{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_53260/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_53260","id":"gutenberg_53260","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/53260","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Biographies","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900"],"text":"NIETZSCHE\n\nHIS LIFE AND WORKS\n\n[Philosophies Ancient and Modern]\n\nBY\n\nANTHONY M. LUDOVICI\n\nAUTHOR OF\n\n'Who is to be Master of the World?'\n\nAND 'Notes to Zarathustra'\n\n\nPREFACE BY DR. OSCAR LEVY\n\n\nCONSTABLE & COMPANY LTD\n\nLondon\n\n1910\n\n\n\n\n\nIntroduction\n\n\nThe commission for a book on Nietzsche, to form the latest addition\nto a series of famous philosophers, is most certainly a sign that\nthe age of adversity, through which the earlier Nietzscheans had to\nstruggle, has at last come to an end. For ten consecutive years they\nhad had no reply whatever to their propaganda, and their publications,\nloud as some of them were, proved as ineffective as cannon shots fired\ninto the eternity of interplanetary space. Finally, however, when the\necho was at last heard, it gave back nothing like the original sound:\nit was an echo of groans and moans, an echo of roaring disapproval\nand hissing mockery. Yet the years rolled on and on--and so did the\nprinting-presses--hissing and roaring as much as ever--but at last,\ntheir thunders grew tamer and more subdued--the tempest of their fury\nseemed to die away in the distance--occasionally a slight mutter\nwas still to be heard, but no more flashes and hisses--and suddenly\na streak of blue was observed over the horizon, followed by a ray\nand smile of sunlight--and a soft zephyr of subdued and tentative\ncompliments--and when our Nietzsche edition had begun to appear in its\nstately volumes we were enabled to receive from our former enemies on\nboth sides of the Atlantic \"respectful congratulations.\"\n\nAnd now all my brave friends are radiant with joy and optimism. Like\nthe wanderer in the fairy tale, while the storm of disgust and loud\nreproach was raging, they wrapped themselves all the more closely in\ntheir cloaks, and no impudent wind could tear a shred of garments from\nthem, but now that the sun of approval has set in, they would fain get\nout of their armour and enjoy the fine weather as a reward for past\nperils. Has not the spring come at last? Are not the gay flowers at our\nfeet meant to welcome the victorious warriors?... Are not the ladies\n--ladies that from time immemorial have loved the warrior (especially\nwhen he is successful)--smiling at us more gloriously even than the\nsun?... Sun, ladies, flowers, smiles--was there ever a nicer\ncombination?...\n\nBut, alas! there is an unimaginative creature among the guests, an\nearnest face among the cheerful, a disbeliever among the faithful, a\ndark countenance amid the bright assembly;--a being who, in glaring\ncontrast to the sun, the smiles, and the gaily-coloured dresses and\nsunshades, is keeping a tight hold upon a dark umbrella--for he has an\nuncontrollable mistrust of English weather!\n\nAnd I may claim that I not only know the meteorological conditions of\nEngland, but also those of the whole of modern Europe. I know them so\nwell that I have the greatest doubts whether Nietzsche's influence\nwill be strong enough to withstand the terrible hurricane of democracy\nwhich in our age is sweeping everything before it, and leaving a\nlevel plain in its rear. Nietzsche may have been ever so right, but\nTruth and Righteousness do not always prevail in this world of ours,\nindeed, they don't: the bible itself, that otherwise optimistic book,\nlets this grand secret out once and only once--in the story of Job.\nThe \"happy ending\" in that book will deceive no realistic observer:\nit was added to the story, as it is added to modern plays and novels,\nfor the edification and comfort of the audience: the true story of Job\nwas without it, as was the true story of many a brave man, as was the\ntrue story of that great pope, who on his deathbed came out with the\nconfession: \"Dilexi justitiam et odi iniquitatem, _propterea_ morior\nin exsilio,\"[1] a confession which went in the very teeth of his own\nvirtue-rewarding creed with its happy-go-lucky trust in the moral order\nof the universe.\n\nNietzsche may have been right, _therefore_ he may be unsuccessful. I\nmyself regard Nietzsche's views on art, religion, psychology, morality,\nas extremely sound; I think they are proved both by history and by\ncommon experience; I even suspect that they could be confirmed by\nscience, if only science would give up looking at the world through\nthe coloured spectacles of democratic prejudice ... but then, it is\nso difficult to give up this democratic prejudice; for it is by no\nmeans simply a political opinion. Democracy, as a political creed, need\nterrify no one; for political creeds succeed each other like waves\nof the sea, whose thunder is loud and whose end is froth; but the\ndriving power behind democracy is not a political one, it is religious\n--it is Christianity. A mighty religion still, a religion which has\ngoverned the world for two thousand years, which has influenced all\nphilosophies, all literatures, all laws, all customs up to our own day,\ntill it has finally filtered into our hearts, our blood, our system,\nand become part and parcel of ourselves without our being aware of\nit. At the present moment we are all instinctive Christians. Even\nif this Christian religion has been severely wounded by Nietzsche's\ncriticism--and I believe this to be the case--I beg to suggest\nthat a wounded lion may still have more strength than all the fussy,\npolitical, rationalistic, agnostic, nonconformist, Nietzschean and\nsuper-Nietzschean mice put together.\n\nIt was all the braver, therefore, on Nietzsche's part to assail\nsuch a mighty enemy, and to attack him exactly on the spot where\nattack was most needed, if victory were to be won. Nietzsche clearly\nrecognised that the canons of criticism had until now only been\ndirected against the outer works of that stalwart fortress--at\ndogmatic, at supernatural, at ecclesiastical Christianity, and that\nno one had yet dared to aim right at the very heart of the creed--\nits morality, which, while the shamfighters were at work outside,\nwas being enormously strengthened and consolidated from within. This\nmorality, however, Nietzsche recognised as intimately connected with\nmodern democracy--and behind the rosebush of democracy with its\nflowery speeches and its fraternity- and liberty-blossoms, Nietzsche\nclearly saw the dragon of anarchy and dissolution lurking. It was the\nmortal fear of annihilation and ruin which gave Nietzsche the daring\nto fulminate against our religion with such imperishable Dithyrambics.\nHe was the first to mean the phrase, \"_\u00e9crasez l'inf\u00e2me!_\" which in\nVoltaire's mouth was only an epigrammatic exclamation. For Nietzsche's\ngreat forerunner on the Continent, Wolfgang Goethe, who was also just\nas well aware how it would all end, was much too prudent a man to lay\nhis innermost heart bare to his enemies, he--the grand old hypocrite\nof Weimar--gauged the power of the contrary current correctly, and\nwisely left the open combat against Christianity and democracy to\nhis great colleague--to that man of tragic wit, to Heinrich Heine.\n\nAnd there were others on the Continent--very few to be sure, and no\npolitician or man of science or woman among them--others who saw the\ndrift of modern ideas: all of them poets. For poets are prophets: their\nsensitive organisation feels the fall of the glass first, while their\npluck and their pride, their duty and their desire to face the storm\ndrive them into the very thick of it. The German poet Hebbel, the\nFrench novelist Stendhal, were amongst them. A new Matthew Arnold\n--the object of my wish for this country--would perhaps like to include\nanother poet, the Frenchman Alfred de Vigny, in whose journal are to\nbe found those awe-inspiring words against democracy: \"Alas! it is\nthou, Democracy, that art the desert! it is thou who hast shrouded\nand bleached everything beneath thy monticles of sand! Thy tedious\nflatness has covered everything and levelled all! For ever and ever\nthe valley and the hill supplant each other; and only from time to\ntime a man of courage is seen: he rises like a sand-whirl, makes his\nten paces towards the sun, and then falls like powder to the ground.\nAnd then nothing more is seen save the eternal plain of endless sand.\"\n\nGoethe and Hebbel, Stendhal and Heinrich Heine, Alfred de Vigny and\nFriedrich Nietzsche, all made their ten steps towards the sun and are\nnow sleeping peacefully beneath the dry sands of Christian democracy.\nTheir works are read, to be sure; but alas! how few understand their\nmeaning! I see this and I shudder. And I remember another moment in\nmy life--a moment of perturbation too--a moment in which an idea\novercame me, which has been haunting me ever since. I was on a visit\nto Mrs. F\u00f6rster-Nietzsche, in her villa high up amongst the hills of\nWeimar, waiting in the drawing-room for my hostess to enter. It was\nthe first time that I had stood upon the holy ground where Friedrich\nNietzsche gave up his heroic soul, and I was naturally impressed; my\neyes wandered reverently around the scene, and I suddenly noticed\nsome handwriting on the wall. The handwriting consisted of a powerful\nletter N which the ingenious builder had engraved profusely upon the\noak panels of the room. The N, of course, reminded me of another big\nN, connected with another big name,--the N which used to be engraved\ntogether with the imperial crown and eagle upon the plate and regalia\nof Napoleon Bonaparte. There was another victim of democracy: the man\nwho, elevated by its revolutionary wave, tried to stifle and subdue\nthe anarchical flood, was swallowed up as ignominiously as its other\nimplacable opponent, the plucky parson's son of the vicarage of R\u00f6cken.\n\nThe mighty sword in the beginning and the mighty pen at the end of\nthe last century were alike impotent against--Fate. No doubt, I saw\nin that moment, as though lit up by a flashlight, the fate of Europe\nclearly before my eyes. A fate--an iron fate. A fate unavoidable\nfor a continent that will have no more guides, no more great men.\nA fate unavoidable for an age that spills its best blood with the\ncarelessness of ignorance. A fate unavoidable for a people that is\ndriven by its very religion to disobedience and anarchy. And I thought\nof my own race, which has seen so many fates, so many ages, so many\nempires decline--and there was I, the eternal Jew, witnessing another\ncatastrophe. And I shuddered, and when my hostess entered I had not\nyet recovered my breath.\n\nGruesome, isn't it? But what if it should not come true? \"There are\nno more prophets to-day,\" says the Talmud scornfully. Well, unlike\nmy ancestor Jonah, who became melancholic when his announcement of\nthe downfall of Nineveh was not fulfilled, I beg to say that I on the\ncontrary shall be extremely delighted to have proved a false prophet.\nBut I shall keep my umbrella all the same.\n\n                                                       OSCAR LEVY.\n54 Russell Square,\nLondon, W.C.\n\n\n[1] 'I have loved justice and I have hated iniquity, _therefore_ I die\nin exile.'\n\n\n\n\nContents\n\nIntroduction\n\n    Chapter I\n    Life and Works\n    Chapter II\n    Nietzsche the Amoralist\n    Chapter III\n    Nietzsche the Moralist\n    Chapter IV\n    Nietzsche the Evolutionist\n    Chapter V\n    Nietzsche the Sociologist\n    Summary and Conclusion\n    Books Useful to the Student of Nietzsche\n\n\n\nAbbreviations Used in Referring to Nietzsche's Works\n\n    D. D. = Dawn of Day.\n    Z.    = Thus Spake Zarathustra.\n    G. E. = Beyond Good and Evil.\n    G. M. = The Genealogy of Morals.\n    Aph.  = Aphorism.\n\n\n\n\nChapter I\n\n\nLife and Works\n\n\n\"Holy be thy name to all coming generations! In the name of all thy\nfriends, I, thy pupil, cry out our warmest thanks to thee for thy great\nlife.\n\n\"Thou wast one of the noblest and purest men that ever trod this earth.\n\n\"And although this is known to both friend and foe, I do not deem it\nsuperfluous to utter this testimony aloud at thy tomb. For we know the\nworld; we know the fate of Spinoza! Around Nietzsche's memory, too,\nposterity may cast shadows! And therefore I close with the words: Peace\nto thy ashes!\"[1]\n\nThis view, expressed by Peter Gast, Nietzsche's staunchest friend and\ndisciple, at his master's graveside, in August 1900, may be regarded\nas typical of the Nietzsche enthusiast's attitude towards his master.\nOn the other hand we have the assurance of Nietzsche's opponents and\nenemies that nothing could have been more utterly disastrous to modern\nsociety, more pernicious, dangerous, and ridiculous than Nietzsche's\nlife-work.\n\nAt the present day Nietzsche is so potent a force and his influence is\nincreasing with such rapidity that, whatever our calling in life may\nbe, it behoves us to know precisely what he stands for, and to which of\nthe opinions above given we should subscribe. As a matter of fact, the\ninquirer into the life and works of this interesting man will find that\nhe has well-nigh as many by-names as he has readers, and not the least\nof our difficulties in speaking about him will be to give him a fitting\ntitle, descriptive of his mission and the way in which he understood it.\n\nSome deny his right to the title \"philosopher\"; others declare him to\nbe a mere anarchist; and a large number regard all his later works as\nno more than a shallow though brilliant reversal of every accepted\ndoctrine on earth.\n\nIn order to be able to provoke so much diversity of opinion, a man\nmust be not only versatile but forcible. Nietzsche was both. There is\nscarcely a subject in the whole range of philosophical thought which\nhe does not attack and blow up; and he hurls forth his hard, polished\nmissiles in a manner so destructive, and at the same time with such\naccuracy of aim, that it is no wonder a chorus of ill-used strongholds\nof traditional thought now cry out against him as a disturber and\nannihilator of their peace. Yet, through all the dust, smoke, and noise\nof his implacable warfare, there are both a method and a mission to be\ndiscerned--a method and a mission in the pursuit of which Nietzsche is\nreally as unswerving as he seems capricious.\n\nThroughout his life and all his many recantations and revulsions of\nfeeling, he remained faithful to one purpose and to one aim--the\nelevation of the type man. However bewildered we may become beneath the\nhail of his epigrams, treating of every momentous question that has\never agitated the human mind, we still can trace this broad principle\nrunning through all his works: his desire to elevate man and to make\nhim more worthy of humanity's great past.\n\nEven in his attack on English psychologists, naturalists, and\nphilosophers, in _The Genealogy of Morals_, what are his charges against\nthem? He says they debase man, voluntarily or involuntarily, by seeking\nthe really operative, really imperative and decisive factor in history\nprecisely where the intellectual pride of man would least wish to find\nit, i.e. in _vis inerti\u00e6_, in some blind and accidental mechanism of\nideas, in automatic and purely passive adaptation and modification, in\nthe compulsory action of adjustment to environment.\n\nAgain, in his attack on the evolutionists' so-called \"struggle for\nexistence,\" of which I shall speak more exhaustively later, it is the\nsuggestion that life--mere existence in itself--is worthy of being\nan aim at all, that he deprecates so profoundly. And, once more, it is\nwith the view of elevating man and his aspirations that he levels the\nattack.\n\nWhatever we may think of his methods, therefore, at least his aim was\nsufficiently lofty and honourable, and we must bear in mind that he\nnever shirked the duties which, rightly or wrongly, he imagined would\nhelp him to achieve it.\n\nWhat was Nietzsche? If we accept his own definition of the\nphilosopher's task on earth, we must place him in the front rank of\nphilosophers. For, according to him, the creation of new values, new\nprinciples, new standards, is the philosopher's sole _raison d'\u00eatre_; and\nthis he certainly accomplished. If, on the other hand, with all the\n\"school\" philosophers, we ask him to show us his system, we shall most\nsurely be disappointed. In this respect, therefore, we may perhaps need\nto modify our opinion of him.\n\nBe that as it may, it is safe to maintain that he was a poet of no\nmean order; not a mere versifier or rhapsodist, but a poet in the\nold Greek sense of the word, _i.e._ a maker, in our time such men are\nso rare that we are apt to question whether they exist at all, for\npoetasters have destroyed our faith in them. Goethe was perhaps the\nlast example of the type in modern Europe, and although we may recall\nthe scientific achievements of men like Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci\nand Galileo, we are not sufficiently ready to associate their divining\nand intuitive power in the department of science with their purely\nartistic and poetic achievements, despite the fact that the two are\nreally inseparable.\n\nKnowing the high authority with which poets of this order are wont\nto sneak, it might be supposed that we should approach Nietzsche's\ninnovations in the realm of science with some respect, not in spite of,\nbut precisely owing to, his great poetic genius. Unfortunately to-day\nthis no longer follows. Too thoroughly have we divorced science from\nemotion and feeling (very wrongly, as even Herbert Spencer and Buckle\nboth declared), and now, wherever we see emotion or a suggestion of\npassion, we are too apt to purse our lips and stand on our guard.\n\nWhen we consider that Nietzsche was ultimately to prove the bitterest\nenemy of Christianity, and the severest critic of the ecclesiastic, his\nantecedents seem, to say the least, remarkable. His father, Karl Ludwig\nNietzsche, born in 1813, was a clergyman of the German Protestant\nChurch; his grandfather had also taken orders; whilst his grandmother\non his father's side was descended from a long line of parsons. Nor do\nthings change very much when we turn to his mother's family; for his\nmaternal grandfather, Oehler, was also a clergyman, and, according to\nNietzsche's sister, he appears to have been a very sound, though broad,\ntheologian.\n\nYet, perhaps, it is we who are wrong in seeing anything strange\nin the fact that a man with such orthodox antecedents should have\ndeveloped into a prophet and reformer of Nietzsche's stamp; for we\nshould remember that only a long tradition of discipline and strict\nconventionality, lasting over a number of generations, is able to rear\nthat will-power and determination which, as the lives of most great\nmen have shown, are the first conditions of all epoch-making movements\nstarted by single individuals.\n\nFriedrich Nietzsche was born at R\u00f6cken near L\u00fctzen, in the Prussian\nprovince of Saxony, on the 15th of October 1844. From his earliest\nchildhood onwards the boy seems to have been robust and active and\ndoes not appear to have suffered from any of the ordinary ailments of\ninfancy. In the biography written by his sister much stress is laid\nupon this fact, while the sometimes exceptional health enjoyed by his\nparents and ancestors is duly emphasised by the anxious biographer.\nElisabeth Nietzsche (born in July 1846), the biographer in question, is\nperfectly justified in establishing these facts with care; for we know\nthat our poet philosopher died insane, and many have sought to show\nthat his insanity was hereditary and could be traced throughout his\nworks.\n\nNietzsche's father died in 1849, and in the following year the family\nremoved to Naumburg. There the boy received his early schooling,\nfirst at a preparatory school and subsequently at the Gymnasium--the\nGrammar School--of the town. As a lad, it is said that he was fond\nof military games, and of sitting alone, and it appears that he would\nrecline for hours at his grandmother Nietzsche's feet, listening to\nher reminiscences of the great Napoleon. Towards the end of 1858 Mrs.\nNietzsche was offered a scholarship for her son, for a term of six\nyears, in the Landes-Schule, Pforta, so famous for the scholars it\nproduced. At Pforta, where the discipline was very severe, the boy\nfollowed the regular school course and worked with great industry.\nHis sister tells us that during this period he distinguished himself\nmost in his private studies and artistic efforts, though even in the\nordinary work of the school he was decidedly above the average. It was\nhere, too, that he first became acquainted with Wagner's compositions,\nand a word ought now perhaps to be said in regard to his musical\nstudies.\n\nMusic, we know, played anything but a minor r\u00f4le in his later life,\nas his three important essays, _Richard Wagner in Bayreuth_, _The Case\nof Wagner_, and _Nietzsche contra Wagner_, are with us to prove. I fear,\nhowever, that it will be impossible to go very deeply into this\nquestion here, save at the cost of other still more important matters\nwhich have a prior claim to our attention. Let it then suffice to say\nthat, as a boy, Nietzsche's talent had already become so noticeable\nthat for some time the question which agitated the elders in his circle\nof relatives and friends, among whom were some competent judges, was\nwhether he should not give up all else in order to develop his great\ngift. In the end, however, it was decided that he should become a\nscholar, and although he never entirely gave up composing and playing\nthe piano, music never attained to anything beyond the dignity of a\nserious hobby in his life. In saying this I naturally exclude his\ncritical writings on the subject, which are at once valuable and\nimportant.\n\nNietzsche's six years at Pforta were responsible for a large number of\nhis subsequent ideas. When we hear him laying particular stress upon\nthe value of rigorous training free from all sentimentality; when we\nread his views concerning austerity and the importance of law, order\nand discipline, we must bear in mind that he is speaking with an actual\nknowledge of these things, and with profound experience of their worth.\nThe excellence of his philological work may also be ascribed to the\nvery sound training he received at Pforta, and the Latin essay which\nhe wrote on an original subject (Theognis, the great aristocratic poet\nof Megara) for the leaving examination, laid the foundation of all his\nsubsequent opinions on morality.\n\nNietzsche left Pforta in September 1864 and entered the University of\nBonn, where he studied philology and theology. The latter he abandoned\nsix months later, however, and in the autumn of 1865 he left Bonn for\nLeipzig, whither his famous teacher Ritschl had preceded him. Between\n1865 and 1867 his work at Leipzig proved of the utmost importance to\nhis career. Hellenism, Schopenhauer and Wagner now entered into his\nlife and became paramount influences with him, and each in its way\ndetermined what his ultimate mission was to be. Hellenism drew him ever\nmore strongly to philology and to the problem of culture in general;\nSchopenhauer directed him to philosophy, and Wagner taught him his\nfirst steps in a subject which was to be the actual _Leit-motif_ of his\nteaching--I refer to the question of Art.\n\nHis work during these two years, arduous though it was, in no way\naffected his health, and, despite his short-sight, he tells us that\nhe was then able to endure the greatest strain without the smallest\ntrouble. Being of a robust and energetic nature, however, he was\nanxious to discover some means of employing his bodily strength, and it\nwas for this reason that, regardless of the interruption in his work,\nhe was enthusiastic at the thought of becoming a soldier.\n\nIn the autumn of 1867 he entered the fourth regiment of Field\nArtillery, and it is said that he performed his duties to the complete\nsatisfaction of his superiors. But, alas, this lasted but a short time;\nfor, as the result of an unfortunate fall from a restive horse, he was\ncompelled to leave the colours before he had completed his term of\nservice.\n\nIn October 1868, after a serious illness, the student returned to his\nwork at Leipzig, and now that event took place which was perhaps the\nmost triumphant and most decisive in his career. It was Nietzsche's\nambition to get His doctor's degree as soon as possible and then\nto travel. Meanwhile, however, others were busy determining what\nhe should do. Some philological essays which he had written in his\nstudent days, and which, owing to their excellence, had been published\nby the \"Rheinisches Museum,\" had attracted the attention of the\neducational Board of B\u00e2le. One of the Board communicated with Ritschl\nconcerning Nietzsche, and the reply the learned scholar sent was so\nfavourable that the University of B\u00e2le immediately offered Ritschl's\nfavourite pupil their Professorship of Classical Philology. This was an\nexceptional honour, and, to crown it, the University of Leipzig quickly\ngranted Nietzsche his doctor's degree without further examination\n--truly a remarkable occurrence in straitlaced and formal Germany!\n\nHis first years at B\u00e2le are chiefly associated in our minds with his\ninaugural address: \"Homer and Classical Philology,\" with his action in\nregard to the Franco-German war, and with his lectures on the \"Future\nof our Educational Institutions.\" I can do no more than refer to these\nhere, but as regards the war it is necessary to go into further detail.\n\nIn July 1870, hostilities opened between France and Prussia. Now,\nalthough Nietzsche had been forced to become a naturalised Swiss\nsubject in order to accept his appointment at B\u00e2le, he was loth\nto remain inactive while his own countrymen fought for the honour\nof Germany. He could not, however, fight for the Germans without\ncompromising Switzerland's neutrality. He therefore went as a hospital\nattendant, and in this capacity, after obtaining the necessary leave,\nhe followed his former compatriots to the war. According to Elisabeth\nNietzsche, it was this act of devotion which was the cause of all her\nbrother's subsequent ill-health. In Ars-sur-Moselle, while tending\nthe sick and wounded, Nietzsche contracted dysentery from those in\nhis charge. With his constitution undermined by the exertions of the\ncampaign, he fell very seriously ill, and had to be relieved of his\nduties. Long before he was strong enough to do so, however, he resumed\nhis work at B\u00e2le; and now began that second phase of his life during\nwhich he never once recovered the health he had enjoyed before the war.\n\nIn January 1872 Nietzsche published his first book, _The Birth of\nTragedy_. It is really but a portion of a much larger work on Hellenism\nwhich he had always had in view from his earliest student days, and it\nmay be said to have been prepared in two preliminary lectures delivered\nat B\u00e2le, under the title of the \"Greek Musical Drama,\" and \"Socrates\nand Tragedy.\" The work was received with enthusiasm by Wagnerians; but\namong Nietzsche's philological friends it succeeded in rousing little\nmore than doubt and suspicion. It was a sign that the young professor\nwas beginning to ascribe too much importance to Art in its influence\nupon the world, and this the dry men of science could not tolerate.\n\nBetween 1873 and 1876, Nietzsche, while still at B\u00e2le, published four\nmore essays which, for matter and form, proved to be among the most\nstartling productions that Germany had read since Schopenhauer's prime.\nTheir author called these essays _Thoughts out of Season_, and his aim\nin writing them was undoubtedly the regeneration of German culture.\nThe first was an attack on German Philistinism, in the person of David\nStrauss, the famous theologian of T\u00fcbingen, whom Nietzsche dubbed\nthe \"Philistine of Culture,\" and was calculated to check the extreme\nsmugness which had suddenly invaded all departments of thought and\nactivity in Germany as the result of the recent military triumph.\n\nThe second, _The Use and Abuse of History_, was a protest against\nexcessive indulgence in the \"historical sense,\" or the love of looking\nbackwards, which threatened to paralyse the intelligence of Germany in\nthose days. In it Nietzsche tries to show how history is for the few\nand not for the many, and points out how rare are those who have the\nstrength to endure the lesson of experience.\n\nIn the third, _Schopenhauer as Educator_, Nietzsche pits his great\nteacher against all other dry-as-dust philosophers who make for\nstagnation in philosophy. The fourth, Richard Wagner in Bayreuth,\ncontains Nietzsche's last word of praise as a friend of the great\nGerman musician. In it we already see signs of his revulsion of\nfeeling; but on the whole it is a panegyric written with love and\nconviction.\n\nThe fourth, Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, contains Nietzsche's last word\nof praise as a friend of the great German musician. In it we already\nsee signs of his revulsion of feeling; but on the whole it is a\npanegyric written with love and conviction.\n\nThe only one of the four _Thoughts out of Season_ which created much\ncomment was the first, concerning David Strauss, and this gave rise to\na loud outcry against the daring young philologist.\n\nNietzsche had been very unwell throughout this period. Dyspepsia and\nheadaches, brought on partly by overwork, racked him incessantly,\nand, in addition, he was getting ever nearer and nearer to a final\nand irrevocable breach with the greatest friend of his life--Richard\nWagner. After obtaining leave from the authorities he went to Sorrento,\nwhere, in the autumn of 1876, he began work on his next important book,\n_Human, All-too-human_, the book which was to part him for ever from\nWagner. In February 1878 the first volume was ready for the printer,\nand was published almost simultaneously with Wagner's Parsifal, which\nwork, as is well known, was the death-blow to Nietzsche's faith in his\nformer idol.\n\nIn _Human, All-too-human_, Nietzsche as a philosopher is not yet\nstanding on his own legs, as it were. He is only just beginning to\nfeel his way, and is still deeply immersed in the thought of other\nmen--more particularly that of the English positivists. As a work of\ntransition, however, _Human, All-too-Human_ is exceedingly interesting,\nas are also its sequels _Miscellaneous Opinions and Apophthegms_ (1879)\nand _The Wanderer and his Shadow_ (1880). But in none of these, as the\nauthor himself admits, is there to be found that certainty of aim and\ntreatment which characterised his later writings.\n\nIn 1879, owing to ill-health, Nietzsche was compelled to resign his\nprofessorship at the University of B\u00e2le, and the spring of that year\nsaw him an independent man with an annual pension of 3000 francs,\ngenerously granted to him by the Board of Management on the acceptance\nof his resignation. With this pension and a small private income\nderived from a capital of about \u00a31400, he was not destitute, though by\nno means affluent, and when we remember that he was obliged to defray\nthe expenses of publication in the case of almost every one of his\nbooks, we may form some idea of his actual resources.\n\nFrom this time forward Nietzsche's life was spent in travelling and\nwriting. Venice, Marienbad, Z\u00fcrich, St. Moritz in the Ober-Engadine,\nSils Maria, Tautenberg in Thuringia, Genoa, etc., etc. were among the\nplaces at which he stayed, according to the season; and during the year\n1880 his health materially improved. In January 1881 he had completed\nthe manuscript of the _Dawn of Day_, and is said to have been well\nsatisfied with his condition.\n\nIn the _Dawn of Day_ Nietzsche for the first time begins to reveal his\nreal personality. This book is literally the dawn of his great life\nwork, and in it we find him grappling with all the problems which he\nwas subsequently to tackle with such a masterly and courageous hand. It\nappeared in July 1881 and met with but a poor reception. Indeed, after\nthe publication of the last of the _Thoughts out of Season_ Nietzsche\nappears to have created very little stir among his countrymen--a fact\nwhich, though it greatly depressed him, only made him redouble his\nenergies.\n\nIn September 1882 _The Joyful Wisdom_ was published--a book written\nduring one of the happiest periods of his life. It is a veritable\nfanfare of trumpets announcing the triumphal entry of its distinguished\nfollower _Zarathustra_. With it Nietzsche's final philosophical views are\nalready making headway, and it is full of the love of life and energy\nwhich permeates the grand philosophical poem which was to come after it.\n\nDisappointed by the meagre success of his works, and hurt by the\nattitude of various friends, Nietzsche now retired into loneliness,\nand, settling down on the beautiful bay of Rapallo, began work on that\nwonderful moral, psychological, and critical rhapsody, _Thus Spake\nZarathustra_, which was to prove the greatest of his creations. During\nthe years 1883-84, the three first parts of this work were published,\nand, though each part was issued separately and met with the same cold\nreception which had been given to his other works of recent years,\nNietzsche never once lost heart or wavered in his resolve. It required,\nhowever, all the sublime inspirations which we find expressed in that\nwonderful _Book for all and None_, to enable a man to stand firmly and\nabsolutely alone amid all the hardships and reverses that beset our\nanchorite poet throughout this period.\n\nIt was about this time that Nietzsche began to take chloral in the\nhope of overcoming his insomnia; it was now, too, that his sister\n--the only relative for whom, despite some misunderstandings, he had a\nreal affection--became engaged to a man with whom he was utterly out\nof sympathy; and all the while negotiations, into which Nietzsche had\nentered with the Leipzig University for the purpose of securing another\nprofessorial chair, were becoming ever more hopeless.\n\nIn the course of this exposition I shall have to treat of the doctrines\nenunciated in _Thus Spake Zarathustra_--indeed, seeing that this work\ncontains all Nietzsche's thought in a poetical form, it would be quite\nimpossible to discuss any single tenet of his philosophy without in\nsome way referring to the book in question. I cannot therefore say\nmuch about it at present, save that it is generally admitted to be\nNietzsche's _opus magnum_. Besides the philosophical views expounded in\nthe four parts of which it consists, the value of its autobiographical\npassages is enormous. In it we find the history of his most intimate\nexperiences, friendships, feuds, disappointments, triumphs, and the\nlike; and the whole is written in a style so magnetic and poetical,\nthat, as a specimen of _belles-lettres_ alone, entirely apart from the\nquestions it treats, the work cannot and ought not to be overlooked.\n\nAlthough there is now scarcely a European language into which\n_Zarathustra_ has not been translated, although the fame of the work,\nat present, is almost universal, the reception it met with at the\ntime of its publication was so unsatisfactory, and misunderstanding\nrelative to its teaching became so general, that within a year of\nthe issue of its first part, Nietzsche was already beginning to see\nthe necessity of bringing his doctrines before the public in a more\ndefinite and unmistakable form. During the years that followed--that is\nto say, between 1883 and 1886--this plan was matured, and between 1886\nand 1889--the year of our author's final breakdown, three important\nbooks were published which may be regarded as prose-sequels to the\npoem _Zarathustra_. These books are: _Beyond Good and Evil_ (1886),\n_The Genealogy of Morals_ (1887), and _The Twilight of the Idols_\n(1889); while the posthumous works _The Will to Power_ (1901) and\nthe little volume Antichrist, published in 1895, when its author was\nlying hopelessly ill at Naumburg, also belong to the period in which\nNietzsche wished to make his _Zarathustra_ clear and comprehensible to\nhis fellows. In the ensuing chapters it will be my endeavour to state\nbriefly all that is vital in the works just referred to.\n\nWhat remains to be related of Nietzsche's life is sad enough, and is\nalmost common knowledge. When his sister Elizabeth married Dr. F\u00f6rster\nand went to Paraguay with her spouse, Nietzsche was practically without\na friend, and, had it not been for Peter Gast's devotion and help,\nhe would probably have succumbed to his constitutional and mental\ntroubles much sooner than he actually did. Before his last breakdown\nin Turin, in January 1889, the only real encouragement he is ever\nknown to have received in regard to his philosophical works came to\nhim from Copenhagen and Paris. In the latter city it was Taine who\ncommitted himself by praising Nietzsche, and in the former it was Dr.\nGeorge Brandes, a clever and learned professor, who delivered a series\nof lectures on the new message of the German philosopher. The news of\nBrandes' success in Copenhagen in 1888 greatly brightened Nietzsche's\nlast year of authorship, and he corresponded with the Danish professor\nuntil the end. It has been rightly observed that these lectures were\nthe dawn of Nietzscheism in Europe.\n\nAs the result of over-work, excessive indulgence in drugs, and a host\nof disappointments and anxieties, Nietzsche's great mind at last\ncollapsed on the 2nd or 3rd of January 1889, never again to recover.\n\nThe last words he wrote, which were subsequently found on a slip of\npaper in his study, throw more light upon the tragedy of his breakdown\nthan all the learned medical treatises that have been written about\nhis case. \"I am taking narcotic after narcotic,\" he said, \"in order to\ndrown my anguish; but still I cannot sleep. To-day I will certainly\ntake such a quantity as will drive me out of my mind.\"\n\nFrom that time to the day of his death (25th August 1900) he lingered a\nhelpless and unconscious invalid, first in the care of his aged mother,\nand ultimately, when Elizabeth returned a widow from Paraguay, as his\nsister's beloved charge.\n\nFor an opinion of Nietzsche during his last phase I cannot do better\nthan quote Professor Henri Lichtenberger of Nancy, who saw the invalid\nin 1898; and with this sympathetic Frenchman's valuable observations, I\nshall draw this chapter to a close:--\n\n\"In the gradual wane of this enthusiastic lover of life, of this\napologist of energy, of this prophet of Superman there is something\ninexpressibly sad--inexpressibly beautiful and peaceful. His brow is\nstill magnificent--his eyes, the light of which seems to be directed\ninwards, have an expression which is indefinably and profoundly moving.\nWhat is going on within his soul? Nobody can say. It is just possible\nthat he may have preserved a dim recollection of his life as a thinker\nand a poet.\"\n\n\n[1] Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsche's by Frau F\u00f6rster-Nietzsche.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\nChapter II\n\n\nNietzsche the Amoralist\n\n\nFrom a casual study of Nietzsche's life it might be gathered that he\nhad little time for private meditation or for any lonely brooding over\nproblems foreign to his school and university studies. Indeed, from\nthe very moment when it was decided that he should become a scholar,\nto the day when the University of Leipzig granted him his doctor's\ndegree without examination, his existence seems to have been so wholly\noccupied by strenuous application to the duties which his aspirations\nimposed upon him that, even if he had had the will to do so, it would\nseem that he could not have had the leisure to become engaged in\nany serious thought outside his regular work. Nevertheless, if we\ninquire into the matter more deeply, we find to our astonishment, that\nduring the whole of that arduous period--from his thirteenth to this\ntwenty-fourth year--his imagination did not once cease from playing\naround problems of the highest import, quite unrelated to his school\nand university subjects.\n\nIn the introduction to _The Genealogy of Morals_, he writes as follows:\n--\"... while but a boy of thirteen the problem of the origin of\nevil haunted me: to it I dedicated, in an age when we have in\nheart half-play, half-God, my first literary child-play, my first\nphilosophical composition; and, as regards my solution of the problem\ntherein, well, I gave, as is but fair, God the honour, and made\nhim _Father_ of evil.\"[1] And then he continues: \"A little historical and\nphilological schooling, together with an inborn and delicate sense\nregarding psychological questions, changed my problem in a very short\ntime into that other one: under what circumstances and conditions did\nman invent the valuations good and evil? And what is their own specific\nvalue?\"\n\nThis problem, as stated here, seems stupendous enough; in fact, it\nwould be difficult, in the whole realm of human thought, to discover\na question of greater moment and intricacy; and yet we shall see that\nNietzsche was just as much born to attack and solve it as Cardinal\nNewman seems, from the _Apologia pro Vita Sua_, to have been born to\nthe Roman Catholic Church.\n\nIf we reflect a moment, we find that \"good\" and \"evil\" are certainly\nwords that exercise a tremendous power in the world. To attach the\nword \"good\" to any thing or deed is to give it the hall-mark of\ndesirability: on the other hand, to attach the word \"evil\" to it is\ntantamount to proscribing it from existence. Even in the old English\nproverb, \"Give a dog a bad name and hang him,\" we have a suggestion of\nthe enormous force which has been compressed into the two monosyllables\n\"good\" and \"bad,\" and before we seriously take up the problem, it were\nwell to ponder a while over the really profound significance of these\ntwo words.\n\nNietzsche, as we have already observed, was never in any doubt as to\ntheir importance: his life passion was the desire to solve the meaning,\nthe origin, and the intrinsic value of the two terms; and he did not\nrest until he had achieved his end.\n\nLet us now examine what morality--what \"good\" and \"evil\"--means to\nalmost everybody to-day. In the minds of nearly all those people who\nare neither students nor actual teachers of philosophy, there is a\nsuperstition that \"good\" is a perfectly definite and absolute value,\nand that \"evil\" is known unto all. Few seem to doubt that the meaning\nof these words has been fixed once and for ever. The ordinary European\nlives, reads, and sleeps, year in, year out, under the delusion that\nall is quite clear in regard to right and wrong. Such a person is, of\ncourse, somewhat abashed when you tell him that a certain people in the\nEast practise infanticide and call it good or that a certain people in\nthe West always separate at meals and eat apart and call _this_ good. He\nusually gets over the difficulty, however, by saying that they know no\nbetter, and when at last he is hard pressed, and is bound to admit that\nviews of good and bad, sometimes the reverse of his own, actually do\npreserve and unite people in strange lands, he takes refuge in the hope\nthat all differences may one day be broken down and that the problem\nwill thus be solved.\n\nNo such facile shelving of the question, however, could satisfy\nNietzsche. From the very outset he freed himself from all national\nand even racial prejudices, and could see no particular reason why\nthe kind of morality now prevailing in Europe, or countries like\nEurope, must necessarily and ultimately overcome and supplant all\nothers. He therefore attacked the question with a perfectly open\nmind, and asked himself whether he quite understood the part the\nterms \"good\" and \"evil\" have played in human history.\n\nIs morality--its justification in our midst and its mode of\naction--comprehended at all?--He replies to this question so daringly\nand so uprightly, that at first his clearness may only bewilder us.\n\nThese terms \"good\" and \"evil,\" he tells us, are merely a means to the\nacquisition of power. And, indeed, in the very resistance we offer\nwhen he attempts to criticise our notions of morality, we tacitly\nacknowledge that in this morality our strength does actually reside.\n\"No greater power on earth was found by Zarathustra than good and\nevil\"[2] \"No people could live without first valuing; if a people\nwill maintain itself, however, it must not value as its neighbour\nvalueth.\"[3]\n\nIn the last sentence we have seized Nietzsche's clue to the whole\nquestion. If you would maintain yourself, you cannot and must not\nvalue as your neighbour values. Good and evil, then, are not permanent\nabsolute values; they are transient, relative values, serving an end\nwhich can be explained in terms of biology and anthropology.\n\nBut now let us halt a moment, for the sake of clearness, and let us\ninquire precisely how Nietzsche himself was led to this conclusion.\n\nIn the summer of 1864, when he was in his twentieth year, he was given\nsome home work to do which he was expected to have ready by the end of\nthe holidays. It was to consist of a Latin thesis upon some optional\nsubject, and he chose \"Theognis, the Aristocratic Poet of Megara.\"\n\nWhile preparing the work he was struck with the author's use of the\nwords \"good\" and \"bad\" as synonymous with aristocratic and plebeian,\nand it was this valuable hint which first set him on the right track.\nTheognis and his friends, being desirous of making their power prevail,\nwere naturally compelled to regard any force which assailed that power\nas bad--\"bad,\" in the sense of \"dangerous to their order of power\"; and\nthus it came to pass that Theognis, as an aristocrat in the heat of a\nstruggle between an oligarchy and a democracy, spoke of the democratic\nvalues as \"bad\" and of those of his own party as \"good.\"\n\nThe writing of this essay had other consequences which I shall only be\nable to refer to in the next chapter; but at present let it suffice\nto say that, in recognising the arbitrary use made by Theognis of the\nepithets good and bad in designating the oligarchy and the democracy\nrespectively, Nietzsche was first induced to look upon morality merely\nas a weapon in the struggle for power, and he thus freed himself from\nall the usual bias which belongs to the absolutist's standpoint. Hence\nhis claim to the surname \"amoralist,\" and his use of the phrase \"Beyond\nGood and Evil,\" as the title of one of his greatest works.\n\nLet us, however, remember that although Nietzsche did undoubtedly\ntake up a position beyond good and evil, in order to free himself\ntemporarily from the gyves of all tradition, still this attitude was no\nmore than a momentary one, and he ultimately became as rigid a moralist\nas the most exacting could desire. It was a new morality, however, or\nperhaps a forgotten one, which he ultimately preached, and with the\nview of preparing the ground for it he was in a measure obliged to\ndestroy old idols. \"He who hath to be a creator in good and evil,\" says\nZarathustra, \"verily, he hath first to be a destroyer, and to break\nvalues to pieces.\"[4]\n\nAssuming the position of the relativist, then, Nietzsche observed\nthat, all morality, all use of the words \"good\" and \"evil,\" is only an\nartifice for acquiring power. Turning to the animal kingdom, he went\nin search of support for his views, and very soon discovered that, in\nbiology at least, no fact was at variance with his general hypothesis.\n\nIn nature every species of organic being behaves as if its kind alone\nought ultimately to prevail on earth, and, whether it try to effect\nthis end by open aggression or cowardly dissimulation, the motive in\nboth cases is the same. The lion's good is the antelope's evil. If\nthe antelope believed the lion's good to be its good, it would go\nand present itself without further ado before the lion's jaws. If\nthe lion believed the antelope's good to be its good it would adopt\nvegetarianism forthwith and eschew its carnivorous habits for the rest\nof its days. Again, no parasite could share the notions of good and\nevil entertained by its victim, neither could the victims share the\nnotions of good and evil entertained by the parasite. Everywhere, then,\nthose modes of conduct are adopted and perpetuated by a species, which\nmost conduce to the prevalence and extension of their particular kind,\nand that species which fails to discover the class of conduct best\ncalculated to preserve and strengthen it gets overcome in the war of\nconduct which constitutes the incessant struggle for power.\n\nNow, applying the knowledge to man, what did Nietzsche find? He found\nthere was also a war being waged between the different modes of conduct\nwhich now prevail among men, and that what one man sets up as good is\ncalled evil by another and _vice vers\u00e2_. But of this he soon became\nconvinced, that whenever and wherever good and evil had been set up as\nabsolute values, they had been thus elevated to power with the view of\npreserving and multiplying one specific type of man.\n\nAll moralities, therefore, were but so many Trades Union banners flying\nabove the heads of different classes of men, woven and upheld by them\nfor their own needs and aspirations.\n\nSo far, so good. But then, if that were so, the character of a morality\nmust be determined by the class of men among whom it came into being.\n\nWe shall see that Nietzsche did not hesitate to accept this conclusion,\nand that if for a moment he declared: \"No one knoweth yet what is good\nand what is evil!\" the next minute he was asking himself this searching\nquestion: \"Is _our_ morality--that is to say, the particular table\nof values which is gradually modifying us--compatible with an ideal\nworthy of man's inheritance and past?\"\n\nIf Nietzsche has been called dangerous, pernicious and immoral, it is\nbecause people have deliberately overlooked this last question of his.\nNo thinker who states and honestly sets out to answer this question,\nas Nietzsche did, deserves to be slandered, as he has been slandered,\nby prejudiced and interested people intent on misunderstanding only\nin order that they may fling mud more freely.\n\nNietzsche cast his critical eye very seriously around him, and the\nsight of the modern world led him to ask these admittedly pertinent\nquestions: \"Is that which we have for centuries held for good and evil,\nreally good and evil? Does our table of ethical principles seem to be\nfavouring the multiplication of a desirable type?\"\n\nIn answering these two inquiries, Nietzsche unfortunately stormed\nthe most formidable strongholds of modern society--Christianity and\nDemocracy; and perhaps this accounts for the fact that his fight was so\nuneven and so hopeless. The strength of modern Europe, if indeed there\nbe any strength in her, lies precisely on the side of Christianity and\nDemocracy, the grandmother and the mother of what is called \"progress,\"\n\"modernity\"; and in assailing these, Nietzsche must have known that he\nwas engaging in a hand-to-hand struggle with stony-hearted adversaries\nunaccustomed to giving quarter and unscrupulous in their methods.\n\nNietzsche clearly saw that if all moral codes are but weapons\nprotecting and helping to universalise distinct species of men,\nthen the Christian religion with its ethical principles could be no\nexception to the rule. It must have been created at some time and in\nsome place by one who had the interests of a certain type of man at\nheart, and who desired to make that type paramount. Now if that were\nreally so, the next question that occurred to Nietzsche's mercilessly\nlogical mind was this: \"Is the Christian religion, with its morality,\ntending to preserve and multiply a _desirable_ type of man?\"\n\nTo this last question Nietzsche replies most emphatically \"_No!_\"\n\nBut, before going into the reasons of this flat negative, let us first\npause to consider the age and the circumstances in which our author\nwrote and thought.\n\nLong before Nietzsche had reached his prime David Strauss had published\nhis _Life of Jesus_; in 1863, when Nietzsche was still in his teens,\nRenan published his _Vie de J\u00e9sus_, and in the meantime Charles Darwin\nhad given his _Origin of Species_ to the world. These books had\nbeen read by a Europe that had already studied Hume and Lamarck, Kant\nand Schopenhauer, and in all directions a fine ear could not help\nhearing the falling timbers of Christian dogma.\n\nIn the midst of this general work of destruction it was almost\nimpossible for Nietzsche to remain unmoved or indifferent, and very\nsoon he found that he too was drawn into the general stream of European\nthought; but only to prove how completely he was independent of it, and\nin every way superior to it.\n\nHe contemplated the work of the destroyers for some time with amused\ninterest; and then it suddenly occurred to him to inquire whether\nthese zealous and well-meaning housebreakers were really doing any\nlasting good, or whether all their efforts were not perhaps a little\nmisguided. True, they were pulling the embellishments from the walls\nand were casting the most cherished idols of the Christian Faith into\nthe dust. But the walls themselves, the actual design of the edifice,\nremained untouched and as strong as ever. A few broken stones, a few\ncomplaints from the priestly arch\u00e6ologists who wished to preserve\nthem, and then all the noise subsided! Europe remained as it was before\n--that is to say, still in possession of a stronghold of Christianity,\nmerely divested of its superfluous ornament.\n\nNietzsche soon perceived that, in spite of all the rubbish and refuse\nwhich such people as Kant, Schopenhauer, Strauss, Renan and others had\nmade of Christian dogma, the essential core of Christianity, the vital\norgan of its body--its morality--had so far remained absolutely intact.\nNay, he saw that it was actually being plastered up and restored\nby scholars and men of science who vowed that they could proffer\nreasonable, rationalistic, and logical grounds in support of it.\n\nJust as Christian dogma and metaphysics had been rationalised and\nphilosophically proved by the scholars of the Middle Ages, and even\nas late as Leibnitz; so, now, Christian morality was being presented\nin a purely philosophical garb by the intellects of Europe. Having\nrelinquished the dogma as no longer tenable, all scholars and men of\nscience were trying with redoubled vigour to bolster up Christian\nethics with elaborate text-books and learned treatises. There were\nsome who accepted it all as if it were innate in human nature, and\nattributed it to a \"moral sense\"; there were others--good-natured\nbiologists--who were likewise desirous of leaving it whole, and who\ndeclared with conviction that it was the natural outcome of the\nfeelings of pleasure and pain; and there were yet others who assumed\nthat it must have been evolved quite automatically out of expediency\nand non-expediency.\n\nNot one of these would-be rationalists, however, halted at the\nChristian terms \"good\" and \"bad\" themselves, in order to ask himself\nwhether, like all the other notions of good and evil prevailing\nelsewhere under the shelter of other religions, these, the Christian\nnotions, might not have been invented at some particular time by\na certain kind of man, simply with the view of preserving and\nuniversalising his specific type. Breathless from their efforts at\ngetting rid of the dogma, they did not dream that perhaps the most\nimportant part of the work still remained to be done.\n\nNietzsche went to the very foundation of the Christian edifice.\nHe pointed to its morality and said: if we are going to measure the\nvalue of this religion, let us cease our petty quarrels concerning\nthe truth or falsehood of such stories as the loss of the Gadarene\nswine, or the miracle of the loaves and fishes, and let us throw the\nwhole of Christian morality into the scales and appraise its precise\nworth as a system of ethics. Nietzsche would have scorned to quarrel\nwith the Church, as Huxley did; for much more important issues were at\nstake. The worth of a religion is measured by its morality; because by\nits morality it moulds and rears men and reveals the type of man who\nultimately wishes to prevail by means of it.\n\nWith the metaphysics and the dogma of Christianity in ruins all around\nhim, therefore, Nietzsche took a step very far in advance of the\nrationalistic iconoclasts of his age. He attacked Christian morals,\nand declared them to be, like all other morals, merely a weapon in the\nhands of a certain type of man, with which that type struggled for\npower.\n\nBut bold as this step was, it constituted but the first of a series,\nthe next of which was to discover the type which had laid the\nfoundations of the Christian ideal. If it could be proved that these\nChristian values had been created by a noble species with the object of\nperpetuating that species, then Christianity would come forth from the\ninquiry vindicated to the hilt, and fill the damage done to its dogma\nwould not have deterred Nietzsche from standing by it and upholding it\nto his very last breath. Alas! Things turned out somewhat differently\nand Nietzsche was not by any means the least pained by the result.\nPursuing the inquiry with his usual unflinching and uncompromising\nhonesty, and avoiding no conclusion however unpleasant or fatal,\nNietzsche, the scion of a profoundly religions house, the lover of\norder and tradition, with the blood of generations of earnest believers\nin his veins, finally found himself compelled to renounce and even to\ncondemn, root and branch, the faith which had been the strength and\nhope of his forebears.\n\nBefore turning to the next chapter, where I shall explain how he\ncame to regard this step as inevitable, it should be said concerning\nNietzsche's philosophy in general, that it is essentially and through\nand through religious and almost prophetic in spirit. No careful\nreader of his works can doubt that Nietzsche was a deeply religious\nman. A glance at _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ alone would convince any\none of this; while in his constant references to religion throughout\nhis works, as \"a step to higher intellectuality,\"[5] as \"a means to\ninvaluable contentedness,\"[6] as \"a measure of discipline,\"[7] as a\npowerful social factor,[8] a more substantial confirmation of the fact\nis to be found.\n\nIt is well to bear in mind, however, throughout our study of Nietzsche,\nthat he had a higher type always in view; that he was also well aware\nthat this type could only be attained by the strict observance of a\nnew morality, and that if he opposed other forms of morality--more\nparticularly the Christian form--it was because he earnestly believed\nthat they were rearing an undesirable and even despicable kind of man.\n\n\"Verily men have made for themselves all their good and evil. Verily\nthey did not take it: they did not find it: it did not come down as a\nvoice from heaven.\"[9]\n\n\"Behold, the good and just! Whom do they hate most? Him who breaketh up\ntheir tables of values; the breaker, the law-breaker: he, however, is\nthe creator.\"[10]\n\n\"Verily a muddy stream is man. One must be at least a sea to be able to\nabsorb a muddy stream without becoming unclean.\"\n\n\"Behold, I teach you Superman: he is that sea; in him your great\ncontempt can sink.\"[11]\n\n\n[1] See also D.D. Aph. 81.\n\n[2] Z., p. 67.\n\n[3] Z., p. 65.\n\n[4] Z., p. 138.\n\n[5] G. E., p. 81.\n\n[6] G. E., p. 81.\n\n[7] G. E., p. 80.\n\n[8] G. M., 3rd Essay, Aph. 15.\n\n[9] Z., p. 67.\n\n[10] Z., p. 20.\n\n[11] Z., p. 8.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\nChapter III\n\n\nNietzsche the Moralist\n\n\nConceiving all forms of morality to be but weapons in the struggle\nfor power, Nietzsche concluded that every species of man must at\nsome time or other have taken to moralising, and must have called\nthat \"good\" which its instincts approved, and that \"bad\" which its\nenemies instincts approved. In Beyond Good and Evil, however, he\ntells us that after making a careful examination \"of the finer and\ncoarser moralities which have hitherto prevailed or still prevail on\nearth,\" he found certain traits recurring so regularly together, and so\nclosely connected with one another, that, finally, two primary types\nof morality revealed themselves to him. That is to say, after passing\nthe known moralities of the world in review, he was able to classify\nthem broadly into two types.\n\nHe observed that throughout human history there had been a continual\nand implacable war between two kinds of men; it must have begun in the\nremotest ages, and it continues to this day. It is the war between the\npowerful and the impotent, the strong and the weak, the givers and\nthe takers, the healthy and the sick, the happy and the wretched. The\npowerful formed their concept of \"good,\" and it was one which justified\ntheir strongest instincts. The impotent likewise acquired their view of\nthe matter, which was often precisely the reverse of the former view.\n\nIn this way Nietzsche arrived at the following broad generalisation:\nthat all the moralities of the world could be placed under one of two\nheads, _Master Morality or Slave Morality_.\n\nIn the first, the master morality, it is the oak which contends: I\nmust reach the sun and spread broad brandies in so doing; this I call\n\"good,\" and the herd that I shelter may also call it good. In the\nsecond, the slave morality, it is the shrub which says: I also want to\nreach the sun, these broad branches of the oak, however, keep the sun\nfrom me, therefore the oak's instincts are \"bad.\"\n\nIt is obvious that these two points of view exist and have existed\neverywhere on earth. Apart from national and racial distinctions,\nmankind does fall into the two broad classes of master and slave, or\nruler and subject. We also know that each of these classes must have\ndeveloped its moral code, and must have tried to protect its conduct\nand life therewith. But, what we did not know until Nietzsche pointed\nthe fact out to us, was: which morality is the more desirable and the\nmore full of promise for the future? Admitting that the master and the\nslave moralities are struggling for supremacy still, which of them\nought we to promote with every means in our power?--which of them\nis going to make life more attractive, more justifiable, and more\nacceptable on earth?\n\nThese are now questions of the utmost importance; because it is\nprecisely now that pessimism, nihilism, and other desperate faiths are\nbeginning to set their note of interrogation to human existence, and to\nshake our belief even in the desirability of our own survival.\n\nIt is now time for us to discover whence arises this contempt and\nhorror of life, and to lay the blame for it either at the door of the\nmaster or of the slave morality.\n\nIn order that we may understand how to set forth upon this inquiry, let\nus first form a mental image of the two codes as they must have been\nevolved by their originators.\n\nNietzsche reminds us before we start, however,[1] that in most communities\nthe two moralities have become so confused and mingled, in order\nto establish that compromise which is so dear to the hearts of the\npeaceful, that it would be almost a hopeless task to seek any society\non earth in which they are now to be seen juxtaposed in sharp contrast.\nBe this as it may, in order to recognise the blood of each when we come\nacross it, we have only to think of what must have occurred when the\nruling caste and the ruled class took to moralising.\n\nTaking the ruling caste first, it is clear that in their\nmorality, all is _good_ which proceeds from strength, power, health,\nwell-constitutedness, happiness, and awfulness; for the motive force\nbehind the people who evolved it was simply the will to discharge\na plenitude, a superabundance, of spiritual and physical wealth. A\nconsciousness of high tension, of a treasure that would fain give and\nbestow,--this is the mental attitude of the nobles. The antithesis\n\"good\" and \"bad\" to this first class means the same as \"noble\" and\n\"despicable.\" \"Bad\" in the master morality must be applied to the\ncoward, to all acts that spring from weakness, to the man with \"an eye\nto the main chance,\" who would forsake everything in order to live.\n\nThe creator of the master morality was he who, out of the very fulness\nof his soul, transfigured all he saw and heard, and declared it better,\ngreater, more beautiful than it appeared to the creator of the slave\nmorality. Great artists, great legislators, and great warriors belong\nto the class that created master morality.\n\nTurning now to the second class, we must bear in mind that it is the\nproduct of a community in which the struggle for existence is the\nprime life-motor. There, inasmuch as oppression, suffering, weariness,\nand servitude are the general rule, all will be regarded as good that\ntends to alleviate pain. Pity, the obliging hand, the warm heart,\npatience, industry, and humility,--these are undoubtedly the virtues\nwe shall here find elevated to the highest places; because they are\n_useful_ virtues; they make life endurable; they are helpful in the\nstruggle for existence. To this class, all that proceeds from strength,\nsuperabundance of spiritual or bodily power, or great health, is looked\nupon with loathing and mistrust, while that which is awful is the worst\nand greatest evil. He is good who is amenable, kind, unselfish, meek,\nand submissive; that is why, in all communities where slave morality is\nin the ascendant, a \"good fellow\" always suggests a man in possession\nof a fair modicum of foolishness and sentimentality.\n\nThe creator of slave-morality was one who, out of the poverty of his\nsoul, transfigured all he saw and heard, and declared it smaller,\nmeaner, and less beautiful than it appeared to the creator of the\nmaster values. Great misanthropists, pessimists, demagogues, tasteless\nartists, nihilists, spiteful authors and dramatists, and resentful\nsaints belong to the class that created slave-morality.\n\nThe first order of values are active, creative, Dionysiac. The\nsecond are passive, defensive, venomous, subterranean; to them\nbelong \"Adaptation,\" \"adjustment,\" and \"utilitarian relationship to\nenvironment.\"\n\nNow, seeing that mankind is undoubtedly moulded by the nature of the\nvalues which prevail over it, it is manifestly of paramount importance\nto the philosopher to know which order of values conduces to rear the\nmost desirable species of man, and then to advocate that order, with\nall the art and science at his disposal.\n\nNietzsche saw two lines of life: an ascending and a descending line.\nAt the end of the one he pictured an ideal type, robust in mind and\nbody, rich enough in spirit and vigour to make giving and bestowing\na necessary condition of its existence; at the end of the other line\nhe already perceived degeneracy, poverty of blood and spirit, and a\nsufficiently low degree of vitality to make parasitism a biological\nneed.\n\nHe believed that the first, or noble morality, when it prevailed, made\nfor an ascending line of life and therefore favoured the multiplication\nof a desirable type of man; and he was now equally convinced that\nwhenever ignoble or slave morality was supreme, life not only tended\nto follow the descending line, but that the very men whose existence\nit favoured were the least likely to stem the declining tide. Hence it\nseemed to him that the most essential of all tasks was to ascertain\nwhat kind of morality now prevailed, in order that we might immediately\ntransvalue our values, while there was still time, if we believed this\nchange to be necessary.\n\nWhat then are our present values? Nietzsche replies most emphatically\n--they are Christian values.\n\nIn the last chapter we saw that although Christian dogma was very\nrapidly becoming mere wreckage, its most earnest opposers and\ndestroyers nevertheless clung with fanatical faith to Christian\nmorality. Thus, in addition to the vast multitude of those professing\nthe old religion, there was also a host of atheists, agnostics,\nrationalists, and materialists, who, as far as Nietzsche was concerned,\ncould quite logically be classed with those who were avowedly\nChristian. And, as for the remainder--a few indifferent and perhaps\nnameless people,--what could they matter? Even they, perhaps, if hard\npressed, would have betrayed a sneaking, cowardly trust in Christian\nethics, if only out of a sense of security; and with these the total\nsum of the civilised world was fully made up.\n\nPerhaps to some this may appear a somewhat sweeping conclusion. To such\nas doubt its justice, the best advice that can be given is to urge them\nto consult the literature, ethical, philosophical, and otherwise, of\nthose writers whom they would consider most opposed to Christianity\nbefore the publication of Nietzsche's works; and they will then realise\nthat, with very few exceptions, mostly to be found among uninfluential\nand uncreative iconoclasts, the whole of the Western civilised world in\nNietzsche's time was firmly Christian in morals, and most firmly so,\nperhaps, in those very quarters where the dogma of the religion of pity\nwas most honestly disclaimed.\n\nIt had therefore become in the highest degree necessary to put these\nvalues under the philosophical microscope, and to discover to which\norder they belonged. Was Christianity the purveyor of a noble or of\na slave morality? The reply to this question would reveal the whole\ntendency of the modern world, and would also answer Nietzsche's\nsearching inquiry: \"Are we on the right track?\"\n\nPursuing Nietzsche's method as closely as we can, let us now turn to\nChristianity, as we find it to-day, and see whether it is possible to\nbring its values into line with one of the two broad classes spoken of\nin this chapter.\n\nIn the first place, Nietzsche discovers that Christianity is not a\nworld-approving faith. The very pivot upon which it revolves seems to\nbe the slandering and depreciating of this world, together with the\npraise and exaltation of a hypothetical world to come. To his mind it\nseems to draw odious comparisons between the things of this earth and\nthe blessings of heaven. Finally, it gushes in a very unsportsmanlike\nmanner over an imaginary beyond, to the detriment and disadvantage of\na \"here,\" of this earth, of this life, and posits another region--a\nnether region--for the accommodation of its enemies.[2]\n\nWhat, now, is the mental attitude of these \"backworldsmen,\" as\nNietzsche calls them, who can see only the world's filth? Who is likely\nto need the thought of a beyond, where he will live in bliss while\nthose he hates will writhe in hell? Such ideas occur only to certain\nminds. Do they occur to the minds of those who, by the very health,\nstrength, and happiness that is in them, transfigure all the world\n--even the ugliness in it--and declare it to be beautiful? Do they\noccur to the powerful who can chastise their enemies while their blood\nis still up? Admitting that the world may be surveyed from a hundred\ndifferent standpoints, is this particular standpoint which we now have\nunder our notice, that of a contented, optimistic, sanguine type, or\nthat of a discontented, pessimistic, an\u00e6mic one?\n\n\"To the pure all things are pure!--I, however, say unto you: To the\nswine all things are swinish.\"[3]\n\nNietzsche's sensitive car caught curious notes in the daily dronings of\nthose around him--notes that made him suspicious of the whole melody\nof modern life, and still more suspicions of the chorus executing it.\n\nHe heard to his astonishment: ... \"the wretched alone are the good;\nthe poor, the impotent, the lowly alone are good; only the sufferers,\nthe needy, the sick, the ugly are pious only they are godly; them alone\nblessedness awaits--but ye, the proud and potent, ye are for aye\nand evermore the wicked, the cruel, the lustful, the insatiable, the\ngodless; ye will also be, to all eternity, the unblessed, the cursed,\nand the damned.\"[4]\n\nHe continued listening intently, and, with his ear attuned anew, these\nsentiments broke strangely upon his senses:--\n\n\"Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.\n\n\"Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.\n\n\"Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.\n\n\"Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of\nGod.\"[5]\n\nThere was no time for brooding over stray thoughts; there was still\nmuch to be seen and hoard. When you want to catch some one napping, you\nkeep your eye eagerly upon him, and turn neither to the right nor to\nthe left. Nietzsche, it must be remembered, was at this stage treading\nsoftly towards Europe whom he believed to be \"napping.\"\n\nIn his lonely hermit cell he was able to catch all the sounds that\nrose from the city beneath him, and he heard perhaps more than the\ninhabitants themselves.\n\nHe could see them all fighting and quarrelling, and he was cheered,\nbecause he knew that where the great fight for power ceases, the\nstandard of life falls. But some he saw were wounded, others were\nactually unfit for the battlefield, a large number looked tired and\nlistless, and there were yet others--a goodly multitude--who were\nresentful at the sight of their superiors and who, like sulky children,\ndropped their arms in a pet and declared that they would not play any\nmore. And what were all these feeble and less viable mortals doing?\nThey were crying aloud, and making their deepest wishes known. They\nwere elevating their desiderata to the highest places amongst earthly\nvirtues--and driving back the others with _words_! Nietzsche thought\nof Reynard the Fox, who, at the very moment that he was about to be\nhanged, and with the rope already round his neck, succeeded by his\ndialectical skill in persuading the crowd to release him. For Nietzsche\ncould hear the weary, the wounded, and the incapable of the fight,\ncrying quite distinctly through their lips parched for rest: \"Peace is\ngood! Love is good! Love for one's neighbour is good! Ay, and even love\nfor one's enemy is good!\"[6]\n\nAnd some cried: \"It is God that avengeth me!\" to those who oppressed\nthem, and others said: \"The Lord avenge me!\"[7]\n\nWhereupon Nietzsche thought of the Jehovah of the Old Testament, the\nGod of revenge and thunderbolts; he recalled the sentiment: \"Ye shall\nchase your enemies and they shall fall fall before you by the sword,\"\nand he wondered how this had come to mean \"love your enemies,\" in the\nNew Testament. Had another type of men perhaps made themselves God's\nmouthpiece?\n\nYes, that must be so; for, in their holy book, he came across this\npassage, ascribed to one of their greatest saints:\n\n\"Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?\n\n\"For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew God, it\npleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.\n\n\"... Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many\nnoble _are called_:\n\n\"But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the\nwise: and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the\nthings which are mighty:\n\n\"And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God\nchosen, yea and things which are not, to bring to nought things that\nare.\"[8]\n\nHere, Nietzsche tells us, he began to hold his nose; but he still\nlistened; for there was yet more to be heard. From the smiles that were\nbreaking over the lips of those who read the above words, he gathered\nthat they must have overcome their unhappiness. Yes, indeed, they had.\nBut what did they call it? This was important--even the Christian view\nof unhappiness seemed significant to Nietzsche in this inquiry.\n\nTheir unhappiness, their wretchedness, they called a trial, a gift, a\ndistinction! Not really? Yes indeed! As Nietzsche points out: \"They\nare wretched, no doubt, all these mumblers and underground forgers,\nthough warmly seated together. But they tell us their wretchedness is a\nselection and distinction from God, that the dogs which are loved most\nare whipped, that their misery may perhaps also be a preparation, a\ntrial, a schooling; perhaps even more--something which at some time to\ncome will be refuted and paid back with immense interest in gold. No!\nin happiness. This they call 'blessedness.'\"[9]\n\nAt this point Nietzsche declares that he could stand it no longer.\n\"Enough, enough! Bad air! Bad air!\" he cried. \"Methinks this workshop\nof virtue positively reeks.\"\n\nHe had now realised in whose company he had been all this time.\n\nThese people who halted at nothing in order to elevate their weaknesses\nto the highest place among the virtues, and to monopolise goodness on\nearth--who called that good which was tame and soft and harmless,\nbecause they themselves could only survive in litters of cotton wool;\nwho coloured the earth with the darkness _that_ was in their own bodies;\n--who did not scruple to dub all manly and vital virtues odiously\nsinful and wicked, and who preferred to set the life of the whole\nworld at stake, rather than acknowledge that it was precisely their\nown second-rate, third-rate, or even fourth-rate, vitality which was\nthe greatest sin of all; who in one and the same breath preached their\nutilitarian \"universal love\" to the powerful, and then sent them to\neternal damnation in another world: Nietzsche asks, are these people\nthe supporters of a noble or of a slave morality?\n\nThe answer is obvious, and we need not labour the point. But it was so\nobvious to the lonely hermit, that the thought of it filled him with\nhorror and dread, and he was moved to leave his cell and to descend\ninto the plain, while there was yet time, with the object of urging us\nto transvalue our values.\n\nIn Christian values, Nietzsche read nihilism, decadence, degeneration,\nand death. They were calculated to favour the multiplication of the\nleast desirable on earth: and, as such, despite his antecedents,\nand with his one desire, \"the elevation of the type man,\" always\nbefore him, he condemned Christian morality from top to bottom.\nThis magnificent attempt on the part of the low, the base, and the\nworthless, to establish themselves as the most powerful on earth, must\nbe checked at all costs, and with terrible earnestness he exhorts us to\nalter our values.\n\n\"O my brethren, with whom lieth the greatest danger to the whole human\nfuture? Is it not with the good and the just?\n\n\"_Break up, break up, I pray you, the good and the just!_\"\n\nThis condemnation of Christian values, as slave values--which\nNietzsche regarded as his greatest service to mankind--he says he\nwould write on all walls. He tells us he came just in the nick of time;\nto-morrow might be too late.\n\n\"It is time for man to fix his goal. It is time for man to plant the\ngerm of his highest hope.\n\n\"His soil is still rich enough for that purpose. But that soil will one\nday be too poor and exhausted, and no lofty tree will any longer be\nable to grow thereon.\"[10]\n\n\n[1] G. E., p. 227\n\n[2] John xii. 25; 1 John ii. 15, 16; James iv. 4.\n\n[3] Z., p. 249.\n\n[4] G. M., 1st Essay, Aph. 7.\n\n[5] Matthew v.\n\n[6] Matthew xxiii. 39; Mark xiii. 31; Luke x. 27; Matthew v. 44.\n\n[7] 2 Luke xviii. 7, 8; Romans xii. 19; Revelation vi. 10.\n\n[8] I Corinthians i. 20, 21, 26, 27, 28.\n\n[9] G. M., 1st Essay, Aph. 14. See also Epistle to the Hebrews xii. 6,\nand Revelation iii. 19.\n\n[10] Z., p. 12\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\nChapter IV\n\n\nNietzsche the Evolutionist\n\n\n\"Transvalue your values or perish!\" This was the message of the\nhermit Nietzsche to the people inhabiting the valley into which he\nhad descended. \"Transvalue your values!\"--that is to say, make them\nwhat they once were, noble, life-approving, virile! For two thousand\nyears the roll of the world-wheel had been reversed--Stendhal had\nsaid that many years before Nietzsche lived--but it was left to\nNietzsche, Stendhal's admirer and pupil, to teach and prove this fact.\nStendhal, too, had cried out against the tameness, the lukewarmness,\nthe effeminacy of society; but Nietzsche took up this cry with a voice\nmore brazen than Stendhal's at a time when mankind was in much greater\nneed of it. Stendhal had pointed enthusiastically to the sun and to the\npassion of the south, and had donned a moral respirator whenever he\nturned to face the grey and depressing atmosphere of northern ideas and\nnorthern tepidness. Nietzsche follows his master's hint with alacrity,\nbut in doing so converts Stendhal's clarion notes into thunder, and the\nglint of Stendhal's rapier into strokes of lightning.[1]\n\nWhen Nietzsche began to write Europe was suffering from the worst kind\nof spiritual illness--weakness of will. Everywhere comfort and freedom\nfrom danger were becoming the highest ideals; everywhere, too, virtue\nwas being confounded with those qualities which led to the highest\npossible amount of security and tame, back-parlour pleasures; and man\nwas gradually developing into a harmless domesticated type of animal,\ncapable of performing a host of charming little drawing-room tricks\nwhich rejoiced the hearts of his womenfolk.\n\nSleep seemed to be the greatest accomplishment. It had become all\nimportant to have a good night's rest, and everything was done to\nachieve this end. A man no longer asked his heart what it dictated,\nwhen he stood irresolute before a daring deed, he simply consulted\nMorpheus, who warned him that he could not promise him a soft pillow if\nhe did anything that was ever so slightly naughty. In the end, Morpheus\nwould prevail, and thus all Europe was beginning to snore peacefully\nthe whole night through, with marvellous regularity, while manliness\nrotted and danger dwindled.[2]\n\nNietzsche protested against this state of affairs:--\"What is good? ye\nask. To be brave is good. Let the little schoolgirls say: To be good is\nsweet and touching at the same time. Ye say, a good cause will hallow\neven war? I say unto you: a good war halloweth every cause. War and\ncourage have done greater things than love!\"[3]\n\n\"I pass through this people and keep mine eyes open: they have\nbecome _smaller_, and ever become smaller: _the reason thereof is their\ndoctrine of happiness and virtue_.\n\n\"For they are moderate also in virtue--because they want comfort. With\ncomfort, however, moderate virtue only is compatible.\n\n\"Of man there is little here: therefore do their women make themselves\nmanly. For only he who is man enough, will _save the woman_ in woman.\n\n\"In their hearts, they want simply one thing most of all: that no one\nhurt them.\n\n\"That, however, is _cowardice_, though it be called virtue.\"[4]\n\nSome there were, of course, who were conscious of the dreadful\ncondition of things, and who deplored it, without, however, being able\nto put their finger on the root of the evil. Such people were most of\nthem pessimists, and, at the time that Nietzsche lived, Schopenhauer\nwas their leader.\n\nSensitive, noble-minded, artistic people, deprived by rationalistic\nand atheistic teachers of the belief in God, felt the ignobleness of\nEuropean hopes and aspirations, and knowing of no better creed and\npossessing the intelligence to see the hopelessness of things under the\nrule of the values which then prevailed, they succumbed to a mood of\nutter despair, subscribed to Schopenhauer's horror and loathing of the\nworld, and regarded the very optimism of childhood with suspicion and\nscorn.\n\nFor a while Nietzsche, too, was an ardent and devoted follower of\nSchopenhauer. Godlessness was bad enough to endure: but Godlessness in\na world of un-pagan and effeminate manhood, was too much for the loving\nstudent of classical antiquity, and he turned to Schopenhauer as to one\nwho, he thought, would understand how to steel his heart against life's\nmisery.\n\nBut this opiate did not maintain its sway over Nietzsche long. Our poet\nwas of a type too courageous and too vigorous to be able to surrender\nhimself so completely to sorrow and to Buddhistic consolations.\nGradually he began to regard the humble and resigned attitude of the\npessimist before life's hardships and modernity's greyness as unworthy\nof a spirited and active man. Slowly it dawned upon him that the root\nof the evil lay, not in the constitution of the earth, but in man\nhimself, and in man's actual values. If man could be roused to pursue\nhigher ideals; if he could be moved to kill the poisonous snake of\nignoble values that had crawled into his throat and choked him while\nhe was in slumber;[5] in fact, if man could surpass himself and regard\nthe reversal of the world's engines, for the last two thousand years,\nas Stendhal had done--that is to say, as the grossest error and most\nridiculous _faux pas_ that had ever been made--then, Nietzsche thought,\npessimism and Schopenhauer might go to the deuce, and conscious,\nsensitive, intellectual, and artistic Europe would once more be able\nto smile instead of shuddering at the thought of mankind's former\nqualities.\n\nThus it was the condemnation of modern values, together with the\nthought of man's being able to surpass himself, which gave Nietzsche\nthe grounds and the necessary strength for abandoning pessimism and\nembracing that wise optimism which characterises the whole of his works\nafter _The Joyful Wisdom_.\n\nTrue, God was dead; but that ought only to make man feel more\nself-reliant, more creative, prouder. Undoubtedly God was dead: but\nman could now hold himself responsible for himself. He could now seek\na goal in manhood, on earth, and one that was at least within the\ncompass of his powers. Long enough had he squinted heavenwards, with\nthe result, that he had neglected his task on earth.[6]\n\n\"Dead are all Gods!\" Nietzsche cries, \"now we will that Superman live!\"[7]\n\nWe are now before Nietzsche the evolutionist, and we must define him,\nrelatively to those other evolutionists with whom we, as English\npeople, are already familiar.\n\nTo begin with, then, let us dispose of the fundamental question:\nNietzsche's concept of life. We have had life variously defined for\nus by our own writers, and perhaps one among Nietzsche's greatest\ncontemporaries in England--Herbert Spencer--defined it in the\nmost characteristically English fashion. Spencer said: \"Life is\nactivity,\" or \"the continuous adjustment of internal relations to\nexternal relations.\" Now there is absolutely nothing in either of\nthese definitions, no suggestion or hint, which would lead the most\nsuspicious to conjecture what life really is. (Activity) reveals\nnothing of life's passions, its hate, its envy, its covetousness, its\nhard, inexorable principles; the process of the continual adjustments\nof internal relations to external relations might mean the serpent's\ndigestion of its prey, or the training of an opera singer's voice, and\nit might also be a scientific formula for a \"moral order of things.\"\nBoth definitions are delightfully unheroic and vague; though they do\nnot compromise the writer they compromise with everything else, and to\nstart out with them is to shelve the question in a way which allows of\nour subsequently weaving all the romance and sweetness possible into\nlife, and of making it as pretty as a little nursery story.\n\nNietzsche, always eager for a practical and tangible idea, naturally\ncould not accept these two definitions as expressing anything profound\nabout life at all. Looking into the race of nature, and reading her\nhistory from the amoeba with its predatory pseudo-podia, to the lion\nwith its murderous prehensile claws, he defined life practically,\nuprightly, and bravely, as \"appropriation, injury, conquest of the\nstrange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of its own forms,\nincorporation, and, at least, putting it mildest, exploitation.\"[8]\n\nThus, as we see, from the start Nietzsche closes his eyes at nothing,\nhe does not want life to be a pretty tale if it is not one. He wants\nto know it as it is: for he is convinced that this is the only way of\narriving at sound principles as to the manner in which human existence\nshould be led.\n\n\"Appropriation,\" then, he takes as a fact: he does not argue it away,\nany more than he tries to argue away \"injury,\" \"conquest of the strange\nand weak,\" \"suppression,\" and \"incorporation.\" These things are only\ntoo apparent, and he states them bravely in his definition. We know\nlife is all this; but how much more comfortable it is, when we are\nsitting in our soft easy-chairs before our cheerful fires, to think\nthat life is merely activity!\n\nTo believe that there is a moral order in the universe is to believe\nthat these unpleasant things in Nietzsche's definition will one day\nbe overcome. This was the position Christianity assumed from the\nstart. Put, though it was excusable in a religion fighting for power,\nand compelled to use nice and attractive words for its followers, to\nsuppose that all the misery on earth will one day be transformed by\nGod's wisdom into perfect bliss; such an attitude is quite unpardonable\nin the case of a philosopher or even of a poet. When Browning chanted\nsmugly: \"God's in His heaven: All's right with the world,\" he confessed\nhimself a mediocre spirit with one stroke of the pen. And when Spencer\nwrote that the blind process of evolution \"must inevitably favour all\nchanges of nature which increase life and augment happiness,\" he did\nthe same. We may now perhaps understand Nietzsche's impatience of his\npredecessors and contemporaries, who refused to see precisely what he\nsaw in the face of nature.\n\nBut even in his extended definition of life, the modern biologist\nbrings himself no nearer to Nietzsche's honest standpoint, and for the\nfollowing reasons:--\n\nThe modern biologist says, this \"activity\" he speaks of has a precise\nmeaning. It connotes \"the struggle for existence,\" or in other words\n\"self-defence.\" (Again he is looking at life through moral or Christian\nglasses; because if every thing on earth is done in self-defence, even\nthe devil himself is argued out of existence, and God remains creator\nof the \"good\" alone.) Nietzsche replies by denying this flatly. He says\nthat the definition is again inadequate. He warns us not to confound\nMalthus with nature.[9] He admits that the struggle occurs, but only as\nan exception. \"The general aspect of life is not a state of want or\nhunger; it is rather a state of opulence, luxuriance, and even absurd\nprodigality--where there is a struggle, it is a struggle for power.\"\n--Will to power and not will to live is the motive force of life.\n\n\"Wherever I found living matter,\" he says, \"I found will to power, and\neven in the servant I found the yearning to be master.\n\n\"Only where there is life, there is will: though a not will to live,\nbut thus I teach thee--WILL TO POWER.\"[10]\n\nIs there no aggression without the struggle for existence? Is there\nno voluptuousness in a position of power for us own sake? Of course\nthere is! And one wonders how these English biologists could ever have\nbeen schoolboys without noticing these facts. As Nietzsche points out,\nhowever, they are every one of them labouring under the Christian\nideal still--in spite of all their upsetting of the first chapter of\nGenesis, and in spite of all their blasting of the miracles. Put, if\nlife is the supreme aim of all, how is it that many things are valued\nhigher than life by living beings? If the will to live sometimes\nfinds itself overpowered by another will--more particularly in great\nwarriors, great prophets, great artists, and great heroes--what is\nthis mightier force which thus overpowers it? We have heard what\nNietzsche calls it--it is the Will to Power.\n\n\"Psychologists should bethink themselves before putting down the\ninstinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic\nbeing. A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength--life\nitself is Will to Power; self-preservation is only one of the indirect\nand most frequent results thereof.\"[11]\n\nIn spite of everything we have already said, Nietzsche's disagreement\nwith our own biologists may still seem to many but a play upon words.\nA moment's meditation, however--more particularly over the passage\njust quoted--will show that it is really much deeper than this. It is\none thing to regard an animal as a mere automaton, prowling around to\nsatisfy its hunger, and happy to remain inactive when the sensation of\nhunger is appeased, and quite another to regard an animal as a battery\nof accumulated forces which _must_ be discharged at all costs (and for\ngood or evil), with only temporary lapses of purely self-preservative\ndesires and self-preservative actions. All the different consequences\nof these two views will occur to the thinker in an instant.\n\nUpon this basis, then, the Will to Power, Nietzsche builds up a\ncosmogony which also assumes that species have been evolved; but again,\nin the processes of that evolution he is at variance with Darwin and\nall the natural-selectionists.\n\nNietzsche cannot be persuaded that \"mechanical adjustment to ambient\nconditions,\" or \"adaptation to environment\"--both purely passive,\nmeek, and uncreative functions--should be given the importance,\nas determining factors, which the English and German schools give\nthem. With Samuel Butler, he protests against this \"pitchforking of\nmind and spirit out of the universe,\" and points imperatively to\nan inner creative will in living organisms, which ultimately makes\nenvironment and natural conditions subservient and subject. In the\n_Genealogy of Morals_[12] he makes it quite clear that he would ascribe\nthe greatest importance to a power in the organism itself, to \"the\nhighest functionaries in the animal, in which the life-will appears\nas an active and formative principle,\" and that even in the matter\nof the mysterious occurrence of varieties (sports) he would seek for\ninner causes. Darwin himself threw out only a hint in this direction;\nthat is why it is safe to suppose that, if Nietzsche and Darwin are\never reconciled, it will probably be precisely on this ground. In\nthe _Origin of Species_, speaking of the causes of variability, Darwin\nsaid: \"... There are two factors, namely the nature of the organism,\nand the nature of the conditions. _The former seem to be much the more\nimportant_,[13] for nearly similar variations sometimes arise under, as\nfar as we can judge, dissimilar conditions; and on the other hand,\ndissimilar variations arise under conditions which appear to be\nuniform.\"\n\nThus differing widely from the orthodox school of evolutionists,\nNietzsche nevertheless believed their hypothesis to be sound; but once\nmore he has an objection to raise. Why did they halt where they halted?\n\nIf the process is a fact, if things have become what they are, and\nhave not always been so; then why should we rest on our oars? If it\nwas possible for man to struggle up from barbarism, and still more\nremotely from the lower Primates, and reach the zenith of his physical\ndevelopment; why, Nietzsche asks, should he not surpass himself and\nattain to Superman by evolving in the same decree volitionally and\nmentally?\n\n\"The most careful ask to-day: 'How is man preserved?' But Zarathustra\nasketh as the only and first one: 'How is man surpassed?'[14]\n\n\"All beings (in your genealogical ladder) have created something beyond\nthemselves, and are ye going to be the ebb of this great tide?\n\n\"Behold I teach you Superman!\"[15]\n\nAnd now, again, at the risk of being monotonous, I must point to yet\nanother difference between Nietzsche and the prevailing school of\nevolutionists. Whereas the latter, in their unscrupulous optimism,\nbelieved that out of the chaotic play of blind forces something highly\ndesirable and \"good\" would ultimately be evolved; whereas they tacitly,\nthough not avowedly, believed that their \"fittest\" in the struggle\nfor existence would eventually prove to be the best--in fact that\nwe should \"muddle through\" to perfection somehow, and that something\nreally noble and important would be sure to result from John Brown's\ncontest with Harry Smith for the highest place in an insurance office,\nfor instance; Nietzsche disbelieved from the bottom of his heart in\nthis chance play of blind and meaningless tendencies. He said: Given\na degenerate, mean, and base environment and the fittest to survive\ntherein will be the man who is best adapted to degeneracy, meanness,\nand baseness--therefore the worst kind of man. Given a community of\nparasites, and it may be that the flattest, the slimiest, and the\nsoftest, will be the fittest to survive. Such faith in blind forces\nNietzsche regarded merely as the survival of the old Christian belief\nin the moral order of things, fogged out in scientific apparel to\nsuit modern tastes. He saw plainly, that if man were to be elevated\nat all, no blind struggle in his present conditions would ever effect\nthat end; for the present conditions themselves make those the fittest\nto survive in them who are persons of absolutely undesirable gifts\nand propensities.\n\nHe declared (and here we are in the very heart of Nietzscheism)\nthat nothing but a total change in these conditions, a complete\ntransvaluation of all values, would ever alter man and make him more\nworthy of his past. For it is values, values, and again values, that\nmould men, and rear men, and create men; and ignoble values make\nignoble men, and noble values make noble men! Thus it was in the\nbeginning, is now, and ever shall be, truth without end--for men.\n\nNietzsche realised \"all that could still be made out of man, through\na favourable accumulation and augmentation of human powers and\narrangements\"; he knew \"how unexhausted man still is for the greatest\npossibilities, and how often in the past the type man has stood in\nmysterious and dangerous crossways, and has launched forth upon the\nright or the wrong road, impelled merely by a whim, or by a hint from\nthe giant Chance.\"[16] And now, he was determined that, whether man wished\nto listen or not, at least he should be told of the ultimate disaster\nthat awaited him, if he continued in his present direction. For, there\nwas yet time!\n\nIt is to higher men that Nietzsche really makes his appeal, the leaders\nand misleaders of the mob. He had no concern with the multitude and\nthey did not need him. The world had seen philosophies enough which had\nadvocated the cause of the \"greatest number\"--English libraries were\nstacked with such works. What was required was, to convert those rare\nmen who give the direction--the heads of the various throngs--the\nvanguard.\n\n\"Awake and listen, ye lonely ones! From the future, winds are coming\nwith a gentle beating of wings, and there cometh good tidings for fine\nears.\n\n\"Ye lonely ones of to-day, ye who stand apart, ye shall one day be a\npeople: from you, who have chosen yourselves, a chosen people shall\narise and from it Superman.\"[17]\n\n\n[1] G. E., Aph. 254, 255, 256.\n\n[2] See Schopenhauer on _The Vanity and Suffering of Life_.\n\n[3] Z., p. 52.\n\n[4] Z., pp. 204, 205, 206.\n\n[5] Z., pp. 192, 193.\n\n[6] See Z., p. 98 _et seq_.\n\n[7] Z., p. 91.\n\n[8] G. E., p. 226.\n\n[9] Twilight of the Idols, Part 9, Aph. 14.\n\n[10] Z., pp. 136, 137.\n\n[11] G. E., p. 20.\n\n[12] Second Essay, Aph. 12.\n\n[13] The italics are mine.--A. M. L.\n\n[14] Z., p. 351.\n\n[15] Z., p. 6.\n\n[16] G. E., p. 130.\n\n[17] Z., p. 89.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\nChapter V\n\n\nNietzsche the Sociologist\n\n\nFor Nietzsche, as we are beginning to see, a fitting title is hard to\nfind. Unless we coin new names for things that have not yet been given\nnames, Nietzsche remains without a title among his fellow thinkers.\nHe has been called the \"arch-anarchist,\" which he is not; he has been\ncalled the \"preacher of brutality,\" which he is not; he has been called\nthe \"egoist,\" which he is not. But all these titles were conferred\nupon him by people whose interest it was to reduce him in the public's\nesteem. If he must be named, however, and we suppose he must, the best\ntitle would obviously be that which would distinguish him most exactly\nfrom his colleagues. Now, how does Nietzsche stand out from the ranks\nof almost all other philosophers? By the fact that he was throughout\nhis life an \"Advocate of Higher Man.\" Whereas other philosophers and\nscholars had always thought they had some divine message to impart in\nthe cause of the \"greatest number\"; Nietzsche--the typical miner and\nunderminer--believed that his mission was to stand for a neglected\nminority, for higher men, for the gold in the mass of quartz.\n\nNo title therefore could be more fair, and at the same time more\nessentially descriptive, than the \"Advocate of Higher Man,\" and in\ngiving this title to Nietzsche, we immediately outline him against that\nassembly of his colleagues who were \"Advocates of the Greatest Number.\"\n\nIt is of the first importance to humanity that its higher individuals\nshould be allowed to attain their full development, for only by means\nof its heroes can the human race be led forward step by step to higher\nand ever higher levels. In view of the fact that Nietzsche realised\nthis, some of his principles, when given general application, may\nvery naturally appear to be both iniquitous and subversive, and those\nwho read him with the idea that he is preaching a gospel for all are\nperfectly justified if they turn away in horror from his works. The\nmistake they make, however, is to suppose that he, like most other\nphilosophers with whom they are familiar, is an advocate of the\ngreatest number.\n\nLet us take a single instance. In _The Honey Sacrifice_[1] the phrase\n\"Become what thou art,\" occurs. Now it is obvious that however\nlegitimate this command may be when applied to the highest and best, it\nbecomes dangerous and seditious when applied to each individual of the\nmass of mankind. And this explains the number of errors that are rife\nconcerning Nietzsche's gospel. Whenever Nietzsche spoke esoterically,\nhis enemies declared that he was pronouncing maxims for the greatest\nnumber; whenever he spoke for the greatest number, as he does again\nand again in his allusions to the mediocre, he was accused of speaking\nesoterically. How would any other philosophy have fared under such\nmisrepresentation and calumny?\n\nNietzsche could not believe in equality; for within him justice said\n\"men are not equal!\" Those to whom it gives pleasure to think that men\nare equal, he conjures not to confound pleasure with truth, and, like\nProfessor Huxley, he finds himself obliged to recognise \"the natural\ninequality of men.\"\n\nBut, far from deploring this fact, he would fain have accentuated\nand intensified it. This inequality, to Nietzsche, is a condition to\nbe exploited and to be made use of by the legislator. The higher men\nof a society in which gradations of rank are recognised as a natural\nand desirable condition constitute the class in which the hopes of a\nreal elevation of humanity may be placed. The Divine Manu, Laotse,\nConfucius, Muhammad, Jesus Christ--all these men, who in their sublime\narrogance actually converted man into a mirror in which they saw\nthemselves and their doctrines reflected, and who in thus converting\nman into a mirror really made him feel happy in the function of\nreflecting alone:--these leaders are the types Nietzsche refers to when\nhe speaks of higher men.\n\nRuling, like all other functions which require the great to justify\nthem, has fallen into disrepute, thanks to the incompetent amateurs\nthat have tried their hand at the game. As in the Fine Arts, so in\nleading and ruling; it is the dilettantes that have broken our faith\nin human performances. The really great ruler reaches his zenith in\ndominating an epoch, a party, a nation or the world, to the best\nadvantage of each of these; but it does not follow that the motive\npower propelling him should necessarily be the conscious pursuit of\nthe best advantage of those he rules,--this is merely a fortuitous\ncircumstance curiously associated with greatness in ruling,--generally\nspeaking, however, his only conscious motive is the gratification of\nhis inordinate will to power.\n\nThe innocent fallacy of democracy lies in supposing that by a mere\nsearch, by a mere rummaging and fumbling among a motley populace, one\nman or several men can be found, who are able to take the place of the\nrare and ideal ruler. As if the mere fact of searching and rummaging\nwere not in itself a confession of failure,--a confession that this\nman does not exist! For if he existed he would have asserted himself!\nhe would have needed no democratic exploration party to unearth him.\n\n\"There is no sorer misfortune in all human destiny, than when the\npowerful of the earth are not at the same time the first men. Then\neverything becometh false and warped and monstrous.\"[2]\n\n\"For, my brethren, the best shall rule: the best will rule! And where\nthe teaching is different, there--the best _is lacking_.\"[3]\n\nHere we observe that Nietzsche advocated an aristocratic arrangement\nof society. A firm believer in tradition, law, and order, and, in\nspite of his opponents' accusations, an undaunted enemy of Anarchy and\n_laisser-aller_, he saw in Socialism and Democracy nothing more than\ntwo slave organisations for the raising of every individual to his\nhighest power, individuality made as general as possible; or, in other\nwords, Socialism and Democracy meant to Nietzsche the annihilation of\nall higher aims and hopes. It meant valuing all the weeds and noble\nplants alike, and with such a valuation, the noble plants, being in\nthe minority, must necessarily suffer and ultimately die out. Where\neverybody is somebody, nobody is anybody. Socialism, _i.e._ organised\nIndividualism, seemed to Nietzsche merely the reflection in politics\nof the Christian principle that all men are alike before God. Grant\nimmortality to every Tom, Dick, and Harry, and, in the end, every Tom,\nDick, or Harry will believe in equal rights before he can even hope\nto reach Heaven, but to deny the privileges of rare men implies the\nproscription from life of all high trees with broad brandies,--those\nbroad brandies that protect the herd from the rain, but which also keep\nthe sun from the envious and ambitious shrub,--and thus it would mean\nthat the world would gradually assume the appearance of those vast\nScotch moors of gorse and heather, where liberalism and mediocrity are\nrampant, but where all loftiness is dead.\n\nNietzsche was a profound believer in the value of tradition, in the\nvalue of general discipline lasting over long periods. He knew that all\nthat is great and lasting and intensely moving has been the result of\nthe law of castes or of the laws governing the individual members of a\ncaste throughout many generations.[4] This building up of the rare man, of\nthe great man (of the cultivated type in a Darwinian sense) as every\nscientist is aware, is utterly frustrated by any thing in the way of\ninjudicious and careless cross-breeding (see Darwin on the degeneration\nof the cultivated types of animals through the action of promiscuous\nbreeding), by democratic _m\u00e9salliances_ of all kinds, and by the laisser\naller which is one of the worst evils of that kind of freedom which\ntends to prevail when the slaves of a community have succeeded in\nasserting and expressing their insignificant and miserable little\nindividualities.\n\nBelieving all this, Nietzsche could not help but advocate the rearing\nof a select and aristocratic caste, and in none of his exhortations is\nhe more sincere than when he appeals to higher men to sow the seeds of\na nobility for the future.\n\n\"O my brethren, I consecrate you to be, and show unto you the way unto\na now nobility. Ye shall become procreators and breeders and sowers of\nthe future.\n\n\"Verily, ye shall not become a nobility one might buy, like shopkeepers\nwith shopkeepers' gold. For all that hath its fixed price is of little\nworth.\n\n\"Not whence ye come be your honour in future, but whither ye go!\" Your\nwill, and your foot that longeth to get beyond yourselves,--be that\nyour new honour!\"\n\n\"Your children's land ye shall love (be this your new nobility), the\nland undiscovered in the remotest sea! For it I bid you set sail and\nseek!\"[5]\n\n\"Every elevation of the type man,\" says Nietzsche, \"has hitherto been\nthe work of an aristocratic society--and so will it always be--a\nsociety believing in a long scale of gradations of rank and differences\nof worth among human beings, and requiring slavery in some form or\nother. Without the _pathos of distance_, such as grows out of the\nincarnated differences of classes, out of the constant outlooking and\ndownlooking of the ruling caste on subordinates and instruments, and\nout of their equally constant practice of obeying and commanding, of\nkeeping down and keeping at a distance that other more mysterious\npathos could never have arisen, the longing for an ever new widening\ndistance within the soul itself, the formation of ever higher, rarer,\nfurther, more extended, more comprehensive states, in short, just the\nelevation of the type 'man,' the continued 'self-surmounting of man,'\nto use a moral formula in a super-moral sense.\"[6]\n\nI cannot attempt to give a full account of the society Nietzsche would\nfain have seen established on earth. It will be found exhaustively\ndescribed in Aph. 57 of the _Antichrist_: while in the book of _Manu_ (Max\nM\u00fcller's \"Sacred Books of the East,\" No. 25), similar sociological\nprescriptions are to be found, correlated with all the imposing\nmachinery of divine revelation, supernatural authority, and religious\nearnestness.\n\nBriefly, Nietzsche says this:--\n\nIt is ridiculous to pretend to treat every one without regard to those\nnatural distinctions which are manifested by superior intellectuality,\nor exceptional muscular strength, or mediocrity of spiritual and\nbodily powers, or inferiority of both. He tells us that it is not the\nlegislator, but nature herself, who establishes these broad classes,\nand to ignore them when forming a society would be just as foolish as\nto ignore the order of rank among materials and structural principles\nwhen building a monument. Though the base of a pyramid does not require\nto be of the very finest marble, we know it must be both broad and\nmassive. Nietzsche declares that no society has any solidarity which\nis not founded upon a broad basis of mediocrity. Though the stones\nget fewer in the layers as we ascend to the top of the pyramid, we\nknow that their gradation is necessary if the highest point is to be\nreadied. Nietzsche believes in the long scale of gradations of rank\nwith the ascending line leading always to the highest--even if he be\nonly a single individual. Though the very uppermost point consists of a\nsingle stone, it is around that single stone that the weather will rage\nmost furiously and the sun shine most gorgeously. That single stone\nwill be the first to cleave the heavy shower, and the first, for, to\nmeet the lightning. Nietzsche says: \"Life always becomes harder towards\nthe _summit_,--the cold increases, responsibility increases.\"[7]\n\n    \"Saepius ventis agitatur ingens\n    pinus, et celsae graviore casu\n    decidunt turres, feriuntque summos\n        fulgura montes.\"[8]--HORACE, _Carm_. II. X.\n\nThus he would have the intellectually superior, those who can bear\nresponsibility and endure hardships, at the head. Beneath them are\nthe warriors, the physically strong, who are \"the guardians of right,\nthe keepers of order and security, the king above all as the highest\nformula of warrior, judge, and keeper of the law. The second in rank\nare the executive of the most intellectual.\" And below this caste are\nthe mediocre. \"Handicraft, trade, agriculture, _science_, the greater\npart of art, in a word, the whole _compass_ of business activity,\nis exclusively compatible with an average amount of ability and\npretension.\" At the very base of the social edifice, Nietzsche sees\nthe class of man who thrives best when he is well looked after and\nclosely observed,--the man who is happy to serve, not because he must,\nbut because he is what he is,--the man uncorrupted by political and\nreligious lies concerning equality, liberty, and fraternity,--who is\nhalf conscious of the abyss which separates him from his superiors, and\nwho is happiest when performing those acts which are not beyond his\nlimitations.\n\nHe forestalls this sketch of his ideal society by enunciating the moral\ncode wherewith he would transvalue our present values, and I shall now\ngive this code without a single remark or comment, feeling quite sure\nthat the reader who has understood Nietzsche so far will not require\nany assistance in seeing that it is the necessary and logical outcome\nof the rest of his teaching.\n\n       *        *        *        *        *\n\n\"What is good? All that increases the feeling of power, will to power,\npower itself in man.\n\n\"What is bad?--All that proceeds from weakness.\n\n\"What is happiness?--The feeling that power _increases_, that resistance\nis overcome.\n\n\"Not contentedness, but more power; not peace at any price, but\nwarfare; not virtue, but capacity (virtue in the Renaissance style,\nvirt\u00f9 free from any moralic acid).\"[9]\n\n       *        *        *        *        *\n\nI cannot well close this chapter on Nietzsche's sociological views\nwithout touching upon two of the most important elements in modern\nsociety, and his treatment of them. I refer to \"altruism\" and to\n\"pity.\" I am more particularly anxious to express myself clearly on\nthese two points, inasmuch as I know how many erroneous opinions\nare current in regard to Nietzsche's attitude towards them. In all\ngregarious communities, as is well known, altruism and pity have become\nvery potent life-preserving factors, and it would be hard to find\nin Europe to-day, a city, a town, or a village, in which these two\nqualities are not considered the most creditable of virtues. Now apart\nfrom the fact that this excessive praise of compassion and selflessness\nis a sign of slave values being in the ascendant, we must bear in\nmind two things: (1) that under our present system of society, in\nwhich cruelties are perpetrated far more brutal than any that could be\nfound in antiquity, a sort of maudlin sentimentality has arisen among\nthe oppressing classes, whereby they attempt to counterbalance their\ndeeds of oppression with lavish acts of charity. This sentimentality\nis a sign that their conscience is no longer clean for the act of\noppressing; because in their heart of hearts they feel themselves\nunworthy of being at the top: (2) that wherever two or three human\nbeings collect together, a certain modicum of altruism and compassion\nis a prerequisite of their social unity.\n\nDismissing observation one as the mere expression of a regrettable\nfact which scarcely requires substantiation, and which is responsible\nfor more than three-quarters of the anomalies that characterise\nmodern Western civilisation; and passing over the suggestion that the\nexcessive praise of compassion and selflessness denotes an ascendency\nof slave values (for we have dealt with this question in Chapter III.),\nlet us turn to the more abstract proposition enunciated in observation\ntwo and try to grasp Nietzsche's treatment of it.\n\nIn the first place, let us understand that there are two kinds of pity\nand selflessness, just as there are two kinds of generosity. There\nis the pity, the selflessness and the generosity which is preached\nand praised as a virtue by him who urgently requires them because he\nis ill-constituted, needy, and hungry; and there is the pity, the\nselflessness and the generosity which suggests itself to the man\noverflowing with health, trust in the future, and confidence in his\nown powers. To such a man, pity, selflessness, and generosity are a\nmeans of discharging a certain plenitude of power, and in his case\ngiving and bestowing are natural functions. In the first instance, the\nthree virtues are preached from a utilitarian standpoint which tends to\nincrease an undesirable type; in the second, they are the sign of the\nexistence of a desirable type.\n\nLet us hear Nietzsche--\n\n\"A man who says: 'I like that, I take it for my own, and mean to guard\nit and protect it from everyone'; and the man who can conduct a case,\ncarry out a resolution, remain true to an opinion, keep hold of a\nwoman, punish and overthrow insolence; a man who has his indignation\nand his sword, and to whom the weak, the suffering, the oppressed, and\neven the animals willingly submit and naturally belong; in short, a man\nwho is a master by nature--when such a man has sympathy, well! that\nsympathy has value! But of what account is the sympathy of those who\nsuffer! or of those even who preach sympathy!\"\n\nWherever we find anything akin to \"pity,\" even in nature: the suckling\nof the young, the maintenance of dependants (the lion's attitude\ntowards the jackal), the protection of the helpless young (as in many\nfish and mammals), it is always the superabundance of the giver and his\nWill to Power which creates the pitiful act.\n\nBut the pity which most of us understand as a virtue in Europe to-day,\nis merely a sort of sickly sensitiveness and irritability towards pain,\nan effeminate absence of control in the presence of suffering, which\nhas nothing whatever to do with our powers of alleviating the misery\nwe contemplate, and which is only compatible either with excessive\nsentimentality or with weak and overstrained nerves. In that case all\nit does is to add to the misery of this world, and to elevate to a\nvirtue that which is perhaps one of the saddest signs of the times. It\nis then indiscriminate, rash, and short-sighted, and gives rise to more\nevil than it tries to dispel.\n\n\"Ah, where in the world have there been greater follies than with the\npitiful? And what in the world hath caused more suffering than the\nfollies of the pitiful?\n\n\"Woe unto all loving ones who have not an elevation which is above\ntheir pity!\"[10]\n\nThe legislator or the leader (and it is to him, remember, that\nNietzsche appeals), is often obliged to leave dozens to die by the\nwayside, and has to do so with a clean conscience. If the march he\nis organising requires certain sacrifices, he must be ready to make\nthem; the slavish pity, then, which would sacrifice the greater to\nthe less, must have been overcome by him in his own heart., and he\nmust have learnt that hardness which is wider in its sympathies, more\npresbyopic in its love, and less immediate in its effect. But he alone\ncan feel like this who has something to give to those he leads, _i.e._\nhis protection and guidance, his promise of a better land.\n\n\"Myself I would sacrifice to my design, and my neighbour as well--such\nis the language of creators.\n\n\"All creators, however, are hard.\"[11]\n\nNow turning to the question of egoism _cru et vert_, which, according to\nsome, is the very basis and core of Nietzscheism, what are the points\nwhich strike us most in Nietzsche's standpoint? To begin with, in this\nquestion, as in all others, his honesty is paramount, and we become\nconscious of it the moment we read his first line on the subject.\nWhere Nietzsche discusses matters of which others are wont to speak\nwith heaving breasts, florid language, and tearful voices, he takes\nparticular pains to be clear, concise, calculating and cold--hence\nperhaps the hatred he has provoked in those who depend for their effect\nupon the impression of benevolence which their watery eyes, their\ncracked, good-natured voices, and their high-falutin' words make upon a\nmultitude.\n\nNietzsche puts his linger on the very centre of the question of egoism,\nhe simply says: \"Not every one has the right to be an egoist. Whereas\nin some egoism would be a virtue, in others it may be an insufferable\nvice which should be stamped out at all costs.\"\n\nIn whom then is egoism a vice?\n\nObviously in him who is physiologically botched, below mediocrity in\nspirit and body, mean, despicable, and even ugly.\n\nEgoism in such a man means concentrating certain interests, and not\nalways the least valuable, upon the promotion and enhancement of\nan undesirable element in society. The egoism of him who is below\nmediocrity is a form of tyranny which leads to nothing, save, perhaps,\na Heaven where the _haute vol\u00e9e_ will consist of the whole scum and dross\nof humanity. Such egoism leads humanity downwards: it practically says:\n\"I, the bungled and the botched, I the poor in spirit and body, I the\nmean, despicable and ugly, want my kind to be all-important, paramount\nand on the top--I the least desirable wish to prevail.\" But this\negoism would mean humanity's ruin, it would mean humanity's suicide and\nannihilation: it would certainly mean humanity's degradation. When such\negoism says: \"I will have all,\" the only decent retort is deafness.\nWhen such egoism says: \"I have as much right to live and flourish as\nthe well-constituted, the superior in spirit and body, the beautiful\nand the happy,\" wisdom replies with a shrill of its shoulders. And when\nsuch egoism preaches altruism--then! Then woe to all those who are\ntempted to practise one virtue more! Woe to humanity! Woe to the whole\nworld!\n\nThere is, on the other hand, a form of egoism, which is both virtuous\nand noble. It is the egoism of him whose multiplication would make the\nworld better, more desirable, happier, healthier, superior in spirit\nand body. Egoism in such a case is a moral duty; wherever, _in such a\ncase_, giving, bestowing--altruism in fact--is not compatible with\nsurvival, then egoism becomes the highest principle of all, and it is\nin such circumstances that altruism may become a vice.\n\nNow let us hear Nietzsche's own words:--\n\n\"Selfishness,\" he says, \"has as much value as the physiological value\nof him who possesses it: it may be very valuable or it may be vile\nand contemptible. Each individual may be looked at with respect to\nwhether he represents an ascending or a descending line of life. When\nthat is determined, we have a canon for determining the value of his\nselfishness. If he represent the ascent in the line of life, his value\nis in fact very great--and on account of the collective life which\nin him makes a further step, the concern about his maintenance, about\nproviding his optimum of conditions, may even be extreme... If\nhe represent descending development, decay, chronic degeneration, or\nsickening, he has little worth, and the greatest fairness would have\nhim _take away_ as little as possible from the well-constituted. He is\nthen no more than their parasite.\"[12]\n\nThis is all clear enough; but it is quite conceivable that a\nmisunderstanding of it might lead to the most perverted notions of what\nNietzsche actually stood for, and when I hear people inveighing against\nthe so-called egoism of his teaching, and declaring it poisonous on\nthat account, I often wonder whether they have really made any attempt\nat all to comprehend the above passage, and whether there is not\nperhaps something wrong with language itself, that a thought which to\nsome seems expressed so clearly and unmistakably, should still prove\nconfusing and incomprehensible to others.\n\nSpeaking once more to higher men, then, Nietzsche tells them, with\nsome reason on his side, that altruism may be their greatest danger,\nthat altruism may be even their greatest temptation, that there are\ntimes when they must avoid it as they would avoid a plague. In periods\nof gestation, when plans and dreams of plans for the elevation of\nthemselves and their fellows are taking shape in their minds, altruism\nmay lure them sideways, it may make them diverge from their path, and\nit may make mankind one great thought the poorer. In this sense, and\nin this sense alone, does our author deprecate the altruistic virtues;\nbut, again, I venture to remind readers that it is the simplest thing\non earth to awaken suspicion against him by declaring, as some have\ndeclared, that his deprecation of altruism applies to all.\n\nNo greater nonsense could be talked about Nietzsche than to say that he\npreached universal egoism. Universal egoism as opposed to select egoism\nis behind all the noisiest movements to-day--it is behind Socialism,\nDemocracy, Anarchy, and Nihilism--but it is not behind Nietzscheism,\nand nobody who reads him with care could ever think so.\n\nWith these observations in mind, we can read the following passages\nfrom _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ without either surprise or indignation;\nindeed we may even learn a new valuation from them which will alter our\nwhole outlook on life, though no such sudden revulsion of feeling need\nnecessarily follow a study of Nietzsche's doctrine. Only when we have\ngiven his thoughts time to become linked up and co-ordinated in our\nminds are we likely to find that our view of the world has become in\nthe least decree transformed.\n\n        *        *        *        *        *        *\n\n\"Do I advise you to love your neighbour? leather do I advise you to\nflee from your neighbour and to love the most remote.\n\n\"Higher than love to your neighbour is love unto the most remote future\nman.\n\n\"It is the more remote (your children and your children's children) who\npay for your love unto your neighbour.[13]\n\n\"Your children's land ye shall love (be this love your new nobility!),\nthe land undiscovered in the remotest sea! For it I bid your sails seek\nand seek!\n\n\"In your children ye shall make amends for being the children of your\nfathers: all the past shall ye thus redeem! This new table do I place\nover you!\"[14]\n\n\n[1] Z., chap. lxi.\n\n[2] Z., p. 299.\n\n[3] Z., pp. 256, 257.\n\n[4] G. E., Aph. 188.\n\n[5] Z., pp. 247, 248.\n\n[6] G. E., p. 223.\n\n[7] Antichrist, Aph. 57.\n\n[8] \"The big pine is more often shaken by the winds: the higher a\ntower, the heavier is the fall thereof, and it is the tops of the\nmountains that the lightning strikes.\"\n\n[9] _Antichrist_, Aph. 2.\n\n[10] Z., pp. 104, 105.\n\n[11] Z., p. 105.\n\n[12] _The Twilight of the Idols_, Par. 10, Aph. 33.\n\n\n[13] Z., pp. 69, 70.\n\n[14] Z., p. 248.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\nSUMMARY AND CONCLUSION\n\n\nWhen we have done rubbing our eyes and ears at the dazzling and\nstartling novelty of all we have seen and heard, let us ask ourselves\ncalmly and dispassionately what sort of man this is who has led us thus\nfar into regions which, from their very unfamiliarity and exoticness,\nmay have seemed to us both unpleasant and forbidding.\n\nThis is no time for apologetics, or for pleading extenuating\ncircumstances. Even if Nietzsche's doctrines have been presented in a\nform too undiluted to be inviting, it would scarcely mend matters, now,\nto beg pardon fur them; and I have no intention of doing anything of\nthe sort. But these questions may be put without any fear of assuming\na penitential attitude, and I do not hesitate to put them: Was the\npromise of Nietzsche's life fulfilled? Did the task he started out\nwith, \"the elevation of the type man,\" receive his best strength, his\nbest endeavours, his sincerest application? However fundamentally\nwe may disagree with his conclusions, were they reached by means of\nan upright attempt at grappling with the problems? To all of those\nquestions there is but one answer, and that answer clears Nietzsche of\nall the slander and calumny to which he has been submitted for the last\nthirty years.\n\nHowever often we may think he has erred, it is nonsense any longer to\nspeak of him as an anarchist, an advocate of brutality, a supporter of\nimmorality in its worst modern sense, and a guardian saint of savage\npassions. If I have led any readers to suspect that he was all this, I\ncan only entreat them to turn as soon as possible to the original works\nthemselves, and there they will find that it was I who was wrong.\n\nPersonally I believe, as Hippolyte Taine, Dr. George Brandes and Wagner\nbelieved, that Nietzsche's work is greater than his own or the next\ngeneration could ever suspect. Questions such as Art, the future of\nScience, and the future of Religion, which Nietzsche treats with his\ncustomary skill, I have been unable to find room for, in this work.\nBut in each of these departments, I believe (and in this belief I am\nby no means alone) that Nietzsche's speculations may prove of the very\nhighest value.\n\nAlready in Biology there are signs that Nietzsche's conclusions are\ngaining ground. In Art, as I hope to able to show elsewhere, his\ndoctrines are likely to effect a salutary revolution: while, in the\ndepartments of history, psychology, jurisprudence and metaphysics,\nspecialists will doubtless arise who will attempt to make innovations\nunder his leadership.\n\nFor the present, though the outlook is brighter than it was,\nNietzscheism--that is to say: free-spiritedness, intellectual bravery;\nthe ability to stand alone when every one else has his arm linked in\nsomething; the courage to face unpleasant, fatal, and disconcerting\ntruths,--has not much hope of very general acceptance, among those to\nwhom it really ought to appeal. Calumny, which had a long start, has\ndeafened many to the cause and will continue deafening a larger number\nstill, until the truth is ultimately known. Yet it is to be hoped that\nreaders may learn to be less satisfied than they have been heretofore\nwith second-hand accounts of what Nietzsche stood for, and that very\nshortly everybody who is interested in the matter will be able to reply\nto the slanderer with facts culled from Nietzsche's life and works.\n\n       *        *        *        *        *        *\n\n\"Mine enemies have grown strong,\" says Zarathustra, \"and I have\ndisfigured the face of my teaching, so that my dearest friends have to\nblush for the gifts I gave them.\"[1]\n\n\"But like a wind I shall one day blow amidst them, and take away their\nbreath with my spirit; thus my future willeth it.\n\n\"Verily a strong wind is Zarathustra to all low lands; and his enemies\nand everything that spitteth and speweth he counselleth with such\nadvice: Beware of spitting against the wind.\"[2]\n\n[1] Z., pp. 95, 96.\n\n[2] Z., p. 116.\n\n\n\n\nBooks Useful to the Student of Nietzsche\n\nBIOGRAPHIES:--\n\n    _Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsche's_, by Mrs. F\u00f6rster-Nietzsche.\n    _Erinnerungen an Friedrich Nietzsche_, by Deussen.\n    _Nietzsche, sein Leben und sein Werk_, by Raoul Richter.\n\nEDITIONS OF WORKS.\n\n    The complete works of Friedrich Nietzsche. Edited by Dr.\n    Oscar Levy. (The first complete and authorised English\n    Translation.) T. N. Foulis, 21 Paternoster Square.\n\n    _Friedrich Nietzsche's Werke_. Library Edition 15\n    vols.----Pocket Edition (very good) 10 vols.\n\nMONOGRAPHS.\n\n    B\u00e9lart, _Nietzsche's Ethik._\n    ------  _Nietzsche's Metaphysik._\n    ------  _Nietzsche und Richard Wagner._\n    Brandes, G., _Menschen und Werke._\n    Common, Thos., _Nietzsche as Critic._\n    Fouill\u00e9e, A., _Nietzsche et l'Immoralisme._\n    Gaultier, J., De Kant \u00e0 Nietzsche.\n    ------  _Nietzsche et la R\u00e9forme philosophique._\n    Kennedy, J. M., _The Quintessence of Nietzsche._\n    Lichtenberger, H., _La Philosophie de Nietzsche._\n    M\u00fcgge, _Nietzsche His Life and Works._\n    Sera, Leo, _On the Tracks of Life._\n    Tienes, _Nietzsche's Stellung zu den Grundfragen der\n        Ethik genetisch dargestellt_.\n    Tille, A., _Von Darwin bis Nietzsche._\n    Zeitler, J., _Nietzsche's \u00c6sthetik._\n\nNIETZSCHE'S WORKS: Authorised Version: edited by Dr. Oscar Levy.\n\n    _Thoughts out of Season_. 2 vols.\n    _The Birth of Tragedy_.\n    _Thus Spake Zarathustra_.\n    _Beyond Good and Evil_.\n    _The Future of our Educational Institutions_.\n    _Human, All too Human_. Vol. i.\n    _The Will to Power_. 2 vols.\n    _The Genealogy of Morals_.\n    _The Case against Wagner_.\n    _The Joyful Wisdom_.\n    _The Dawn of Day_.","title":"Nietzsche: His Life and Works","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":22000}