the 'True World' Finally\nBecame a Fable,\" which describes the successive stages as follows:\n\n\n      \"1. The true world attainable by the wise, the pious, and\n      the virtuous man,--he lives in it, he embodies it.\n\n      \"(Oldest form of the idea, relatively rational, simple,\n      and convincing. Transcription of the proposition, 'I,\n      Plato, am the truth,')\n\n      \"2. The true world unattainable at present, but promised\n      to the wise, the pious, and the virtuous man (to the\n      sinner who repents).\n\n      \"(Progress of the idea: it becomes more refined, more\n      insidious, more incomprehensible,--it becomes feminine, it\n      becomes Christian.)\n\n      \"3. The true world unattainable, undemonstrable, and\n      unable to be promised; but even as conceived, a comfort,\n      an obligation, and an imperative.\n\n      \"(The old sun still, but shining only through mist and\n      scepticism; the idea becomes sublime, pale, northerly,\n      Koenigsbergian.)\n\n      \"4. The true world--unattainable? At any rate unattained.\n      And being unattained also unknown. Consequently also\n      neither comforting, saving nor obligatory: what obligation\n      could anything unknown lay upon us?\n\n      \"(Gray morning. First dawning of reason. Cock-crowing of\n      Positivism.)\n\n      \"5. The 'true world'--an idea neither good for anything,\n      nor even obligatory any longer,--an idea become useless\n      and superfluous; consequently a refuted idea; let us do\n      away with it!\n\n      \"(Full day; breakfast; return of _bon sens_ and\n      cheerfulness; Plato blushing for shame; infernal noise of\n      all free intellects,)\n\n      \"6. We have done away with the true world: what world is\n      left? perhaps the seeming?... But no! in doing away with\n      the true, we have also done away with the seeming world!\n\n      \"(Noon; the moment of the shortest shadow; end of the\n      longest error; climax of mankind; _Incipit Zarathustra!_)\"\n\nThe reader will ask, \"What next?\" Probably afternoon and evening, and\nthen night. In the night presumably \"the old sun,\" i. e., the idea of\nPlato's true world, which (according to Nietzsche) grew pale in the\nmorning, will shine again.\n\nNietzsche's main desire was to live the real life and make his home not\nin an imaginary Utopia but in this actual world of ours. He reproached\nthe philosophers as well as the religious leaders and ethical teachers\nfor trying to make mankind believe that the teal world is purely\nphenomenal, for replacing it by the world of thought which they called\n\"the true world\" or the world of truth. To Nietzsche the typical\nphilosopher is Plato. He and all his followers are accused of hypocrisy\nfor making people believe that \"the true world\" of their own fiction is\nreal and that man's ambition should be to attain to this \"true world\"\n(the world of philosophy, of science, of art, of ethical ideals) built\nabove the real world. Nietzsche means to shatter all the idols of the\npast, and he has come to the conclusion that even the scientists were\nguilty of the same fault as the philosophers. They erected a world of\nthought, of subjective conception from the materials of the real world,\nand so he denounces even their attempts at constructing a \"true world\"\nas either a self-mystification or a lie. It is as imaginary as the\nworld of the priest. In order to lead a life worthy of the \"overman,\"\nwe should assert ourselves and feel no longer hampered by rules of\nconduct or canons of logic or by any consideration for truth.\n\nWith all his hatred of religion, Nietzsche was nevertheless an\nintensely religious character, and knowing that he could not clearly\nsee a connection between his so-called \"real world\" and his actual\nsurroundings, he developed all the symptoms of religious fanaticism\nwhich characterizes religious leaders of all ages. He indulged in\na mystic ecstacy, preaching it as the essential feature of his\nphilosophy, and his Dionysiac enthusiasm is not the least of the\nintoxicants which are contained in his thought and bring so many\npoetical and talented but immature minds under his control.\n\nIt is obvious that \"the real world\" of Nietzsche is more unreal than\n\"the true world\" of philosophy and of religion which he denounces as\nfictitious, but he was too naive and philosophically crude to see this.\nNietzsche's \"real world\" is a fabric of his own personal imagination,\nwhile the true world of science is at least a thought-construction\nof the world which pictures facts with objective exactness; it is\ncontrolled by experience and can be utilized in practical life; it is\nsubject to criticism and its propositions are being constantly tested\neither to be refuted or verified. Nietzsche's \"real world\" is the hope\n(and perhaps not even a desirable hope) of a feverish brain whose\naction is influenced by a decadent body.\n\nNietzsche's so-called \"real world\" is one ideal among many others. It\nis as much subjective as the ideals of other mortals,--of men who seek\nhappiness in wealth, or in pleasures, or in fame, or in scholarship,\nor in a religious life--all of them imagine that the world of their\nthoughts is real and the goal which they endeavor to reach is the only\nthing that possesses genuine worth. In Nietzsche's opinion all are\ndreamers catching at shadows, but the shadow of his own fancy appeared\nto him as real.\n\nAccording to Nietzsche the universe is not a cosmos but a chaos. He\nsays (_La Gaya Scienza_, German edition, p. 148):\n\n      \"The astral order in which we live is an exception. This\n      order and the relative stability which is thereby caused,\n      made the exception' of exceptions possible,--the formation\n      of organisms. The character-total of the world is into all\n      eternity chaos, not in the sense of a missing necessity,\n      but of missing order, articulation, form, beauty, wisdom,\n      and as all our \u00e6sthetic humanities may be called.\"\n\nIn agreement with this conception of order, Nietzsche says of man, the\nrational animal:\n\n      \"I fear that animals look upon man as a being of their own\n      kind, which in a most dangerous way has lost the sound\n      animal-sense,--as a lunatic animal, a laughing animal, a\n      crying animal, a miserable animal.\" (_La Gaya Scienza_,\n      German edition, p. 196.)\n\nIf reason is an aberration, the brute must be superior to man and\ninstinct must range higher than logical thought. Man's reason,\naccording to this consistent nominalist view, is purely subjective and\nhas no prototype in the objective world. This is a feature common to\nall nominalistic philosophies. John Stuart Mill regards the theorems\nof logic and mathematics, not only not as truths, but as positive\nuntruths. He says:\n\n      \"The points, lines, circles, and squares, which any one\n      has in his mind, are (I apprehend) simply copies of the\n      points, lines, circles, and squares which he has known in\n      his experience. Our idea of a point, I apprehend to be\n      simply our idea of the _minimum visibile_, the smallest\n      portion of surface which we can see. A line, as defined\n      by geometers, is wholly inconceivable. We can reason\n      about a line as if it had no breadth; because we have a\n      power, which is the foundation of all the control we can\n      exercise over the operations of our minds; the power, when\n      a perception is present to our senses, or a conception\n      to our intellects, of attending to a part only of that\n      perception or conception, instead of the whole. But we\n      cannot conceive a line without breadth; we can form no\n      mental picture of such a line: all the lines which we have\n      in our minds are lines possessing breadth.\"\n\nNietzsche shows his nominalistic tendencies by repeatedly pronouncing\nthe same propositions in almost literally the same words,[1] without,\nhowever, acknowledging the school in which he picked up this error.\n\nIt is quite true that mathematical lines and circles are human\nconceptions, but they are not purely subjective conceptions, still\nless untruths; they are great and important discoveries. They are\nnot arbitrarily devised but constructed according to the laws of the\nuniformities that dominate existence. They represent actual features\nof the factors which shape the objective universe, and thus only is it\npossible that the astronomer through the calculation of mathematical\ncurves can predict the motion of the stars.[2]\n\nReason is the key to the universe, because it is the reflex of cosmic\norder, and the cosmic order, the intrinsic regularity and immanent\nharmony of the uniformities of nature, is not a subjective illusion but\nan objective reality.\n\nWhen Goethe claims that all things transitory are symbols of that\nwhich is intransitory and eternal, Nietzsche answers that the idea of\nanything intransitory is a mere symbol, and God (the idea of anything\neternal) a poet's lie.\n\nLike a mocking-bird, the nominalist philosopher imitates the ring of\nGoethe's well-known lines at the conclusion of the second part of\n\"Faust,\" in which the \"real world\" of transient things is considered as\na mere symbol of the true world of eternal verities:\n\n    \"Das Unvergangliche\n    Ist nur dein Gleichniss.\n    Gott der Verf\u00e4ngliche\n    Ist Dichter-Erschleichniss.\n    Weltspiel, das herrische,\n    Mischt Sein und Schein:--\n    Das Ewig-N\u00e4rrische\n    Mischt uns--hinein.\"\n\n    \"The non-deciduous\n    Is a symbol of _thy_ sense,\n    God ever invidious,\n    A poetical license.\n    World-play domineeringly\n    Mixes semblance and fact,\n    And between them us sneeringly\n    The Ever-Foolish has packed.\"\n\nIn spite of Nietzsche's hunger for the realities of life, that is\nto say for objectivity, he was in fact the most subjective of all\nphilosophers--so much so that he was incapable of formulating any\nthought as an objectively precise statement. He did not believe in\ntruth: \"There is probability, but no truth,\" says he in _Der Wanderer\nund sein Schatten_, p. 190; and he adds concerning the measure of the\nvalue of truth (ibid., Aphorism 4): \"The trouble in ascending mountains\nis no measure of their height, and should it be different in science?\"\n\nIt is true that such words as \"long\" and \"short\" are relative, because\ndependent on subjective needs and valuations. But must we for that\nreason give up all hope of describing facts in objective terms? Are not\nmeters and foot-measures definite magnitudes, whether or not they be\nlong for one purpose and short for another? Relativity itself admits\nof a description in objective terms; but if a statement of facts in\nobjective terms were impossible, the ideals of exact science (as all\nideals) would be a dream.\n\nThat Nietzsche prefers the abrupt style of aphorisms to dispassionate\ninquisitions is a symptom that betrays the nature of his philosophy.\nHis ideas, thus expressed, are easily understood. They are but very\nloosely connected, and we find them frequently contradictory. They are\nnot presented in a logical, orderly way, but sound like reiterated\nchallenges to battle. They are appeals to all wild impulses and a\nclamor for the right of self-assertion.\n\nWhile Nietzsche's philosophy is in itself inconsistent and illogical,\nit is yet born of the logic of facts; it is the consistent result and\nlegitimate conclusion of principles uttered centuries ago and which\nwere slowly matured in the historical development of thought.\n\nThe old nominalistic school is the father of Nietzsche's philosophy.\nA consistent nominalist will be driven from one conclusion to another\nuntil he reaches the stage of Nietzsche, which is philosophical\nanarchism and extreme individualism.\n\nThe nominalist denies the reality of reason; he regards the existence\nof universals as a fiction, and looks upon the world as a heap of\nparticulars. He loses sight of the unity of the world and forgets that\nform is a true feature of things. It is form and the sameness of the\nlaws of form which makes universality of reason possible.\n\nNominalism rose in opposition to the medieval realism of the schoolmen\nwho looked upon universals as real and concrete things, representing\nthem as individual beings that existed _ante res, in rebus_, and\n_post res_, i. e., in the particulars, before them and after them.\nThe realists were wrong in so far as they conceived universals as\nsubstances or distinct essences, as true realities (hence the name\n\"realism\"); only they were supposed to be of a more spiritual nature\nthan material things but, after all, they were concrete existences.\nThey were said to have been created by God as an artisan would make\npatterns or molds for the things which he proposes to produce.\nAccording to Plato, ideas serve the Creator as models of concrete\nobjects of which they are deemed to be the prototypes. The realists\nwere mistaken in regarding the ideal as concrete and real, but the\nnominalists, on the other hand, also went too far in denying the\nobjective significance of universals and declaring that universals were\nmere names (_nomina_ and _flatus vocis_), i. e., words invented for the\nsake of conveniently thinking things and serving no other purpose.\n\nAt the bottom of the controversy lies the problem as to the nature of\nthings. The question arises, What are things in themselves? Do things,\nor do they not, possess an independence of their own? Kant's reply is,\nthat things in themselves can not be known; but our reply is, that\nthe nature of a thing consists in its form; a thing is such as it is\nbecause it has a definite form. Therefore \"things in themselves\" do not\nexist; but there are \"forms in themselves.\"\n\nForm is not a non-entity but the most important feature of reality,\nand the pure laws of form are the determinative factors of the world.\nThe sciences of the laws of pure form, logic, arithmetic, algebra,\ngeometry, etc., are therefore the key to a comprehension of the world,\nand morality is the realization of ideals, i. e., of the conceptions of\npure forms, which are higher, nobler, and better than those which have\nbeen actualized.\n\nFrom our standpoint, evolution is a process in which the eternal laws\nof being manifest themselves in a series of regular transformations,\nreaching a point at which sentiency appears. And then evolution takes\nthe shape of progress, that is to say, sentient beings develop\nmind; sentiments become sensations, i. e., representative images;\nand words denote the universals. Then reason originates as a reflex\nof the eternal laws of pure form. Human reason is deepened in a\nscientific world-conception, and becoming aware of the moral aspect of\nuniversality it broadens out into comprehensive sympathy with all forms\nof existence that like ourselves aspire after a fuller comprehension of\nexistence.\n\nThus the personality of man is the reflex of that system of\neternalities which sways the universe, and humanity is found to be a\nrevelation of the core of the cosmos, an incarnation of Godhood. This\nrevelation, however, is not closed. The appearance of the religions of\ngood-will and mutual sympathy merely marks the beginning of a new era,\nand we may expect that the future of mankind will surpass the present,\nas much as the present surpasses savagery. Such is the higher humanity,\nthe true \"overman,\" representing a higher species of mankind, whom we\nexpect.\n\nNietzsche's philosophy of \"unmorality\" looms on the horizon of human\nthought as a unique conception apparently ushered into this world\nwithout any preparation and without any precedent. It sets itself up\nagainst tradition. Schopenhauer, Nietzsche's immediate predecessor,\nregarded history as the desolate dream of mankind, and Nietzsche\nexhibits a remorseless contempt for everything that comes to us as a\nproduct of history. Nietzsche scorns not only law and order, church\nand state, but also reason, argument, and rule; he scorns consistency\nand logic which are regarded as toys for weaklings or as tools of the\ncrafty.\n\nNietzsche is a nominalist with a vengeance. His philosophy is\nparticularism carried to extremes. There is no unity of existence to\nhim. The God-idea is dead--not only the old metaphysical notion of a\nGod-individual, but also God in the sense of the ultimate ground of\nbeing, the supreme norm of the cosmos. Nietzsche's world is split up\ninto particular selves. He does not ask how they originated; he only\nknows that they are here. Above all, he knows that his own self is\nhere, and there is no bond of sympathy between it and other selves. The\nhigher self is that which assumes dominion over the world. His ideal\nis brutal strength, his overman the tyrant who tramples under foot his\nfellowmen. Democracy is an abomination to him, and he despises the\ngospel of love as it is preached by both Christ and Buddha. This is\nthe key to his anti-moralism and to the doctrine of the autonomy of\nselfhood.\n\nNietzsche's philosophy might be called philosophical nihilism, if\nhe did not object to the word. He calls it positivism, but it is\nparticularism, or rather an aristocratic individualism which in the\ndomain of thought plays the same role that political nihilism plays\nin Russia. It would dethrone the hereditary Czar, the ruler by God's\ngrace, but it would not establish a republic. It would set on the\nthrone a ruthless demagogue, a self-made political boss--the overman.\nIt is the philosophy of protest, and Nietzsche is conscious of being\nSlavic in thought and aspiration. Nor does he forget that his ancestors\nbelonged to the nobility. He claims to have been descended from a\nPolish nobleman by the name of Ni\u00ebtzki, a Protestant who came to\nGermany in the eighteenth century as a religious refugee.\n\nNietzsche's love of Slavism manifested itself in his childhood, for\nwhen the news of the fall of Sebastopol became known, Nietzsche, at\nthat time a mere boy, was so dejected that he could not eat and gave\nexpression to his chagrin in mournful strains of verse.\n\nHe who has faith in truth accepts truth as authority; he who accepts\ntruth as authority recognizes duty; he who recognizes duty beholds\na goal of life. He has found a purpose for which life appears worth\nliving, and reaches out beyond the bounds of his narrow individuality\ninto the limitless cosmos. He transcends himself, he grows in truth, he\nincreases in power, he widens in his sympathies.\n\nHere we touch upon the God problem. In denning God as the ultimate\nauthority of conduct, we are confronted by the dilemma, Is there, or\nis there not a norm of morality, a standard of right and wrong, to\nwhich the self must submit? And this question is another version of\nthe problem as to the existence of truth. Is there truth which we\nmust heed, or is truth a fiction and is the self not bound to respect\nanything? We answer this question as to the existence of truth in the\naffirmative, Nietzsche in the negative.\n\nBut he who rejects truth cuts himself loose from the fountain-head of\nthe waters of life. He may deify selfhood, but his own self will die of\nits self-apotheosis. His divinity is not a true God-incarnation, it is\na mere assumption and the self-exaltation of a pretender.\n\nNietzsche's philosophy is more consistent than it appears on its face.\nBeing the negation of the right of consistency, its lack of consistency\nis its most characteristic feature. If the intellect is truly, as\nSchopenhauer suggests, the servant of the will, then there is no\nauthority in reason, and arguments have no strength. All quarrels are\nsimply questions of power. Then, there is might, but not right; right\nis simply the _bon plaisir_ of might. Then there is no good nor evil;\ngood is that which I will, bad is that which threatens to thwart my\nwill. Good and evil are distinctions invented for the enslavement of\nthe masses, but the free man, the genius, the aristocrat, who craftily\ntramples the masses under foot, knows no difference. He is beyond good\nand evil.\n\nThis, indeed, is the consequence which Nietzsche boldly draws. It is a\nconsistent anarchism; it is unmoralism, a courageous denial of ethical\nrule; and a proud aristocratism, the ruthless shout of triumph of the\nvictor who hails the doctrine of the survival of the strongest and\ncraftiest as a \"joyful science.\"\n\nNietzsche would not refute the arguments of those who differ from\nhim; for refutation of other views does not befit a positive mind that\nposits its own truth. \"What have I to do with refutations!\" exclaims\nNietzsche in the Preface to his Genealogy of Morals. The self is\nlord. There is no law for the lord, and so he denounces the ethics of\nChristianity as slave-morality, and preaches the lord-morality of the\nstrong which is self-assertion.\n\nMorality itself is denounced by Nietzsche as immoral. Morality is the\nresult of evolution, and man's moral ideas are products of conditions\nclimatic, social, economical, national, religious, and what not. Why\nshould we submit to the tyranny of a rule which after all proves to be\na relic of barbarism? Nietzsche rejects morality as incompatible with\nthe sovereignty of selfhood, and, pronouncing our former judgment a\nsuperstition, he proposes \"a transvaluation of all values.\" The self\nmust be established as supreme ruler, and therefore all rules, maxims,\nprinciples, must go, for the very convictions of a man are mere chains\nthat fetter the freedom of his soul.\n\n\n[1] _La Gaya Scienza_, German edition, p. 154; and _passim_ in\n_Menschliches_, etc.\n\n[2] For further details of a refutation of this wrong conception of\ngeometry, see the author's _Foundation of Mathematics_.\n\n\n\n\nA PHILOSOPHY OF ORIGINALITY\n\n\nOne might expect that Nietzsche, who glories in the triumph of the\nstrong over the weak in the struggle for life, red in tooth and claw,\nwould look up to Darwin as his master. But Nietzsche recognizes no,\nmaster, and he emphasizes this by speaking in his poetry of Darwin\nas \"this English joker,\" whose \"mediocre reason\" is accepted for\nphilosophy.[1] To Nietzsche that which exists is the mere incidental\nproduct of blind forces. Instead of working for a development of the\nbetter from the best of the present, which is the method of nature,\nhe shows his contempt for the human and all-too-human; he prophesies\na deluge and hopes that from its floods the overman will emerge whose\nseal of superiority will be the strength of the conqueror that enables\nhim to survive in the struggle for existence.\n\nNietzsche has looked deeply into the apparent chaos of life that\naccording to Darwin is a ruthless struggle for survival. He avoids\nthe mistake of those sentimentalists who believe that goody-goodyness\ncan rule the world, who underrate the worth of courage and over-rate\nhumility, and who would venture to establish peace on earth by\ngrounding arms. He sees the differences that exist between all things,\nthe antagonism that obtains everywhere, and preferring to play the part\nof the hammer, he showers expressions of contempt upon the anvil.\n\nAnd Nietzsche's self-assertion is immediate and direct. He does not\npause to consider what his self is, neither how it originated nor what\nwill become of it. He takes it as it is and opposes it to the authority\nof other powers, the state, the church, and the traditions of the past.\nAn investigation of the nature of the self might have dispelled the\nillusion of his self-glorification, but he never thinks of analysing\nits constitution. Bluntly and without any reflection or deliberation he\nclaims the right of the sovereignty of self. He seems to forget that\nthere are different selves, and that what we need most is a standard by\nwhich we can gauge their respective worth, and not an assertion of the\nrights of the self in general.\n\nWe do not intend to quarrel with Nietzsche's radicalism. Nor do we\nunderrate the significance of the self. We, too, believe that every\nself has the liberty to choose its own position and may claim as many\nrights as it pleases provided it can maintain them. If it cannot\nmaintain them it will be crushed; otherwise it may conquer its rivals\nand suppress counter-claims; but therefore the wise man looks before he\nleaps. Reckless self-assertion is the method of brute creation. Neither\nthe lion nor the lamb meditate on their fate; they simply follow their\ninstincts. They are carnivorous or herbivorous by nature through the\nactions of their ancestors. This is what Buddhists call the law of\ndeeds or _Karma_. Man's karma leads higher. Man can meditate on his\nown fate, and he can discriminate. His self is a personality, i. e.,\na self-controlled commonwealth of motor ideas. Man does not blindly\nfollow his impulses but establishes rules of action. He can thus\nabbreviate the struggle and avoid unnecessary friction; he can rise\nfrom brute violence to a self-contained and well-disciplined strength.\nSelf-control (i. e., ethical guidance) is the characteristic feature\nof the true \"overman\"; but Nietzsche knows nothing of self-control;\nhe would allow the self blindly to assert itself after the fashion of\nanimal instincts.\n\nNietzsche is the philosopher of instinct. He spurns all logical order,\neven truth itself. He has a contempt for every one who learns from\nothers, for he regards such a man as a slave to other people's thought.\nHis ambition for originality is expressed in these four lines which he\ninserted as a motto to the second edition of _La Gaya Scienza_:\n\n    \"Ich wohne in meinem eignen Haus,\n    Hab' niemandem nie nichts nachgemacht\n    Und--lachte noch jeden Meister aus,\n    Der nicht sich selber ausgelacht.\"\n\nWe translate faithfully, preserving even the ungrammatical use of the\ndouble negative, as follows:\n\n    \"In my own house do I reside,\n    Did never no one imitate,\n    And every master I deride,\n    Save if himself he'd derogate.\"\n\nWe wonder that Nietzsche did not think of Goethe's little rhyme, which\nseems to suit his case exactly:\n\n    \"A fellow says: 'I own no school or college;\n    No master lives whom I acknowledge;\n    And pray don't entertain the thought\n    That from the dead I e'er learned aught.'\n    This, if I rightly understand,\n    Means: 'I'm a fool by own command.'\"\n\nNietzsche observes that the thoughts of most philosophers are secretly\nguided by instincts. He feels that all thought is at bottom a \"will for\npower,\" and the will for truth has no right to exist except it serve\nthe will for power. He reproaches philosophers for glorifying truth.\n\nFichte in his _Duties of the Scholar_ says:\n\n      \"My life and my fate are nothing; but the results of my\n      life are of great importance. I am a priest of Truth; I am\n      in the service of Truth; I feel under obligation to do, to\n      risk, and to suffer anything for truth.\"\n\nNietzsche declares that this is shallow. Will for truth, he says,\nshould be called \"will to make being thinkable.\" Here, it seems to us,\nNietzsche simply replaces the word \"truth\" by one of its functions.\nTruth is a systematic representation of reality, a comprehensive\ndescription of facts; the result being that \"existence is made\nthinkable.\"\n\nNietzsche is in a certain sense right when he says that truth in itself\nis nothing; for every representation of reality must serve a purpose,\notherwise it is superfluous and useless. And the purpose of truth is\nthe furtherance of life. Nietzsche instinctively hits the right thing\nin saying that at the bottom of philosophy there is the will for power.\nIn spite of our school-philosopher's vain declamations of \"science\nfor its own sake,\" genuine philosophy will never be anything else\nthan a method for the acquisition of power. But this method is truth.\nNietzsche errs when he declares that \"the head is merely the intestine\nof the heart.\" The head endeavors to find out the truth, and the truth\nis not purely subjective. It is true that truth is of no use to a man\nunless he makes it his own; he must possess it; it must be part of\nhimself, but he cannot create it. Truth cannot be made; it must be\ndiscovered. Since the scholar's specialized business is the elucidation\nof the method of discovering the truth--not its purpose, not its\napplication in practical life--Fichte's ideal of the aim of scholarship\nremains justified.\n\nOmit the ideal of truth in a philosophy, and it becomes an _ignis\nfatuus_, a will-o'-the-wisp, that will lead people astray. Truth makes\nexistence thinkable, but thinkableness alone is not as yet a test of\ntruth. The ultimate test of truth is its practical application. There\nis something wrong with a theory that does not work, and thus the self\nhas a master, which is reality, the world in which it lives, with its\nlaws and actualities. The subjective self must measure its worth by the\nobjective standard of truth--to be obtained through exact inquiry and\nscientific investigation.\n\nThe will for power, in order to succeed, must be clarified by a\nmethodical comprehension of facts and conditions. The contradictory\nimpulses in one's own self must be systematized so that they will not\ncollide and mutually annihilate themselves; and the comprehension of\nthis orderly disposition is called reason.\n\nNietzsche is on the right track when he ridicules such ideals as\n\"virtue for virtue's sake,\" and even \"truth for truth's sake.\" Virtue\nand truth are for the sake of life. They have not their purpose in\nthemselves, but their nature consists in serving the expansion and\nfurther growth of the human soul. This is a truth which we have always\ninsisted upon and which becomes apparent when those people who speak of\nvirtue for its own sake try to define virtue, or determine the ultimate\nstandard of right and wrong, of goodness and badness. We say, that\nwhatever enhances soulgrowth, thus producing higher life and begetting\na superior humanity, is good; while whatever cripples or retards those\naspirations is bad. Further, truth is not holy in itself. It becomes\nholy in the measure that it serves man's holiest aspirations. We\nsometimes meet among scientists, and especially among philologists,\nmen who with the ideal of \"truth for truth's sake,\" pursue some very\ntrivial investigations, such, for example, as the use of the accusative\nafter certain prepositions in Greek, or how often Homer is guilty of a\nhiatus. They resemble Faust's famulus Wagner, whom Faust characterizes\nas a fool\n\n    \".... whose choice is\n    To stick in shallow trash for ever more,\n    Who digs with eager hand for buried ore,\n    And when he finds an angle-worm rejoices.\"\n\nThus there are many trivial truths of no importance, the investigation\nof which serves no useful purpose. For instance, whether the correct\npronunciation of the Greek letter _\u00eata_; was _ee_ or _ay_ need not\nconcern us much, and the philologist who devotes all his life and his\nbest strength to its settlement is rather to be pitied than admired.\nVarious truths are very different in value, for life and truth become\nholy according to their importance. All this granted, we need not, with\nNietzsche, discard truth, reason, virtue, and all moral aspirations.\n\nNietzsche apparently is under the illusion that reason, systematic\nthought, moral discipline and self-control, are external powers, and\nin his love of liberty he objects to their authority. Did he ever\nconsider that thought is not an external agent, but a clarification of\nman's instincts, and that discipline is, or at least in its purpose\nand final aim ought to be, self-regulation, so that our contradictory\nthoughts would not wage an internecine war? Thus, Nietzsche, the\ninstinct-philosopher, appears as an ingenious boy whose very\nimmaturity is regarded by himself as the highest blossom of his\nexistence. Like an intoxicated youth, he revels in his irresponsibility\nand laughs at the man who has learned to take life seriously. Because\nthe love of truth originates from instincts, Nietzsche treats it as a\nmere instinct, and nothing else. He forgets that in the evolution of\nman's soul all instincts develop into something higher than instinct,\nand the love of truth develops into systematic science.\n\nNietzsche never investigated what his own self consisted of. He never\nanalyzed his individuality. Other-wise he would have learned that he\nreceived the most valuable part of his being from others, and that the\nbundle of instincts which he called his sovereign self was nothing but\nthe heirloom of the ages that preceded him. In spite of his repudiation\nof any debt to others, he was but the continuation of others. But he\nboldly carried his individualism, if not to its logical conclusions,\nyet to its moral applications. When speaking of the Order of Assassins\nof the times of the Crusades, he said with enthusiasm: \"The highest\nsecret of their leaders was, 'Nothing is true, everything is allowed!'\"\nAnd Nietzsche adds: \"That indeed, was liberty of spirit; that dismissed\neven the belief in truth.\" The philosopher of instinct even regards\nthe adherence to truth as slavery and the proclamation of truth as\ndogmatism.\n\n\n[1] See Nietzsche's poems in the appendix to _A Genealogy of Morals_,\nEng. ed., Macmillan, p. 248.\n\n\n\n\nTHE OVERMAN\n\n\nHe quintessence of Nietzsche's philosophy is the \"overman.\" What is the\noverman?\n\nThe word (_Uebermensch_) comes from a good mint; it is of Goethe's\ncoinage, and he used it in the sense of an awe-inspiring being, almost\nin the sense of _Unmensch_, to characterize Faust, the titanic man of\nhigh aims and undaunted courage,--the man who would not be moved in the\npresence of hell and pursued his aspirations in spite of the forbidding\ncountenance of God and the ugly grin of Satan. But the same expression\nwas used in its proper sense about two and a half millenniums ago\nin ancient China, where at the time of Lao-tze the term _chi\u00fcn jen_\n[Chin. chars], \"superior man,\" or _chi\u00fcn tse_, \"superior sage,\" was in\ncommon usage. But the overman or _chi\u00fcn jen_ of Lao-tze, of Confucius\nand other Chinese sages is not a man of power, not a Napoleon, not\nan unprincipled tyrant, not a self-seeker of domineering will, not a\nman whose ego and its welfare is his sole and exclusive aim, but a\nChristlike figure, who puts his self behind and thus makes his self--a\nnobler and better self--come to the front, who does not retaliate, but\nreturns good for evil,[1] a man (as the Greek sage describes him) who\nwould rather suffer wrong than commit wrong.[2]\n\nThis kind of higher man is the very opposite of Nietzsche's overman,\nand it is the spirit of this nobler conception of a higher humanity\nwhich furnishes the best ideas of all the religions of the world, of\nLao-tze's Taoism, of Buddhism and of Christianity.\n\nAlexander Tille, the English translator of Nietzsche's _Thus Spake\nZarathustra_, translates the word _Uebermensch_ by \"beyond-man.\" But\n\"beyond\" means _jenseits_; and Nietzsche wrote _\u00fcber_, i. e., superior\nto, over, or higher than, and the literal translation \"overman\" appears\nto be the best. It is certainly better than the barbaric combination of\n\"superman\" in which Latin and Saxon are mixed against one of the main\nrules for the construction of words. Say \"superhuman\" and \"overman,\"\nbut not \"overhuman\" or \"superman.\" Emerson in a similar vein, when\nattempting to characterize that which is higher than the soul, invented\nthe term \"oversoul,\" and I can see no objection to the word \"overman.\"\n\nThe overman is the higher man, the superhuman man of the future, a\nhigher, nobler, more powerful, a better being than the present man!\nWhat a splendid idea! Since evolution has been accepted as a truth, we\nmay fairly trust that we all believe in the overman. All our reformers\nbelieve in the possibility of realizing a higher mankind. We Americans\nespecially have faith in the coming of the kingdom of the overman, and\nour endeavor is concentrated in hastening his arrival. The question is\nonly, What is the overman and how can we make this ideal of a higher\ndevelopment actual?\n\nHappy Nietzsche! You need not trouble yourself about consistency;\nyou reject all ideals as superstitions, and then introduce an ideal\nof your own. \"There you see,\" says an admirer of Nietzsche, \"what a\nsplendid principle it is not to own any allegiance to logic, or rule,\nor consistency. The best thought of Nietzsche's would never have been\nuttered if he had remained faithful to his own principles.\"\n\nHowever ingenious the idea of an overman may be, Nietzsche carries his\npropositions to such extremes that in spite of many flashes of truth\nthey become in the end ridiculous and even absurd. His ideal is good,\nbut he utterly fails to comprehend its nature and also the mode in\nwhich alone the overman can be realized.\n\nNietzsche proclaims the coming of the \"overman,\" but his overman is not\nsuperior by intellect, wisdom, or nobility of character, but by vigor,\nby strength, by an unbending desire for power and an unscrupulous\ndetermination. The blond barbarian of the north who tramples under\nfoot the citizens of Greece and Rome, Napoleon I, and the Assyrian\nconqueror,--such are his heroes in whom this higher manhood formerly\nmanifested itself.\n\nHe saw in the history of human thought, the development of the notion\nof the \"true world,\" which to him was a mere subjective phantom, a\nsuperstition; but a reaction must set in, and he prophesied that the\ndoom of nihilism would sweep over the civilized world applying the\ntorch to its temples, churches and institutions. Upon the ruins of\nthe old world the real man, the overman, would rise and establish his\nown empire, an empire of unlimited power in which the herds, i. e.,\nthe common people, would become subservient. The \"herd animal\" (so\nNietzsche called any one foolish enough to recognize morality and\ntruth) is born to obey. He is destined to be trodden under foot by the\noverman who is strong, and also unscrupulous enough to use the herds\nand govern them.\n\nNietzsche was by no means under the illusion that the rule of the\noverman would be lasting, but he took comfort in the thought that\nthough there would be periods in which the slaves would assert\nthemselves and establish an era of the herd animals, the overman\nwould nevertheless assert himself from time to time, and this was\nwhat he called his \"doctrine of the eternal return\"--the gospel of\nhis philosophy. The highest summit of existence is reached in those\nphases of the denouement of human life when the overman has full\ncontrol over the herds which are driven into the field, sheared\nand butchered for the sole benefit of him who knows the secret that\nthis world has no moral significance beyond being a prey to his good\npleasure. Nietzsche's hope is certainly not desirable for the mass\nof mankind, but even the fate of the overman himself would appear as\nlittle enviable a condition as that of the tyrant Dionysius under the\nsword of Damocles, or the Czar of Russia living in constant fear of the\nanarchistic bomb.\n\nNietzsche, feeling that his thoughts were untimely, lived in the\nhope of \"the coming of the great day\" on which his views would find\nrecognition. He looked upon the present as a rebellion against the\nspirit of strength and vigor; Christianity especially, and its doctrine\nof humility and love for the down-trodden was hateful to him. He speaks\nof it as a rebellion of slaves and places in the same category the\ndemocraticism that now characterizes the tendency of human development\nwhich he denounces as a pseudo-civilization.\n\nHe insists that the overman is beyond good and evil; and yet it\nis obvious that though he claims to be the first philosopher who\nmaintained the principle of unmorality, he was only the first\nphilosopher boldly to proclaim it. His maxim (or lack of maxims) has\nbeen stealthily and secretly in use among all those classes whom he\ncalls \"overmen,\" great and small. The great overmen are conquerors\nand tyrants, who meteorlike appear and disappear, the small ones are\ncommonly characterized as the criminal classes; but there is this\ndifference between the two, that the former, at least so far as they\nhave succeeded, recognize the absolute necessity of establishing law\nand order, and though they may temporarily have infringed upon the\nrules of morality themselves, they have finally come always to the\nconclusion that in order to maintain their position they must enforce\nupon others the usual rules of morality.\n\nBoth Alexander and C\u00e6sar were magnanimous at the right moment. They\nshowed mercy to the vanquished, they exercised justice frequently\nagainst their own personal likes or dislikes, and were by no means men\nof impulse as Nietzsche would have his overman be. The same is true\nof Napoleon whose success is mainly due to making himself subservient\nto the needs of his age. As soon as he assumed the highest power in\nFrance, Napoleon replaced the frivolous tone at his court, to which his\nfirst wife Josephine had been accustomed, by an observance of so-called\n_bourgeois_ decency, and he enforced it against her inclinations and\nhis own.\n\nFurther, Napoleon served the interests of Germany more than is\ncommonly acknowledged by sweeping out of existence the medi\u00e6val\nsystem of innumerable sovereigns, ecclesiastical as well as secular,\nwho in conformity with the conservative tenor of the German people\nhad irremediably ensconced themselves in their hereditary rights\nto the disadvantage of the people. Moreover, the _Code Napoleon_,\nthe new law book, perhaps the most enduring work of Napoleon, was\ncompiled by the jurists of the time, not because Napoleon cared for\njustice, but because he saw that the only way of establishing a stable\ngovernment was by acknowledging rules of equity and by enforcing\ntheir recognition. It is true that Napoleon made his service in the\ncause of right and justice a pedestal for himself, but in contrast to\nNietzsche's ideas we must notice that this recognition of principle\nwas the only way of success to a man whose natural tendency was an\nunbounded egotism, an unlimited desire for power.\n\nIn spite of his enthusiasm in announcing the advent of an overman,\nNietzsche would be a poor adviser for a rising usurper. He would be\nable to cause a great upheaval, to bring about a Volcanic eruption,\nor to raise a thunderstorm wherever restlessness prevails, but his\nphilosophy lacks the principle of using discretion, or advising\nself-discipline, of applying scientific methods--all of which is\nindispensable for success. He preaches boldness, not wisdom; and a hero\nafter Nietzsche's heart would be like a navigator who courageously\nventures into the storm but scorns a chart and leaves the mariners'\ncompass behind; he would steer not as circumstances demand but\naccording to his own sweet will, and would be wrecked before ever\nreaching the harbor of overmanhood.\n\nHow much greater is the ideal of the overman as taught by the ancient\nphilosopher of China! He, the _chi\u00fcn jen_, the superior man, does not\nneed power either political or financial to be great; he does not need\na pedestal of oppressed slaves to stand on; he is great in himself,\nbecause he has a great compassionate heart and a broad comprehensive\nmind. He is simple, and, as we read in the _Tao Teh King_, \"He wears\nwool [is not dressed in silk and purple] and wears his jewel concealed\nin his bosom.\"\n\n\n[1] _Lao-tse's Tao Teh King_, Chaps. 49 and 63.\n\n[2] For a collection of Greek quotations on the ethics of returning\ngood for evil, see _The Open Court_, Vol. XV, 1901, pp. 9-12.\n\n\n\n\nZARATHUSTRA\n\n\nTo those who have not the time to wade through the twelve volumes of\nNietzsche's works and yet wish to become acquainted with him at his\nbest, we recommend a perusal of his book _Thus Spake Zarathustra_.\nIt is original and interesting, full of striking passages, sometimes\nflashes with deep truths, then again is sterile and unprofitable, or\neven tedious, and sometimes absurd; but at any rate it presents the\nembodiment of Nietzsche's grandest thoughts in their most attractive\nand characteristic form. We need scarcely warn the reader that\nZarathustra is only another name for Friedrich Nietzsche and has\nnothing to do with the historical person of that name, the great\nIranian prophet, the founder of Mazdaism.\n\nNietzsche's Zarathustra is a hermit philosopher who, weary of his\nwisdom, leaves his cave and comes to mingle with men, to teach them the\noverman. He meets a saint who loves God, and Zarathustra leaving him\nsays: \"Is it possible? This old saint in his forest has not yet heard\nthat God is dead!\"\n\n[Illustration: FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE IN THE PRIME OF LIFE.]\n\nZarathustra preaches to a crowd in the market:\n\n      \"I teach you the overman. Man is a something that shall be\n      surpassed. What have ye done to surpass him?\n\n      \"All beings hitherto have created something beyond\n      themselves: and are ye going to be the ebb of this great\n      tide and rather revert to the animal than surpass man?\n\n      \"What with man is the ape? A joke or a sore shame. Man\n      shall be the same for the overman, a joke or a sore shame.\n\n      \"Behold, I teach you the overman!\n\n      \"The overman is the significance of the earth. Your will\n      shall say; the overman shall be the significance of the\n      earth.\n\n      \"I conjure you, my brethren, remain faithful to the\n      earth and do not believe those who speak unto you of\n      superterrestrial hopes! Poisoners they are whether they\n      know it or not.\n\n      \"Verily, a muddy stream is man. One must be the ocean to\n      be able to receive a muddy stream without becoming unclean.\n\n      \"Behold, I teach you the overman: he is that ocean, in him\n      your great contempt can sink.\n\n      \"What is the greatest thing ye can experience? That is\n      the hour of great contempt. The hour in which not only\n      your happiness, but your reason and virtue as well, turn\n      loathsome.\n\n      \"I love him who is of a free spirit and of a free heart:\n      thus his head is merely the intestine of his heart, but\n      his heart driveth him to destruction.\n\n      \"I love all those who are like heavy drops falling one by\n      one from the dark cloud lowering over men: they announce\n      the coming of the lightning and perish in the announcing.\n\n      \"Behold, I am an announcer of the lightning and a heavy\n      drop from the clouds; that lightning's name it the\n      overman.\"\n\nZarathustra comes as an enemy of the good and the just. He says:\n\n      \"Lo, the good and just! Whom do they hate most? Him\n      who breaketh to pieces their tables of values,--the\n      law-breaker, the criminal:--but he is the creator.\n\n      \"The destroyer of morality I am called by the good and\n      just: my tale is immoral.\"\n\n[Illustration: COINS OF ANCIENT ELIS. Each is worth two drachm\u00e6. One\nshows on the obverse a Zeus head with a laurel wreath, the other a\nwinged Victory.]\n\nNietzsche's favorite animals are the proud eagle and the cunning\nserpent, the former because it typifies aristocracy, the latter as\nthe wisest among all creatures of the earth. It is a strange and\nexceptional combination, for these two animals are commonly represented\nas enemies. The eagle and serpent was the emblem of ancient Elis and\nis at present the coat-of-arms of Mexico, but in both cases the eagle\nis interpreted to be the conqueror of the serpent, not its friend,\ncarrying it as his prey in his claws.\n\nZarathustra's philosophy is a combination of the eagle's pride and the\nserpent's wisdom, which Nietzsche describes thus:\n\n      \"Lo! an eagle swept through the air in wide circles,\n      a serpent hanging from it not like a prey, but like a\n      friend: coiling round its neck.\n\n      \"They are mine animals,' said Zarathustra and rejoiced\n      heartily.\n\n      \"The proudest animal under the sun, and the wisest animal\n      under the sun have set out to reconnoitre.\n\n      \"They wish to learn whether Zarathustra still liveth.\n      Verily, do I still live.\n\n      \"More dangerous than among animals I found it among men.\n      Dangerous ways are taken by Zarathustra. Let mine animals\n      lead me!\"\n\nHere is a sentence worth quoting:\n\n      \"Of all that is written I love only that which the writer\n      wrote with his blood. Write with blood, and thou wilt\n      learn that blood is spirit.\"\n\nIn another chapter on the back-worlds-men Nietzsche writes:\n\n      \"Once Zarathustra threw his spell beyond man, like all\n      back-worlds-men. Then the world seemed to me the work of a\n      suffering and tortured God.\n\n      \"Alas! brethren, that God whom I created was man's work\n      and man's madness, like all Gods!\n\n      \"Man he was, and but a poor piece of man and the I. From\n      mine own ashes and flame it came unto me, that ghost yea\n      verily! It did not come unto me from beyond!\n\n      \"What happened, brethren? I overcame myself, the sufferer,\n      and carrying mine own ashes unto the mountains invented\n      for myself a brighter flame. And lo! the ghost departed\n      from me!\n\n      \"Now to me, the convalescent, it would be suffering and\n      pain to believe in such ghosts: suffering it would be for\n      me and humiliation. Thus spake I unto the back-worlds-men.\"\n\nNietzsche's self is not ideal but material; it is not thought, not even\nthe will, but the body. The following passage sounds like Vedantism as\ninterpreted by a materialist:\n\n      \"He who is awake and knoweth saith: Body I am throughout,\n      and nothing besides; and soul is merely a word for a\n      something in body.\n\n      \"Body is one great reason, a plurality with one sense, a\n      war and a peace, a flock and a herdsman.\n\n      \"Also thy little reason, my brother, which thou callest\n      'spirit'--it is a tool of thy body, a little tool and toy\n      of thy great reason.\n\n      \"T, thou sayest and art proud of that word. But the\n      greater thing is--which thou wilt not believe--thy body\n      and its great reason. It doth not say T, but it is the\n      acting 'I.'\n\n      \"The self ever listeneth and seeketh: it compareth,\n      subdueth, conquereth, destroyeth. It ruleth and is the\n      ruler of the 'I' as well.\n\n      \"Behind thy thoughts and feelings, my brother, standeth a\n      mighty lord, an unknown wise man--whose name is self. In\n      thy body he dwelleth, thy body he is.\n\n      \"There is more reason in thy body than in thy best wisdom.\n      And who can know why thy body needeth thy beat wisdom?\n\n      \"Thy self laugheth at thine 'I' and its prancings: What\n      are these boundings and flights of thought? it saith\n      unto itself. A round-about way to my purpose. I am the\n      leading-string of the I and the suggester of its concepts.\n\n      \"The creative self created for itself valuing and\n      despising, it created for itself lust and woe. The\n      creative body created for itself the spirit to be the hand\n      of its will.\"\n\nOne of the best passages in Zarathustra's sermons is Nietzsche's\ncommand to love the overman, the man of the distant future:\n\n      \"I tell you, your love of your neighbor is your bad love\n      of yourselves.\n\n      \"Ye flee from yourselves unto your neighbor and would\n      fain make a virtue thereof; but I see through your\n      unselfishness.'\n\n      \"The thou is older than the I; the thou hath been\n      proclaimed holy, but the I not yet; man thus thrusteth\n      himself upon his neighbor.\n\n      \"Do I counsel you to love your neighbor? I rather counsel\n      you to flee from your neighbor and to love the most remote.\n\n      \"Love unto the most remote future man is higher than love\n      unto your neighbor. And I consider love unto things and\n      ghosts to be higher than love unto men.\n\n      \"This ghost which marcheth before thee, my brother, is\n      more beautiful than thou art. Why dost thou not give him\n      thy flesh and thy bones? Thou art afraid and fleest unto\n      thy neighbor.\n\n      \"Unable to endure yourselves and not loving yourselves\n      enough, you seek to wheedle your neighbor into loving you\n      and thus to gild you with his error.\n\n      \"My brethren, I counsel you not to love your neighbor; I\n      counsel you to love those who are the most remote.\"\n\nIn perfect agreement with the ideal of the overman is Nietzsche's view\nof marriage, and verily it contains a very true and noble thought:\n\n      \"Thou shalt build beyond thyself. But first thou must be\n      built thyself square in body and soul.\n\n      \"Thou shalt not only propagate thyself but propagate\n      thyself upwards! Therefore the garden of marriage may help\n      thee!\n\n      \"Thou shalt create a higher body, a prime motor, a wheel\n      of self-rolling,--thou shalt create a creator.\n\n      \"Marriage: thus I call the will of two to create that one\n      which is more than they who created it I call marriage\n      reverence unto each other as unto those who will such a\n      will.\n\n      \"Let this be the significance and the truth of thy\n      marriage. But that which the much-too-many call marriage,\n      those superfluous--alas, what call I that?\n\n      \"Alas! that soul's poverty of two! Alas! that soul's dirt\n      of two! Alas! that miserable ease of two!\n\n      \"Marriage they call that; and they say marriage is made in\n      heaven.\n\n      \"Well, I like it not that heaven of the superfluous!\"\n\nNietzsche takes a Schopenhauerian view of womankind, excepting from the\ncommon condemnation his sister alone, to whom he once said, \"You are\nnot a woman, you are a friend.\" He says of woman:\n\n      \"Too long a slave and a tyrant have been hidden in woman.\n      Therefore woman is not yet capable of friendship; she\n      knoweth love only.\"\n\nNietzsche is not aware that the self changes and that it grows by the\nacquisition of truth. He treats the self as remaining the same, and\ntruth as that which our will has made conceivable. Truth to him is a\nmere creature of the self. Here is Zarathustra's condemnation of man's\nsearch for truth:\n\n      \"'Will unto truth' ye call, ye wisest men, what inspireth\n      you and maketh you ardent?\n\n      \"'Will unto the conceivableness of all that is,'--thus I\n      call your will!\n\n      \"All that is ye are going to make conceivable. For with\n      good mistrust ye doubt whether it is conceivable.\n\n      \"But it hath to submit itself and bend before yourselves!\n      Thus your will willeth. Smooth it shall become and subject\n      unto spirit as its mirror and reflected image.\n\n      \"That is your entire will, ye wisest men, as a will\n      unto power; even when ye speak of good and evil and of\n      valuations.\n\n      \"Ye will create the world before which to kneel down. Thus\n      it is your last hope and drunkenness.\"\n\nRecognition of truth is regarded as submission:\n\n      \"To be true,--few are able to be so! And he who is able\n      doth not want to be so. But least of all the good are able.\n\n      \"Oh, these good people! _Good men never speak the truth_.\n      To be good in that way is a sickness for the mind.\n\n      \"They yield, these good men, they submit themselves;\n      their heart saith what is said unto it, their foundation\n      obeyeth. But whoever obeyeth doth not hear _himself_!\"\n\nNietzsche despises science. He must have had sorry experiences with\nscientists who offered him the dry bones of scholarship as scientific\ntruth.\n\n      \"When I lay sleeping, a sheep ate at the ivy-wreath of my\n      head,--ate and said eating: 'Zarathustra is no longer a\n      scholar.'\n\n      \"Said it and went off clumsily and proudly. So a child\n      told me.\n\n      \"This is the truth: I have departed from the house of\n      scholars, and the door I have shut violently behind me.\n\n      \"Too long sat my soul hungry at their table. Not, as they,\n      am I trained for perceiving as for cracking nuts.\n\n      \"Freedom I love, and a breeze over a fresh soil. And I\n      would rather sleep on ox-skins then on their honors and\n      respectabilities.\n\n      \"I am too hot and am burnt with mine own thoughts, so as\n      often to take my breath away. Then I must go into the open\n      air and away from all dusty rooms.\n\n      \"Like millworks they work, and like corn-crushers. Let\n      folk only throw their grain into them! They know only too\n      well how to grind corn and make white dust out of it.\n\n      \"They look well at each other's fingers and trust each\n      other not over-much. Ingenious in little stratagems, they\n      wait for those whose knowledge walketh on lame feet; like\n      spiders they wait.\n\n      \"They also know how to play with false dice; and I found\n      them playing so eagerly that they perspired from it.\n\n      \"We are strangers unto each other, and their virtues are\n      still more contrary unto my taste than their falsehoods\n      and false dice.\"\n\nEven if all scientists were puny sciolists, the ideal of science would\nremain, and if all the professed seekers for truth were faithless to\nand unworthy of their high calling, truth itself would not be abolished.\n\nSo far as we can see, Nietzsche never became acquainted with any one of\nthe exact sciences. He was a philologist who felt greatly dissatisfied\nwith the loose methods of his colleagues, but he has not done much\nin his own specialty to attain to a greater exactness of results.\nHis essays on Homer, on the Greek tragedy, and similar subjects,\nhave apparently not received much recognition among philologists and\nhistorians.\n\nHaving gathered a number of followers in his cave, one of them, called\nthe conscientious man, said to the others:\n\n      \"We seek different things, even up here, ye and I.\n      For I seek more security. Therefore have I come unto\n      Zarathustra. For he is the firmest tower and will--\n\n      \"Fear--that is man's hereditary and fundamental feeling.\n      By fear everything is explained, original sin and original\n      virtue. Out of fear also hath grown my virtue, which is\n      called Science.\n\n      \"Such long, old fears, at last become refined, spiritual,\n      intellectual, to-day, methinketh, it is called _Science_.\"\n\nThis conception of science is refuted by Nietzsche in this fashion:\n\n      \"Thus spake the conscientious one. But Zarathustra, who\n      had just returned into his cave and had heard the last\n      speech and guessed its sense, threw a handful of roses at\n      the conscientious one, laughing at his 'truths.' 'What?'\n      he called. 'What did I hear just now? Verily, methinketh,\n      thou art a fool, or I am one myself. And thy \"truth\" I\n      turn upside down with one blow, and that quickly.'\n\n      \"'For fear is our exception. But courage and adventure,\n      and the joy of what is uncertain, what hath never been\n      dared--courage, methinketh, is the whole prehistoric\n      development of man.\n\n      \"'From the wildest, most courageous beasts he hath, by his\n      envy and his preying, won all their virtues. Only thus\n      hath he become a man.\n\n      \"'_This_ courage, at last become refined, spiritual,\n      intellectual, this human courage with an eagle's wings and\n      a serpent's wisdom--it, methinketh, is called to-day--'\n\n      \"'_Zarathustra_!' cried all who sat together there, as\n      from one mouth making a great laughter withal.\"\n\n      In spite of identifying the self with the body, which is\n      mortal, Nietzsche longs for the immortal. He says:\n\n      \"Oh! how could I fail to be eager for eternity, and for\n      the marriage-ring of rings, the ring of recurrence?\n\n      \"Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to\n      have had children, unless it be this woman I love--for I\n      love thee, O Eternity!\"\n\n[Illustration: NIETZSCHE'S HANDWRITING.]\n\nThe best known of Nietzsche's poems forms the conclusion of Thus Spake\nZarathustra, the most impressive work of Nietzsche, and is called\nby him \"The Drunken Song.\" The thoughts are almost incoherent and\nit is difficult to say what is really meant by it. Nothing is more\ncharacteristic of Nietzsche's attitude and the vagueness of his fitful\nmode of thought. It has been illustrated by Hans Lindlof, in the same\nspirit in which Richard Strauss has written a musical composition on\nthe theme of Nietzsche's _Thus Spake Zarathustra._\n\n[Illustration: NIETZSCHE'S DRUNKEN SONG--ILLUSTRATION BY LINDLOF.]\n\n\"The Drunken Song\" reads in our translation as follows:\n\n    \"Man, listen, pray!\n    What the deep midnight has to say:\n    'I lay asleep,\n    'But woke from dreams deep and distraught\n    The world is deep,\n    'E'en deeper than the day e'er thought.\n    'Deep's the world's pain,--\n    'Joy deeper still than heartache's burning.\n    'Pain says, Life's vain!\n    'But for eternity Joy's yearning.\n    'For deep eternity Joy's yearning!'\"\n\nProf. William Benjamin Smith has translated this same song, and we\nthink it will be interesting to our readers to compare his translation\nwith our rendering. It reads as follows:\n\n    \"Oh Man! Give ear!\n    What saith the midnight deep and drear?\n    'From sleep, from sleep\n    'I woke as from a dream profound.\n    'The world is deep\n    'And deeper than the day can sound.\n    'Deep is its woe,--\n    'Joy, deeper still than heart's distress.\n    'Woe saith, Forego!\n    'But Joy wills everlastingness,--\n    'Wills deep, deep everlastingness.'\"\n\n\n\n\nA PROTEST AGAINST HIMSELF\n\n\nNietzsche is far from regarding his philosophy as timely. He was\na proud and aristocratic character, spoiled from childhood by an\nunfaltering admiration on the part of both his mother and sister.\nIt was unfortunate for him that his father had died before he could\ninfluence the early years of his son through wholesome discipline.\nNot enjoying a vigorous constitution Nietzsche was greatly impressed\nwith the thought that a general decadence was overshadowing mankind.\nThe truth was that his own bodily system was subject to many ailments\nwhich hampered his mental improvement. He was hungering for health, he\nenvied the man of energy, he longed for strength and vigor, but all\nthis was denied him, and so these very shortcomings of his own bodily\nstrength--his own decadence--prompted in him a yearning for bodily\nhealth, for an unbounded exercise of energy, and for success. These\nwere his dearest ideals, and his desire for power was his highest\nambition. He saw in the history of human thought, the development of\nthe notion of the \"true world,\" which to him was a mere subjective\nphantom, a superstition; but a reaction would set in, and he prophesied\nthat the doom of nihilism would sweep over the civilized world applying\nthe torch to its temples, churches and institutions. Upon the ruins of\nthe old world the real man, the overman, would rise and establish his\nown empire, an empire of unlimited power in which the herds, i. e., the\ncommon people would become subservient.\n\nNietzsche's philosophy forms a strange contrast to his own habits of\nlife. A model of virtue, he made himself the advocate of vice, and\ngloried in it. He encouraged the robber[1] to rob, but he himself was\nhonesty incarnate; he incited the people to rebel against authority of\nall kinds, but he himself was a \"model child\" in the nursery, a \"model\nscholar\" in school, and a \"model soldier\" while serving in the German\narmy. His teachers as well as the officers of his regiment fail to find\nwords enough to _praise Nietzsche's obedience_.[2]\n\nNietzsche's professors declare that he distinguished himself \"_durch\np\u00fcnktlichen Gehorsam_\" (p. 3); his sister tells us that she and her\nbrother were \"_ungeheuer artig, wahre Musterkinder_\" (p. 36). He makes\na good soldier, and, in spite of his denunciations of posing, displays\ntheatrical vanity in having himself photographed with drawn sword (the\nscabbard is missing). His martial mustache almost anticipates the\ntonsorial art of the imperial barber of the present Kaiser; and yet\nhis spectacled eyes and good-natured features betray the peacefulness\nof his intentions. He plays the soldier only, and would have found\ndifficulty in killing even a fly.\n\nNietzsche disclaims ever having learned anything in any school, but\nthere never was a more grateful German pupil in Germany. He composed\nfervid poems on his school--the well known institution Schulpforta,\nwhich on account of its severe discipline he praises, not in irony but\nseriously, as the \"narrow gate.\"[3]\n\n[Illustration: FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE AS A VOLUNTEER IN THE GERMAN\nARTILLERY, 1868.]\n\nNietzsche denounces the German character, German institutions, and\nthe German language, his mother-tongue, and is extremely unfair in\nhis denunciations. He takes pleasure in the fact that _Deutsch_ (see\nUlfila's Bible translation) originally means \"pagans or heathen,\" and\nhopes that the dear German people will earn the honor of being called\npagans. (_La Gaya Scienza_, p. 176.) A reaction against his patriotism\nset in immediately after the war, when he became acquainted with the\nbrutality of some vulgar specimens of the victorious nation,--most of\nthem non-combatants.[4]\n\nNietzsche not only wrote in German and made the most involved\nconstructions, but when the war broke out he asked his adopted country\nSwitzerland, in which he had acquired citizenship after accepting\na position as professor of classical languages at the University\nof Basel, for leave of absence to join the German army. In the\nFranco-Prussian war he might have had a chance to live up to his\ntheories of struggle, but unfortunately the Swiss authorities did\nnot allow him to join the army, and granted leave of absence only on\ncondition that he would serve as a nurse. Such is the irony of fate.\nWhile Nietzsche stood up for a ruthless assertion of strength and for\na suppression of sympathy which he denounced as a relic of the ethics\nof a negation of life, his own tender soul was so over-sensitive that\nhis sister feels justified in tracing his disease back to the terrible\nimpressions he received during the war.\n\nNietzsche speaks of the king as \"the dear father of the country.\"[5]\nIf there was a flaw in Nietzsche's moral character, it was\ngoody-goodyness; and his philosophy is a protest against the principles\nof his own nature. While boldly calling himself \"the first unmoralist,\"\njustifying even license itself and defending the coarsest lust,[6] his\nown life might have earned him the name of sissy, and he shrank in\ndisgust from moral filth wherever he met with it in practical life.\n\nNietzsche denounced pessimism, and yet his philosophy was, as he\nhimself confesses, the last consequence of pessimism. Hegel declared\n(says Nietzsche in _Morgenr\u00f6the_, p. 8), \"Contradiction moves the\nworld, all things are self-contradictory\"; \"we (adds Nietzsche) carry\npessimism even into logic.\" He proposes to vivisect morality; \"but\n(adds he) you cannot vivisect a thing without killing it.\" Thus his\n\"unmoralism\" is simply an expression of his earnestness to investigate\nthe moral problem, and he expresses the result in the terse sentence;\n_Moral ist Nothl\u00fcge_ (_Menschliches_, p. 63.)\n\nHe preached struggle and hatred, and yet was so tender-hearted that\nin an hour of dejection he confessed to his sister with a sigh: \"I\nwas not at all made to hate or be an enemy.\"[7] The decadence which\nhe imputes to mankind is a mere reflection of his own state of mind,\nand the strength which he praises is that quality in which he is most\nsorely lacking. Nietzsche himself had the least possible connection\nwith active life. He was unmarried, had no children, nor any interests\nbeyond his ambition, and having served as professor of the classical\nlanguages for some time at the small university of Basel, he was for\nthe greater part of his life without a calling, without duties, without\naims. He never ventured to put his own theories into practice. He did\nnot even try to rise as a prophet of his own philosophy, and remained\nin isolation to the very end of his life.\n\nNietzsche must have felt the contradiction between his theories and\nhis habits of life, and it appears that he suffered under it more than\ncan be estimated by an impartial reader of his books. He was like the\nbird in the cage who sings of liberty, or an apoplectic patient who\ndreams of deeds of valor as a knight in tournament or as a wrestler in\nthe prize ring. Never was craving for power more closely united with\nimpotence!\n\nIt is characteristic of him that he said, \"If there were a God, how\nshould I endure not to be God?\" and so his ambition impelled him at\nleast to prophesy the coming of his ideal, i. e., robust health, full\nof bodily vigor and animal spirits, unchecked by any rule of morality,\nand an unstinted use of power.\n\nNietzsche had an exaggerated conception of his vocation and he saw\nin himself the mouthpiece of that grandest and deepest truth, viz.,\nthat man should dare to be himself without any regard of morality\nor consideration for his fellow beings. And here we have the tragic\nelement of his life. Nietzsche, the atheist, deemed himself a God\nincarnate, and the despiser of the Crucified, suffered a martyr's fate\nin offering his own life to the cause of his hope. The earnestness\nwith which he preached his wild and untenable doctrines appeals to\nus and renders his figure sympathetic, which otherwise would be\ngrotesque. Think of a man who in his megalomania preaches a doctrine\nthat justifies an irresponsible desire for power! Would he not be\nridiculous in his impotence to actualize his dream? and on the other\nhand, if he were strong enough to practice what he preached, if like\nanother Napoleon, he would make true his dreams of enslaving the world,\nwould not mankind in self-defense soon rise in rebellion and treat\nhim as a criminal, rendering him and his followers incapable of doing\nharm? But Nietzsche's personality, weak and impotent and powerless to\nappear as the overman and to subjugate the world to his will, suffered\nexcruciating pains in his soul and tormented himself to death, which\ncame to him in the form of decadence--a softening of the brain.\n\nPoor Nietzsche! what a bundle of contradictions! None of these\ncontradictions are inexplicable. All of them are quite natural. They\nare the inevitable reactions against a prior enthusiasm, and he swings,\naccording to the law of the pendulum, to the opposite extreme of his\nformer position.\n\nHow did Nietzsche develop into an unmoralist? Simply by way of\nreaction against the influence of Schopenhauer in combination with the\ntraditional Christianity.\n\nNietzsche passed through three periods in his development. He was\nfirst a follower of Schopenhauer and an admirer of Wagner, but he\nshattered his idols and became a convert to Auguste Comte's positivism.\nSchopenhauer was the master at whose feet Nietzsche sat; from him\nhe learned boldness of thought and atheism, that this world is a\nworld of misery and struggle. He accepted for a time Schopenhauer's\npessimism but rebelled in his inmost soul against the ethical doctrine\nof the negation of the will. He retained Schopenhauer's contempt for\nprevious philosophers (presumably he never tried to understand them)\nyet he resented the thought of a negation of life and replaced it by\na most emphatic assertion. He thus recognized the reactionary spirit\nof Schopenhauer, whose system is a Christian metaphysics. Nietzsche\ndenounces the ethics of a negation of the will as a disease, and since\nnature in the old system is regarded as the source of moral evil the\nidea dawns on him that he himself, trying to establish a philosophy of\nnature, is an immoralist. He now questions morality itself from the\nstandpoint of an affirmation of the will, and at last goes so far as to\nspeak of ideals as a symptom of shallowness.[8]\n\n[Illustration: FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE AS PROFESSOR AT BASLE.]\n\nNietzsche argued that our conception of truth and our ideal world\nis but a phantasmagoria, and the picture of the universe in our\nconsciousness a distorted image of real life. Our pleasures and pains,\ntoo, are both transient and subjective. Accordingly it would be a gross\nmistake for us to exaggerate their importance. What does it matter if\nwe endure a little more or less pain, or of what use are the pleasures\nin which we might indulge? The realities of life consist in power, and\nin our dominion over the forces that dominate life. Knowledge and truth\nare of no use unless they become subservient to this realistic desire\nfor power. They are mere means to an end which is the superiority of\nthe overman, the representative of Nietzsche's philosophy by whom\nthe mass of mankind are to be enslaved. This view constitutes his\nthird period, in which he wrote those works that are peculiarly\ncharacteristic of his own philosophy.\n\nNietzsche must not be taken too seriously. He was engaged with the\ndeepest problems of life, and published his opinions as to their\nsolution before he had actually attempted to investigate them. He\ncriticised and attacked like the Irishman who hits a head wherever he\nsees it. Here are the first three rules of his philosophical warfare:\n\n\"First: I attack only those causes which are victorious, sometimes I\nwait till they are victorious. Secondly: I attack them only when I\nwould find no allies, when I stand isolated, when I compromise myself\nalone. Thirdly: I have never taken a step in public which did not\ncompromise me. That is my criterion of right action.\"\n\nA man who adopts this strange criterion of right conduct must produce\na strange philosophy. His soul is in an uproar against itself. Says\nNietzsche in his _G\u00f6tzend\u00e4mmerung_, Aphorism 45:\n\n      \"Almost every genius knows as one phase of his development\n      the 'Catilinary existence,' so-called, which is a feeling\n      of hatred, of vengeance, of revolution against everything\n      that is, which no longer needs to become ... Catiline--the\n      form of C\u00e6sar's pre-existence.\"\n\nNietzsche changed his views during his life-time, and the unmoralist\nNietzsche originated in contradiction to his habitual moralism. He was\na man of extremes. As soon as a new thought dawned on him, it took\npossession of his soul to the exclusion of his prior views, and his\nlater self contradicts his former self.\n\nNietzsche says:\n\n\"The serpent that cannot slough must die. In the same way, the spirits\nwhich are prevented from changing their opinions cease to be spirits.\"\n\nSo we must expect that if Nietzsche had been permitted to continue\nlonger in health, he would have cast off the slough of his immoralism\nand the negative conceptions of his positivism. His _Zarathustra_ was\nthe last work of his pen, but it is only the most classical expression\nof the fermentation of his soul, not the final purified result of his\nphilosophy; it is not the solution of the problem that stirred his\nheart.\n\nWhile writing his _Unzeitgem\u00e4sse Betrachtungen_, Nietzsche\ncharacterizes his method of work thus:\n\n      \"That I proceed with my outpourings considerably like a\n      dilettante and in an immature manner, I know very well,\n      but I am anxious first of all to get rid of the whole\n      polemico-negative material. I wish undisturbedly to sing\n      off, up and down and truly dastardly, the whole gamut\n      of my hostile feelings, 'that the vaults shall echo\n      back.'[9] Later on, i. e., within five years, I shall\n      discard all polemics and bethink myself of a really 'good\n      work,' But at present my breast is oppressed with disgust\n      and tribulation. I must expectorate, decorously and\n      indecorously, but radically and for good\" [_endg\u00fcltig_].\n\nThe writings of Nietzsche will make the impression of a youthful\nimmaturity upon any half-way serious reader. There is a hankering\nafter originality which of necessity leads to aberrations and a\nsovereign contempt for the merits of the past. The world seems\nendangered, and yet any one who would seriously try to live up to\nNietzsche's ideal must naturally sober down after a while, and we may\napply to him what Mephistopheles says of the baccalaureus:\n\n    \"Yet even from him we're not in special peril\n    He will, ere long, to other thoughts incline.\n    The must may foam absurdly in the barrel.\n    Nathless, it turns at last to wine.\"\n                     _Tr. by Bayard Taylor._\n\nNietzsche did not live long enough to experience a period of matured\nthought. He died before the fermentation of his mind had come to its\nnormal close, and so his life will remain forever a great torso,\nwithout intrinsic worth, but suggestive and appealing only to the\nimmature, including the \"herd animal\" who would like to be an overman.\n\nThe very immaturity of Nietzsche's view becomes attractive to\nimmature minds. He wrote while his thoughts were still in a state of\nfermentation, and he died before the wine of his soul was clarified.\n\nNietzsche is an almost tragic figure that will live in art as a\nbrooding thinker, a representative of the dissatisfied, a man of an\ninsatiable love of life, with wild and unsteady looks, proud in his\nindomitable self-assertion, but broken in body and spirit. Such he was\nin his last disease when his mind was wrapt in the eternal night of\ndementia, the oppressive consciousness of which made him exclaim in\nlucid moments the pitiable complaint. \"_Mutter, ich bin dumm_\" As such\nhe is represented in Klein's statue,[10] which in its pathetic posture\nis a psychological masterpiece.\n\n[Illustration: FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE--THE LATEST PORTRAIT, AFTER AN OIL\nPAINTING BY C. STOEVING.]\n\nNietzsche's works are poetic effusions more than philosophical\nexpositions and yet we would hesitate to call him a poet. His poems are\nnot poetical in the usual sense. They lack poetry and yet they appeal\nnot only to his admirers, but also to his critics and enemies. Most\nof them are artificial yet they are so characteristic that they are\ninteresting specimens of a peculiar kind of taste. They strike us as\ningenious, because they reflect his eccentricities.\n\nIn a poem entitled \"Ecce Homo\"[11] he characterizes himself:\n\n    \"Yea, I know from whence I came!\n    Never satiate, like the flame\n    Glow I and consume me too\n    Into light turns what I find,\n    Cinders do I leave behind,\n    Flame am I, 'tis surely true.\"\n\n\n\n[1] E.g.:\n\n    \"Bitte nie! Lass dies Gewimmer!\n    Nimm, ich bitte dich, nimm immer!\"\n\n\n[2] Compare _Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsche's_ by his sister, Elisabeth\nF\u00f6rster-Nietzsche.\n\n[3] Leben, pp. 90-97.\n\n[4] (See, e. g., Leben, II., 1, pp. 108-111.) \"Nach dem Kriege missfiel\nmir der Luxus, die Franzosenverachtung,\" etc., p. 108. \"Ich halte\ndas jetzige Preussen f\u00fcr eine der Cultur h\u00f6chst gef\u00e4hrliche Macht.\"\nNietzsche ridicules the German language as barbarous in sound (_La\nGaya Scienza_, pp. 138-140), \"w\u00e4lderhaft, heiser, wie aus r\u00e4ucherigen\nStuben und unh\u00f6flichen Gegenden.\" Unique is the origin of the standard\nstyle of modern high German from the bureaucratic slang, \"kanzleim\u00e4ssig\nschreiben, das war etwas Vornehmes\" (_La Gaya Scienza_, p. 138), and\nat present the German changes into an \"Offizierdeutsch\" (ibid., p.\n139). Nietzsche suspects, \"the German depth,\" \"die deutsche Tiefe,\" to\nbe a mere mental dyspepsia (see \"Jenseits von Gut und B\u00f6se,\" p. 211),\nsaying, \"Der Deutsche verdaut seine Ereignisse schlecht, or wird nie\ndamit fertig; die deutsche Tiefe ist oft nur eine schwere, z\u00f6gernde\nVerdauung.\" Nevertheless, he holds that the old-fashioned German depth\nis better than modern Prussian \"Schneidigkeit und Berliner Witz und\nSand.\" He prefers the company of the Swiss to that of his countrymen.\n(See also \"Was den Deutschen abgeht,\" Vol. 8, p. 108.)\n\n[5] \"Unser lieber K\u00f6nig,\" \"der Landesvater,\" etc. See _Leben_, I., p.\n24, and IL, 1, p. 248, \"Unser lieber alter Kaiser Wilhelm,\" and \"wir\nPreussen waren wirklich stolz.\" These expressions occur in Nietzsche's\ndescription of the Emperor's appearance at Bayreuth.\n\n[6] _E.g._, \"Auch der sch\u00e4dlichste Mensch ist vielleicht immer noch\nder allern\u00fctzlichste in Hinsicht auf Erhaltung der Art,\" etc. _La Gaya\nScienza_, p. 3 ff.\n\n[7] \"Ich bin so gar nicht zum Hassen und zum Feind sein gemacht!\"\n\n[8] See, e. g., _Leben_, I., p. 135, where he speaks of a new\n\"Freigeisterei,\" denouncing the \"libres penseurs\" as \"unverbesserliche\nFlachk\u00f6pfe und Hansw\u00fcrste,\" adding, \"Sie glauben allesammt noch an's\n'Ideal.'\"\n\n[9] \"Dass das Gew\u00f6lbe wiederhallt,\"--a quotation from Goethe's \"Faust.\"\n\n[10] Reproduced as the frontispiece of this book.\n\n[11]\n\n\"Ja, ich weiss woher ich stamme!\nUnges\u00e4ttigt gleich der Flamme,\nGl\u00fche und verzehr ich mich,\nlicht wird alles was ich fasse,\nKohle alles was ich lasse:\nFlamme bin ich sicherlich!\"\n\n\n\n\n\nNIETZSCHE'S PREDECESSOR\n\n\nFriedrich Nietzsche, the author of _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ and the\ninventor of the new ideal called the \"overman,\" is commonly regarded\nas the most extreme egotist, to whom morality is non-existent and who\nglories in the coming of the day in which a man of his liking--the\noverman--would live au grand jour. His philosophy is an individualism\ncarried to its utmost extreme, sanctioning egotism, denouncing altruism\nand establishing the right of the strong to trample the weak under\nfoot. It is little known, however, that he followed another thinker,\nJohann Caspar Schmidt, whose extreme individualism he adopted. But this\nforerunner who preached a philosophy of the sovereignty of self and an\nutter disregard of our neighbors' rights remained unheeded; he lived in\nobscurity, he died in poverty, and under the pseudonym \"Max Stirner\" he\nleft behind a book entitled _Der Einzige und sein Eigentum_.\n\nThe historian Lange briefly mentioned him in his _History of\nMaterialism_, and the novelist John Henry Mackay followed up the\nreference which led to the discovery of this lonely comet on the\nphilosophical sky.[1]\n\nThe strangest thing about this remarkable book consists in the many\ncoincidences with Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy. It is commonly\ndeemed impossible that the famous spokesman of the overman should not\nhave been thoroughly familiar with this failure in the philosophical\nbook market; but while Stirner was forgotten the same ideas\ntransplanted into the volumes of the author of _Thus Spake Zarathustra_\nfound an echo first in Germany and soon afterwards all over the world.\n\nStirner's book has been Englished by Stephen T. Byington with an\nintroduction by J. L. Walker at the instigation of Benjamin R. Tucker,\nthe representative of American peaceful anarchism, under the title\n_The Ego and His Own_. They have been helped by Mr. George Schumm and\nhis wife, Mrs. Emma Heller Sch\u00fcmm. These five persons, all interested\nin this lonely and unique thinker, must have had much trouble in\ntranslating the German original and though the final rendering of the\ntitle is not inappropriate, the translator and his advisers agree\nthat it falls short of the mark. For the accepted form Mr. B. R.\nTucker is responsible, and he admits in the preface that it is not\nan exact equivalent of the German. _Der Einzige_ means \"the unique\nman,\" a person of a definite individuality, but in the book itself our\nauthor modifies and enriches the meaning of the term. The unique man\nbecomes the ego and an owner (_ein Eigener_), a man who is possessed of\nproperty, especially of his own being. He is a master of his own and\nhe prides himself on his ownhood, as well as his ownership. As such he\nis unique, and the very term indicates that the thinker who proposes\nthis view-point is an extreme individualist. In Stirner's opinion\nChristianity pursued the ideal of liberty from the world; and in this\nsense Christians speak of spiritual liberty. To become free from\nanything that oppresses us we must get rid of it, and so the Christian\nto rid himself of the world becomes a prey to the idea of a contempt\nof the world. Stirner declares that the future has a better lot in\nstore for man. Man shall not merely be free, which is a purely negative\nquality, but he shall be his own master; he shall become an owner of\nhis own personality and whatever else he may have to control. His\nend and aim is he himself. There is no moral duty above him. Stirner\nexplains in the very first sentence of his book:\n\n      \"What is not supposed to be my concern! First and\n      foremost, the good cause, then God's cause, the cause of\n      mankind, of truth, of freedom, of humanity, of justice;\n      further, the cause of my people, my prince, my fatherland;\n      finally, even the cause of mind, and a thousand other\n      causes. Only my cause is never to be my concern. 'Shame on\n      the egoist who thinks only of himself!\"\n\nStirner undertakes to refute this satirical explanation in his book\non the unique man and his own, and a French critic according to\nPaul Lauterbach (p. 5) speaks of his book as _un livre qu'on quitte\nmonarque_, \"a book which one lays aside a king.\"\n\nStirner is opposed to all traditional views. He is against church and\nstate. He stands for the self-development of every individual, and\ninsists that the highest duty of every one is to stand up for his\nownhood.\n\nJ. L. Walker in his Introduction contrasts Stirner with Nietzsche and\ngives the prize of superiority to the former, declaring him to be a\ngenuine anarchist not less than Josiah Warren, the leader of the small\nband of New England anarchists. He says:\n\n      \"In Stirner we have the philosophical foundation for\n      political liberty. His interest in the practical\n      development of egoism to the dissolution of the state\n      and the union of free men is clear and pronounced, and\n      harmonizes perfectly with the economic philosophy of\n      Josiah Warren. Allowing for difference of temperament\n      and language, there is a substantial agreement between\n      Stirner and Proudhon. Each would be free, and sees in\n      every increase of the number of free people and their\n      intelligence an auxiliary force against the oppressor.\n      But, on the other hand, will any one for a moment\n      seriously contend that Nietzsche and Proudhon march\n      together in general aim and tendency--that they have\n      anything in common except the daring to profane the shrine\n      and sepulcher of superstition?\n\n      \"Nietzsche has been much spoken of as a disciple of\n      Stirner, and, owing to favorable cullings from Nietzsche's\n      writings, it has occurred that one of his books has been\n      supposed to contain more sense than it really does--so\n      long as one had read only the extracts.\n\n      \"Nietzsche cites scores or hundreds of authors. Had he\n      read everything, and not read Stirner?\n\n      \"But Nietzsche is as unlike Stirner as a tight-rope\n      performance is unlike an algebraic equation.\n\n      \"Stirner loved liberty for himself, and loved to see any\n      and all men and women taking liberty, and he had no lust\n      of power. Democracy to him was sham liberty, egoism the\n      genuine liberty.\n\n      \"Nietzsche, on the contrary, pours out his contempt\n      upon democracy because it is not aristocratic. He is\n      predatory to the point of demanding that those who must\n      succumb to feline rapacity shall be taught to submit with\n      resignation. When he speaks of 'anarchistic dogs' scouring\n      the streets of great civilized cities, it is true, the\n      context shows that he means the communists; but his\n      worship of Napoleon, his bathos of anxiety for the rise\n      of an aristocracy that shall rule Europe for thousands\n      of years, his idea of treating women in the Oriental\n      fashion, show that Nietzsche has struck out in a very\n      old path--doing the apotheosis of tyranny. We individual\n      egoistic anarchists, however, may say to die Nietzsche\n      school, so as not to be misunderstood: We do not ask of\n      the Napoleons to have pity, nor of the predatory barons\n      to do justice. They will find it convenient for their own\n      welfare to make terms with men who have learned of Stirner\n      what a man can be who worships nothing, bears allegiance\n      to nothing. To Nietzsche's rhodomontade of eagles in\n      baronial form, born to prey on industrial lambs, we rather\n      tauntingly oppose the ironical question: Where are your\n      claws? What if the 'eagles' are found to be plain barnyard\n      fowls on which more silly fowls have fastened steel spurs\n      to hack the victims, who, however, have the power to\n      disarm the sham 'eagles' between two suns?\n\n      \"Stirner shows that men make their tyrants as they make\n      their gods, and his purpose is to unmake tyrants.\n\n      \"Nietzsche dearly loves a tyrant.\n\n      \"In style Stirner's work offers the greatest possible\n      contrast to the puerile, padded phraseology of Nietzsche's\n      _Zarathustra_ and its false imagery. Who ever imagined\n      such an unnatural conjuncture as an eagle 'toting' a\n      serpent in friendship? which performance is told of in\n      bare words, but nothing comes of it. In Stirner we are\n      treated to an enlivening and earnest discussion addressed\n      to serious minds, and every reader feels that the word\n      is to him, for his instruction and benefit, so far as he\n      has mental independence and courage to take it and use it\n      The startling intrepidity of this book is infused with\n      a whole-hearted love for all mankind, as evidenced by\n      the fact that the author shows not one iota of prejudice\n      or any idea of division of men into ranks. He would lay\n      aside government, but would establish any regulation\n      deemed convenient, and for this only _our_ convenience\n      is consulted. Thus there will be general liberty only\n      when the disposition toward tyranny is met by intelligent\n      opposition that will no longer submit to such a rule.\n      Beyond this the manly sympathy and philosophical bent of\n      Stirner are such that rulership appears by contrast a\n      vanity, an infatuation of perverted pride. We know not\n      whether we more admire our author or more love him.\n\n      \"Stirner's attitude toward woman is not special. She is\n      an individual if she can be, not handicapped by anything\n      he says, feels, thinks, or plans. This was more fully\n      exemplified in his life than even in this book; but there\n      is not a line in the book to put or keep woman in an\n      inferior position to man, neither is there anything of\n      caste or aristocracy in the book.\"\n\nIt is not our intention to enter here into a detailed criticism of\nStirner's book. We will only point out that society will practically\nremain the same whether we consider social arrangements as voluntary\ncontracts or as organically developed social institutions, or as\nimposed upon mankind by the divine world-order, or even if czars and\nkings claim to govern \"by the grace of God.\" Whatever religious or\nnatural sanction any government may claim to possess, the method of\nkeeping order will be the same everywhere. Wrongs have been done and in\nthe future may still be committed in the name of right, and injustice\nmay again and again worst justice in the name of the law. On the other\nhand, however, we can notice a progress throughout the world of a slow\nbut steady improvement of conditions. Any globe-trotter will find by\nexperience that his personal safety, his rights and privileges are\npractically the same in all civilized countries, whether they are\nrepublics like Switzerland, France and the United States, or monarchies\nlike Sweden, Germany and Italy. At the same time murders, robberies,\nthefts and other crimes are committed all over the world, even in\nthe homes of those who pride themselves on being the most civilized\nnations. The world-conception lying behind our different social\ntheories is the same wherever the same kind of civilization prevails.\nWhere social evils prevail, dissatisfaction sets in which produces\ntheories and reform programs, and when they remain unheeded, a climax\nis reached which leads to revolution.\n\nStirner's book begins with a short exhortation headed with Goethe's\nline,\n\n    \"My trust in nothingness is placed.\"\n\nHe discusses the character of human life (Chap. I) and contrasts men\nof the old and the new eras (Chap. II). He finds that the ancients\nidealized bodily existence while Christianity incarnates the ideal.\nGreek artists transfigure actual life; in Christianity the divine takes\nabode in the world of flesh, God becomes incarnate in man. The Greeks\ntried to go beyond the world and Christianity came; Christian thinkers\nare pressed to go beyond God, and there they find spirit. They are\nled to a contempt of the world and will finally end in a contempt of\nspirit. But Stirner believes that the ideal and the real can never be\nreconciled, and we must free ourselves from the errors of the past. The\ntruly free man is not the one who has become free, but the one who has\ncome into his own, and this is the sovereign ego.\n\nAs Achilles had his Homer so Stirner found his prophet in a German\nsocialist of Scotch Highlander descent, John Henry Mackay. The reading\npublic should know that Mackay belongs to the same type of restless\nreformers, and he soon became an egoistic anarchist, a disciple of\nStirner. His admiration is but a natural consequence of conditions.\nNevertheless Mackay's glorification of Stirner proves that in Stirner\nthis onesided world-conception has found its classical, its most\nconsistent and its philosophically most systematic presentation.\nWhatever we may have to criticize in anarchism, Stirner is a man of\nuncommon distinction, the leader of a party, and the standard-bearer\nof a cause distinguished by the extremeness of its propositions which\nfrom the principle of individualism are carried to their consistent\nends.\n\nMackay undertook the difficult task of unearthing the history of a man\nwho, naturally modest and retired, had nowhere left deep impressions.\nNo stone remained unturned and every clue that could reveal anything\nabout his hero's life was followed up with unprecedented devotion. He\npublished the results of his labors in a book entitled \"Max Stirner,\nHis Life and His Work.\"[2] The report is extremely touching not so\nmuch on account of the great significance of Stirner's work which to\nimpartial readers appears exaggerated, but through the personal tragedy\nof a man who towers high above his surroundings and suffers the misery\nof poverty and failure.\n\nMr. Mackay describes Stirner as of medium height, rather less so than\nmore, well proportioned, slender, always dressed with care though\nwithout pretension, having the appearance of a teacher, and wearing\nsilver-or steel-rimmed spectacles. His hair and beard were blonde\nwith a tinge of red, his eyes blue and clear, but neither dreamy nor\npenetrating. His thin lips usually wore a sarcastic smile, which,\nhowever, had nothing of bitterness; his general appearance was\nsympathetic. No portrait of Stirner is in existence except one pencil\nsketch which was made from memory in 1892 by the London socialist,\nFriedrich Engels, but the criticism is made by those who knew Stirner\nthat his features, especially his chin and the top of his head, were\nnot so angular though nose and mouth are said to have been well\nportrayed, and Mackay claims that Stirner never wore a coat and collar\nof that type.\n\n[Illustration: PENCIL SKETCH OF MAX STIRNER. The only portrait in\nexistence.]\n\nStirner was of purely Frankish blood. His ancestors lived for centuries\nin or near Baireuth. His father, Albert Christian Heinrich Schmidt of\nAnspach, a maker of wind-instruments, died of consumption in 1807 at\nthe age of 37, half a year after the birth of his son. His mother,\nSophie Eleanora, n\u00e9e Reinlein of the city of Erlangen, six months later\nmarried H. F. L. Ballerstedt, the assistant in an apothecary shop in\nHelmstedt, and moved with him to Kulm on the Vistula. In 1818 the boy\nwas sent back to his native city where his childless god-father and\nuncle, Johann Caspar Martin Sticht, and his wife took care of him.\n\nYoung Johann Caspar passed through school with credit, and his\nschoolmates used to call him \"Stirner\" on account of his high forehead\n(_Stirn_) which was the most conspicuous feature of his face. This name\nclung to him throughout life. In fact his most intimate friends never\ncalled him by any other, his real name being almost forgotten through\ndisuse and figuring only in official documents.\n\nStirner attended the universities of Erlangen, Berlin and K\u00f6nigsberg,\nand finally passed his examination for admission as a teacher in\ngymnasial schools. His stepfather died in the summer of 1837 in Kulm at\nthe age of 76. It is not known what became of his mother who had been\nmentally unsound for some time.\n\nNeither father nor stepfather had ever been successful, and if Stirner\never received any inheritance it must have been very small. On December\n12 of 1837 Stirner married Agnes Clara Kunigunde Burtz, the daughter of\nhis landlady.\n\nTheir married life was brief, the young wife dying in a premature\nchild-birth on August 29th. We have no indication of an ardent love\non either side. He who wrote with passionate fire and with so much\ninsistence in his philosophy, was calm and peaceful, subdued and quiet\nto a fault in real life.\n\nHaving been refused appointment in one of the public or royal schools\nStirner accepted a position in a girls' school October 1, 1839.\nDuring the political fermentation which preceded the revolutionary\nyear of 1848, he moved in the circle of those bold spirits who called\nthemselves _Die Freien_ and met at Hippel's, among whom were Ludwig\nBuhl, Meyen, Friedrich Engels, Mussak, C. F. K\u00f6ppen, the author of a\nwork on Buddha, Dr. Arthur M\u00fcller and the brothers Bruno, Egbert and\nEdgar Bauer. It was probably among their associates that Stirner met\nMarie D\u00e4hnhardt of Gadebusch near Schwerin, Mecklenberg, the daughter\nof an apothecary, Helmuth Ludwig D\u00e4hnhardt. She was as different from\nStirner as a dashing emancipated woman can be from a gentle meek man,\nbut these contrasts were joined together in wedlock on October 21,\n1843. Their happiness did not last long, for Marie D\u00e4hnhardt left her\nhusband at the end of three years.\n\nThe marriage ceremony of this strange couple has been described in the\nnewspapers and it is almost the only fact of Stirner's life that stands\nout boldly as a well-known incident. That these descriptions contain\nexaggerations and distortions is not improbable, but it cannot be\ndenied that much contained in the reports must be true.\n\nOn the morning of October 21, a clergyman of extremely liberal\nviews, Rev. Marot, a member of the Consistory, was called to meet\nthe witnesses of the ceremony at Stirner's room. Bruno Bauer, Buhl,\nprobably also Julius Faucher, Assessor Kochius and a young English\nwoman, a friend of the bride, were present. The bride was in her\nweek-day dress. Mr. Marot asked for a Bible, but none could be found.\nAccording to one version the clergyman was obliged to request Herr Buhl\nto put on his coat and to have the cards removed. When the rings were\nto be exchanged the groom discovered that he had forgotten to procure\nthem, and according to Wilhelm Jordan's recollection Bauer pulled out\nhis knitted purse and took off the brass rings, offering them as a\nsubstitute during the ceremony. After the wedding a dinner with cold\npunch was served to which Mr. Marot was invited. But he refused, while\nthe guests remained and the wedding carousal proceeded in its jolly\ncourse.\n\nIn order to understand how this incident was possible we must know that\nin those pre-revolutionary years the times were out of joint and these\nheroes of the rebellion wished to show their disrespect and absolute\nindifference to a ceremony that to them had lost all its sanctity.\n\nStirner's married life was very uneventful, except that he wrote the\nmain book of his life and dedicated it to his wife after a year's\nmarriage, with the words,\n\n    \"Meinem Liebchen\n    Marie D\u00e4hnhardt.\"\n\nObviously this form which ignores the fact that they were married,\nand uses a word of endearment which in this connection is rather\ntrivial, must be regarded as characteristic of their relation and their\nlife principles. Certain it is that she understood only the negative\nfeatures of her husband's ideals and had no appreciation of the genius\nthat stirred within him. Lauterbach, the editor of the Reclam edition\nof Stirner's book, comments ironically on this dedication with the\nSpanish motto _Da Dios almendras al que no tiene muelas_, \"God gives\nalmonds to those who have no teeth.\"\n\nMarie D\u00e4hnhardt was a graceful blonde woman rather under-sized, with\nheavy hair which surrounded her head in ringlets according to the\nfashion of the time. She was very striking and became a favorite of\nthe round table of the _Freien_ who met at Hippel's. She smoked cigars\nfreely and sometimes donned male attire, in order to accompany her\nhusband and his friends on their nightly excursions. It appears that\nStirner played the most passive part in these adventures, but true\nto his principle of individuality we have no knowledge that he ever\ncriticized his wife.\n\nMarie D\u00e4hnhardt had lost her father early and was in possession of a\nsmall fortune of 10,000 thalers, possibly more. At any rate it was\nconsidered quite a sum in the circle of Stirner's friends, but it did\nnot last long. Having written his book, Stirner gave up his position\nso as to prevent probable discharge and now they looked around for new\nresources. Though Stirner had studied political economy he was a most\nunpractical man; but seeing there was a dearth of milk-shops, he and\nhis wife started into business. They made contracts with dairies but\ndid not advertise their shop, and when the milk was delivered to them\nthey had large quantities of milk on hand but no patrons, the result\nbeing a lamentable failure with debts.\n\nIn the circle of his friends Stirner's business experience offered\ninexhaustible material for jokes, while at home it led rapidly to the\ndissolution of his marriage. Frau Schmidt complained in later years\nthat her husband had wasted her property, while no complaints are known\nfrom him. One thing is sure that they separated. She went to England\nwhere she established herself as a teacher under the protection of Lady\nBunsen, the wife of the Prussian ambassador.\n\nFrau Schmidt's later career is quite checkered. She was a well-known\ncharacter in the colony of German exiles in London. One of her friends\nthere was a Lieutenant Techow. When she was again in great distress she\nemigrated with other Germans, probably in 1852 or 1853, to Melbourne,\nAustralia. Here she tasted the misery of life to the dregs. She made a\nliving as a washerwoman and is reported to have married a day laborer.\nTheir bitter experiences made her resort to religion for consolation,\nand in 1870 or 1871 she became a convert to the Catholic Church. At her\nsister's death she became her heir and so restored her good fortune to\nsome extent. She returned to London where Mr. Mackay to his great joy\ndiscovered that she was still alive at the advanced age of eighty.\nWhat a valuable resource her reminiscences would be for his inquiries!\nBut she refused to give any information and finally wrote him a letter\nwhich literally reads as follows: \"Mary Smith _solemnly avowes_ that\nshe will have _no more_ correspondence on the subject, and authorizes\nMr. -------[3] to return all those writings to their owners. She is ill\nand prepares for death.\"\n\nThe last period of Stirner's life, from the time when his wife left him\nto his death, is as obscure as his childhood days. He moved from place\nto place, and since his income was very irregular creditors pressed him\nhard. His lot was tolerable because of the simple habits of his life,\nhis only luxury consisting in smoking a good cigar. In 1853 we find\nhim at least twice in debtor's prison, first 21 days, from March 5 to\n26,1853, and then 36 days, from New Year's eve until February 4 of the\nnext year. In the meantime (September 7) he moved to Philippstrasse 19.\nIt was Stirner's last home. He stayed with the landlady of this place,\na kind-hearted woman who treated all her boarders like a mother, until\nJune 25, 1856, when he died rather suddenly as the result of the bite\nof a poisonous fly. A few of his friends, among them Bruno Bauer and\nLudwig Buhl, attended his funeral; a second-class grave was procured\nfor one thaler 10 groats, amounting approximately to one American\ndollar.\n\nDuring this period Stirner undertook several literary labors from which\nhe possibly procured some remuneration. He translated the classical\nauthors on political economy from the French and from the English,\nwhich appeared under the title _Die National-Oekonomen der Franzosen\nund Engl\u00e4nder_ (Leipsic, Otto Wigand, 1845-1847).\n\nHe also wrote a history of the Reaction which he explained to be a mere\ncounter-revolution. This _Geschichte der Reaction_ was planned as a\nmuch more comprehensive work, but the two volumes which appeared were\nonly two parts of the second volume as originally intended.\n\nThe work is full of quotations, partly from Auguste Comte, partly from\nEdmund Burke. None of these works represent anything typically original\nor of real significance in the history of human thought.\n\nHis real contribution to the world's literature remains his work\n_Der Einzige und sein Eigentum_, the title of which is rendered in\nEnglish _The Ego and His Own_, and this, strange to say, enthrones\nthe individual man, the ego, every personality, as a sovereign power\nthat should not be subject to morality, rules, obligations, or duties\nof any kind. The appeal is made so directly that it will convince all\nthose unscientific and half-educated minds who after having surrendered\ntheir traditional faith find themselves without any authority in\neither religion or politics. God is to them a fable and the state an\nabstraction. Ideas and ideals, such as truth, goodness, beauty, are\nmere phrases. What then remains but the concrete bodily personality\nof every man of which every one is the ultimate standard of right and\nwrong?\n\n\n[1] See also R. Schellwien, _Max Stirner und Friedrich Nietzsche_; V.\nBasch, _L'individualisme anarchiste, Max Stirner_, 1904.\n\n[2] _Max Stirner, sein Leben und sein Werk_. Berlin, 1898.\n\n[3] The name of the gentleman she mentions is replaced by a dash at his\nexpress wish in the facsimile of her letter reproduced in Mr. Mackay's\nbook (p. 255).\n\n\n\n\nEGO-SOVEREIGNTY\n\n\nStrange that neither of these philosophers of individuality,\nNietzsche or Stirner, ever took the trouble to investigate what an\nindividual is! Stirner halts before this most momentous question\nof his world-conception, and so he overlooks that his ego, his own\nindividuality, this supreme sovereign standing beyond right and wrong,\nthe ultimate authority of everything, is a hazy, fluctuating, uncertain\nthing which differs from day to day and Anally disappears.\n\nThe individuality of any man is the product of communal life. No one\nof us could exist as a rational personality were he not a member\nof a social group from which he has imbibed his ideas as well as\nhis language. Every word is a product of his intercourse with his\nfellow-beings. His entire existence consists in his relations toward\nothers and finds expression in his attitude toward social institutions.\nWe may criticize existent institutions but we can never do without any.\nA denial of either their existence or their significance proves an\nutter lack of insight into the nature of personality.\n\nWe insert here a few characteristic sentences of Stirner's views, and\nin order to be fair we follow the condensation of John Henry Mackay\n(pp. 135-192) than whom certainly we could find no more sympathetic or\nintelligent student of this individualistic philosophy.\n\nHere are Stirner's arguments:\n\nThe ancients arrived at the conclusion that man was spirit. They\ncreated a world of spirit, and in this world of spirit Christianity\nbegins. But what is spirit? Spirit has originated from nothing. It\nis its own creation and man makes it the center of the world. The\ninjunction was given, Thou shalt not live to thyself but to thy spirit,\nto thy ideas. Spirit is the God, the ego and the spirit are in constant\nconflict. Spirit dwells beyond the earth. It is in vain to force the\ndivine into service here for I am neither God nor man, neither the\nhighest being nor my being. The spirit is like a ghost whom no one has\nseen, but of whom there are innumerable creditable witnesses, such as\ngrandmother can give account of. The whole world that surrounds thee\nis filled with spooks of thy imagination. The holiness of truth which\nhallows thee is a strange element. It is not thine own and strangeness\nis a characteristic of holiness. The specter is truly only in thine\nownhood..... Right is a spleen conferred by a spook; might, that is\nmyself. I am the mighty one and the owner of might.... Right is the\nroyal will of society. Every right which exists is created right. I am\nexpected to honor it where I find it and subject myself to it. But what\nto me is the right of society, the right of all? What do I care for\nequality of right, for the struggle for right, for inalienable rights?\nRight becomes word in law. The dominant will is the preserver of the\nstates. My own will shall upset them. Every state is a despotism.\nAll right and all power is claimed to belong to the community of the\npeople. I, however, shall not allow myself to be bound by it, for I\nrecognize no duty even though the state may call crime in me what\nit considers right for itself. My relation to the state is not the\nrelation of one ego to another ego. It is the relation of the sinner\nto the saint, but the saint is a mere fixed idea from which crimes\noriginate (Mackay, pages 154-5).\n\nIt will sometimes be difficult to translate Stirner's declarations in\ntheir true meaning; for instance: \"I am the owner of mankind, I am\nmankind and shall do nothing for the benefit of another mankind. The\nproperty of mankind is mine. I do not respect the property of mankind.\nPoverty originates when I can not utilize my own self as I want to. It\nis the state which hinders men from entering into a direct relation\nwith others. On the mercy of right my private property depends. Only\nwithin prescribed limits am I allowed to compete. Only the medium of\nexchange, the money which the state makes, am I allowed to use. The\nforms of the state may change, the purpose of the state always remains\nthe same. My property, however, is what I empower myself to. Let\nviolence decide, I expect all from my own.\n\n\"You shall not lure me with love, nor catch me with the promise of\ncommunion of possessions, but the question of property will be solved\nonly through a war of all against all, and what a slave will do as\nsoon as he has broken his fetters we shall have to see. I know no law\nof love. As every one of my sentiments is my property, so also is\nlove. I give it, I donate it, I squander it merely because it makes me\nhappy. Earn it if you believe you have a right to it. The measure of\nmy sentiments can not be prescribed to me, nor the aim of my feelings\ndetermined. We and the world have only one relation toward each other,\nthat of usefulness. Yea, I use the world and men.\" (Pp. 156-157.)\n\nAs to promises made and confidence solicited Stirner would not allow\na limitation of freedom. He says: \"In itself an oath is no more\nsacred than a lie is contemptible.\" Stirner opposes the idea of\ncommunism. \"The community of man creates laws for society. Communism\nis a communion in equality.\" Says Stirner, \"I prefer to depend on the\negotism of men rather than on their compassion.\" He feels himself\nswelled into a temporary, transient, puny deity. No man expresses him\nrightly, no concept defines him; he, the ego, is perfect. Stirner\nconcludes his book: \"Owner I am of my own power and I am such only when\nI know myself as the only one. In the only one even the owner returns\ninto his creative nothingness from which he was born. Any higher being\nabove, be it God or man, detracts from the feeling of my uniqueness and\nit pales before the sun of this consciousness. If I place my trust in\nmyself, the only one, it will stand upon a transient mortal creator of\nhimself, who feeds upon himself, and I can say,\n\n    \"_Ich hab mein Sach' auf nichts gestellt._\"\n    \"My trust in nothingness is placed.'\"\n\nWe call attention to Stirner's book, \"The Only One and His Ownhood,\"\nnot because we are strongly impressed by the profundity of his thought\nbut because we believe that here is a man who ought to be answered,\nwhose world-conception deserves a careful analysis which finally would\nlead to a justification of society, the state and the ideals of right\nand truth.\n\nSociety is not, as Stirner imagines, an artificial product of men who\nband themselves together in order to produce a state for the benefit of\na clique. Society and state, as well as their foundation the family,\nare of a natural growth. All the several social institutions (kind of\nspiritual organisms) are as much organisms as are plants and animals.\nThe co-operation of the state with religious, legal, civic and other\ninstitutions, are as much realities as are individuals, and any one who\nwould undertake to struggle against them or treat them as nonentities\nwill be implicated in innumerable struggles.\n\nStirner is the philosopher of individualism. To him the individual,\nthis complicated and fluctuant being, is a reality, indeed the only\ntrue reality, while other combinations, institutions and social\nunits are deemed to be mere nonentities. If from this standpoint the\nindividualism of Stirner were revised, the student would come to\nradically different conclusions, and these conclusions would show that\nnot without good reasons has the individual developed as a by-product\nof society, and all the possessions, intellectual as well as material,\nwhich exist are held by individuals only through the assistance and\nwith the permission of the whole society or its dominant factors.\n\nBoth socialism and its opposite, individualism, which is ultimately\nthe same as anarchism, are extremes that are based upon an erroneous\ninterpretation of communal life. Socialists make society, and\nanarchists the individual their ultimate principle of human existence.\nNeither socialism nor anarchism are principles; both are factors, and\nboth factors are needed for preserving the health of society as well\nas comprehending the nature of mankind. By neglecting either of these\nfactors, we can only be led astray and arrive at wrong conclusions.\n\nPoor Stirner wanted to exalt the ego, the sovereign individual, not\nonly to the exclusion of a transcendent God and of the state or any\nother power, divine or social, but even to the exclusion of his\nown ideals, be it truth or anything spiritual; and yet he himself\nsacrificed his life for a propaganda of the ego as a unique and\nsovereign being. He died in misery and the recognition of his labors\nhas slowly, very slowly, followed after his death. Yea, even after his\ndeath a rival individualist, Friedrich Nietzsche, stole his thunder and\nreaped the fame which Stirner had earned. Certainly this noble-minded,\nmodest, altruistic egotist was paid in his own coin.\n\nDid Stirner live up to his principle of ego sovereignty? In one sense\nhe did; he recognized the right of every one to be himself, even when\nothers infringed upon his own well-being. His wife fell out with him\nbut he respected her sovereignty and justified her irregularities.\nApparently he said to himself, \"She has as much right to her own\npersonality as I have to mine.\" But in another sense, so far as he\nhimself was concerned, he did not. What became of his own rights, his\nownhood, and the sweeping claim that the world was his property, that\nhe was entitled to use or misuse the world and all mankind as he saw\nfit; that no other human being could expect recognition, nay not even\non the basis of contracts, or promises, or for the sake of love, or\nhumaneness and compassion? Did Stirner in his poverty ever act on the\nprinciple that he was the owner of the world, that there was no tie of\nmorality binding on him, no principle which he had to respect? Nothing\nof the kind. He lived and died in peace with all the world, and the\nbelief in the great ego sovereignty with its bold renunciation of all\nmorality was a mere Platonic idea, a tame theory which had not the\nslightest influence upon his practical life.\n\nMen of Stirner's type do not fare well in a world where the ego has\ncome into its own. They will be trampled under foot, they will be\nbruised and starved, and they will die by the wayside. No, men of\nStirner's type had better live in the protective shadow of a state; the\nworst and most despotic state will be better than none, for no state\nmeans mob rule or the tyranny of the bulldozer, the ruffian, the brutal\nand unprincipled self-seeker.\n\nHere Friedrich Nietzsche comes in. Like Stirner, Nietzsche was a\npeaceful man; but unlike Stirner, Nietzsche had a hankering for power.\nBeing pathological himself, without energy, without strength and\nwithout a healthy appetite and a good stomach, Nietzsche longed to play\nthe part of a bulldozer among a herd of submissive human creatures whom\nhe would control and command. This is Nietzsche's ideal, and he calls\nit the \"overman.\" Here Nietzsche modified and added his own notion to\nStirner's philosophy.\n\nIndividualistic philosophies are therefore based on an obvious error\nby misunderstanding the nature of the individual man, by forgetting\nthe reality of society and its continued significance for the\nindividual life. A careful investigation of the nature of the state\nas well as of our personality would have taught Stirner that both\nthe state and the individual are realities. The state and society\nexist as much as the individuals of which they are composed,[1] and\nno individual can ignore in his maxims of life the rules of conduct,\nthe moral principles, or whatever you may call that something which\nconstitutes the conditions of his existence, of his physical and\nsocial surroundings. The dignity and divinity of personality does not\nexclude the significance of super-personalities; indeed, the two, super\npersonal presences with their moral obligations and concrete human\npersons with their rights and duties, co-operate with each other and\nproduce thereby all the higher values of life.\n\nStirner is onesided but, within the field of his onesided view,\nconsistent. Nietzsche spurns consistency but accepts the field\nof notions created by Stirner, and, glorying in the same extreme\nindividualism, proclaims the gospel of that individual who on the basis\nof Stirner's philosophy would make the best of a disorganized state\nof society, who by taking upon himself the functions of the state\nwould utilize the advantages thus gained for the suppression of his\nfellow beings; and this kind of individual is dignified with the title\n\"overman.\"\n\nNietzsche has been blamed for appropriating Stirner's thoughts and\ntwisting them out of shape from the self-assertion of every ego\nconsciousness into the autocracy of the unprincipled man of power; but\nwe must concede that the common rules of literary ethics can not apply\nto individualists who deny all and any moral authority. Why should\nNietzsche give credit to the author from whom he drew his inspiration\nif neither acknowledges any rule which he feels obliged to observe?\nNietzsche uses Stirner as Stirner declares that it is the good right of\nevery ego to use his fellows, and Nietzsche shows us what the result\nwould be--the rise of a political boss, a brute in human shape, the\noverman.\n\nNietzsche is a poet, not a philosopher, not even a thinker, but as a\npoet he exercises a peculiar fascination upon many people who would\nnever think of agreeing with him. Most admirers of Nietzsche belong to\nthe class which Nietzsche calls the \"herd animals,\" people who have no\nchance of ever asserting themselves, and become hungry for power as a\nsick man longs for health.\n\nIndividualism and anarchism continue to denounce the state, when they\nought to reform it and improve its institutions. In the meantime the\nworld wags on. The state exists, society exists, and innumerable social\ninstitutions exist. The individual grows under the influence of other\nindividuals, his ideas--mere spooks of his brain--yet the factors of\nhis life, right or wrong, guide him and determine his fate. There are\nas rare exceptions a few lawless societies in the wild West where a few\noutlaws meet by chance, revolver in hand, but even among them the state\nof anarchy does not last long, for by habit and precedent certain rules\nare established, and wherever man meets man, wherever they offer and\naccept one another's help, they co-operate or compete, they join hands\nor fight, they make contracts, form alliances, and establish rules, the\nresult of which is society, the state, with all the institutions of the\nstate, the administration, the legislature, the judiciary, with all the\nintricate machinery that regulates the interrelations of man to man.\n\nThe truth is that man develops into a rational, human and humane being\nthrough society by his intercourse with other men. Man is not really an\nindividual in the sense of Stirner and Nietzsche, a being by himself\nand for himself, having no obligations to his fellows. Man is a part\nof the society through which he originated and to which he belongs and\nto overlook, to neglect and to ignore his relations to society, not to\nrecognize definite obligations or rules of conduct which we formulate\nas duties is the grossest mistake philosophers can make, and this\nbecomes obvious if we consider the nature of man as a social being as\nAristotle has defined it.\n\n\n[1] See the author's _The Nature of the State_, 1894, and\n_Personality_, 1911.\n\n\n\n\nANOTHER NIETZSCHE\n\n\nThe assertion of selfhood and the hankering after originality make\nNietzsche the exponent of the absolute uniqueness of everything\nparticular, and he goes to the extreme of denying all kinds of\nuniversality--even that of formal laws (the so-called uniformities\nof nature), reason, and especially its application in the field of\npractical life, morality. His ideal is \"Be thyself! Be unique! Be\noriginal!\" Properly speaking, we should not use the term ideal when\nspeaking of Nietzsche's maxims of life, for the conception of an\nideal is based upon a recognition of some kind of universality, and\nNietzsche actually sneers at any one having ideals. The adherents of\nNietzsche speak of their master as \"_der Einzige_,\" i. e., \"the unique\none,\" and yet (in spite of the truth that every thing particular is in\nits way unique) the uniformities of nature are so real and unfailing\nthat Nietzsche is simply the representative of a type which according\nto the laws of history and mental evolution naturally and inevitably\nappears whenever the philosophy of nominalism reaches its climax. He\nwould therefore not be unique even if he were the only one that aspires\nafter a unique selfhood; but the fact is that there are a number of\nNietzsches, he happening to be the best known of his type. Other\nadvocates of selfhood, of course, will be different from Nietzsche in\nmany unimportant details, but they will be alike in all points that\nare essential and characteristic. One of these Nietzsches is George\nMoore, a Britain who is scarcely familiar with the writings of his\nGerman double, but a few quotations from his book, _Confessions of a\nYoung Man_, will show that he can utter thoughts which might have been\nwritten by Friedrich Nietzsche himself. George Moore says:\n\n      \"I was not dissipated, but I loved the abnormal\" (p. 18).\n\n      \"I was a model young man indeed\" (p. 20).\n\n      \"I boasted of dissipations\" (p. 19).\n\n      \"I say again, let general principles be waived; it\n      will suffice for the interest of these pages if it be\n      understood that brain-instincts have always been, and\n      still are, the initial and the determining powers of my\n      being\" (p. 47).\n\nGeorge Moore, like Nietzsche, is one of Schopenhauer's disciples who\nhas become sick of pessimism. He says:\n\n      \"That odious pessimism! How sick I am of it\" (p. 310).\n\nWhen George Moore speaks of God he thinks of him in the old-fashioned\nway as a big self, an individual and particular being. Hence he denies\nhim. God is as dead as any pagan deity. George Moore says:\n\n      \"To talk to us, the legitimate children of the nineteenth\n      century, of logical proofs of the existence of God,\n      strikes us in just the same light as the logical proof of\n      the existence of Jupiter Ammon\" (p. 137).\n\nGeorge Moore is coarse in comparison with Nietzsche. Nietzsche is no\ncynic; he is pure-hearted and noble by nature. Moore is voluptuous\nand vulgar. Both are avowed immoralists, and if the principle of an\nunrestrained egotism be right, George Moore is as good as Nietzsche,\nand any criminal given to the most abominable vices would not be worse\nthan either.\n\nNietzsche feels the decadence of the age and longs for health; but he\nattributes the cause of his own decadence to the Christian ideals of\nvirtue, love, and sympathy with others. George Moore cherishes the same\nviews; he says:\n\n      \"We are now in a period of decadence, growing steadily\n      more and more acute\" (p. 239).\n\n      \"Respectability ... continues to exercise a meretricious\n      and enervating influence on literature\" (p. 240).\n\n      \"Pity, that most vile of all vile virtues, has never been\n      known to me. The great pagan world I love knew it not\" (p.\n      200).\n\n      \"The philanthropist is the Nero of modern times\" (p. 185).\n\nBoth Nietzsche and Moore long for limitless freedom; but Moore seems\nmore consistent, for he lacks the ideal of the overman and extends\nfreedom to the sex relation, saying:\n\n      \"Marriage--what an abomination! Love--yes, but not\n      marriage...freedom limitless\" (p. 168-169).\n\nMoore loves art, but his view of art is cynical, and here too he is\nunlike Nietzsche; he says:\n\n      \"Art is not nature. Art is nature digested. Art is a\n      sublime excrement\" (p. 178).\n\nBoth believe in the coming of a great social deluge. George Moore says:\n\n      \"The French revolution will compare with the revolution\n      that is to come, that must come, that is inevitable, as a\n      puddle on the road-side compares with the sea. Men will\n      hang like pears on every lamp-post, in every great quarter\n      of London, there will be an electric guillotine that will\n      decapitate the rich like hogs in Chicago\" (p. 343).\n\nIdeals are regarded as superstitions, and belief in ideas is deemed\nhypocritical. George Moore says:\n\n      \"In my heart of hearts I think myself a cut above you,\n      because I do not believe in leaving the world better than\n      I found it; and you, exquisitely hypocritical reader,\n      think that you are a cut above me because you say you\n      would leave the world better than you found it\" (p. 354).\n\nThe deeds of a man, his thoughts and aspirations, which constitute his\nspiritual self, count for nothing; the body alone is supposed to be\nreal, and thus after death a pig is deemed more useful than a Socrates.\nContinues Moore:\n\n      \"The pig that is being slaughtered as I write this line\n      will leave the world better than it found it, but you will\n      leave only a putrid carcass fit for nothing but the grave\"\n      (p. 353).\n\nWrong is idealized:\n\n      \"Injustice we worship; all that lifts us out of the\n      miseries of life is the sublime fruit of injustice.\n\n      \"Man would not be man but for injustice\" (p. 203).\n\n      \"Again I say that all we deem sublime in the world's\n      history are acts of injustice; and it is certain that if\n      mankind does not relinquish at once and for ever, its\n      vain, mad, and frantic dream of justice, the world will\n      lapse into barbarism\" (p. 205).\n\nGeorge Moore gives a moment's thought to the ideal of \"a new art, based\nupon science, in opposition to the art of the old world that was based\non imagination, an art that should explain all things and embrace\nmodern life in its entirety, in its endless ramifications, be it, as it\nwere, a new creed in a new civilization ... that would continue to a\nmore glorious and legitimate conclusion the work that the prophets have\nbegun\"; but he turns his back upon it. It would be after all a product\nof development; it would be the tyranny of a past age, and he says, \"as\nwell drink the dregs of yesterday's champagne\" (p. 128).\n\n\n\n\nNIETZSCHE'S DISCIPLES\n\n\nIt is said that barking dogs do not bite, and this being true, we must\nlook upon Nietzsche's philosophy as a harmless display of words and a\nburning desire for power without making any attempt to practice what\nhe preached. His philosophy, so far as he is concerned, is a purely\nPlatonic love of an unattainable star whose brilliance dazzled the\nimagination of a childlike peaceful weakling. Suppose, however, for\nargument's sake, that Nietzsche had been a man of robust health, and\nthat he had been born at the time of great disturbances, offering\nunlimited chances to an unscrupulous ambition, would he under these\ncircumstances have led the life he preached, and in case he had done\nso, would he have boldly and unreservedly admitted his principles while\ncarrying out his plans? Did ever C\u00e6sar or Napoleon or any usurper,\nsuch as Richard III, who unscrupulously aspired for power, own that he\nwould shrink from nothing to attain his aim? Such a straightforward\npolicy for any schemer would be the surest way of missing his aim.\nSuch men, on the contrary, have played hypocrites, and have pretended\nto cherish ideals generally approved by the large masses of the people\nwhom Nietzsche calls the herd. So it is obvious that the philosophy\nof Nietzsche if it were ever practically applied, would have become a\nsecret doctrine known only to the initiated few, while the broad masses\nwould be misguided by some demonstrative show of moral principles that\nmight be pleasing to the multitudes and yet at the same time conceal\nthe real tendency of the overman to gain possession of his superior\nposition.\n\nNietzsche's influence upon professional philosophers is comparatively\nweak. Whenever mentioned by them, it is in criticism, and he is\ngenerally set aside as onesided, and perhaps justly, because he was\ntruly no philosopher in the strict sense of the word. He was no\nreasoner, no logician, and we can not, properly speaking, look upon\nhis philosophy as a system or even a systematized view of the world.\nNietzsche made himself the exponent of a tendency, and as such he has\nhis followers among large masses of those very people whom he despised\nas belonging to the herds. As Nietzsche idealized this very quality\nin which he was lacking, so his followers recruit themselves from the\nranks of those people who more than all others would be opposed to the\nrule of the overman. His most ardent followers are among the nihilists\nof Russia, the socialists and anarchists of all civilized countries.\nThe secret reason of attraction, perhaps unknown to themselves, seems\nto be Nietzsche's defense of the blind impulse and the privilege which\nhe claims for the overman to be himself in spite of law and order and\nmorality, and also his contempt for rules, religious, philosophical,\nethical or even logical, that would restrict the great sovereign\npassion for power.\n\nNietzsche's philosophy has taken a firm hold of a number of souls\nwho rebel against the social, the political, the religious, and even\nthe scientific, conditions of our civilization. Nietzsche is the\nphilosopher of protest, and, strange to say, while he himself is\naristocratic in his instincts, he appeals most powerfully to the masses\nof the people.\n\nNietzsche's disciples are not among the aristocrats, not among the\nscholars, not among the men of genius. His followers are among\nthe people who believe in hatred and hail him as a prophet of the\ngreat deluge. His greatest admirers are anarchists, sometimes also\nsocialists, and above all those geniuses who have failed to find\nrecognition. Nietzsche's thought will prove veritable dynamite if it\nshould happen to reach the masses of mankind, the disinherited, the\nuneducated, the proletariat, the Catilinary existences. Nietzsche's\nphilosophy is an intoxicant to those whom he despised most; they see in\nhim their liberator, and rejoice in his invectives.\n\nInvectives naturally appeal to those who are as unthinking as the\nbrutes of the field, but feel the sufferings of existence as much as\ndo the beasts of burden. They are impervious to argument, but being\nfull of bitterness and envy they can be led most easily by any kind\nof denunciations of their betters. Nietzsche hated the masses, the\ncrowd of the common people, the herd. He despised the lowly and had\na contempt for the ideals of democracy. Nevertheless, his style of\nthought is such as to resemble the rant of the leaders of mobs, and\nit is quite probable that in the course of time he will become the\nphilosopher of demagogues.\n\nA great number of Nietzsche's disciples share their master's\neccentricities and especially his impetuosity. Having a contempt for\nphilosophy as the work of the intellect, they move mainly in the field\nof political and social self-assertion; they are anarchists who believe\nthat the overman is coming in labor troubles, strikes, and through a\nsubversion of the authority of government in any form.\n\nThe best known German expounders of Nietzsche's philosophy have been\nRudolph Steiner and Alexander Tille.[1] Professor Henri Lichtenberger\nof the University of Nancy was his interpreter in France,[2] and the\nformer editor of The Eagle and the Serpent, known under the pseudonym\nof Erwin McCall, in England. This periodical, which flourished for a\nshort time only, characterized its own tendency as follows:\n\n\"_The Eagle and the Serpent_ is a bi-monthly journal of egoistic\nphilosophy and sociology which teaches that in social science altruism\nspells damnation and egoism spells salvation. In the war against their\nexploiters the exploited cannot hope to succeed till they act as a\nunit, an 'ego.'\"\n\nA reader of _The Eagle and the Serpent_ humorously criticised the\negoistic philosophy as follows:\n\n      \"Dear Eagle and Serpent.--I am one of those unreasonable\n      persons who see no irreconcilable conflict between egoism\n      and altruism. The altruism of Tolstoy is the shortest\n      road to the egoism of Whitman. The unbounded love and\n      compassion of Jesus made him conscious of being the son\n      of God, and that he and the Father were one. Could egoism\n      go further than this? I believe that true egoism and true\n      altruism grow in precisely equal degree in the soul, and\n      that the alleged qualities which bear either name and\n      attempt to masquerade alone without their respective\n      make-weights are shams and counterfeits. The real\n      desideratum is balance, and that cannot be permanently\n      preserved on one leg. However, you skate surprisingly well\n      for the time being on one foot, and I have enjoyed the\n      first performance so well that I enclose 60 cents for a\n      season-ticket--ERNEST H. CROSBY. Rhinebeck, N. Y., U. S.\n      A.\"\n\nA German periodical _Der Eigene_, i. e., \"he who is his own,\"\nannounced itself as \"a journal for all and nobody,\" and sounded \"the\nslogan of the egoists,\" by calling on them to \"preserve their ownhood.\"\n\nAnother anarchistic periodical that stood under the influence of\nNietzsche appeared in Budapest,[3] Hungary, in German and Hungarian\nunder the name Ohne Staat, (\"Without Government\") as \"the organ of\nideal anarchists,\" under the editorship of Karl Krausz.\n\nPerhaps the most worthy exponent of Nietzsche in England to-day is his\ntranslator Thomas Common. He does not consider himself an orthodox\nNietzsche apostle but thinks that Nietzsche has given the world a very\nimportant revelation and that his new philosophy of history and his\nexplanation of the role of Christianity are among the most wonderful\ndiscoveries since Darwin. At the same time Mr. Common pronounces\nNietzsche's doctrine of eternal recurrence \"very foolish\" and believes\nhis use of the terms \"good\" and \"evil\" so perverted that he was\nfrequently confused about them and so misled superficial readers. Mr.\nCommon published at regular intervals during the years 1903 to 1909\nten numbers of a small periodical entitled variously _Notes for Good\nEuropeans and The Good European Point of View_, and expects to resume\nits publication soon. Its motto is from Nietzsche, \"In a word--and it\nshall be an honorable word--we are Good Europeans ... the heirs of\nthousands of years of the European spirit.\" Its purpose is expressed in\nits first number as follows: \"Our general purpose is to spread the best\nand most important knowledge relating to human well-being among those\nwho are worthy to receive it, with a view to reducing the knowledge\nto practice, after some degree of unanimity has been attained.... As\nNietzsche's works, notwithstanding some limitations, exaggerations and\nminor errors, embody the foremost philosophical thought of the age, it\nwill be one of our special objects to introduce these works to English\nreaders.\"\n\nThese numbers contain many bibliographical and other notes of interest\nto friends or critics of the Nietzsche propaganda. Mr. Common has\npublished selections from Nietzsche's works under the title, _Nietzsche\nas Critic, Philosopher, Poet and Prophet_.[4]\n\nIn America Nietzsche's philosophy is represented by a book of Ragnar\nRedbeard, entitled _Might is Right, the Survival of the Fittest._[5]\nThe author characterizes his work as follows:\n\n[Illustration: BUST OF NIETZSCHE, BY KLINGER.]\n\n      \"This book is a reasoned negation of the Ten\n      Commandments--the Golden Rule--the Sermon on the\n      Mount--Republican Principles--Christian Principles--and\n      Principles' in general.\n\n      \"It proclaims upon scientific evolutionary grounds,\n      the unlimited absolutism of Might, and asserts that\n      cut-and-dried moral codes are crude and immoral\n      inventions, promotive of vice and vassalage.\"\n\nThe author is a most ardent admirer of Nietzsche, as may be learned\nfrom his verses made after the pattern of Nietzsche's poetry. He sings:\n\n      \"There is no 'law' in heaven or earth that man must needs\n      obey! Take what you can, and all you can; and take it\n      while you--may.\n\n      \"Let not the Jew-born Christ ideal unnerve you in the\n      fight. You have no 'rights,' except the rights you win\n      by--might.\n\n      \"There is no justice, right, nor wrong; no truth, no good,\n      no evil. There is no 'man's immortal soul,' no fiery,\n      fearsome Devil.\n\n      \"There is no 'heaven of glory:' No!--no 'hell where\n      sinners roast' There is no 'God the Father,' No!--no Son,\n      no 'Holy Ghost.'\n\n      \"This world is no Nirv\u00e2na where joy forever flows. It is a\n      grewsome butcher shop where dead 'lambs' hang in--rows.\n\n      \"Man is the most ferocious of all the beasts of prey. He\n      rangeth round the mountains, to love, and feast, and--slay.\n\n      \"He sails the stormy oceans, he gallops o'er the plains,\n      and sucks the very marrow-bones of captives held\n      in--chains.\n\n      \"Death endeth all for every man,--for every 'son of\n      thunder'; then be a lion (not a 'lamb') and--don't be\n      trampled under.\"\n\nA valuable recent addition to the discussion of egoism is _The\nPhilosophy of Egoism_ by James L. Walker, (Denver, 1905).\n\nWe know of no American periodical which stands for Nietzsche's views,\nexcept, perhaps, _The Lion's Paw_ (Chicago) which claims to follow no\none. In the last years of the nineteenth century Clarence L. Swartz\npublished at Wellesley, Mass., an egoistic periodical called the _I_.\nThis magazine is no longer in existence, but Mr. Swartz is very active\nin the International Intelligence Institute whose aims are universal\nlanguage, universal nationality and universal peace. He still maintains\nthe same philosophical view which he held as editor of the _I_, but his\nphilosophical egoism has led him in far different paths from those of\nNietzsche--into the paths of peace and not of struggle. He expresses\nhis present conception as follows:\n\n\"In the last analysis there is no right but might. Such is the common\nordinary rule of every-day life, from which there is no escape, even\nwere escape desirable. Any attempt to overthrow or circumvent or\neven dispute the exercise of this prerogative of the mighty is but to\nassert or oppose a greater might. Expediency always dictates how might\nshould be exercised. Politically, I hold that the non-coercion of\nthe non-invasive individual is the part of wisdom. The individual is\nsupreme, and should be preserved as against society, for in no other\nway can evolution perform its perfect work.\"\n\n_The Free Comrade_ edited by J. Wm. Lloyd and Leonard Abbott, an\navowedly socialistic and individualistic paper, originally under the\nsole editorship of Lloyd, stood for Nietzsche and his egoism, but can\nno longer be said to do so.\n\n\n[1] A. Tille, _Von Darwin bis Nietzsche_. R. Steiner, _Wahrheit und\nWissenschaft_; _Die Philosophie der Freiheit; and F. Nietzsche, ein\nK\u00e4mpfer gegen seine Zeit_.\n\nWe have already mentioned the biography of Nietzsche published by the\nphilosopher's sister, Frau E. F\u00f6rster-Nietzsche. A characterization,\ndisavowed by Nietzsche's admirers, was written by Frau Lou Andreas\nSalome, under the title _F. Nietzsche in seinen Werken_. Other\nworks kindred in spirit are Schellwien's _Der Geist der neueren\nPhilosophie_, 1895, and Der Darwinismus, 1896; also Adolf Gerecke,\n_Die Aussichtslosigkeit des Moralismus_; Schmitt, _An der Grenzscheide\nzweier Weltalter_; K\u00e1roly Krausz, _Nietzsche und seine Weltanschauung._\n\n[2] Henri Lichtenberger, _La Philosophie de Nietzsche_. Paris, Alcan,\n1898\n\n[3] We may mention incidentally that a contributor to _Ohne Staat_\nreproduced one of the Homilies of St Chrysostom, in which he harangues\nafter the fashion of the early Christian preachers against wealth\nand power. The state's attorney, not versed in Christian patristic\nliterature, seized the issue and placed the man who quoted the old\nByzantine saint behind the prison bars. In the issue of Nov., 1898, Dr.\nEugen Heinrich Schmitt mentions the case and says: \"Thus we have an\nexact and historical proof that the liberty of speech and thought was\nincomparably greater in miserable, servile Byzantium than it is now in\nthe much more miserable and more servile despotism of modern Europe.\"\nDoes not Dr. Schmitt overlook the fact that in the days of Byzantine\nChristianity the saints were protected by the mob, which was much\nfeared by the imperial government and was kept at bay only by a nominal\nrecognition of its claims and beliefs?\n\n[4] Other recent English Nietzschean literature is as follows: Grace\nNeal Dolson, _The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche_, 1901; Oscar Levy,\n_The Revival of Aristocracy_, 1906; A. R. Orage, _Fried. Nietzsche,\nthe Dionysion Spirit of the Age_, 1906; A. R. Orage, _Nietzsche in\nOutline and Alphorism_; Henry L. Mencken, _The Philosophy of Friedrich\nNietzsche_; M. A. M\u00fcgge, _Friedrich Nietzsche: His Life and Work_;\nAnthony M. Ludovici, _Who Is to Be Master of the World_?\n\n[5] Published by Adolph Mueller, Chicago.\n\n\n\n\nTHE PRINCIPLE OF VALUATION\n\n\nIt may be interesting in this connection to mention the case of an\nAmerican equivalent to Nietzsche's philosophy, which so far as I know\nhas never yet seen publicity.\n\nSome time ago the writer of this little book became acquainted with a\njournalist who has worked out for his own satisfaction a new system of\nphilosophy which he calls \"Christian economics,\" the tendency of which\nwould be to preach a kind of secret doctrine for the initiated few who\nwould be clever enough to avail themselves of the good opportunity. He\nclaims that the only thing worth while in life is the acquisition of\npower through the instrumentality of money. He who acquires millions\ncan direct the destiny of mankind, and this tendency was first\nrealized in the history of mankind in this Christian nation of ours,\nwhose ostensible faith is Christianity. Our religion, he argues, is\nespecially adapted to serve as a foil to protect and conceal the real\nissue, and so he calls his world-conception, \"Christian economics.\"\nEmperors and kings are mere puppets who are exhibited to general\ninspection, and so are presidents and all the magistrates in office.\nPolitical government has to obey the behests of the financiers, and the\nmost vital life of mankind resides in its economical conditions.\n\nThe inventor of this new system of \"Christian economics\" would allow no\nother valuation except that of making money, on the sole ground that\nscience, art and the pleasures of life are nothing to man unless he is\nin control of power which can be had only through the magic charm of\nthe almighty dollar.\n\nI shall not comment upon his view, but shall leave it to the reader,\nand am here satisfied to point out its similarity to Nietzsche's\nphilosophy. There is one point only which I shall submit here for\ncriticism and that is the principle of valuation which is a weak point\nwith both the originator of \"Christian economics\" and with Friedrich\nNietzsche.\n\nNietzsche proclaimed with great blast of trumpets, if we may so call\nhis rhetorical display of phrases, that we need a revaluation of\nall values; but the best he could do was to establish a standard of\nvaluation of his own. Every man in this world attains his mode of\njudging values according to his character, which is formed partly by\ninherited tendencies, partly by education and is modified by his own\nreflections and experiences. There are but few persons in this world\nwho are clearsighted enough to formulate the ultimately guiding motive\nof their conduct. Most people follow their impulses blindly, but in\nall of them conduct forms a certain consistent system corresponding to\ntheir own idiosyncrasy. These impulses may sometimes be contradictory,\nyet upon the whole they will all agree, just as leaves and blossoms,\nroots and branches of the same tree will naturally be formed according\nto the secret plan that determines the growth of the whole organism.\nThose who work out a specially pronounced system of moral conduct do\nnot always agree in practical life with their own moral principle,\nsometimes because they wilfully misrepresent it and more frequently\nbecause their maxims of morality are such as they themselves would\nlike to be, while their conduct is such as they actually are. Such are\nthe conditions of life and we will call that principle which as an\nultimate _raison d'\u00eatre_ determines the conduct of man, his standard of\nvaluation. We will see at once that there is a different standard for\neach particular character.\n\nA scientist as a rule looks at the world through the spectacles of\nthe scientist. His estimation of other people depends entirely on\ntheir accomplishments in his own line of science. Artist, musician, or\nsculptor does the same. To a professional painter scarcely any other\npeople exist except his pupils, his master, his rivals and especially\nart patrons. The rest of the world is as indifferent as if it did not\nexist; it forms the background, an indiscriminate mass upon which all\nother values find their setting. All the professions and vocations,\nand all the workers along the various lines of life are alike in that\nevery man has his own standard of valuation.\n\nA Napoleon or a C\u00e6sar might have preached the doctrine that the\nsciences, the arts and other accomplishments are of no value if\ncompared with the acquisition of power, but I feel sure that it would\nnot have been much heeded by the mass of mankind, for no one would\nchange his standard of value. A financier might publicly declare that\nthe only way to judge people is according to the credit they have in\nbanking, but it would scarcely change the standard of judgment in\nsociety. Beethoven knew as well as any other of his contemporaries the\nvalue of money and the significance of power, and yet he pursued his\nown calling, fascinated by his love for music. The same is true not\nonly of every genius in all the different lines of art and science, but\nalso of religious reformers and inventors of all classes. Tom, Dick and\nHarry in their hankering for pleasure and frivolous amusement are not\nless under the influence of the conditions under which they have been\nborn than the great men whose names are written in the book of fame. It\nis difficult for every one of us to create for himself a new standard\nof valuation, for what Goethe says of man's destiny in a poem entitled\n_Daimon_, is true:[1]\n\n    \"As on the day which has begotten thee\n    The sun and planets stood in constellation,\n    Thus growest and remainest thou to be,\n    For't is life's start lays down the regulation\n    How thou must be. Thyself thou canst not flee.\n    Such sibyl's is and prophet's proclamation.\n    For truly, neither force nor time dissolveth,\n    Organic form as, living, it evolveth.\"\n\nThe original reads thus:\n\n    \"Wie an dem Tag der dich der Welt verliehen,\n    Die Sonne stand zum Grusse der Planeten,\n    Bist alsobald and fort und fort gediehen\n    Nach dem Gesetz, wonach du angetreten.\n    So musst du sein, dir kannst du nicht entfliehen,\n    So sagten schon Sibyllen, so Propheten;\n    Und keine Zeit und keine Macht zerst\u00fcckelt,\n    Gepr\u00e4gte Form, die lebend sich entwickelt.\"\n\nOur attitude in life depends upon our character, and the basic elements\nof character are the product of the circumstances that gave birth to\nour being. Our character enters unconsciously or consciously in the\nformulation of our standards of value which we will find to be the\nmost significant factors of our destinies. Now the question arises, Is\nthe standard of value which we set up, each one of us according to his\ncharacter, purely subjective or is there any objective criterion of its\nworth?\n\nWe must understand that to a great extent our choice of a profession\nand other preferences in our occupations or valuations are naturally\ndifferent according to conditions; some men are fit to be musicians,\nor scholars, or traders, or farmers, or manufacturers, and others\nare not. The same profession would not be appropriate for every one.\nBut there is a field common to all occupations which deals with man's\nattitude toward his fellow beings and, in fact, toward the whole\nuniverse in general. This it is with which we are mainly concerned\nin our discussion of a criterion of value because it is the field\noccupied by religion, philosophy and ethics. Tradition has sanctioned\ndefinite views on this very subject which have been codified in certain\nrules of conduct different in many details in different countries\naccording to religion, national and climatic conditions, and the type\nof civilization; yet, after all, they agree in most remarkable and\nsurprising coincidences in all essential points.\n\nNietzsche, the most radical of radicals, sets up a standard of\nvaluation of his own, placing it in the acquisition of power, and he\nclaims that it alone is entitled to serve as a measure for judging\nworth because, says he, it alone deals with that which is real in the\nworld; yet at the same time he disdains to recognize the existence of\nany objective criterion of the several standards of value. If he were\nconsistent, he ought to give the palm of highest morality to the man\nwho succeeds best in trampling under foot his fellowmen, and he does\nso by calling him the overman, but he does not call him moral. To be\nsure this would be a novel conception of morality and would sanction\nwhat is commonly execrated as one of the most devilish forms of\nimmorality. Nietzsche takes morality in its accepted meaning, and so\nin contradiction to himself denies its justification in general.\n\nConsidering that every one carries a standard of valuation in himself\nwe propose the question, \"Is there no objective criterion of valuation,\nor are all valuations purely subjective?\" This question means whether\nthe constitution of the objective world in which we all live, is such\nas to favor a definite mode of action determined by some definite\ncriterion of value.\n\nWe answer that subjective standards of valuation may be regarded as\nendorsed through experience by the course of events in the world\nwhenever they meet with success, and thus subjective judgments become\nobjectively justified. They are seen to be in agreement with the\nnatural course of the world, and those who adhere to them will in the\nlong run be rewarded by survival. Such an endorsement of standards can\nbe determined by experience and has resulted in what is commonly called\n\"morality.\" We may here take for granted that the moral valuation is a\nproduct of many millenniums and has been established, not only in one\ncountry and by one religion, nor in one kind of human society, but in\nperfect independence in many different countries, under the most varied\nconditions, and finds expression in the symbolism of the most divergent\ncreeds. The beliefs of a Christian, of a Buddhist, of a Mussulman in\nTurkey, or a Taoist in the Celestial Empire, of a Parsee in Bombay, or\nJapanese Shintoist, are all as unlike as they can be, but all agree\nas to the excellency of moral behavior which has been formulated in\nthese different religions in sayings incorporated in their literature.\nWe find very little if anything contradictory in their standards of\nvaluation, and if there is any objective norm for the subjective\nvaluation of man it is this moral consensus in which all the great\nreligious prophets and reformers of mankind agree.\n\nA transvaluation of all values is certainly needed, and it is taking\nplace now. In fact it has always taken place whenever and wherever\nmankind grows or progresses or changes the current world-conception.\n\nThe old morality has been negative and we feel the need of positive\nideals. The old doctrines are formulated in rules which forbid certain\nactions and our commandments begin with the words \"Thou shalt not....\"\nThose folk are esteemed moral who obey these restrictions or at least\ndo not ostensibly infringe upon them, and this practically limits\nmorality to mediocrity. How often have great and noble people been\ncondemned as immoral because some irregularities would not fit the\nProcrustean bed of customary respectability! Think only of George Eliot\nwho had to suffer under the prejudices of Sunday-School morality! We\nneed a higher standard in which we may set aside the paltry views\nof the old morality without losing our ideals. We need a positive\nnorm, the norm which counts in the actual world and in history, where\nman is measured not by his sins of omission but by his positive\naccomplishments; not by the errors he has or has not committed, but by\nhis deeds, by the work with which he has benefited mankind. Therefore\nthe new morality does not waste much time with the several injunctions,\n\"Thou shalt not ...\" but impresses the growing generation with the\ndemand: \"Do something useful; show thyself efficient; be superior to\nothers in nobility, in generosity, in energy; excel in one way or\nanother\"; and in this sense a transvaluation of the old values is being\nworked out at present.\n\nWe will grant that Nietzsche's demand of a transvaluation of all values\nmay mean to criticize the narrow doctrines and views of the religion\nof his surroundings. But as he expresses himself and according to his\nphilosophical principle he goes so far as to condemn not only the husk\nof all these religious movements, but also their spirit. In spite of\nhis subjectivism which denies the existence of anything ideal, and\ngoes so far as to deny the right even of truth to have an objective\nvalue, Nietzsche establishes a new objectivism, and proposes his own,\nand indeed very crude, subjective standard of valuation as the only\nobjective one worthy of consideration for the transvaluation of all\nvalues.\n\nNietzsche's real world, or rather what he deemed to be the real world,\nis a dream, the dream of a sick man, to whom nothing possesses value\nsave the boons denied him, physical health, strength, power to dare and\nto do.\n\nThe transvaluation of all values which Nietzsche so confidently\nprophesied, will not take place, at least not in the sense that\nNietzsche believed. There is no reason to doubt that in the future\nas in the past history will follow the old conservative line of\ndevelopment in which different people according to their different\ncharacters will adopt their own subjective standards, and nature, by a\nsurvival of the fittest will select those for preservation who are most\nin agreement with this real world in which we live, a world from which\nNietzsche, according to the sickly condition of his constitution, was\nseparated by a wide gulf. He thirsted for it in vain, and we believe\nthat he had a wrong conception of the wealth of its possibilities and\nviewpoints.\n\n\n[1] So far as I know, these lines have never been translated before.\n\n\n\n\nINDIVIDUALISM\n\n\nNietzsche is unquestionably a bold thinker, a Faust-like questioner,\nand a Titan among philosophers. He is a man who understands that the\nproblem of all problems is the question, Is there an authority higher\nthan myself? And having discarded belief in God, he finds no authority\nexcept pretensions.\n\nNietzsche apparently is only familiar with the sanctions of morality\nand the criterion of good and evil as they are represented in the\ninstitutions and thoughts established by history, and seeing how\nfrequently they serve as tools in the hands of the crafty for the\noppression of the unsophisticated masses of the people, he discards\nthem as utterly worthless. Hence his truly magnificent wrath, his\ndisgust, his contempt for underling man, for the masses, this muddy\nstream of present mankind.\n\nIf Nietzsche had dug deeper, he would have found that there is after\nall a deep significance in moral ideals, for there is an authority\nabove the self by which the worth of the self must be measured. Truth\nis not a mere creature of the self, but is the comprehension of the\nimmutable eternal laws of being which constitute the norm of existence.\nOur self, \"that creating, willing, valuing 'I,' which (according to\nNietzsche) is the measure and value of all things,\" is itself measured\nby that eternal norm of being, the existence of which Nietzsche does\nnot recognize.\n\nWhat is true of Nietzsche applies in all fundamental questions also to\nhis predecessor, Max Stirner. It applies to individualism in any form\nif carried to its consistent and most extreme consequences.\n\nNietzsche is blind to the truth that there is a norm above the self,\nand that this norm is the source of duty and the object of religion;\nhe therefore denies the very existence of duty, of conviction, of\nmoral principles, of sympathy with the suffering, of authority in any\nshape, and yet he dares to condemn man in the shape of the present\ngeneration of mankind. What right has he, then, to judge the sovereign\nself of to-day and to announce the coming of another self in the\noverman? From the principles of his philosophical anarchism he has no\nright to denounce mankind of to-day, as an underling; for if there is\nno objective standard of worth, there is no sense in distinguishing\nbetween the underman of to-day and the overman of a nobler future.\n\nOn this point, however, Nietzsche deviates from his predecessor\nStirner. The latter is more consistent as an individualist, but the\nformer appeals strongly to the egoism of the individual.\n\nNietzsche is a Titan and he is truly Titanic in his rebellion against\nthe smallness of everything that means to be an incarnation of what is\ngreat and noble and holy. But he does not protest against the smallness\nof the representatives of truth and right, he protests against truth\nand right themselves, and thus he is not merely Titanic, but a genuine\nTitan,--attempting to take the heavens by storm, a monster, not\nsuperhuman but inhuman in proportions, in sentiment and in spirit.\nBeing ingenious, he is, in his way, a genius, but he is not evenly\nbalanced; he is eccentric and, not recognizing the authority of reason\nand science, makes eccentricity his maxim. Thus his grandeur becomes\ngrotesque.\n\nThe spirit of negation, the mischief-monger Mephistopheles, says of\nFaust with reference to his despair of reason and science:\n\n    \"Reason and Knowledge only thou despise,\n    The highest strength in man that lies!...\n    And I shall have thee fast and sure.\"\n                   --_Tr. by Bayard Taylor._\n\nBeing giant-like, the Titan Nietzsche has a sense only for things\nof large dimensions. He fails to understand the significance of the\nsubtler relations of existence. He is clumsy like Gargantua; he is\ncoarse in his reasoning; he is narrow in his comprehension; his horizon\nis limited. He sees only the massive effects of the great dynamical\nchanges brought about by brute force; he is blind to the quiet and slow\nbut more powerful workings of spiritual forces. The molecular forces\nthat are invisible to the eye transform the world more thoroughly than\nhurricanes and thunderstorms; yet the strongest powers are the moral\nlaws, the curses of wrong-doing and oppression, and the blessings of\ntruthfulness, of justice, of good-will. Nietzsche sees them not; he\nignores them. He measures the worth of the overman solely by his brute\nforce.\n\nIf Nietzsche were right, the overman of the future who is going to take\npossession of the earth will not be nobler and better, wiser and juster\nthan the present man, but more gory, more tiger-like, more relentless,\nmore brutal.\n\nNietzsche has a truly noble longing for the advent of the overman, but\nhe throws down the ladder on which man has been climbing up, and thus\nlosing his foothold, he falls down to the place whence mankind started\nseveral millenniums ago.\n\nWe enjoy the rockets of Nietzsche's genius, we understand his\nFaust-like disappointment as to the unavailableness of science such as\nhe knew it; we sympathize with the honesty with which he offered his\nthoughts to the world; we recognize the flashes of truth which occur\nin his sentences, uttered in the tone of a prophet; but we cannot help\ncondemning his philosophy as unsound in its basis, his errors being the\nresult of an immaturity of comprehension.\n\nNietzsche has touched upon the problem of problems, but he has not\nsolved it. He weighs the souls of his fellowmen and finds them\nwanting; but his own soul is not less deficient. His philosophy is well\nworth studying, but it is not a good guide through life. It is great\nonly as being the gravest error, boldly, conscientiously, and seriously\ncarried to its utmost extremes and preached as the latest word of\nwisdom.\n\nIt has been customary that man should justify himself before the\ntribunal of morality, but Nietzsche summons morality itself before\nhis tribunal. Morality justifies herself by calling on truth, but\nthe testimony of truth is ruled out, for truth--objective truth--is\ndenounced as a superstition of the dark ages. Nietzsche knows truth\nonly as a contemptible method of puny spirits to make existence\nconceivable--a hopeless task! Nietzsche therefore finds morality guilty\nas a usurper and a tyrant, and he exhorts all _esprits forts_ to shake\noff the yoke.\n\nWe grant that the self should not be the slave of morality; it should\nnot feel the \"ought\" as a command; it should identify itself with it\nand make its requirements the object of its own free will. Good-will on\nearth will render the law redundant; but when you wipe out the ideal\nof good-will itself together with its foundation, which is truth and\nthe recognition of truth, the struggle for existence will reappear\nin its primitive fierceness, and mankind will return to the age of\nsavagery. Let the _esprits forts of Nietzsche's_ type try to realize\ntheir master's ideal, and their attempts will soon lead to their own\nperdition.\n\nWe read in _Der arme Teufel_,[1] a weekly whose radical editor would\nnot have been prevented by conventional reasons from joining the new\nfad of Nietzscheanism, the following satirical comment on some modern\npoet of original selfhood:\n\n      \"'I am against matrimony because I am a poet Wife,\n      children, family life,--well, well! they may be good\n      enough for the man possessed of the herding instinct But\n      I object to trivialities in my own life. I want something\n      stimulating, sensation, poetry 1 A wife would be prosaic\n      to me, simply on account of being my wife; and children\n      who would call me papa would be disgusting. Poetry I need!\n      Poetry!' Thus he spoke to a friend, and when the latter\n      was gone continued his letter reproaching a waitress for\n      again asking for money and at the same time reflecting\n      upon the purity of her relations to the bartender who, she\n      pretended, was her cousin only....\"\n\nIf marriage relations were abolished to-day, would not in the course of\ntime some new form of marriage be established? Those who are too proud\nto utilize the experiences of past generations, will have to repeat\nthem for themselves and must wade through their follies, sins, errors,\nand suffer all the consequences and undergo their penalties.\n\nNietzsche tries to produce a C\u00e6sar by teaching his followers to imitate\nthe vices of a Catiline; he would raise gods by begetting Titans; he\nendeavors to give a nobler and better standard to mankind, not by\nlifting the people higher and rendering them more efficient, but by\ndepriving them of all wisdom and making them more pretentious.\n\nIf the ethics of Nietzsche were accepted to-day as authoritative, and\nif people at large acted accordingly, the world would be benefited\nin one respect, viz., hypocrisy would cease, and the selfishness of\nmankind would manifest itself in all its nude bestiality. Passions\nwould have full sway; lust, robbery, jealousy, murder, and revenge\nwould increase, and Death in all forms of wild outbursts would reap\na richer harvest than he ever did in the days of prehistoric savage\nlife. The result would be a pruning on a grand scale, and after a few\nbloody decades those only would survive who either by nature or by\nhypocritical self-control deemed it best to keep the lower passions\nand the too prurient instincts of their selfhood in proper check, and\nthen the old-fashioned rules of morality, which Nietzsche declared\nantiquated, would be given a new trial in the new order of things. They\nmight receive a different sanction, but they would find recognition.\n\nNietzsche forgets that the present social order originated from that\ngeneral free-for-all fight which he commends, and that if we begin at\nthe start we should naturally run through the same or a similar course\nof development to the same or very similar conditions. Will it not be\nbetter to go on improving than to revert to the primitive state of\nsavagery?\n\nThere are superstitious notions about the nature of the sanction of\nethics, but for that reason the moral ideals of mankind remain as\nfirmly established as ever.\n\nThe self is not the standard of measurement for good and evil, right\nand wrong, as Nietzsche claims in agreement with the sophists of old;\nthe self is only the condition to which and under which it applies.\nThere is no good and evil in the purely physical world, there is no\nsuffering, no pain, no anguish--all this originates with the rise of\norganized animal life which is endowed with sentiency; and further\nthere is no goodness and badness, no morality until the animal rises to\nthe height of comprehending the nature of evil. The tiger is in himself\nneither good nor bad, but he makes himself a cause of suffering to\nothers; and thus he is by them regarded as bad. Goodness and badness\nare relative, but they are not for that reason unreal.\n\nIt is true that there is no \"ought\" in the world as an \"ought\"; nor are\nthere metaphysical ghosts of divine commandments revealing themselves.\nBut man learns the lesson how to avoid evil and reducing it to brief\nrules which are easily remembered, he calls them \"commandments.\"\n\nBuddha was aware that there is no metaphysical ghost of an \"ought,\" and\nbeing the first positivist before positivism was ever thought of, his\ndecalogue is officially called \"avoiding the ten evils,\" not \"the ten\ncommandments,\" the latter being a popular term of later origin.\n\nGranting that there is no metaphysical \"ought\" in the world and that\nit finds application only in the domain of animate life through the\npresence of the self or rather of many selves, we fail to see that\nthe self is the creator of the norm of good and evil. Granting also\nthat there are degrees of comprehending the nature of evil and that\ndifferent applications naturally result under different conditions,\nwe cannot for that reason argue that ethics are purely subjective and\nthat there is no objective norm that underlies the moral evolution of\nmankind and comes out in the progress of civilization more and more in\nits purity.\n\nNietzsche is like a schoolboy whose teacher is an inefficient pedant.\nHe rebels against his authority and having had but poor instruction\nproclaims that the multiplication table is a mere superstition with\nwhich the old man tries to enslave the free minds of his scholars. Are\nthere not different solutions possible of the same example and has not\nevery one to regard his own solution as the right solution? How can the\nteacher claim that he is the standard of truth? Why, the very attempt\nat setting up a standard of any kind is tyranny and the recognition of\nit is a self-imposed slavery. There is no rightness save the rightness\nthat can be maintained in a general hand-to-hand contest, for it is\nultimately the fist that decides all controversies.\n\nNietzsche calls himself an atheist; he denies the existence of God\nin any form, and thus carries atheism to an extreme where it breaks\ndown in self-contradiction. We understand by God (whether personal,\nimpersonal, or superpersonal) that something which determines the\ncourse of life; the factors that shape the world, including ourselves;\nthe law to which we must adjust our conduct. Nietzsche enthrones the\nself in the place of God, but for all practical purposes his God is\nblunt success and survival of the fittest in the crude sense of the\nterm; for according to his philosophy the self must heed survival in\nthe struggle for existence alone, and that, therefore, is his God.\n\nNietzsche's God is power, i. e., overwhelming force, which allows the\nwolf to eat the lamb. He ignores the power of the still small voice,\nthe effectiveness of law in the world which makes it possible that man,\nthe over-brute, is not the most ferocious, the most muscular, or the\nstrongest animal. Nietzsche regards the cosmic order, in accommodation\nto which ethical codes have been invented, as a mere superstition. Thus\nit will come to pass that Nietzsche's type of the overman, should it\nreally make its appearance on earth, would be wiped out as surely as\nthe lion, the king of the beasts, the proud pseudo-overbrute of the\nanimals, will be exterminated in course of time. The lion has a chance\nfor survival only behind the bars of the zo\u00f6logical gardens or when he\nallows himself to be tamed by man, that weakling among the brutes whose\npower has been built up by a comprehension of the sway of the invisible\nlaws of life, physical, mental and moral.\n\nWhat is the secret of Nietzsche's success? While other men of greater\nconsistency, among them his predecessor Stirner, failed, he attained\nan unparalleled fame, and his philosophy exercised an extraordinary\ninfluence upon large classes of people not only in Germany but also\nabroad, in Russia, in France, in the United States and even in\nconservative England.\n\nWe must concede that Nietzsche possesses a poetic power of oratory; he\nappeals to sentiment; he is not much of a thinker, not a philosopher,\nbut a leader and a prophet, and as such he stands for the most extreme\negoism. Nietzsche attempts to establish the absolute sovereignty of\nthe individual and grants a most irresponsible freedom to the man who\ndares; and this principle of doing away with moral maxims has made him\npopular.\n\nThe truth is that our moral sanctions are no longer accepted. People\nstill believe in God, in the authority of church and state, but their\nbelief is no longer a living faith. Whatever they may think of God, the\nold God, the God of traditional dogmatism, is gone. He is no longer a\nliving power in the hearts of the people; and so, large masses rejoice\nto have the proclamation frankly stated that God is dead, that they\nneed no longer fear hell, and that the chains of their slavery are\nbroken.\n\nNietzsche is consistent in his denial of the traditional sanctions. He\nunderstands not only that there are no gods, that the powers of nature\nas personifications do not exist, but that the laws of nature are mere\nabstract generalizations. We need no longer believe in Hephaestos, the\ngod of fire; there is no use to bow the knee to him or do homage to his\ndivinity. Nor is there any truth in the existence of a phlogiston, a\nmetaphysical fire-stuff, or any fire essence; there are only scattered\nfacts of burning. Everything else is mere superstition. Generalizations\nexist only in our imagination, and so we should get rid of the idea\nthat there is any truth at all. Science is a pretender which is apt to\nmake cowards of us. That man is wise who is not hampered by scruple or\ndoubt of any kind and simply follows the bent of his mind, subjecting\nto himself every thing he finds, including his fellow human beings.\n\nThis bold and reckless proposition appeals to egoism and it seems so\ntrue that abstract formulas and generalizations are empty. Weight\nexists; there is gravity; there are particular phenomena of masses in\nmutual attraction, but gravitation, the law of these actual happenings,\nis a mere formula, an imaginary quantity, a mere thought about which we\nneed not worry. The law of gravitation is a human invention and has no\nreal existence in the realm of facts.\n\nAnd the same would of course be true about the interrelations among\nhuman beings in their social intercourse, too. All the several maxims\nof conduct, which are called moral and constitute our code of ethics,\nare built upon generalizations. There is no sanction for them. The gods\nwho were formerly supposed to be responsible for the several domains\nof facts have died long ago. The Jewish deity called Elohim, the\nLord, entered upon the inheritance of the ancient gods, but he too had\nto die. Thereupon his place was taken by metaphysical essences, pale\nghosts of a mysterious nature, but they too died and so the last shadow\nof anything authoritative is gone. We are _en face du rien_; therefore\nlet us boldly enjoy our freedom. Let us be ourselves; let our passions\ntake their course; let us do wrong if it suits us; let us live without\nconsideration of anything, just as we please. There is no sanction of\nmoral maxims to be respected; there is no authority of conduct; there\nis no judge; there is no evil, no wrong.\n\nThis seems pretty plausible to our modern generation raised in the\ntraditions of nominalism, but would we really ignore the law of\ngravitation because the Newtonian formula is a man-made abstraction\nand a mere generalization? Yet, if we do not give heed to it we fall,\nand the same is true of any law of nature. Our sciences are mental\nconstructions; they are mind-made, and so far as they are built out\nof the material of our experience they tally with facts and we call\nthem true. Our social interrelations, too, constitute conditions\nobservable in experience; they can be formulated in Jaws and applied\nto practical life; they can be expressed in maxims of conduct and have\nreceived various sanctions successively, the sanctions of religion,\nthe sanctions of metaphysics, the sanctions of science. In the age of\nsavagery the sanction of moral maxims was offered us in a mythological\ndress. With the rise of monotheism our moral sanction came to us as\nthe command of a supreme ruler of the universe; in the age of abstract\nphilosophy as metaphysical principles, and in the age of science these\nshould be recognized as lessons of experience.\n\n\n[1] May 13, 1809. Detroit, 949 Gratiot Ave.\n\n\n\n\nCONCLUSION.\n\n\nWe will gladly grant that personifications are mythological fictions,\nthat metaphysical entities are products of a philosophical imagination\nand that the scientific formulas are abstract generalizations, but\nwe deny that generalizations are unmeaning; they signify some actual\nfeatures of reality. Abstract ideas are not purely fictitious; they\ndenote significant qualities or occurrences, and the relations in life,\nthe forms of things, combinations, or in general the non-material\nconfigurations, co-operations, combinations and functions are the\nmost important and the most significant aspects of existence. Indeed,\nmatter and energy are only the clumsy conditions of being; they denote\nactuality and reality, but all things, all events, all facts are such\nas they are on account of their form--on account of that feature which\nis non-material and non-energetic.\n\nAccording to Nietzsche the whole history of mankind, especially the\ndevelopment of reason, knowledge and science, is a great blunder,\nand the dawn of day begins with a radical break with the past. We see\nin the evolution of life a gradual ascent with a slow but constant\napproximation to truth. In the history of religion we see in the dawn\nof civilization the beginning of a comprehension of truth. Mythology\nis not error pure and simple, not a conglomeration of superstitions;\nit is plainly characterized by a groping after great truths, and myths\nbecome foolish inventions only when the poetic character of the tale\nis misunderstood. So dogmas become dangerous errors when the symbol is\ntaken literally, when the letter is exalted and the spirit forgotten.\nIt is true that science has taken away the charm of many religious\nbeliefs, but the great lesson of the doctrine of evolution is to show\nus that our onward march in the humanization of man does not stop, that\nthe periods of mythology and dogma are stages in the progress of our\nrecognition of the truth. There is no need to fear a collapse of past\nresults but we may boldly build higher. We must search for truth and\nwe shall have a clearer vision of it, and the future will bring new\nglories, new fulfilments of old hopes and grander realization of our\nfondest dreams.\n\nVerily, the overman will come, although he is not quite so near at\nhand as one might wish. He is at hand though, but he will not come, as\nNietzsche announces him, in the storm of a catastrophe. The fire and\nthe storm may precede the realization of a higher humanity; but the\nhigher humanity will be found neither in the fire nor in the storm.\nThe overman will be born of the present man, not by a contempt for the\nshortcomings of the present man, but by a recognition of the essential\nfeatures of man's manhood, by developing and purifying the truly human\nby making man conform to the eternal norm of rationality, humaneness\nand rightness of conduct.\n\nWhat we need first is the standard of the higher man; and on\nthis account we must purify our notions of the norm of truth and\nrighteousness,--of God. Let us find first the over-God, and the overman\nwill develop naturally. The belief in an individual God-being is giving\nway to the recognition of a superpersonal God, the norm of scientific\ntruth, the standard of right and wrong, the standard of worth by\nwhich we measure the value of our own being; and the kingdom of the\ngenuine overman will be established by the spread of the scientific\ncomprehension of the world, in matters physical, social, intellectual,\nmoral, and religious.\n\n\n\n\n    INDEX\n\n\n    Abbott, Leonard\n    Alexander\n    All-too-human\n    Ambition; for originality; for power\n    Anacreon\n    Anarchism\n    Anarchists\n    _Ancilla Voluntatis_, intellect\n    Animals superior to man\n    Aphorisms, no preference for\n    Aristocracy\n    Aristocratic tastes\n    Aristotle\n    Art; nature of\n    Assassins\n    Atheism\n    Authority of conduct\n    Average, the\n\n    Back-worlds-men\n    Ballerstedt, H. F. L.\n    Basch, V.\n    Bauer, Bruno\n    Beethoven\n    Bergson, Henri\n    Blood is spirit\n    Body, self is\n    Bruno, Edgar and Egbert\n    Buddha's Decalogue; gospel of love\n    Buhl, Ludwig\n    Burke, Edmund\n    Burtz, Agnes Clara Kunigunde\n    Byington, Stephen T.\n\n    C\u00e6sar\n    Carus, _Foundation of Mathematics_;\n    _Lao-Tse's Too Teh King_;\n    _The Nature of the State,_; _Personality_\n    Catilinary existences\n    Catilene\n    Chaos, universe a\n    Change of views\n    _Chi\u00fcn jen_\n    Christ, overman the\n    Christ's gospel of love\n    Christian economics\n    Christianity a rebellion of slaves\n    Classical taste\n    Commandments, negative\n    Common, Thomas; _Nietzsche as Critic, Philosopher, Poet\n    and Prophet_\n    Comte, Auguste\n    Confucius\n    Consistency, N. scorns; of N.; of Stirner\n    Contempt for, democratic ideals; man; past;\n    philosophy; the all-too-human; truth; world\n    Contradictions natural\n    Contrast between life and theory\n    Cosmic order\n    Cosmos, universe not a\n    Criterion of right action\n    Crosby, Ernest H.\n    Cynic, N. not a\n    D\u00e4hnhardt, Helmuth Ludwig\n    D\u00e4hnhardt, Marie\n    Damocles, sword of\n    Darwin\n    Decadence\n    Democracy\n    _Der arme Teufel_\n    _Der Eigene_\n    _Der Wanderer und sein Schatten_\n    Deussen, Paul; his opinion of N.\n    _Die Freien_\n    Dionysiac enthusiasm\n    Doctrine of the eternal return\n    Dolson, Grace Neal\n    Dream, N.'s real world a\n    Dreamers catching at shadows\n    _Drunken Song_\n    Duty not recognized\n\n    Eagle and Serpent\n    _Eagle and the Serpent, The_\n    Eliot, George\n    Elis, Coins of\n    Emerson\n    Emotional attitude\n    Engels, Friedrich\n    Error, a liberator; mythology not\n    Eternal return\n    Eternity, love for\n    Ethics, denial of; denounced; identical;\n    no sanction for; of the strong; result of N.'s;\n    test of philosophy. See also s. v. \"Morality.\"\n    Evolution, defined; lesson of\n    Examination at school\n    Expediency\n\n    Faucher, Julius\n    Faust\n    Fichte, _Duties of the scholar_\n    Financier, standard of\n    _Flatus vocis_\n    Form, importance of\n    Forms in themselves\n    F\u00f6rster-Nietzsche, Elisabeth, _Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsche's_\n    _Free Comrade_\n    Freedom fettered by convictions; limitless love of; spiritual\n\n    Garden of marriage\n    Gargantua\n    _Genealogy of morals_\n    Generalizations, abstract; not unmeaning\n    Genius not abnormal\n    Geometry\n    Gerecke, Adolph\n    German things, dislike of\n    Germany a philosophical storm center\n    God, a poet's lie; authority of conduct; created by man;\n      denial of; idea of; is dead; norm of truth; self in place of\n    Goethe; imitation of; quotations from,\n    Good, and evil; and evil, overman beyond; men never true\n    _Good Europeans, notes for_\n    Good will\n    Goody-goodyness\n    _G\u00f6tzend\u00e4mmerung_\n    Gravitation a human invention\n\n    Hammer and anvil\n    Health, N.'s desire for\n    Hegel\n    Herd animal (_Heerdentier_)\n    Hero, overman the\n    Hippel's\n    Homer\n    Hypocrisy, Plato accused of\n    Hypocrisy to obtain power\n\n    _I_\n    Ideal, Christianity incarnates\n    Ideals are superstitions; needed, positive; significance in\n    Identical ethics; world-conceptions\n    Idols of the past shattered\n    Imaginary, scientist's world\n    Immature minds, influence on\n    Immaturity; appeal of; of N.\n    Immortality, desire for\n    Individual defined\n    Individualism; aristocratic; error of extreme; ineffective\n    Influence of N.\n    Insanity\n    Instinct higher than reason; N. the philosopher of; self a bundle of\n    Intellect _ancilla voluntatis_\n    International Intelligence Institute\n    Intoxicants\n    Ionian physicist\n\n    James, William\n    \"Joyful science\"\n\n    Kant\n    Karma\n    Key to the universe, reason the\n    Kochius\n    K\u00f6ppen, C. F.\n    Klein's statue\n    Kraust, K\u00e1roly\n\n    _La Gaya Scienza_\n    Lange, _History of Materialism_\n    Lao-tze\n    Lauterbach\n    Leasing\n    Levy, Oscar\n    Lichtenberger, Henri\n    Life, truth for the sake of\n    Lightning, overman the\n    Lion and lamb\n    _Lion's Paw_\n    Lindlof, Hans\n    Lloyd, J. Wm.\n    Logic untrue\n    Lombroso\n    Love, freedom of; not your neighbor; Stirner's view of\n    Ludovici, Anthony M.\n\n    McCall, Erwin (pseud.)\n    Mackay, John Henry\n    Man, beast of prey; a muddy stream; a part of society;\n      animals' opinion of; contempt for; his own master;\n      humanization of; personality of\n    Marot\n    Marriage, a poet's objection to; an abomination; N.'s view of\n    Masses, are pragmatists; distinction for; enslaved by overman\n    Mathematics\n    Measure of truth\n    Mencken, Henry L.\n    Mephistopheles\n    Messiah, overman the\n    Meyen\n    Meyer, a fellow student\n    Mill, John Stuart\n    Moore, George, and N. compared; _Confessions of a Young Man_\n    \"_Moral ist Nothl\u00fcge_,\"\n    Morality, denial of; immoral; limited to mediocrity;\n      See also s. v. \"Ethics.\"\n    _Morgenr\u00f6the_\n    Mozart\n    Mueller, Adolph\n    M\u00fcller, Dr. Arthur\n    M\u00fcgge, M. A.\n    Mussak\n    Mythology not an error\n\n    Napoleon\n    Nature, uniformities of\n    Negation, of will; spirit of\n    Negative, commandments\n    Neighbor, love not\n    Nietzsche, a model of virtue; a modern; a mystic;\n      abnormal, not a genius; ancestors of; and George Moore\n      compared; and Stirner compared; confirmation of;\n      consistency of; contrast between life and theory;\n      destroyer of morality; his doctrine of self; immaturity of;\n      insanity of, not an accident; nominalistic tendencies of;\n      philosophy of, agreement with; philosophy of, result of\n      nominalism; religious character of; requiem composed by;\n      subjectivity of; success of; tender-hearted\n    Nihilism\n    _Nomina_\n    Nominalism, and realism; of Lombroso; traditions of\n    Normal man the exception\n    Nothingness, trust in\n    Nurse, N. as a\n\n    Obedience\n    Objectivism, subjective\n    Objectivity of truth\n    Ocean, overman the\n    _Ohne Staat_\n    _Open Court, The_\n    Orage, A. R.\n    Order; cosmic\n    Originality; ambition for; hankering after\n    Overman\n    love of; the true\n\n    Particularism\n    Patriotism\n    Personality of man\n    Pessimism\n    Philologist, N. a\n    Philosophy as a science; contempt for; three features of\n    Pig, usefulness of\n    Plato; accused of hypocrisy; ideal of; ideas of\n    Platonism\n    Pleasure and pain\n    Poet, God the lie of\n    Poet, N. a; N. not really a\n    Positive ideals needed\n    Positivism\n    Power, acquisition of; desire for;\n    God is; hypocrisy to obtain; will for\n    Pragmatism\n    Pragmatists, masses are\n    Pride\n    Probability but no truth\n    Progress, evolution is; in epicycles; in the world\n    Protest, against himself; against truth; philosopher of;\n      philosophy of\n    Proudhon\n\n    Quarrels at school\n\n    Real world\n    Realism and nominalism\n    Reason, a blunder; key to the universe; origin of;\n      subjective; tool of body; universality of\n    Redbeard, Ragnar, _Might is Right_\n    Relativity\n    Religion, hatred of\n    Revaluation of values\n    Richard III\n    Right but might, no\n    Rules of N.'s philosophical warfare\n\n    Salome, Lou Andreas\n    Sandwich, anecdote\n    Schellwien, R.\n    Schiller\n    Schlegel\n    Schmidt, Albert Christian Heinrich\n    Schmidt, Johann Caspar. See\n    Stirner, Max.\n    Schmitt, Eugen Heinrich\n    Schopenhauer\n    Schulpforta; a pupil at\n    Sch\u00fcmm, George and Mrs. Emma H.\n    Science, a blunder; a means; a mental construction;\n    a pretender; despised; for its own sake, 3; triumph of;\n    unavailableness of; world of\n    Sciences of form, the\n    Scientist, standard of\n    Sebastopol, fall of\n    Self, an authority above; is body;\n    sovereignty of; truth creature of\n    Self-assertion, right of, 24; the ethics of the strong\n    Serpent; eagle and\n    Slavism\n    Smith, William Benjamin\n    Snuffing brotherhood\n    Socialism\n    Society; man a part of\n    Socrates\n    Soldier, N. as a\n    Sophists\n    Spectacles not the world\n    Spirit, blood is; Stirner on\n    Spoiled child\n    Standard, of measurement; of valuation; of values needed\n    State, a despotism; growth of\n    Steiner, Rudolph\n    Sticht, Johann Caspar\n    _Stimmungsbild_\n    Stirner, Max, and Nietzsche compared; arguments of;\n    consistent; contrast between life and theory; death of;\n    _Der Einzige und sein Eigentum_; description of;\n    life of; marriage of; pencil sketch of; the name;\n    works of\n    Straus, Richard\n    Subjective standard\n    Subjectivism\n    Subjectivity of N.\n    Superman\n    Superpersonal God\n    Superpersonalities\n    Swartz, Clarence L.\n    Switzerland, a citizen of\n\n    Things in themselves\n    Three, features of philosophy; periods in N.'s development;\n    rules of philosophical warfare\n    _Thus Spake Zarathustra_\n    Tieck\n    Tille, Alexander\n    Tolstoy\n    Tradition defied; opposed to; sanction of; sanction of denied\n    Tragic, element; figure\n    Transvaluation of values\n    True world\n    Truth, as authority; creature of self; defined; existence of;\n      flashes of; for the sake of life; need of; non-existent;\n      objectivity of; probability but no; protests against\n    Tucker, Benjamin R.\n    _Twilight of the Idols_\n    Tyrant, morality a; N. loves a; overman a\n\n    Ulfila's bible\n    Uniformities dominate existence\n    Universality of reason\n    Universe a chaos\n    Unmoralist; development into; the first\n    Unmoralism\n    Unmorality\n    Unseitgem\u00e4sse Betrachtungen\n\n    Valuation, principle of\n    Vedantism interpreted by a materialist\n    Virtue, a model of\n\n    Wagner\n    Walker, James, L.; _The Philosophy of Egoism_\n    Warren, Josiah\n    Wenley, R. M.\n    Whitman\n    Will, ennoblement of; for power; intellect slave of; negation of\n    Woman; Stirner's attitude toward\n    World-conceptions identical\n\n    Zarathustra","title":"Nietzsche and Other Exponents of Individualism","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":34634}