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THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
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The Philosophy of Nietzsche :
AN EXPOSITION AND AN a: X, APPRECIATION a: :x.
BY
GEORGES CHATTERTON-HILL, Ph.D.
PRIVATDOCENT OF SOCIOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF GENEVA
NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
MCMXIII
THE L/SRARy
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CONTENTS
BOOK I.— CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY
CilAPTER
I. The Life of Nietzsche II. General View of Nietzsche's Ideal
III. The State ....
IV. The Moral Law V. The Religions
VI. Science. ....
BOOK II.— POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY
I. The Will of Power as Fundamental Postulate
II. The Theory of Knowledge as expressive of the Will of Power ....
III. The Moral Systems — Masters and Slaves
IV. The Over-Man ....
V. Nietzsche and Max Stirner
VI. The Value of Nietzsche
VII. Conclusion .....
9
S6
73
90
114 138
149
164 184 217
239 252 286
PREFACE
The manuscript of this book was written as long ago as 1905. Seven years constitute a long period in the life of a young author. Since this manuscript was written, other work has been composed and has seen the light of day, amongst it being my books on ''Heredity and Selection in Sociology," and *'The Sociological Value of Christianity," and various essays. During seven years an author must inevit- ably go through various phases of mental evolution, he cannot fail to be influenced by the numerous books and persons with whom he comes in contact, and to have his horizon constantly enlarged thereby. I cannot say, therefore, that the point of view from which I judged things seven years ago is the same as that from which I judge them to-day.
For certain reasons the manuscript was not published at the time, and since then my attention has been taken up with other work. But now, following advice which has been tendered me, I have decided to publish it, without changing anything except a few unimportant details.
The book is as objective as possible — that is to say, I have endeavoured to place as clearly as I can the philosophy of Nietzsche before the reader, without putting forward my own opinions. It is Nietzsche's thought, and Nietzsche s thought alone, which is exposed here. It is impossible, however, when exposing the thought of another, to be oneself wholly and completely silent ; my views may consequently da
6 6 PREFACE
be found to have expressed themselves more than I should have wished, and more than it was my intention to have given expression to them. Should these views be found, by those who may have read other work of mine, not to be in harmony with the ideas developed in such other work, the explanation of this apparent anomaly is to be sought in the fact that the present book was written seven years ago, as mentioned above.
If this book can, in the slightest degree, help any- one, among the English-speaking public, to a stronger admiration for, and a better comprehension of, the most recent of the really great Masters of European thought ; if it should succeed in inciting anyone to study more deeply, and therefore to appreciate more fully, that magnificent German culture, illustrated by the names of so many immortal thinkers, poets and artists, to which modern civilisation owes so immense a debt ; the author may, perhaps, be par- doned for venturing to lay before the reader the present work.
My sincere gratitude is due to M. Henri Lichten- berger, Professor of German Literature at the University of Paris, and author of that admirable introduction to the study of Nietzsche's thought. La Philosophie de Nietzsche, which has had such great success in making Nietzsche known and appreciated in France. Professor Lichtenberger most kindly read my manuscript, besides rendering me other valuable assistance.
G. C.-H.
Geneva, November 191 2.
BOOK I
CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY
Tag meines Lebens !
Gen Abend geht's.
Schon gliiht Dein Auge
halbgebrochen,
Schon quillt Deines Thau's
Thranengetrausel,
Schon lauft still iiber weisse Meere
Deiner Liebe Purpur,
Deine letzte zogernde Seligkeit. . . .
Dies ist der Herbst : der — bricht Dir noch das Herz ! Fliege fort ! fiiege fort 1
Nietzsche.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
CHAPTER 1
THE LIFE OF NIETZSCHE
Nietzsche himself has said of Schopenhauer that he was the last German to enjoy an international reputation. The same remark may, however, more fitly be made of Friedrich Nietzsche himself. The powerful mind of Nietzsche has exercised an influence in Europe which it would be difficult to overestimate. During the last ten years the philosophy and letters of the Continent have been under the hypnotism of that gospel of life in all its plenitude and energy which, preached under the attractive form of aphorisms, vigorous and apodictical, has broken loose from the trammels of the dogmatic school which had dominated the world of Western thought since Immanuel Kant. In Germany the philosophy of Nietzsche has given birth to a literature abundant in quantity and varying in quality. In France it has attracted the attention of all thinking circles and has become, as M. Ferdinand Brunetiere remarks in the first volume of his '' Discours de Combat,'' the '' philosophic a la mode.'' M. Emile Faguet, M. Alfred Fouillee, M. Eugene de Roberty, M. Henri Lichtenberger, have contributed valuable works to the Nietzsche bibliography. In England something like a dozen
9
10 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
books have been devoted to the hfe and teachings of the German philosopher, notably those of Mr T. Common, Mr A. M. Ludovici, Mr J. M. Kennedy, Dr Miigge, and Mr A. R. Orage ; while a translation of the whole of his works has been issued in eighteen substantial volumes under the editorship of Dr Oscar Levy. The first half of the official biography, written in German by Mrs Forster-Nietzsche, has recently been published in an English translation, and it is understood that the other part is to follow shortly. It is, however, regrettable that an even wider knowledge should not have been obtained of a doctrine which, whatever may be the views taken as to its fundamental principles, has exercised an invigorating and revivifying influence on the whole domain of philosophic thought ; and which, by calling in question the very basis of an almost universally accepted ethical creed — by calling in question the legitimacy of the moral law itself — has brought us face to face with those fundamental problems which every philosopher from Socrates onwards has sought to solve. Hitherto, with very few and almost unknown exceptions, every school of philosophy has been agreed on the fact that a universal moral law exists ; the differences of opinion arose as to the precise basis on which the categorical imperative could be grounded. Max Stimer was, we believe, the first to deny the existence of the categorical imperative altogether, and to preach the gospel of immoralism. But, even in spite of the persevering efforts of Mr Mackay, the name of Stirner remains unknown to the vast majority of men. It was the gospel preached with lyrical enthusiasm by Zarathustra - Nietzsche which first called general attention to the fact that serious reasons exist for
THE LIFE OF NIETZSCHE 11
preferring the immoral to the moral, the untrue to the true.
It has often been objected with regard to Nietzsche that the numerous contradictions which are to be found scattered through his works themselves, pre- clude any attempt to systematise his philosophy. To this it may be replied that all, or almost all, these contradictions are capable of being resolved in the light of the master-thought which pervades all his writings ; and, indeed, that philosopher who is often held up as a model in respect of consistency, Kant himself, is by no means free from contradiction in the pages of the '' Critique of Pure Reason " ; which fact does not prevent us from recognising Kant as the founder of a very fruitful and important system of philosophy. But with regard to Nietzsche, it may i also be urged that he never intended his work to| be regarded as a coherent and consistent '' system. ''| It does not appear that Nietzsche ever endeavoured to deduce any sociological conclusions from his philo- sophical premises. The philosophy of Nietzsche, in the eyes of its author, was the expression of a per- sonality, of a character, of a temperament. We are therefore quite justified in endeavouring to system- atise the writings and teachings of Nietzsche, in examining that teaching in the light of biological fact and sociological reality, in applying it to the solution of the fundamental problems of philosophy and of sociology ; but we should be committing a grave error if, in studying Nietzsche, we should make abstraction of the personality of the author. That personality reveals itself in every line, in every aphor- ism. If the work of Nietzsche is characterised by one fundamental doctrine : the belief in life in all its
12 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
plenitude and power — which serves as a clue to the systematisation of his philosophy — it is also character- ised by one fundamental feature : the sincerity and heroism of the writer's nature, which serves as a guide to the comprehension of his personality. And, as we have said, the personality of Nietzsche is intimately bound up with his philosophy.
Sincerity and heroism, we have said, are the two characteristics of Nietzsche's personality. To these qualities should be added a third — delicacy of senti- ment and refinement of taste. These characteristics give us the clue to his rupture with Wagner, to the apparent brutality of his language, to his hatred of the democratic and plebeian movement, to his enthusiastic worship of art as the raison-d'etre and object of life, to his detestation of the Christian religion. '' All or nothing," was his motto, and he lived up to it. Gifted, as we have said, with an extraordinary refine- ment of sentiment and taste ; having set himself as an ideal Life itself, and Life in beauty, in plenitude, in power, in exuberance of wealth ; he was determined to be sincere with himself at all and every cost, to examine every ideal, however ancient, however sacred its traditions, however universal its acceptance; to examine it to the bottom, to reject it if necessary, at whatever cost of friendship or of suffering to himself ; to affirm and reaffirm his ideal, that ideal which he held to be true ; to affirm and reaffirm it in the face of the whole world if necessary, without compromise. To be able to do this — to be able to attack and reject all that which mankind has hitherto, by almost universal acceptance, held sacred ; to be able to sacrifice all those ideas which tradition and education have rendered personalty of value ; to be able to sacrifice friends that one loves and venerates on the
THE LIFE OF NIETZSCHE 13
altar of one's convictions — to do this requires courage above the ordinary : it requires heroism.
Refinement of taste is the third great characteristic of Nietzsche. The standard by which he judges of every ideal, whether in morality or in religion — which is morality in a higher potency — or in art, or in the intimacy of daily life, is its '' Vornehmheit,'' its elegance, its good taste, its aesthetic qualities. Nietz- sche is essentially an artist. He is more an artist than a thinker ; or rather his career as thinker is subor- dinated to his artistic propensities. And when we say of Nietzsche that he was an artist, we do not mean that he was a mere poet, or a mere musical composer — although he wrote some very delightful verses and was an excellent appreciator of music, if not a profound one — but we mean that his whole conception of life was an artistic conception ; and even as he regarded the cosmological process in its entirety as an aesthetical manifestation of the universal Will of which life and the world and thought are composed, he also con- sidered all the details of existence in their relation to his standard — a very high standard — of artistic value.
Friedrich Nietzsche was born in 1844, at Rocken, in Germany. Left fatherless at the age of five, he emi- grated with his family in 1850 to Naumburg, where his first studies were undertaken. In 1858, at the age of fourteen, he entered the school at Schulpforta as a pupil, an institution which counted Klopstock, Fichte, Schlegel, von Ranke, among its former students. After leaving school he studied at Bonn (1864-1865) and at Leipzig (1865-1867) . From an early age he had developed a liking and an aptitude for general culture, as opposed to that speciaHsm which manifested itself
14 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
already in the sixties and which tends to increase with every advance of modern civiUsation. Confronted with the difficulty of choosing a career when entering the university, he selected philology as his speciaUty ; and in 1869, before even he had defended the thesis necessary to the obtaining of the degree of doctor at the University of Leipzig, we find him nominated to the post of Professor of Philology at the University of Bale.
Nietzsche's career up till now had been uneventful. He and his sister, now Frau Forster-Nietzsche, were the only two children. The account which his sister gives of these early years shows Nietzsche to have been already in boyhood of a singularly thoughtful and serious disposition. His father was the Protestant pastor of Rocken, his native village, and Nietzsche was brought up in an atmosphere which, without being bigoted or austere, was deeply religious. This early education was destined to influence profoundly the whole life of the philosopher. However violently he may have later on broken loose from Christianity, however bitterly he may have criticised the faith of his forefathers, Nietzsche's remained always an essenti- ally religious nature. The man who imagined himself to have effected the most complete separation with the past, who proclaimed at all times and in all places that '' God is dead,'' that he was beyond and above all religion and all supernatural belief, that same man proved, by his worship of truth, by his fearless and intrepid sincerity, by his idealisation of life, that he was ever actuated by the most deeply religious principles. Certainly he was far above all churches and all religions ; but, if he emphatically repudiated belief in an anthropomorphic God, he believed in Life, in Life as a manifestation of Beauty ;
THE LIFE OF NIETZSCHE 15
he believed in principles, and he lived up to his principles.
In 1869, therefore, we find Nietzsche occupying the chair of philology at Bale. At Leipzig, as the pupil of Ritschl, he had devoted himself to the study of the Greek language and literature. From thence onwards he was a passionate lover of Greek life, of Greek art, of Greek philosophy. His study of that ancient and glorious civilisation revealed Nietzsche to himself. It brought to his knowledge a culture and an ideal which seemed to correspond most nearly to the ideal which he had already evoked of life. This search for himself, as we may call it, this endeavour to discover, in contact with the outer world, that ideal which was also his, or which was as near to his as possible, was destined to prove a painful, but very salutary, experience for Nietzsche.
From earliest boyhood upwards, we find Nietzsche's temperament deeply tinged with that aristocratism which is so characteristic a feature of his philosophy. He claimed always, whether rightly or not we know not, to be descended from the Polish race, from a family of Nietzky, which is said to have sought shelter in Germany towards the beginning of the eighteenth century from the religious persecutions directed against Protestants in Poland. '' A Count Nietzky does not tell lies," Nietzsche used to say proudly to his sister when yet a boy ; and this sentence gives us the clue to his aristocratic, extraordinarily refined and sensitive character. His breach with orthodoxy seems to have been effected gradually, without violent emotions. But that he was deeply conscious of the importance of the step which he took in abandoning Christianity is shown by several passages in his writings. The separation of Nietzsche from Chris-
16 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
tianity was in any case inevitable. His was too powerful a genius to be able to confine itself within the narrow domain of a dogmatic creed ; and the ideal of Christianity — of primitive Christianity — is the diametrical opposite of Nietzsche's ideal, which was also the ideal of the Greeks of the heroic age, and of the Romans before the disruption.
Nietzsche's search for himself, as we have called it, led him to explore vast fields of culture. His was ever a synthetical mind, to which the minute and detailed analysis of the scientist was repugnant. He had a natural aptitude for music and poetry, an apti- tude which harmonised with the delicacy and refine- ment of his nature. He had an aptitude for literature, for philosophy ; he had the curiosity of new details, of adventurous research ; and above all he had an inborn love of life, of beauty, of strength ; and the life which is strong and beautiful, which manifests itself in all its integrity, which goes out conquering and to conquer, was the life which Nietzsche recognised as the ideal life.
As a consequence it ensued that all the manly virtues — courage, strength, purity, love of adventure, love of hardship and privation, even ferocity — were, in Nietzsche's eyes, above value. He had a natural repugnance for the Christian virtues of humility, gentleness, love, forgiveness — in a word, feminism. Beauty — Art — were the raison-d'etre of life, its justification ; and beauty was synonymous with strength, with courage, with Power. The man who is strong and courageous and powerful is the justi- fication of humanity. And such a man naturally detests those qualities which tend to minimise his strength and to undermine his power, such quahties, for instance, as humihty and gentleness.
THE LIFE OF NIETZSCHE 17
Life = Beauty Beau ty= Power /. Life = Power
Such was the syllogism which Nietzsche probably posed at a very early age. The question which now presented itself was : Such an ideal, has it ever existed, has it ever constituted the gospel, if not of humanity, at all events of a powerful and ruling race which dominates humanity ?
His philological studies led Nietzsche to obtain a more profound knowledge of the ancient Hellenic world. And his study of Hellenic philosophy, of Hellenic art, of Hellenic poetry, and above all of the Hellenic drama, convinced him that the Hellenes of the pre-Socratian era had realised an ideal which corresponded to his own ; that the ancient Hellenic culture was a culture in which life was regarded as synonymous with Beauty, and in which the vague mass of humanity was regarded as the basis for the establishment of a superior race, of a race which was the incarnation of the Will of Power, of a race whose object was to create beauty, and whose existence was the justification of the world.
Such was Nietzsche's conception of the Hellenic ideal, as revealed in Homer, in iEschylus, in Anaxi- mander, in Pythagoras. It may have been right and it may have been wrong. But certain it is that this discovery, as Nietzsche considered it, of the secret of Greek civilisation, roused him to intense enthusiasm. Henceforth he was to judge of everything in the light of that ancient Greek ideal.
When Nietzsche came to Bale, in 1869, Richard Wagner was living in his retreat at Tribschen. Nietzsche was soon on intimate terms with the creator of Tristan, and very frequently visited Wagner in his
18 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
home on the Lake of Lucerne. This friendship between Nietzsche and Wagner was one of the most important, as it was also one of the most beautiful, events in the lives of both masters. One must go back to the friendship of Goethe and Schiller in order to find a parallel for the friendship of the musician and the philosopher. Nietzsche was roused to enthusiasm by Wagner's work. He saw in Wagner the reviver of Greek tragedy, the modern successor of iEschylus. A further meeting-ground in common was the philo- sophy of Schopenhauer. The great pessimist of Frankfurt had exercised a very great influence on Wagner, an influence which reveals itself especially in Tristan and Isolde. No less was the influence he exercised on Nietzsche. The latter first became acquainted with '' The World as Will and Repre- sentation/' in 1865, by an accident. From the first he was struck by the immense perspective opened out by this masterpiece, as well as by the remarkable personality of the author which shows itself in these pages. Nietzsche saw in Schopenhauer, and saw rightly, the destroyer of that happy and absurd optimism of which David Friedrich Strauss was the then representative, and which still reigns supreme to-day in certain circles, in which the qualities formerly attributed to an anthropomorphic deity have been transferred to the abstract entity called Reason. From his study of Greek drama, Nietzsche had drawn the conclusion that two states of mind were ever present to the Greeks of the heroic era. The contemporaries of ^schylus were no mere optimists, believing in the ordered and harmonious governance of the universe. They were not afraid of the sight of all the pain and suffering that are the necessary accompaniments of the world-process. They were
THE LIFE OF NIETZSCHE 19
strong enough, and brave enough, and powerful enough, and sufficiently sure of their power, to be able, not only to view the sight of the world's sufferings with complacency, but to wish for the spectacle, to enjoy the spectacle as an aesthetic vision, to enjoy it as a reminder of the reality of things, as an instrument for giving them conscience of their power, as an instrument for realising their power. Greek tragedy was the visible symbol of this feeling of invincible power in the face of suffering and pain ; it was in order to have the spectacle of the eternal struggle constantly evoked, constantly placed before them, that the Greeks had recourse to the tragedy. Only he who is strong enough to be able to surmount suffering, who is conscious of being superior to suffering, of being above it, can afford constantly to have evoked before his eyes scenes representing all that is most bitter, all that is most cruel, in the history of human nature and the world.
What was the secret of this power of the Greeks, which rendered them not merely indifferent to the sight of suffering, but which enabled them to regard suffering as an aesthetic manifestation of the universal Will-process which constitutes the world ? That secret Nietzsche saw in those two states of mind to which we have referred above. The Greeks, first of all, possessed the faculty of creating an ideal vision of the world as it should be, a vision which enabled them to escape from the tyranny of Being, which enabled them to regard suffering as the necessary means to the attainment of their ideal. The Olympian gods are the fruit of this ecstatic state of mind, the ApoUin- ian, as Nietzsche termed it. The deities of Olympia were creations of beauty, whose existence inspired the Greeks with a consciousness of their own creative
20 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
power, which opened out to them an endless perspec- tive of the possibihties to be achieved by that creative power, which represented an ideal of supreme beauty and power and strength, whose beauty, power and strength alone sufficed to justify all the pain and all the tears and all the suffering necessary to create that radiant vision. In the ApoUinian state of mind, when confronted by the beauty of that radiant vision which reflected his own strength and his own power, because his strength and his power had created it, man uplifted himself above the cares and worries of existence and exclaimed : '' Life, I love thee, I desire thee, for thou are beautiful and glorious, and thy beauty and thy glory do but represent the infinite possibilities of my strength and power/'
In the second place, the Greeks possessed the faculty of elevating themselves above the narrow limits in which individual life is contined, and of con- templating Life as a whole, in its eternity, above and beyond the fact of individuation, above and beyond the flux and reflux of phenomena. In this state of mind, the Dionysian, they took conscience of the identity of all lives in the one universal Life, they broke down the barriers which the fact of individua- tion had set up, and saw only one universal life- process in its eternity, manifesting itself in the fact of individuation, but superior to it, because confined within no limits, because universal and unchanging and eternal. In the Dionysian state of mind, be- coming conscious of the identity of his individual life with all life, with the whole of nature, with the eternal world-process itself, man exclaimed : '' Life, I love thee, I desire thee, for thou art eternal."
Thus the Greeks were neither pessimists nor optimists ; they were above both pessimism and
THE LIFE OF NIETZSCHE 21
optimism ; for them pessimism and optimism ceased to be, and were confounded in a higher state, in an ApoUinian and Dionysian, or rather in a state which combined both the ApolUnian and Dionysian visions of Ufe. This combination of ApoUinian and Dio- nysian wisdom was reached in Greek tragedy, and above all in the choir of satyrs, so much appreciated by the Greeks. The satyr, of half-human, half- animal creation, represented the return to nature, to primitive savagery, where culture was unknown. The choir of satyrs, by means of dancing and music, roused the spectators to a condition of ecstatic frenzy in which the identity of the whole of nature seemed to be realised, in which the barriers artificially set up by the fact of individuation were broken down ; and at the same time, while the spectators were celebrating the return to nature, and the eternity of nature, and the identity of all nature, was communicated the glorious and radiant vision of the god Dionysus, offering himself to the assembled mass. Thus the ApoUinian mystery celebrated by the choir of satyrs gave birth to a Dionysian vision of the god, radiant ideal above humanity. In this supreme moment ApoUinian and Dionysian wisdom were confounded in a common ecstasy.
The perusal by Nietzsche of Schopenhauer's master-work must have convinced him that Schopen- hauer was deeply impressed by the truth conveyed in the ApoUinian vision. Schopenhauer's fundamental thought is the essential identity of all life, as em- anation of the universal and primordial Will, and the highest wisdom is attained by him who, breaking down the barrier set up by the fact of individuation, raises himself above the sphere of phenomena subjected to the law of sufficient reason, and realises
22 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
the identity of all life as confounded in the universal Will of which the world of phenomena is the mani- festation. Pursuing his investigations further, and had he not been so exclusively devoted to Greek philology, Nietzsche would have discovered that the Eastern philosophy, from which Schopenhauer's learned so much, enunciated the same idea quite independently of the Greeks. " And Krishna says : Know that this science alone is valid which affirms an unique and eternal essence in all beings, the undivided in the divided. For he does but see, he who perceives all beings as like himself.'' ^
But the Apollinian vision of life, which was used by the Greeks as a means of strengthening life, of adding to its beauty, of celebrating its triumphs, was used by Schopenhauer to an end diametrically opposite. According to the philosopher of Frankfurt, it is only when we have realised the universal solidarity which binds us to the rest of nature that we are able to fully fathom the depths of human suffering and human desolation ; and the conception of the identity of all life, celebrated by the Greeks in the choir of satyrs, becomes, in the mind of Schopenhauer, the main incitement to a total negation, not only of life, but of all wish to live.
Nietzsche accepted the pessimism of Schopenhauer. He, too, saw in the world-process a gigantic evil ; he, too, could have repeated : '' Das Leben ist das grosste Verbrechen." He saw in the philosophy of Schopenhauer the salutary counterblast to the " philistine optimism " ('' philisterhafter Optimis- mus ") of which Strauss was the chief representative. The optimist school saw in the world-process the work
^ " Bhagavata-Gita," chap, xviii. Cited in " Sanctuaires et Paysages d'Asie," p. 158, by A. Chevrillon (Paris, 1905).
THE LIFE OF NIETZSCHE 23
of an all-pervading Reason, which abstract entity they substituted for the former anthropomorphic deity. Nietzsche, following Schopenhauer, saw in the world-process no trace of reason. For the disciple as for the master the world is unjustifiable from the point of view of pure reason. The one universal and immutable law is that of fatality. To this view Nietzsche always adhered. He never ceased to proclaim that, from the standpoint of reason, life is an absurdity, an endless struggle, an unnecessary suffering, ruled by the iron hand of Fate. We are unable to agree with M. Emile Faguet who, in other respects, has written so admirable and sympathetic a work on Nietzsche,^ that the latter suffered, in the early part of his career, from a " romantic diathesis,'' and that his later career was in some respects a con- tradiction of his earlier one. Rather are we inclined to the view, based on the account of the evolution of Nietzsche's thought given by his sister,^ and on a study of his own writings, that his position with regard to the fundamental questions of philosophy, in a word his *' Weltanschauung," did not vary from the time of the publication of " Die Geburt der Tragodie " until his illness in 1889. With regard to his change of front concerning Schopenhauer, we believe that when Nietzsche wrote '' Schopenhauer als Erzieher " in the '* Unzeitgemasse Betrachtungen, " in 1874, he did not realise the meaning of the conclusions drawn by Schopenhauer from premises which both held in common. As regards the breach with Richard Wagner, we are inclined to think Nietzsche very mistaken in the view taken by him of the tendencies
^ E. Faguet : " En lisant Nietzsche " (Paris, 1904). ^ Elizabeth Forster-Nietzsche : " Das Leben Friedrich Nietz- sches," 2 Bande, iv. Teile (Naumann, Leipzig).
24 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
of the Wagnerian drama, but although he changed his conception of Wagner, he did not change his concep- tion of hfe. The conception of Hfe entertained by the author of '' Richard Wagner in Bayreuth " is the same as that of the author of '' Der Fall Wagner/' It was the view which he took of the position occupied by Wagner's art with regard to that conception which changed.
This digression as to the conception formed by Nietzsche of life, and of Greek thought and Greek culture, was necessary in order to have some compre- hension of the reasons which led to his memorable breach with Wagner in 1876, and to his renunciation of his master, Schopenhauer. During the years of his professorate at Bale, from 1869 to 1876, Nietzsche was on terms of the closest intimacy with Wagner and his wife. Very frequent were the visits which he paid them in their retreat at Tribschen, and these visits ever remained the sweetest and most beautiful reminiscence of Nietzsche's, and indeed of Wagner's, career. As we have said, Nietzsche was full of enthusiasm for Wagner's work, which he heralded as the revival, in modern form, of the Greek tragedy. He interested himself especially in the scheme pro- pounded by Wagner for founding a German national theatre at Bayreuth, and his essay on '' Richard Wagner at Bayreuth," published in 1876 as the fifth of the *' Unzeitgemasse Betrachtungen," was destined to assist the propaganda in aid of this scheme. Wagner, on the other hand, found in Nietzsche a friend of the highest and most powerful intellect, of quite extraordinary qualities, and of a character, as M. Henri Lichtenberger expresses it, '' d'une trempe pen commune." Probably, in Wagner's eyes, here was the ideal disciple, such as every great
THE LIFE OF NIETZSCHE 25
master fondly hopes to find, the continuator of the great work commenced, and which neither Richard Wagner nor Friedrich Nietzsche was destined to find.
As a matter of fact, Neitzsche's enthusiasm for Wagner, both before and during the period of the Tribschen intimacy, was never of a bhnd or uncritical description. The two dramas of the master which he really admired were the Meistersinger and Tris- tan and Isolde. It seems evident, from certain re- marks made by him in his notebook during the years 1870-1872 — that is to say, during those two years in which he was no less than twenty-three times Wagner's guest at Tribschen — that Nietzsche was conscious of certain important differences, both in the domain of philosophy and in that of art, between himself and Wagner.^ During his frequent visits to Tribschen, he was under the influence of the powerful personality of Wagner, who captivated him, chained him, seduced him. On the other hand, Nietzsche was Wagner's most valued friend. '* First comes Cosima," used Wagner to say, '' and then you. And then a long distance separates all the others." It must be remembered, too, that the publication of Nietzsche's essay on " Richard Wagner in Bayreuth," in 1876, was of great value to Wagner. This essay is recog- nised by the most orthodox Wagnerian circles as being one of the best studies of the master ever published.
The question is : Did Nietzsche change, or did Wagner change, or did only Nietzsche's conception of Wagner change ? We have already expressed the opinion that Nietzsche's convictions underwent no
^ E. Forster-Nietzsche : " Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsches," ii. 853.
26 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
change in themselves. As to Wagner, we are indined to think that the author of Parsifal had certainly modified some of the ideas which inspired him in writing Tristan and Isolde and Siegfried. The atheist Wagner had become, if not an orthodox Christian, certainly a mystic. But Parsifal had not yet appeared at the time of the rupture with Nietzsche in 1876. Therefore we can see no other reason for Nietzsche's action than a change of position in regard to the Wagnerian ideal, as considered in the light of his own ideal. But the rupture was not so sudden as certain think. It was not the affair of a moment, a coup-de-thedtre so to speak. We have said that even during the period of the Tribschen intimacy, Nietzsche's position with regard to certain of Wagner's works, notably Tannhauser, was one of more or less mild hostility. But, if Nietzsche cherished any hopes, during the period of theTribschen intimacy, of converting Wagner to his own views, those hopes were speedily dispelled when Wagner emigrated from Tribschen to Bayreuth. From this moment on, the seduction exercised by Wagner's commanding and captivating personality disappeared. Nietzsche became increasingly conscious of the fact that Wagner was changing, or, at any rate, that his conception of Wagner was changing. Far from being the reviver of Greek ideals which he had dreamed, Wagner seemed to him to have been '' captured by the Germans," as he puts it, to be ministering to the popular vainglory following on the triumphs of 1870, to be pandering to German chauvinism and German mysticism, to be seeking for success at the expense of his own convictions. In 1876, before going to Bayreuth to assist at the solemn celebrations of the Niebelungenring, Nietzsche determined to gather
THE LIFE OF NIETZSCHE 2T
together all the tender memories, all the cherished souvenirs, of that friendship consecrated at Tribschen, to write, as it were, a sort of memorial tribute, not to the real Wagner, but to the idealised Wagner, to the Wagner of his dreams, of his hopes, to the Wagner who had disappeared. The last of the '' Unzeit- gemasse Betrachtungen '' is consecrated to " Richard Wagner in Bayreuth/' But this appreciation, this glorification of the master, must be understood as a tribute to the Wagner of the past, to the Wagner whom Nietzsche had imagined, who had, perhaps, never existed but in the hopes and dreams of Nietzsche. It was the last tribute paid at the parting of the ways.
Nietzsche was bitterly disappointed by the repre- sentation of the '' Ring " in 1876. Wagner, like every Over-Man, like every overwhelming genius, was accustomed only to rigid obedience and respect from those who surrounded him. He was much angered by Nietzsche's conduct on this occasion. The breach was completed two years later by the publication of Nietzsche's book : " Menschliches, Allzumensch- liches." Wagner regarded Nietzsche's conduct as the basest of desertions ; he came to look upon his former bosom friend as an unscrupulous intellectual adven- venturer, who had not hesitated to make use of his name and reputation and friendship in order to attain for himself a certain degree of fame. The flame was fanned further by attacks on Nietzsche of particular violence which appeared in the Bayreuther Blatter,
The year 1876 marked the turning point in the intellectual career of Nietzsche. He had been the fervent worshipper of Schopenhauer, the beloved friend of Wagner. Schopenhauer was dead, and the parting was thus less bitter than the separation from Wagner. Nietzsche had come to the critical moment
28 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
of his life as thinker and philosopher. Hitherto he had been searching for himself, searching for an ideal which might satisfy his conception of life. He had thought to find that ideal in Schopenhauer and Wagner ; and he found out that the idols he had been worshipping were false gods, that they represented, not the ideal of beauty, and of strength, and of power, and of ApoUinian and Dionysian wisdom, which he had discovered among the Greeks, but the very oppo- site. He saw them now in a quite different light : he saw them as representing modern civilisation in all its weariness, in all its disgust of life, in its exhaustion, in its degeneracy. The bitter pessimism of Schopenhauer appeared to him the logical outcome of that nihilism which seems to mark the decay of European culture to-day. The art of Wagner seemed to him to repre- sent life under its most nervous and tired aspect ; he saw in that art a skilful means of administering a narcotic to overwrought minds, of calming and drugging them with all the resources of a magician. And from this moment the contrast, the violent, poignant contrast, between his ideal of life, the ideal of Olympian beauty and power, and the ideal of modern civilisation, with its pessimisms, its disgust of life, its longing for the nirvana, was to haunt Nietzsche night and day, giving him a sense of isolation in a world so totally different in its aspirations.
But not for a moment did Nietzsche hesitate. The ideals of to-day and yesterday and of the last nineteen centuries were not his ideals. In the categorical imperative, in the Sermon on the Mount, in the democratic movement of to-day, he saw the signs of decadency. His ideal was an ideal in which none of those conceptions which the world to-day regards as beyond controversy could find a place. Very well ;
THE LIFE OF NIETZSCHE 29
he would declare war on modern civilisation in all its forms. In an age of democracy, of sentimentalism, of mysticism, he would preach the gospel of ultra- aristocratism, of hatred instead of love, of immoralism instead of morality, of egoism instead of altruism, of hardness of heart instead of sympathy, of art as the justification of life instead of the moral law. He recognised now that he had been living in slippery places, that he had been in real danger of succumbing to the universal degeneracy which he would hence- forth combat without mercy, that he had been seduced by false charmers, that he had attributed to Schopen- hauer ctnd Wagner ideas which they never entertained. His sincerity, and the loyalty and sublime disinterest- edness of his character, had led him, and it always led him, to idealise his friends, to see in them something which they were not, something more than they possessed. It was thus that he had idealised Schopen- hauer and Wagner. It was thus that he was destined subsequently to see in Frau Andreas Lou-Salome qualities which she never possessed. It was thus that he was led to estimate friends like Herr Rohde and Dr Ree at far above their real value. This faculty of idealising his friends was destined often to lead him into very painful positions.
Thus we find Nietzsche having completed the search for himself. We find him at war with all the ideals of modern civilisation. It is not the ideal which he has set forth in '' Die Geburt der Tragodie " which has been modified. But he has realised that that ideal is the diametrical opposite of the ideal of to-day ; that his ideal is an ideal of exuberant life, and of beauty, and of power, and of strength ; whereas the ideal of to-day is an anaemic ideal, the fruit of degeneracy, of nihilism, of weariness, of neuropathy.
30 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
In all modern institutions, in all that constitutes the pride of our modernity, in the State, in the different religions, in the moral law, in modern science, Nietzsche sees the obstacle of the establishment of his ideal. In temperament and constitution a contemporary of iEschylus or Pericles, he finds himself transplanted into a hostile atmosphere saturated with Christianity, with moralism and Hegelianism and romanticism.
In 1878 Nietzsche published '' MenschUches, Allzumenschliches." But already, before this publi- cation, his health had become seriously undermined. In 1869 he had had a bad fall from a horse, which had laid him up for a considerable time. In 1870 he served in the Franco-German War, in the Ambulance Department ; and his health had again broken down under the strain. The stress of his university work in the intervening years, the emotion caused by his rupture with Wagner, and by his breach with all ideas hitherto held sacred as being steps towards the attainment of the ultimate great Ideal, and which he was now obliged to recognise as being diametrically opposed to the realisation of that ultimate ideal, again brought on a complete breakdown in 1876, a break- down in which the serious illness of 1870 also had its share. Nietzsche had been insufficiently treated in 1870 ; he had recommenced work too soon ; and he had overworked. He had to pay a heavy debt now. In 1876 he was compelled to take a year's leave, most of which he passed at Sorrento. In 1877 he recom- menced his professional duties at Bale, and in 1878 he published " Menschliches, Allzumenschliches.'' But his university work was too heavy for him, his health became rapidly worse, and in 1879 he was forced, to his deep regret, to resign his professorship.
THE LIFE OF NIETZSCHE 31
The severance of his connection with the Univer- sity of Bale, where he had been active during ten years, was the outward and visible sign of that more profound separation which Nietzsche now effected between himself and all modern culture. His health was very seriously undermined. He was the victim of violent and frequent headaches, which left him nearly paralysed with pain. Between January 1880 and January 1881 he counted no fewer than one hundred and eighteen such attacks. He passed the winters in the south, the summers generally in the mountain air of Switzerland. During three years, from 1879 to 1882, he lay, as it were, between life and death, in per- petual physical pain, but never losing courage for an instant, disputing every inch of ground with his malady heroically, battling resolutely for health. These years of physical suffering and illness were also the years of his most profound intellectual discourage- ment, the years of the most complete negation. Nietzsche himself was fully aware of the gravity of the physical and moral crisis which he was going through. According to him, there was an intimate connection between the two. He had been afflicted, during the years 1869-1876, with the Wagnerian diathesis, so to speak. He had been nearly conquered by ideals which were the contrary, in reality, of his ideal, and which he had represented as being identical. He had been the victim of illusions, due to the excessive confidence and exaggerated faculty of idealisation which he possessed. But this worship of Wagner and Schopenhauer was not natural to him. It was a worship given under a misapprehension as to the tendencies of these two masters. And now was the period of intellectual emancipation. His physical suffering stood in co-relation to his moral suffering ; or
32 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
his moral suffering stood in co-relation to his physical suffering. Certain it is that the years of severe illness, from 1876-1882, which were destined to end in fairly complete recovery, were also the years of moral suffering, destined to end in his entire emancipation from Schopenhauer and Wagner and the whole of modern civilisation and all the aspirations which he had cherished up to the present, and which were so many obstacles to the attainment of life in all its power and plenitude and beauty, which was always the ideal of Nietzsche.
We can trace the crisis through which Nietzsche was passing, in his works ; and we see the effect of the physical malady on his intellectual evolution. In 1878 he published '' Menschliches, Allzumensch- liches.'' In no book has he been so coldly, so entirely negative as in this one. Every ideal which humanity has been accustomed to look upon with reverence and respect, as something beyond controversy, as something higher and more durable than itself, is coldly and calmly — or violently — flung aside. " Der Wandrer und sein Schatten '' followed in 1879, as the completion of the first work — a book which is full of sadness, with its depicting of the '' Wanderer '' who searches among the labyrinth of the forest to find his way, accompanied always by his shadow, which haunts him. But already in *' Morgenrothe " (1881) we see the signs of improvement in health. The ferocious negation of the *' Human, all too Human '' is gradually giving way to a more positive ideal. '' Die frohliche Wissenschaft '' (1882) is the herald of recovery, written in a strain of gaiety and optimism, in the " most beautiful of all Januaries,'' which Nietzsche passed at Genoa. Nietzsche himself writes in the preface : *' Thankfulness flows from it as a stream.
THE LIFE OF NIETZSCHE 33
thankfulness for that which was the least expected, the thankfulness of a man who has recovered — for this recovery was what was least expected. ' The gay science ' : this title means the saturnalia of a mind which has long been oppressed by an overwhelming weight, which has remained patient, strong, self- possessed, never yielding, but without any hope ; and now it finds itself all of a sudden face to face with hope, with the hope of recovery, it is intoxicated by the hope of recovery." ^
Released from the duties attached to his professor- ship at Bale, Nietzsche's life was henceforth to be that of a wanderer. Even as in his intellectual evolution he was for ever peregrinating along the road of know- ledge, ever seeking to quench his thirst for knowledge, ever curious of things new, so in his manner of living he was henceforth to be permanently on the move, a wanderer without a house, spending his summers mostly in the Engadine, in the village of Sils-Maria, and his winters on the shores of the Mediterranean. He had an intense love for the south, with its sunshine and warmth and the balmy breezes from the sea. Venice, where his friend and faithful disciple, Herr Peter Gast, lived for some time, Rapallo, Nice, were his favourite resorts. In 1883 he visited Rome with his sister, and stayed in a house on the Piazza Barberini. *' On a loggia, high above the Piazza, from which a
* " Die Dankbarkeit stromt fortwahrend aus, als ob eben das Unerwartetste geschehen sei, die Dankbarkeit eines Genesenden — denn die Genesung war dieses Unerwartetste. ' Frohliche Wissen- schaft ' : das bedeutet die Saturnalien eines Geistes, der einem furchtbaren langen Drucke geduldig widerstanden hat — geduldig, streng, kalt, ohne sich zu unterwerfen, aber ohne Hoffnung — und der jetzt mit Einem Male von der Hoffnung angef alien wird, von der Hoffnung auf Gesundheit, von der Trunkenheit der Genesung " (" Werke," v. 3). c
34 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
view of Rome is obtained, and where one hears the gentle murmur of the fountain beneath, was composed that most soUtary of all songs that have ever been sung, the Song of the Night/' This refers to that exquisite " Nachtlied '' of Zarathustra :
** Nacht ist es : nun reden alle springenden Brunnen. Und auch
meine Seele ist ein springender Brunnen. Nacht ist es : nun erst erwachen alle Lieder der Liebenden.
Und auch meine Seele ist das Lied eines Liebenden." ^
The visit to Rome, to the eternal, unique, incom- parable city, inspired several passages of Nietzsche's master-work. The sight of the ruins of the majestic Basilica of Constantine, the passing of a procession of white-robed priests on the Monte Aventino, the gigantic dimensions of St Peter's, the cloisters of San Giovanni Laterano, all impressed him, as they impress everyone, and impressed him the more because his was an essentially impressive nature. Another city which delighted him was Genoa. It was in Genoa that '' Die frohliche Wissenschaft " was com- posed. Its palaces, its history, its situation, its climate, even his hosts, charmed him. He writes : *' I see here the faces of generations which are past and gone ; the whole district is full of the portraits of brave, bold and proud men. These lived and desired not only to live, but to live on, always ; I see this wish expressed in the construction of their houses, built and decorated not merely for the passing hour, but for centuries." ^ Venice charmed him perhaps
1 ((
It is night : now begin the bubbling wells to speak. And my
soul, too, is as a bubbling well. It is night : now begin all the songs of the lovers. And my soul,
too, is as the song of a lover."
^ E. Forster-Nietzsche : " Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsches," ii. 363-
THE LIFE OF NIETZSCHE 35
more than anything. The palaces, the silence, the Piazza San Marco with the Campanile and the Palace of the Doges, and the doves, the poetical atmosphere of the whole town, which seemed to transplant him into another age, all filled his artistic soul with joy. He had the further pleasure of having his devoted friend, Herr Peter Cast, there — Gast, whose music conquered him, and who was ever ready to do some service for the venerated master. Rapallo, on the Italian Riviera, was the scene of the composition of the first part of '* Also sprach Zarathustra," and as such it occupies an important place in Nietzsche's life. He describes the origin of the idea of Zarathustra in his brain : ''In the morning (February 1883) I began the ascent in a southerly direction of the lovely road towards Zoagli, which led me past Pini and brought me to a point commanding a grand view of the sea ; in the afternoon I made the tour of the whole Bay of Santa Margherita as far as Portofino. During these two walks, the whole conception of Zarathustra presented itself to me, especially the type of Zara- thustra himself.'' ^ Later on he frequented Nice, which always charmed him. It was in Nice that the third part of '' Also sprach Zarathustra " was com- posed (1883-1884). '' Under the halcyon sky of Nice, which shone for the first time on my life, I found the third Zarathustra. That decisive part which bears the title : ' Concerning the old and the new tables,' was composed during a most difficult climb from the station to the wonderful Moorish cliff Eza." For Nietzsche, life and beauty were synonymous with southern climates and the southern sun. Italy was
1 <*
Auf diesen beiden Wegen fiel mir der ganze erste Zarathustra ein, vor allem Zarathustra selber, als Typus : rich tiger, er iiberfiel mich."
36 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
for him the unique country, where alone Hfe was
rendered sweet, whose music was charming, where
alone art was understood and cherished.
" Morgenrothe '' had already breathed a new spirit.
Its title was suggestive, as being the dawn of a new
era:
" Es giebt so viele Morgenrothe Die noch nicht geleuchtet haben.*'
But a new morning sky was heralded in this work, where the first streaks of the coming day are perceived. Then follows *' Die frohliche Wissenschaft," breathing the spirit of gratitude and of hope and of renewed confidence in life. And then followed that marvel- lous burst of lyrical enthusiasm, '' Also sprach Zarathustra.*' It is a song of triumph, the song of the wanderer who has returned home at last, who was lost and is found, who has fought the fight and is victorious. It is a song of victory and of faith, of hope and afiirmation, and of life and love.
The poem of Zarathustra contains four published parts, written between January 1883 and January 1885 ; a fifth part was projected by Nietzsche, and destined to end with the death of Zarathustra. Nietzsche has left five plans of this fifth part, none of which he ever put into execution.
As we have said, since the resignation of his chair at the University of Bale left him free, Nietzsche led a wandering and roaming life, wanderings which were mainly determined by the necessities of his health. It is astonishing to contemplate the philosophical and literary activity of Nietzsche during this period of restlessness, in spite of all obstacles. The publication of '' Zarathustra " was followed by that of '' Jenseits von Gut und Bose,'' in August 1886. The work *' Zur Genealogie der Moral '' was written and pub-
THE LIFE OF NIETZSCHE 37
lished in 1887. The year 1888, the last year of his intellectual career, witnessed the production of *' Der Fall Wagner/' of '' Gotzendammerung/' of *'Der Antichrist," and of " Der Wille zur Macht." " Derniere moisson, moisson feconde/'
But during all these years which followed the physi- cal and moral crisis of 1876-1881, the position of Nietz- sche in the world was one of growing isolation. The ever-increasing separation, the ever-widening breach between him and his times, the divergences of their respective aspirations, the growing hardiness and temerity of his views, all led, bit by bit, to an estrange- ment between him and the world. The quarrel with Wagner, with the best-beloved friend, in whom all his fondest hopes were placed, left,' a gap in his life which never could be filled. His wandering life, his inability, through reasons of health, to settle down in a house of his own, prevented him from taking root anywhere. His tendency to idealise all those with whom he came into closer contact, to see in his friends not so much what they really were as what he wished and believed them to be, led him into some bitter disappointments, the bitterness of which was aug- mented by the extreme sensitiveness and delicacy of his nature. And yet how he longed for a friend, for a real, true friend and confidant, for a disciple in whom he could place implicit trust, whom he could rely on to continue the work so bravely commenced by him ! There is a passage in his private diary which expresses this secret yearning of all his later life :
'' Wer die grossten Geschenke zu vergeben hat, sucht nach Solchen, welche sie zu nehmen verstehen — er sucht vielleicht umsonst. Er wirft endlich sein Geschenk weg. Dergleichen gehort zur geheimen Geschichte und Verzweiflung der reichsten Seelen : es
38 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
ist vielleicht der unverstandlichste und schwermii- tigste aller Ungliicksfalle auf Erden/' ^
The constant concentration of his mind on the most exalted and most intricate problems which confront humanity, added to the growing isolation which he himself felt more than anyone. Not with impunity can one be for ever absorbed in the lofty question of the origin and validity of all the tables of values — of metaphysical and moral and scientific values — which humanity possesses or has possessed. Nietzsche himself writes of the conception of the Everlasting Return of all things, which dawned on him one superb summer morning in the forest of Silvaplana in the Engadine, that it originated '' at 6000 feet above the sea, and far higher above all human things." This accurately represents the state of Nietzsche's mind. He lived in an atmosphere which was all his own. He concentrated that powerful brain of his on the highest and deepest problems, which he perpetually meditated. He had thrown overboard all the values which humanity has revered up till to-day. He lived, as he himself expresses it, '' jenseits von Gut und Bose," beyond and above things good and bad, beyond and above all things human. He had ever before his mind's eye the glowing vision of the future, of a new world, of a new humanity, regenerated and purified and beautified, of the Over-Man, incarnation of beauty and strength and power, of light-heartedness and insouciance, of life in all its vigour and plenitude. He had elevated, by a superhuman effort of his
* " He who has the most precious gifts to bestow seeks those who are worthy to receive them — and seeks perhaps in vain. At last he throws those gifts aside. This tragedy appertains to the secret history and despair of the greatest minds ; it is perhaps the most incomprehensible and melancholy of all tragedies on earth."
THE LIFE OF NIETZSCHE 39
indomitable will, his mind far, far above all those things which interested his contemporaries ; he had attained those regions of lofty serenity and great silence which are also the regions of eternal snow, and alone, in that great silence under the stars, he stood contemplating the accumulation of ruins, of tears and sufferings, of joy and hope, of victories and defeats, which, far beneath him in the valleys, constitute the history of the world and of humanity.
But it must not be concluded that Nietzsche was of a cold and haughty disposition. Few men have possessed, according to the accounts of all who were privileged to know him, a more charming and lovable character. Nothing was further from him than vanity or arrogance, and, if he instinctively repulsed those whose manner was displeasing to his excessively refined taste, he was, towards his friends, full of kindness and charm and thoughtfulness. If his intellectual isolation was irksome to him, if he was a man who yearned for friends and yet found none worthy of him, if he was, of course, aware of his immeasurable superiority to all those who surrounded him, yet he never was anything but cheerful, a charm- ing companion, and filled with sympathy for all men and things. All those who met him at Sils-Maria, or on the Riviera, liked him and respected him. He was an altogether striking personality, in the presence of whom the trivialities and conventional banalities of daily conversation seemed out of place ; and in whose presence all boasting, all pretentiousness, all unreality were equally out of place. Nietzsche himself has maintained that he could at once detect, thanks to his extraordinary scent, any " physiological abnormality.'* Certain it is that those who, being physiologically or psychologically inferior, were admitted to his
40 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
presence, at once felt themselves probed to the bottom by the brilliant, piercing blue eyes of their interlocutor. Triviality and uncleanliness, whether bodily or mental, were two things which could never stand in the presence of so delicate, cultured and aristocratic a soul as that of Friedrich Nietzsche.
Nietzsche was the greatest of idealists ; and his passionate idealism led him into grievous mistakes and blinded him as to the real merits and defects of his friends. He speaks of Herr Peter Gast, the faithful friend and disciple, as if Gast were a great musician, and he estimated him far higher than Wagner. He saw in Dr Ree, in Professor Erwin Rohde, in Frau Lou-Salome, personages of a distinction which they were far from possessing. Nietzsche's generous nature was the opposite of those who are always ready to detract, to find out some little defect on which they may insist. Nietzsche saw in his friends nothing but perfection ; but bitter was the disappointment when at last the truth could no longer be concealed, and the veil fell from his eyes.
Nietzsche's was one of those natures which give them- selves freely, lovingly, confidingly, disinterestedly ; and, like all such natures, he yearned for human sympathy and human love, for that same sympathy and love which he was ready and longing to give. This statement will surprise those who only know Nietzsche from some famous, oft-repeated aphorisms, such as his advice to *' become hard,'' and his doctrine that the greatness of a man is to be measured by his capacity to inflict suffering. But in his private life Nietzsche appears as one of those ideal natures to whom might be applied the description by a French poet of Victor Hugo : '' Dieu mit d'abord dans son coeur la grande bonte." We find him writing to a friend in need.
THE LIFE OF NIETZSCHE 41
begging him to accept a small loan ; and when this is declined he writes sorrowfully to his sister : " It would have made me richer had he only accepted it/' He writes of himself, and his testimony is abundantly confirmed : ** My experiences, even with those who have afforded bad experiences to everyone else, speak without exception in my favour ; I tame every bear, I make the most ill-tempered amiable. During seven years that I was at the Bale Pedagogium teaching Greek, I never had cause to inflict a single penalty ; the laziest worked willingly with me/' ^ He quarrelled violently with Wagner. He wrote against Wagner the bitterest of pamphlets. And yet he loved Wagner always : '' Den habe ich sehr geliebt,'' he used to say, almost with tears. And when Wagner died at Venice, in 1883, he wrote to Frau Cosima Wagner the most beautiful and tender of letters.
" In former days,'' he wrote, '* you did not disdain to take my advice in a critical situation ; and now, when the news has just reached me that the bitterest has overtaken you, I know not how to give expres- sion to my feelings, except by pouring them out entirely to you and only to you.
*' Not what you have lost, but what you now possess, is my dominant thought ; and there can be but few persons who can say with such depth of feeling : ' Even as it was my whole duty, all that I did for the sake of this beloved one, and nothing more — ^so is it also my whole reward.'
'' You have lived for one ideal, and sacrificed every- thing to that ideal ; and over and above your love for him who is no more, you understood and grasped the highest, that which all his love and all his hopes
^ E. Forster-Nietzsche : " Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsches," ii. 820.
42 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
embraced. You served that, you belong to that, as also does your name, for eternity — that which is immortal, which dies not with the body, although it is born with it.
" Few have such aspirations ; and — of these few — who can realise them as you can ?
'' Thus it is that my thoughts go out to you to-day, and thus have I always thought of you, if from a far distance, of you who are the woman whom my heart most greatly reveres." ^
His love for all that is artistic, all that is beautiful, his passion for music — *' I know no difference between music and tears,'' he writes ', '' 1 know that happiness which cannot think of the south without a slight shudder of timidity " — are these the signs of a brutal and violent nature ? There are a thousand passages from his works which reveal the tenderness of every fibre of his nature. Could anyone but a delicate and sentimental nature have written, as he wrote, of Venice ? —
*^ An der Briicke stand Jiingst ich in brauner Nacht. Femher kam Gesang : Goldener Tropfen quoU's liber die zitternde Flache wag. Gondeln, Lichter, Musik —
Trunken schwamm's in die Dammerung hinaus. . . . Meine Seele, ein Saitenspiel, Sang sich, unsichtbar beriihrt, Heimlich ein Gondellied dazu, Zitternd vor bunter Seeligkeit. — Horte Jemand ihr zu ? . . ."
Alas ! no one remained to listen to this song of a great soul. Solitude, certainly, Nietzsche loved. '' Oh Einsamkeit ! Du meine Heimat Einsamkeit ! "
^ E. Forster-Nietzsche : " Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsches,"ii. 863.
THE LIFE OF NIETZSCHE 43
he wrote. But he felt also the want of a friend in whom he could confide, who could understand him and, what was for him more important, his ideal. " How many years have elapsed,'' he writes to his sister, '' since I last heard a word that really appealed to me, that went to my heart.'' '' My dear old friend," he writes again, already in 1884, to one of the comrades of his youth, '' when I read your last letter it seemed to me as if you shook my hand with a melancholy look, as if you would say : ' How is it possible that we have to-day so few things in common, that we live as if in different worlds ! And yet, long ago ! ' Thus, dear friend, goes it with all those who are dear to me : all seems finished and past. One sees each other still, one talks in order to break the silence, one writes letters in order to break the silence. But I know the voice of truth, and I hear it saying : ' Friend Nietzsche, you are alone.' " In 1887 he writes to his sister : " O heaven, how lonely I am to-day ! . . . I have no one with whom I can laugh, no one with whom I can take even a cup of tea, no one to comfort me ! " His friend, Baron Heinrich von Stein, died early, and his loss was very keenly felt by Nietzsche. With Professor Rohde he had quarrelled, his friend Baron von Gersdorff was seldom with him, and his sister, the friend and confidante of a lifetime, had gone out to Paraguay with her husband, Herr Bernhard Forster. Few perhaps can understand what it must have cost the author of " Zarathustra " to have perpetually to frequent the society of the amiable nonentities, English, French or German, who filled the hotels and boarding-houses of the Engadine and the Riviera. And yet he was always cheerful, always full of that charming courtesy which was peculiar to him, always ready with a kind word or
44 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
with the offer of a service, always popular. The people he thus met never understood who or what he was. *' He was a most delightful companion, very intelligent, but nothing of a great mind,'' was the opinion expressed by one person. Nietzsche accepted this misunderstanding cheerfully. '' It is my mask," he used to say laughingly with regard to his modesty of demeanour. He knew that it was not such people who would be called upon to judge him. '' The day after to-morrow first belongs to me,'' he wrote ; and he knew that his work was for those for whom it was destined — for the chosen few, and for them only.
The whole work of Nietzsche is that of an artist. As his sister truly says, sunshine and blue sky were necessaries of life to him. The beauties of nature, the beauties of art and of music, who appreciated them, loved them, wished for them, more deeply than Nietzsche ? The poem of Zarathustra was composed partly at Rapallo, in view of the lovely bay of Santa Margherita, partly in the Eternal City, with its memories and treasures, partly in Nice, '' under that halcyon sky," and with the blue expanse of water beneath. The idea of the Everlasting Return occurred to him in the midst of a forest, among the grandeurs of the High Engadine, at a height of 6000 feet. The " Gaya Scienza " is all saturated with the atmosphere of the '* most beautiful of all Januaries," passed under the Italian sky at Genoa. Nietzsche loved the sun- shine and the stars, and the moonlight on the lagoons of Venice, and the soft caressing music of the south which brings with it a gentle breeze of Mediterranean air.
As we have said, the year 1888 was the busiest, as it was the last, of Nietzsche's career as thinker. He wrote '' Der Fall Wagner," the '' Gotzendam-
THE LIFE OF NIETZSCHE 45
merung/' '' Der Antichrist/' and the fragments of " Der Wille zur Macht/' which have been pubhshed. With regard to the latter work, which contains the entire philosophy of Nietzsche in a nutshell, it cannot be too deeply deplored that the breakdown of the author's health prevented its completion. Its con- tents are, indeed, already contained in the poem of Zarathustra. But Nietzsche was the first to under- stand the difficulties which would arise concerning the interpretation of the latter work. Already in 1883, when '' Zarathustra " was finished, Nietzsche seems to have planned the writing of a new volume which should contain the exposition, in prose and in a more methodical style, of the ideas expressed in lyrical language by Zarathustra. In 1886 he wrote out a plan for this new work, to be composed in four books. But in 1887 he revised this plan, and finally deter- mined the composition of this new work as follows : —
Der Wille zur Macht : Versuch einer Umwertung aller Werte
i. Der europaische Nihilismus. ii. Kritik der hochsten Werte. iii. Prinzip einer neuen Wertsetzung. iv. Zucht und Ziichtung.
This plan was carried out, and the work was published posthumously by the Nietzsche- Archiv at Weimar.^ The plan, however, formed but part of a much larger scheme for exposing his philosophy in all its details, which Nietzsche was unfortunately unable to complete.
^ The following is the translation of the title : —
The Will of Power : the Transvaluation of all Values i. The European Nihilism. ii. Critique of the Highest Values, iii. Principles of a new Evaluation, iv. Rearing and Selection.
46 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
The year 1888 was one of extraordinary cerebral activity. It also happened that the summer, which Nietzsche spent as usual at Sils-Maria, was one in which exceptionally bad weather prevailed. Nietzsche's health, always far from robust, was unfavourably influenced by these climatic con- ditions. Although, since his comparative recovery in 1882, he had had no return of the violent attacks of pain to which he was formerly a martyr, he had been obliged to take constant precautions in view of his health, which remained in a weak condition. Unfortunately he had no one to look after him and to care for him. The solitude in which he was plunged, and the constant concentration of his mind, and the vertiginous heights to which his thoughts perpetually soared, all combined to make him neglect a hygienic regime indispensable to him, to fatigue his already somewhat overwrought nervous system, to keep him in a state of unceasing cerebral tension. Everything seemed to combine against him, in this his final year of activity. First, came a renewed and very bitter attack from the Bayreuth ring, who had never forgiven, and never could forgive, '' Der Fall Wagner.'' This attack, ungenerous itself, was made increasingly bitter by the fact that it was published in a musical review whose administrator was Herr E. Fritsch, of Leipzig, Nietzsche's own publisher. He had an increasing sense of loneliness, of isolation. Especially did the absurd silence of the entire German world of thought with regard to his labours fill him with anger and sorrow. He com- plains to his sister of this '' feeling of utter loneliness, this want of sympathy, this general ingratitude towards me. . . . Why is there no sign of approval, no understanding me, no cordial appreciation ? "
THE LIFE OF NIETZSCHE 47
Nietzsche sought refuge from his woes, the neglect of his compatriots, the want of friendship and understanding, in renewed work. And he worked hard, and he forced his brain to concentrate itself for a violent effort, as if he had conscience of the fact that it was to be a last effort ; and increasing nervosity and insomnia ensued as a natural result. The sleeping draughts of chloral, to which he had long accustomed himself, became ever larger and ever larger, as his cerebral tension increased, and the insomnia became more difficult to cope with. In the course of his wanderings, Nietzsche had made the acquaintance of a Dutch gentleman from Java, who recommended him, as sleeping-draught and general remedy for hypertension of the nervous system, a drug which he had himself discovered in the East. Nietzsche, foolishly enough, determined to try this drug, a concoction which medical science had never analysed. And the effects were good, so good that Nietzsche slept long under them and awoke with an ever-increasingly confused brain. This was the state of the man at the close of 1888. Overworked, racked with worry, in ill-health, sleeping only by means of enormous doses of chloral and of this Eastern drug, with his whole nervous system strained to breaking- point — it would have required the constant care and affection of a mother or sister or friend, who could have comforted him, nursed him, cheered his solitude, afforded him light and agreeable distractions, to avoid the coming blow.
Alas ! Nietzsche was alone. After a bad summer in the Engadine, which increased his bad health and bad spirits, he arrived at Turin, en route for the Riviera. At Turin he found the weather most favourable ; he cheered up under the influence of an
48 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
Italian autumn, and we find him writing in a most cheerful frame of mind to his sister in Paraguay. He began, not content with producing '' Der Fall Wagner,'' the '' Gotzendammerung,'' and that most important work " Der Wille zur Macht,'' one after another in the same year, to write an intimate diary, which he entitled " Ecce Homo/' He begins this diary thus :
'' On this most important of days, when not only are the grapes brown, but when all is ripe, suddenly a gleam of sunshine fell on me and lighted up my whole life : I looked back, I looked up, I never saw at one and the same time so many good things. Not for nothing have I just completed my forty-fourth year — it was well for me to bury it, for what has lived during that year is saved and is immortal. The first book of the Transvaluation of all Values, the Song of Zarathustra, the Twilight of the Idols,^ my essay in ' philosophy by means of the hammer,' — all are the gifts of this one year, indeed of the last three months ! How would it be possible for me not to be thankful for my whole life ? And thus will I recount the story of my life." '
In this state of hypertension, of over-excitement, nothing could have been worse than to have caused Nietzsche irritation. This, however, is precisely what he encountered. Instead of that loving sympathy which a home or kind friends could and should have prepared for him, he found himself exposed to one attack after the other. His old and venerated friend, Frau Malwida von Meysenbug, commenced by attacking him on the subject of
^ " Gotzendammerung."
^ E. Forster-Nietzsche : " Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsches,'* ii. 892.
THE LIFE OF NIETZSCHE 49
" Der Fall Wagner/' Then followed that calumni- ous attack by an obscure member of the Bayreuth ring in the Musikalische Wochenblatt, of which Nietzsche's publisher was the administrator. En- couraged by this attack on the part of the Bay- reuth ring, and by the silence with which it was received — for Nietzsche was unable to reply and no one came forward in his defence — other enemies, of the baser sort, came forward, with all sorts of anony- mous letters, containing statements concerning Nietzsche's sister in Paraguay and her husband, Herr Forster. This last method of causing annoy- ance was also, perhaps, the most effective. The thought that his sister, the dearest friend and con- fidante of his whole lifetime, was turning against him, incited by her husband, was the final drop in the cup already full to brimming over. In the midst of this solitude, attacked on all sides, unable to defend himself, exasperated beyond measure by his foes, rendered desperate by the thought of his sister's abandonment, Nietzsche wrote on, wrote on, forc- ing his tired, weary eyes to work, forcing his tired, overwrought brain to work, stimulating the one with powerful spectacles, stimulating the other with chloral in ever-stronger doses — in order to obtain that sleep which would not come, and which was his sole refuge from all his worries and woes. It could not last. The brain, worked up to an impossible pitch, suddenly broke down ; and a paralytic stroke put an end to Nietzsche's career as thinker in the early days of 1889.
It has become customary — as was to be foreseen — to talk of Nietzsche as if a trace of insanity were to be found in all his works, as if the stroke which feU at Turin in January 1889 were but the culminating
D
50 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
point of a morbid state dating back some fifteen years, and which, according to this theory, was inherited by Nietzsche. In view of the attempt which has been made to discredit Nietzsche's work on the ground that it is the work of an insane person, and in view of the not unnatural success which has attended this attempt, especially, or exclusively, among the uninitiated — we say, not unnatural, for it is an easy and convenient way of refuting views which may be only with difficulty refuted by more serious arguments — we think it well to give a brief sketch of Nietzsche's history from the medical point of view.
Nietzsche belonged to a family in which exceptional longevity was the rule. Most of the brothers and sisters of his father, as also his grandfather, survived the age of seventy, and some of them attained eighty or even ninety years. The same rule of longevity prevailed in the family of his mother. On the other hand, not one single case of insanity, or of any mental aberration, is reported among any of his immediate ancestors or relations. Nietzsche's father, it is true, died at the early age of thirty-six, from softening of the brain. But this softening of the brain was caused by a fall down some stairs, which had occurred eleven months previously ; and, Nietzsche being five years old when this accident happened, no further account need be taken of it. During his early life Nietzsche was gifted with exceptionally good health. His sister reports that, when, at the university as a student, he used to return in his riding-suit from a cross-country gallop, everyone admired the splendid build of his frame and the physical strength which it revealed. He never had a serious complaint of any sort, it seems, before 1869, when a fall from his
THE LIFE OF NIETZSCHE 51
horse laid him up for a considerable time. Then came 1870 and the Franco-German War, in which Nietzsche served in the Ambulance Department. The severe strain of this winter campaign proved too much for him. He became seriously ill, and, without being properly cured or sufficiently rested, he resumed his arduous work as professor at Bale. From this time onwards came constantly recurring headaches, of ever-increasing severity, till at last, as we have seen, he was compelled to abandon his professorship at Bale. During two years he lay a martyr to his sufferings, but towards 1881 his health improved, and from 1881 to the time of his attack in 1889 he does not seem to have suffered from this complaint to any great extent. But his health was visibly undermined. It was only by means of the strictest hygienic regime, by constant changes of climate, that life was rendered more or less support- able. In this fragile state of his health, Nietzsche required a woman's care and constant affection ; he required a doctor to supervise him, to prevent him from overworking himself. But, left to himself, Nietzsche subjected his brain to a work which, powerful as that brain was, it was nevertheless unable to cope with. And we must constantly bear in mind that Nietzsche was no mere coldly objective philosopher, but that his philosophy was inseparable from himself, from his life, that he lived his ideas in the most literal sense. By nature of an extremely delicate and sensitive disposition, his work filled him with an enthusiasm which it is hard to conceive. His state of mind after the completion of each part of the poem of Zarathustra was one of extraordinary excitement. He was himself Zara- thustra, preaching, in terms of lyrical beauty, a new
52 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
gospel to the world. He saw himself uplifted above all humanity, soaring in the vast spaces and immense silence of the region of eternal snow, he saw the vision of the future before him, the radiant vision of the Over-Man, far above all things human, far removed from all that which humanity has venerated up till now, the creator of the new tables of the law, of the new values, of him who '' is to mould centuries according to his image, as if they were wax." In a state like this, every fibre of a nervous system already overwrought by long and painful illness was strained. Insomnia attacked him, and he had recourse to ever- stronger doses of chloral and of that fatal Eastern drug given him by the Dutch gentleman from Java ', at the same time, instead of reposing his nervous system and giving it time to calm itself, he worked on and overworked, till at last overwork and drugs and worries proved too much, and that powerful brain, which had created Zarathustra, succumbed to the demands made upon it.
No trace of any morbid influence is to be found in any of Nietzsche's works, with the exception of the later part of his intimate diary, " Ecce Homo," written at the end of 1888, after the completion of all his philosophical and literary work. When we come to these passages of the diary, written in December 1888, certain traces of a distinctly morbid character are to be seen. But the contrast is great between these passages and the rest of Nietzsche's work, a contrast clearly showing that his productions, from the " Birth of Greek Tragedy" to "The Will of Power," are not the fruit of an abnormal state of mind. At the end of his life of thinker, Nietzsche seems transplanted into another world. He was thus transplanted when he wrote " Zarathustra,"
THE LIFE OF NIETZSCHE 53
but in a different fashion, for '' Zarathustra '' is a coherent, well-ordered work, showing all the signs of an exceptionally powerful and fertile intellect ; whereas certain passages in '' Ecce Homo " are incoherent and absurd. Under this morbid influence which heralded by some weeks the fatal stroke, Nietzsche sees himself as a stranger, he contemplates himself as if from afar. He is the continuator of the work of Jesus Christ, as he is also the deadliest enemy of that work, and he is continuing it by annihilating it and trans valuating it. Across nineteen centuries, he stretches his hand out to what he believes to be his predecessor. This idea haunts him continually, and his last letter to Georg Brandes, written on 4th January 1889, and undoubtedly the product of an insane mind, is signed by him '' The Crucified One.*'
The paralytic stroke which attacked him in Turin was a mild one, and confined to cerebral paralysis. Nietzsche was able to go out and to write. It was his letters which first gave alarm to his friends. Professor Overbeck, his former colleague in Bale, came in haste to Turin, and took Nietzsche back with him to Bale. After being nursed for a time at Bale, he was removed to Jena and thence to Naumburg, where his mother and sister joined him, the latter returning from Paraguay to nurse the now helpless brother. Nietzsche was still able to go out, and he met his sister at the station with a bouquet of flowers to greet her on her return.
The decline of the creator of " Zarathustra, *' of the great apostle and lover of life and of beauty, of the enthusiastic prophet of the Over-Man, symbol of life and of beauty and of strength, was a decline singu- larly sublime in its pathos and melancholy. The
54 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
silence which had accompanied Nietzsche during his active Ufe, a silence broken towards the end by a few members of the elite of the world of thought — by Brandes in Denmark, by Taine in France, by Burckhardt in Switzerland — now suddenly gave way to a celebrity which resounded throughout Europe, from Paris to Moscow, a celebrity which was also an apotheosis. But of this tardy recognition of his genius, Nietzsche knew nothing. In that quiet, sunny house at Weimar, whither his mother and sister had removed from Naumburg, lay the great thinker and philosopher, enjoying on his verandah the balmy air and the view of the hills of the Thuringian Forest which dotted the horizon. His great pleasure was to receive the visits of old and well-loved friends, to hear them talk, and to listen to music. His faithful disciple, Herr Peter Gast, came over to Weimar to cheer him with music, and the deep blue eyes of the invalid filled with tears and his whole frame shook with emotion at the sound. What were his thoughts as, on the beautiful spring and summer evenings, he used to watch the sun slowly sink beneath the horizon in a glow of crimson glory ? He seemed to have a faint recollection of his former life of thinker. '' Did not I, too, write good books ? " he asked once of his sister, as she placed a new book in his hands. Towards his sister, who nursed him with a rare devotion, his gratitude was very touching. All those who visited him were moved by this affection, which he constantly showed, as well as by the beauty of that lofty forehead and of those deep blue eyes, which illness seemed only to have made more beautiful. Professor Lichtenberger, in his most excellent introduction to the philosophy of Nietzsche, describes thus the impression left on him :
THE LIFE OF NIETZSCHE 55
'' La souffrance et la maladie avaient, sans doute, marque leur empreinte sur la physionomie de Nietzsche, mais sans la degrader, sans lui enlever sa noblesse. Son front restait toujours admirable, son regard, qui semblait comme ' tourne vers le dedans,' avait une expression indefinissable et pro- fondement emouvante. . . . Dans tous les cas, il avait conscience de Taffection dont sa soeur Fentou- rait ; il ne cessait ne la suivre des yeux lorsqu'elle allait et venait dans la chambre, et rien n'etait touchant, quand elle s'asseyait pres de son fauteuil, comme le geste gauche et lent par lequel il s'efforcait de prendre dans sa main la main de cette soeur, confidante, jadis, de ses annees de jeunesse, supreme consolatrice, aujourd'hui, de ses annees de declin/' ^
In the room below that occupied by the invalid, Frau Forster-Nietzsche, aided by a few devoted friends of the master, were busily sorting, reading, arranging the numerous papers, manuscripts, diaries, correspondence, etc., left by the master, and destined to be published as posthumous works. And above lay the master himself, unconscious of the noise now being made around his name, dying slowly and nobly, unaware of his apotheosis.
The end came peacefully, gently, on the 25th of August 1899. A fresh paralytic stroke fell, a long sleep ensued, the expression on his face changed slightly — a faint agitation, a long breath, and the master fell into the last sleep, that which knows no awakening. The bold fighter, the brave explorer of the paths of knowledge, the intrepid searcher after truth, had entered the haven of peace at last.
^ H. Lichtenberger : " Friedrich Nietzsche : Aphorismes et Fragments choisis," Introduction (Paris, 1902).
CHAPTER II
GENERAL VIEW OF NIETZSCHE'S IDEAL
The temperament of Nietzsche was in some respects well suited to the philosophy of Schopenhauer and to the drama of Wagner ; for Nietzsche was of a melancholy disposition, at times; he was nervous, he willingly exaggerated and was willingly aggressive. He knew in all its bitterness the pang of regret which every man worth something must experience at some time or other in the course of his life, the pang caused by the separation from men and from ideas which are dearly loved and cherished and revered. Nietzsche was of a melancholy disposition at times ; for instance, at the time of the separation from Wagner, or in *' Menschliches, Allzumenschliches," or in " Der Wandrer und sein Schatten,'' or in some of his cor- respondence with his sister and with intimate friends. And this melancholy is a feature of all refined and sensitive natures, especially as such natures are prone to see the world more or less through a prism — that of their own ideal — and the disappointment is the more cruel in proportion as the idealised world finds itself out of harmony with the world of reality. But it is only at times that Nietzsche is melancholy. The basis of his nature, or its principal part, is composed of cheerfulness, of optimism, and of a somewhat aggressive spirit which made of Nietzsche a hard and bold fighter.
During the first thirty years of his life Nietzsche
56
GENERAL VIEW OF NIETZSCHE'S IDEAL 57
worshipped conceptions which he fancied to be in harmony with his own conception of Ufe. That con- ception must always have been aristocratic, and was certainly always artistic. His long contact with the Greeks gave him a clearer idea of that personal con- ception, it showed him a great civilisation in which he recognised, or thought to recognise, his own ideal of life as being the prevalent one. His study of Greek art, of Greek philosophy, of Greek drama, not only enabled him to attain to a clearer conception of the Hellenic culture, but it was destined to have most important effects on his intellectual evolution and on his con- ception of life in general.
Nietzsche saw a civilisation in which life was glorified, in which life was regarded as sacred, as beautiful, as possessing a supreme value over and above all other things ; in which life was regarded as possessing a supreme value because it is the means of creating art and beauty, which art and beauty are the reflections of the boundless power and possibilities of life. The Greeks loved beauty, and the symmetry of forms, and the gracefulness of attitudes ; they loved strength and power ; and they combined beauty and symmetry and strength and power in the deities of Olympia. But the Greeks were also immortal ; but immortal in the sense of loving life so as to wish for life eternal, so as to wish for life in all its plenitude, in all its possibilities, for the integral life, which is above and beyond the mere fact of individual life, and needs for its adequate expression the whole of creation. These Dionysian and ApoUinian visions of the world were combined in Olympia, which was at once the expression of the power and beauty of life, and also of its continuity throughout the ages, of its essential identity over and above the world of phenomena.
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Schopenhauer had preached the negation of all wish to live as the highest wisdom. Nietzsche had admired Schopenhauer ; but he had admired him chiefly as being the pitiless destroyer of that flat and Philistine optimism which prevailed very extensively in German philosophy about the middle of the century, and which was one of the many bad results of the influence of Hegel. Finding himself in the presence of a great and ancient civilisation, whose ideal is the aflirmation of the most intense life, Nietzsche rejected Schopenhauer. His own ideal was the affirmation of life ; he must have misunderstood Schopenhauer ; but in any case he came to recognise that Schopen- hauer's teaching was not in accordance with the Nietzschean ideal. Nietzsche discovered his real self, that which had always been his real self, in contact with the Greeks.
^^ The Apollinian conception of life finds its concrete expression in the work of the sculptor, whose object is to create beauty, and to give us types of beauty which shall raise us above ourselves, which shall give a value to life, which shall create for us a perspective in which we see the possibilities of our own creative faculty, and so incite us to regard life as sanctioned and dignified by the sole creative power of the artist.
^The Dionysian conception finds its concrete expression in the aspiration of the musician, the most lofty aim of all music being to awake in us a love of life because it is strong, and, being strong, also and necessarily eternal. There is no contradiction between Apollo, the god of beauty, and Dionysus, the god of strength and of overflowing life. For the Greeks beauty was synonymous with strength and power. That which was strong and powerful and affirmative was also beautiful. Beauty being the raison-d'etre of life.
GENERAL VIEW OF NIETZSCHE'S IDEAL 59
and the creation of beauty its sole justification, it followed that only the existence of a race which was strong and powerful, which knew how to dominate and to organise, could afford a justification of life.
And the Greeks were precisely a strong race, who knew how to dominate and to organise, Let there be no mistake as to the real meaning of the Athenian republic, a republic governed by ten thousand " aristos " who commanded a nation of subjects and slaves. The political, colonising and administrative activity of the Greeks, activity always bent on con- quering and subjugating, whether it be rival states or the highest riddles of the universe, shows us the in- fluence of the Dionysian conception on the daily life of the race ; and the art, the immortal art of the age associated with the name of Pericles, art which entered into the daily life of the inhabitants and stimulated that life to ever-increasing activity, is the result of the Apollinian conception.
By dint of their strength, the Greeks were able to raise themselves above pessimism ; and they were able also to raise themselves above mere optimism, and to confound pessimism and optimism in a higher state which witnessed the resolution of the antinomy of the two. The supreme proof of that strength is to be seen in Greek tragedy. In its personages, Greek tragedy realised the Apollinian conception of life, of life as synonymous with beauty. In the choir of satyrs, it realised the Dionysian conception, life conceived as synonymous with strength and power. The tragedy proclaimed at once the beauty of life, and the exuber- ant power of life, desiring eternity for the realisation of its infinite possibilities.
And the faculty thus revealed by the Greeks, of being able to contemplate with serenity the sufferings
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and woes of life, proves the strength, both physical and moral, of the race. For the Greeks did not seek to con- ceal the sight of life's sufferings, in order to lull them- selves into an optimistic conception of life. They did not merely succeed in contemplating life's sufferings with serenity and calm. They went further and they considered the exhibition, the frequent exhibition, of suffering and pain to be a necessary factor in the combat against optimism, as essential to an under- standing of the real value of life, as a counterblast to undue optimism. They went further still, and they considered the sight of suffering and pain as adding to the value and to the beauty of life. They contem- plated suffering and pain in the light of an aesthetic manifestation of the universal Will of which all life is but the manifestation. After enjoying the sublimity of the Olympian vision of the beauty and strength and eternity of life, the Greeks liked to renew their force by a contemplation of life under its diametrically opposite aspects, they liked to renew their vigour by going once more to the source of life, which is suffering. And this suffering and pain and hideousness, they considered as the justification of the Olympian vision ; and they considered the Olympian vision as justifying the pain and suffering which accompanied its creation, and as being justified by them. For what reason possess suffering and pain ? Their only justification, which is also their supreme justification, is that they incite us to create beauty, that they are necessary and indispensable to the creation of beauty, that without them beauty could not be created, for beauty does but exist by reason of its antithesis, and thus do suffering and pain become the raison- d'etre of the creation of beauty, which is the raison-d'etre of life. We flee from the sight of so
GENERAL VIEW OF NIETZSCHE'S IDEAL 61
many horrors, and we create for ourselves works of art and of plastic beauty in order to escape from these horrors. And the pain and suffering which is the accompaniment of the whole world-process is also the material with which beauty and art are created. Through them our love of life as synonymous with beauty and with strength is intensified. Through them we realise the vision of life in beauty, of life in power, of life exuberant and overflowing with wealth, wealth of beauty and wealth of power, and needing eternity in order to realise that wealth.
And the whole conception of life which is Nietzsche's is realised in this conception, which was that of the Greeks. Nietzsche is an artist, and as an artist he sees life as a manifestation of beauty ; he sees life as synonymous with the will of power, of domination ; and this will of power, realised by the Greeks in their conquering activity in all domains, is itself but the Repression of the love of Ufe, of the affirmation of life, of the wish to live and to live wholly.
Arrived at this point, Nietzsche realised that this conception of life was likely to be criticised on the score of its being a conception which can only pene- trate the few, the select few. And it is certain that the Dionysian conception of life is the antithesis of a democratic one. The creation of beauty is the work of the elite and of the elite only ; and the strength of mind and body which reveals itself in the ability to contemplate the sufferings of life, as being necessary to the creation of beauty, can but be the privilege of the few ; and that view of life which considers suffering as necessary to the creation of beauty, which considers art as the sole justification of life, and which holds that the greater the suffering.
-y^
/f
62 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
both in amount and in intensity, the greater the beauty in amount and intensity, is not Hkely to be appreci- ated by that vast majority who are called upon to suffer and to die in order that the minority, the elite, may be able to enjoy all the more the con- templation of their artistic creations. For suffering, Nietzsche says, after Schopenhauer, is the basis of all life ; it is, in fact, the only reality in life. The artistic creation, which culminates in the Apollinian and Dionysian visions, is the only means of emanci- pating us from suffering, and consequently from pessimism. We take refuge from suffering in art and in beauty. But, even as life is thus rendered beautiful as a supreme creation of art, so does the creation of art require suffering as a primordial factor. The only means of escaping ourselves from pessimism and suffering is thus the infliction of suffering on others, for art cannot exist without its antithesis.
Such a conception of life presupposes the existence of an elite, of a minority, strong and powerful, which dominates the rest of humanity. And the Greeks had realised the necessities of logic, and they had established the rule of an elite over a republic of slaves and subjects. Nietzsche, too, understood whither the necessities of logic led him. The creation of beauty as the justification of life ; and the existence of suffering as a primordial condition in that creation ; this necessitated the rule of an elite. And the existence of this elite is further justified by the fact that its members alone are capable of creating beauty, that they alone are strong enough to surmount the trials of life and to take pleasure in the contemplation of those trials.
The existence of a strong, dominating race, in whom and by whom is realised the Dionysian and
GENERAL VIEW OF NIETZSCHE'S IDEAL 63
ApoUinian conceptions of life ; who, by its strength, and consequently by its beauty, is naturally called upon to govern humanity ; the existence of such a race can alone ensure the existence of those conditions without which life would be but a universal wail, without object, without justification. Such a race creates the conditions in which life is rendered toler- able ; it creates the conditions in which life is ren- dered fruitful and beautiful and strong. It creates beauty, and in so doing it creates those ideals, which are at the same time visions of its own infinite possibilities, which give a value and a meaning to life. But in order that a race may create beauty, may create those conditions under which we first apperceive the value of life, in which we first can desire life, it is indispensable that certain antecedent conditions should already exist. The first of these antecedent conditions is the existence of suffering. Only as we become aware of the intensity of human suffering can we wish to create an artistic vision which shall be its antithesis. Only as we become aware of the intensity of suffering is there a possibility of realising its antithesis. The justification of a ruling race is the justification of humanity, for it is the duty of that race to create the values which give a value to life, which give a meaning to life. And that race, by its strength, is itself, and in itself, an aesthetic mani- festation of the highest order. For, if it can create beauty, it is because it is strong, because it has an excess of vitality which permits it to surmount pessimism and suffering. And its vitality can be maintained only on condition that it is rendered hard, and it is rendered hard by the sight of suffering. Suffering is thus necessary, it is indispensable, both as the inspirator of artistic creation, and as main-
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taining the vitality essential to that artistic creation, which is the result of a superabundance of life.
Such is Nietzsche's conception of art. And Nietzsche's conception of art contains all Nietzsche. He differs profoundly on this subject from his erst- while master, Schopenhauer. For Schopenhauer, art is the means of escaping for a while, for a short time, from the tyranny of the desire of life. For a brief moment we stand, entranced and as if in ecstasy before the product of artistic creation, and during that moment we are uplifted above ourselves, we are uplifted to a higher sphere, in which we cease to desire. We do not, indeed, in this condition, consciously form a positive wish to be delivered from the desire of life, which positive wish is the highest wisdom ; but we negatively cease to desire life for a brief moment, for a while the ardent flame of desire is quenched, and in this quenching of the thirst for life lies, according to Schopenhauer, the value of art. But even as Schop- enhauer considered art as possessing a value only so far as it acts in a nihilistic sense, in so far as it extin- guishes in us the desire to live, so does Nietzsche consider the value of art as residing in it as a great stimulant of life. Art is what alone gives a value to life, what alone gives it a meaning, without which life would not be possible, or would be possible only as an endless purgatory. '' Art is the great stimulant of life ; how can one say of art that it has no object, no purpose, how can one understand it as ' Tart pour Tart ' ? One question remains ; art brings with it much that is ugly, hard and questionable — does not art, therefore, suffer from life to this extent ? . . . But this is the pessimistic view : one must appeal from it to the artists themselves. What does the
GENERAL VIEW OF NIETZSCHE'S IDEAL 65
tragic artist communicate to us about himself ? Does he not reveal to us precisely that condition in which one stands without fear before the most terrible and mysterious ? This condition is in itself of great value ; he who knows it, honours it above all others. The artist reveals it to us, he must reveal it, provided he be an artist, and a genius for revealing himself. Courage and the sentiment of liberty in the face of a mighty enemy, of a dread-inspiring power, of a problem which causes us to tremble — this victorious condition is the one chosen by the artist, glorified by him. In the face of tragedy, does all that which is bellicose in our nature celebrate its saturnalia. He who is used to suffering, he who seeks suffering, the heroic man, celebrates his own existence in the Tragedy — for the sake of this alone does the tragic artist drink the cup of sweetest cruelty.'' ^
Thus art is the value of life ; and that life alone is worth living which is a manifestation of art ; and that life is a manifestation of art which is strong, which is powerful, which is rich in vitality, which is exuber- ant. But art brings much in its train which is not artistic, much suffering, much pain, much cruelty, many bitter tears. This is erroneous. Suffering, pain, cruelty, tears are artistic ; and the strength of the artist consists precisely in being able to contem- plate suffering and cruelty from the standpoint of art,
^ " Werke," viii. 135, 136. " Die Tapferkeit und Freiheit des Gefiihls vor einem machtigen Feinde, vor einem erhabenen Ungemach, vor einem Problem, das Grauen erweckt — dieser siegreiche Zustand ist es, den der tragische Kiinstler auswahlt, den er verherrlicht. Vor der Tragodie feiert das Kriegerische in unsrer Seele seine Saturnalien ; wer Leid gewohnt ist, wer Leid aufsucht, der heroische Mensch, preist mit der Tragodie sein Dasein — ^ihm allein kredenzt der Tragiker den Trunk dieser siissesten Grausamkeit."
£
66 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
in being able to contemplate them as beautiful, as artistic in themselves, as essential pieces in the great edifice of beauty. Without them, art would not be. And the greater the suffering the greater the develop- ment of artistic creation. And as the intensity of artistic creation is the condition of life, as life finds its justification in art, as the object of life is to expand and develop in beauty, in ever greater beauty, so does life require suffering, and much suffering, and much intense suffering.
And Nietzsche preaches to us the necessity of becoming hardened, of inflicting suffering, of being able to witness the most terrible suffering, with seren- ity, nay with joy, of being able to inflict and witness suffering in order to be able to taste the more keenly the joys of that artistic creation and of that artistic destruction, which is itself a fresh incitement to creation, which embellish life. He tells us that the great man, the truly great man, is not he who is full of sympathy for his fellows, but he who is capable of inflicting the cruellest suffering without heeding the cries of his victim. The greatness of a man is to be measured by his capacity to inflict suffering. It is necessary to harden ourselves, to harden ourselves greatly.
*' Why so hard ? asked once upon a time the piece of kitchen coal of the diamond ; are we not near relations ? — Why so soft ? O my brethren, that is what I ask you : are you not — my brethren ?
'' Why so soft, so tender, so conciliatory ? Why is such self-denial in your hearts ? Such little conscious- ness of your Destiny in your look ?
'' And if you do not desire to be the messengers of Destiny, and of an inexorable Destiny ; how can you hope to triumph with me ?
GENERAL VIEW OF NIETZSCHE'S IDEAL 67
'' And if your hardness cannot shine forth and cut and crush : how can you hope to create with me ? — All creators are hard. And it must be a great joy to you to mould the face of centuries as if it were wax, —
'* Joy, to write 3^our name on the will of centuries as if on brass — harder than brass, nobler than brass. That alone which is the hardest is also the noblest.
'' This new Table, O my brethren, I write above you : Become hard ! '' ^
Thus life in beauty, in strength, and in power ; and suffering and pain as necessary to the creation of beauty, consequently to the glorification of life : this is the message of Nietzsche. It is a message which is distinctly pagan, and distinctly Hellenic, and dis- tinctly Roman ; it is the message of the Renaissance ; and it is a message which is distinctly anti-Christian, anti-democratic, and suflSiciently Neronian to enable
1 <<
Werke," vi. 312. The original German, one of Nietzsche's most striking passages, is as follows : —
'* Warum so hart ! — sprach zum Diamanten einst die Kuchen- Kohle ; sind wir denn nicht Nah-Verwandte ? —
'^ Wanun so weich ? Oh meine Briider, also frage ich euch : seid ihr denn nicht-meine Briider ?
" Warimi so weich, so weichend und nachgebend ? Warum ist so viel Leugnung, Verleugnung in eurem Herzen ? So wenig Schicksal in eurem Blicke ?
" Und wollt ihr nicht Schicksale sein und Unerbittliche : wie konntet ihr einst mit mir — siegen ?
" Und wenn cure Harte nicht blitzen und schneiden und zersch- neiden will : wie konntet ihr einst mit mir — schaffen ?
" Alle Schaffenden namlich sind hart. Und Seligkeit muss es euch diinken, eure Hand auf Jahrtausende zu driicken wie auf Wachs, —
" — Seligkeit, auf dem Willen von Jahrtausenden zu schreiben wie auf Erz — Charter als Erz, edler als Erz. Ganz hart ist allein das Edelste.
" Diese neue Tafel, oh meine Briider, stelle ich iiber euch :
WERDET HART ! "
38 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
us to conclude that Nietzsche must have been an admirer of Nero.
All that which is tired and weak and nervous and pessimistic and anaemic in life finds in Nietzsche its deadliest enemy. And that which is exuberant and gay and bold and intrepid and full of strength and of the love of life finds in Nietzsche its fervent apostle.
According to Schopenhauer, the greatest crime in life is the fact of living. According to Nietzsche the greatest crime in life is sympathy. Sympathy does not serve any purpose except that of increasing the amount of suffering on earth without adding to its beauty. Sympathy does not help him to whom it is proffered ; but it drags down him who proffers it to the level of the others. Sympathy adds to the number of those who are miserable. It may prove, and has indeed proved, exceedingly dangerous as an instrument for impressing on the privileged classes the notion of the injustice of their privileges, and thereby sounding their death-knell. Zarathustra is attacked by the vision of the Most Hideous Man, he who is the symbol of all the miseries and all the sufferings and all the ugliness of humanity, he who has slain God himself, victim of the constant con- templation of all the wounds and sores of stricken humanity. And Zarathustra has a moment's hesitation. The awfulness of the vision has taken him aback. But Zarathustra vanquishes himself, he thrusts the symbol of suffering humanity aside, and goes further. It is the great victory, the victory over his innermost self, the crushing out of the feelings of sympathy and tenderness.
But it would be, perhaps, a mistake to suppose that Nietzsche preached the doctrine of hardness and cruelty for its own sake. Sympathy adds to the
GENERAL VIEW OF NIETZSCHE'S IDEAL 69
number of those who are miserable. Those who are happy, and who love life, and who cherish life, are liable to be rendered unhappy, are sure to be rendered unhappy, are sure to turn against life, to declare life a misery and a burden, by sympathising with those who are miserable and who hate life because they are miserable. For what is sympathy ? It is the sharing of another's burden ; only this sharing of the burden does not relieve any of the weight on the shoulders of him who is miserable, while it places a burden which was hitherto absent on the shoulders of him who was up till then happy. So that sympathy adds to the stock of ugliness and suffering in the world. And Schopenhauer was incontestably right when he saw in sympathy the best means of attaining to that negation of the desire to live, which he prized as the highest wisdom. Sympathy reveals to us the depths of the world's suffering, it inspires us with timidity in the face of that suffering, with the consciousness of the non- value of all life; it incites us to desire the cessation of all life and the cessation of all desire. Sympathy is thus an anti- vital sentiment. And it was but natural that Nietzsche, the great apostle of life in all its plenitude, should regard sympathy as a crime. The predication of the gospel of life in all its plenitude entails some consequences which Nietz- sche foresaw. Firstly, the life which will assert itself in all its plenitude must encounter no obstacles which will hinder it in effecting this realisation ; and if it encounters obstacles it must be able to overthrow them. That is a condition precedent. Secondly, when that condition has been realised, life will affirm itself by all and every means ; by war. " My brothers in war, I love you from my
70 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
heart, I am, and always have been, your fellow- warrior. And I am also your best enemy. . . . You should love peace as a means to fresh wars, and the short peace rather than the long one. . . . You say, a good cause sanctifies even war ; but I say, a good war sanctifies every cause ! " ^ By war, and by the infliction of suffering, and by the trampling down of the weaker ; and by the creation of beauty, and by the assertion of one's personality in every domain of life, whether artistic, or intellectual, or administrative, or political, or social.
And this affirmation of oneself, this expansion of oneself, is but the affirmation of one's belief in life, of one's love of life, which is the cardinal point of Nietzsche's doctrine. During nineteen centuries and longer, since Socrates and Plato, the affirmative and expansive and exuberant life has been repressed, every obstacle has been set in its way, every effort has been made to prevent life from affirming and expanding itself in all its boundless plenitude. " There are many preachers of death, and the earth is full of those whose extinction should be preached." There are those who preach that life is not worth living, that the world is a vale of tears ; and these are those, and they are at present the great majority, whose extinction should be preached and advocated. For these preachers of death are the enemies of all life. For death, as they understand it, is the antithesis of life, the release not only from life but from all desire to live, the nirvana in which those who are tired of life and weary of life may take refuge and find repose.
But death, for him who loves life, who aspires to have life beautiful, to have it powerful and exuberant and strong, who loves life above all things, who loves
' " Werke," vi. 66, 67.
GENERAL VIEW OF NIETZSCHE'S IDEAL 71
life as a creation of art and on account of the possi- bilities it affords of creating art and beauty, who wishes for life eternally, because only in eternity can the plenitude of its expansion be realised, for him death is also something which partakes of the beautiful and gay and optimistic. For if death be indeed a token of the decay to which all individual life is exposed, it is also a reminder of the eternity of life over and above the accidents of this world of phenomena. If death be a manifestation of decay, it is also a manifestation of resurrection. The individual will, with the force which it incarnates, is dead, but the Universal Will, of which life and the world are but emanations, exists still, exists eternally, symbol of the desire of life, immortal and unquenchable.
*' The creator dies his death, triumphant, sur- rounded by those who hope and praise. . . .
'* To die is the best ; but the next best is to die in battle, in the full expansion of a great soul.
'' But that which the fighter, as also the victor, hates, is that miserable death of yours, which steals on you like a thief, but which nevertheless comes as lord and master.
" I recommend you my own death, the death which is free, which comes only when I will. . . .
*' Let your death be not a reproach to man and to the world, my friends ; this I ask of the honey of your soul.
*' In your death should your soul and your virtue shine forth, like unto the evening glow of the sinking sun, otherwise have you failed in your death.
'' And thus shall I die myself, so that you, my friends, shall on my account love life more greatly. . . ." ^
' '* Werke,'' vi. 105, 106, 108.
72 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
Thus is death also a fresh means of loving life, of affirming life. And thus also, from the heights in which he soars, does Nietzsche embrace, in the lyric gospel of the love of life which he preaches, also that phenomenon which is generally considered as the antithesis of life. Death shall sanctify life ; death shall not be welcomed as a release from life ; death shall, by its courage, by its intrepidity, by its beauty, give a fresh proof of the beauty of all life, and thereby increase our love of life.
It is impossible to go further in one's affirmation of life, and of the supreme value of life. In this brief general view of Nietzsche's position, a sketch necessary in order to give us an idea of Nietzsche's philosophy, we have shown that the cardinal doctrine of Nietzsche is the lovejpf life, the affirmation of life in all its plenitude and power, of life unrestrained by any obstacles, expanding itself in force and in beauty. And this affirmation of life contains all Nietzsche, as we shall see. But we must now examine Nietzsche's position with regard to the various obstacles at present existing, and which prevent an unrestrained expansion of life.
CHAPTER III
THE STATE
We have seen that the central point, the corner- stone, of Nietzsche's philosophy, is a lyrical and enthusiastic affirmation of life, of life beautiful, strong, exuberant, overflowing, of life manifesting itself in a thousand ways, in art, in social, intellectual, political, administrative activity, of life in all its plenitude and power. But many are the obstacles to the realisation of this ideal ; and Nietzsche was too intelligent not to see clearly these many obstacles, and too loyal and sincere to pass them over in silence. Nietzsche recognised the obstacles which prevent the realisation of his ideal of the Over-Man, with his superabundant vitality flowing over and expending itself freely and without hindrance. He recognised that all the institutions of the present day, and some of them are ancient and venerable, and most of them are considered to be axiomatic truths — all these institutions he recognised as so many obstacles preventing the fulfilment of his ideal.
But these institutions are no mere fortuitous growths, having sprung up arbitrarily, or having been imposed forcibly by some extraneous or extra- natural power. They have their root deep down in the habits, traditions, prejudices, of the race, and are but the concrete manifestation of the psychology of the race, which, in turn, is but a collective expres- sion for the psychology of the individuals who com-
73
74 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
pose it. And many of the obstacles to the reaUsa- tion of the ideal of the Over-Man are inherent in the habits, traditions and prejudices of humanity.
For instance, that feeling of fear before the un- known, that feeling of '' misoneism " as psychologists term it ; what greater obstacle than this to the free and unfettered exploration of the paths of know- ledge ? But such free and unfettered exploration of the paths of knowledge is a necessity to him who would know the keenest joys, and also the keenest sufferings, of life; consequently to him who desires to live fully. But there is no doubt about this general repugnance to a free and unfettered explora- tion. The most unprejudiced minds still have their prejudices. The scientist who, breaking loose from the religious beliefs which have, perhaps, been his in childhood, imagines himself to be a free and un- fettered explorer after truths, to be a *' free thinker " ; is he in reality so free ? Is he not still retaining many of the prejudices of his childhood, his unwaver- ing belief in the truth, for instance, or his respect for the moral law as assumed in the Kantian impera- tive ? Unknown, perhaps, even to himself, there lingers a pertinacious dislike of adventure in the research of knowledge, and an equally pertinacious partiality for well-trodden paths, which present no dangers, where the road is straight and the point of arrival sure. Humanity does not like to explore the virgin forests, which threaten the bold wanderer with a thousand perils, unknown and unforeseen, in which there are many chances against one that he will miss his path and be lost in a hopeless maze. This sentiment of fear before the unknown is a not unnatural one, but it is an obstacle, and a serious obstacle, to that free and unfettered search after
THE STATE 75
knowledge which is at once necessary to the emanci- pation of man from the bonds which now enthral him, and which is also necessary to the reaHsation of life in its integrity.
Thus here at the very outset is already an obstacle, and a very great obstacle, to be removed. Man must shake off that fear of the unknown and un- explored, he must gird up his loins and boldly explore the mysterious labyrinth of knowledge ; he must learn to shake off the prejudices accumulated by centuries ; prejudices which, by the force of heredity, have become part of his nature. He must unlearn a great deal, indeed most, of what he has learned, and which is merely error. But these errors and prejudices which he must unlearn compose his most sacred, his most cherished, his most firmly rooted beliefs. He is called upon to throw off the burdens of morality, of religion, of the State, and all other obstacles to the realisation of his integral self. And how many care to face the risk ? How many care to wander through the labyrinths of the virgin forest, or navigate amid the reefs of unknown seas, in order to attain to the bottom of things ; if indeed things have a bottom, or if that bottom only con- tains something disagreeable, something repugnant, or nothing at all ?
However the risk must be faced boldly. Man must shake off his fear of the unknown, he must carefully avoid the beaten track and plunge into the unknown recesses of the forest. He knows not what he may meet on the way, or where he will arrive, or if he will indeed arrive at all. But he will taste the pleasures, the incomparable pleasures, as also the poignant anguish and suffering, which alone are the lot of the explorer, of the Don Juan
76 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
of knowledge. Many and bitter will be his dis- appointments and mortifications and deceptions, but his will be also the vast joy of the man who suddenly finds himself, who, like Rip Van Winkle, awakes after a long sleep; of the man who has consciousness of the expansion of himself and of the realisation of himself during the search and by the search. The sentiment of infinite liberty in the face of the unknown, in the face of the most redoubt- able problems, in the face of unknown dangers and ambushes, is the sentiment of highest joy and triumph ; it is the sanction of life, because through it life is affirmed and glorified.
The concrete obstacles to the realisation of his ideal, whether represented by the State, or by the religions, or by the categorical imperative, or other- wise, Nietzsche did not attack them separately, in an orderly and methodical manner. He attacked them all one after the other, or all together, without method, violently.
First of all, we have the State. Nietzsche hates the State, in which he sees an organisation dis- covered by the masses for their protection and defence against the strong, the exceptional, the master. The State is synonymous with mediocrity organised. Being the invention of the weak and the inferior, it profits only the weak and the inferior. It allows these latter to develop without let or hindrance, without fear of the conqueror or the beast of prey. Its aim is the suppression of the exception- ally strong, of the exceptionally gifted. The logical expression of the State is the Democracy, with its absurd doctrine of equality.
When we come to examine the State, the modern
THE STATE 77
State, what do we find ? What is the precise aim of the modern State ? The modern State aims at enabUng the greatest number of men possible to hve together peaceably in the best and happiest conditions possible. The aim of the State is not the development of the individual, nor the creation of beauty, nor the cultivation of a superior race, nor even the protection of the better and stronger elements in a race ; the aim of the State is the greatest possible multiplication of individuals ; its aim is a regime of flat and mediocre happiness for the greatest number of these individuals ; its aim must necessarily be the suppression of all that which is exceptional and superior to the mass, for that which is superior to the mass revolts against the authority of the latter as represented by the State. The Biblical exhortation : '' Go forth and multiply,'' summarises the aim of the State. The mot d'ordre of modern democracy : " the greatest hap- piness of the greatest number,'' completes this definition.
The State is the creation of the weak, and is consequently in the service of the weak. '' The State ? What is that ? I will open my ears, and I will recount you the story of the death of nations. The State is the coldest of all cold monsters. It lies coldly ; and this is the lie which proceeds from its mouth : ' I, the State, am also the People.' But it is a He. They were creators, those that created the different peoples, and gave them a faith and an ideal ; and thus did they serve life. They are destroyers and nihilists, those that set traps for great numbers and call those traps the State ; they hang a sword and a hundred passions above them. There where a strong race still exists, the State is not
^
78 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
understood, and is hated as the evil eye and as a crime against morals and liberty. . . . The State lies with all the tongues of good and of evil ; and whatever proceeds from it is a lie, and all that it possesses is stolen. Everything connected with the State is false ; it bites with stolen teeth, and its very bowels are false.'' ^
Being an instrument designed to permit of the greatest possible multiplication of individuals, the State necessarily tends to favour the increase of numbers of wholly superfluous persons :
'' The State is there where are all the drinkers of poison, good and bad. It is there where all, good and bad, loose themselves. It is there where the slow suicide of all is termed ' life.'
'* Behold these superfluities ! They steal the work of the discoverers, and the treasures of the wise. They call their theft education — and everything in their hands becomes illness and impotency !
'' Behold these superfluities ! They are for ever ailing, they give vent to their spleen and call the result their newspapers. They devour each other, but cannot even digest each other.
'' Behold these superfluities ! They make wealth and yet become poorer. They^desire power, and first of all that condition precedent to all power — money. . . .
'' There, where the State ceases to be, there begins the man who is not superfluous. There, where the State ceases to exist — behold, my brethren ! Do you not see the rainbow and the bridge of the Over- Man ? " '
It matters not whether the State be autocratic,
^ " Werke," vi. 69, 70. ^ Ibid. vi. 71, 72.
THE STATE 79
as in Persia, or democratic, as in Great Britain and the United States. The State is always the enemy of everything which is exceptional, of everything which is powerful, of everything which rises above the ordinary, of everything which is independent. What it aims at is the multiplication and protection of the inferior elements of the race, which elements constitute its strength and guarantee its longevity. The State loves correct attitudes, normality, mediocrity.
And the proof of this is that all those who, in modern times, have risen above humanity, and dominated humanity, and ruled humanity with a rule of iron, have either broken loose from all State control, or else have used the machinery of the State in order to assert their powers. The State is an ad- mirable instrument in the hands of a Cesare Borgia, or of a Peter the Great, or of a Napoleon. It is an admirable instrument for dominating the mass of humanity — and as such the great rulers of humanity, from Alexander and Julius Caesar down to Frederic and Napoleon, have always understood it — that is to say, all those who belong to the mass, either by reason of their weakness in *' physique,'' or on account of their incompetency, or because of their inability or hesitation to enter upon new paths and forsake the beaten track, or for any other reason. All these need the State for their protection ; for the State protects them against exterior foes, and protects them against themselves. The State acts as do the religions, as a policeman who prevents the bad instincts of the masses from breaking loose.
The position of Nietzsche with regard to the State is fundamentally opposed to the position of the anarchists, who also desire the abolition of the
80 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
State. The anarchists desire the aboHtion of the State in order to do away with the power of the governing classes, of the bourgeois and capitaHst classes, in order to ensure to each worker the integral value of his own production, iii order to do away with the alleged exploitation of the industrious and working classes by the capitalist and employers' class. The condemnation of the State by Bakunin, by Kropotkine, Reclus, Grave, and their disciples, is a condemnation pronounced in the name of the masses, pronounced against the alleged exploiters of the masses, against those who have the reins of power in their hands. According to the anarchist theory, the State is the instrument of class domina- tion, which theory is also that of Marx and the different coUectivist schools. The State, according to this theory, is the means whereby the capitalist class is able to prolong its domination. The State, still according to this theory, is the great obstacle which prevents the realisation of the anarchist and collectivist ideal — the ideal of universal fraternity and solidarity.
Anyone even cursorily acquainted with Nietzsche will at once recognise the total and fundamental divergence of views which separates him from the anarchist school. The latter has as starting point the ideal of a humanity living in peace, fraternity and solidarity, of a humanity whose unit, the individual, is naturally good, naturally pacific, and whose natural goodness and disinterestedness have been momentarily destroyed by various influences, of which the State is among the most important. Nietzsche has as starting point the ideal of a humanity living in strife and in war, of an Over- Man dominating humanity by his strength, of an
THE STATE 81
Over-Man, type of the brute, strong, ferocious, merciless ; he sees in man, not a creature naturally good, but a creature naturally and essential vicious ; he sees in the State, not the destroyer of man's good qualities, but the destroyer of his passions and of his vices, of that which is fundamental and which is attractive in his nature. The anarchist school hates the State as a symbol of power ; Nietzsche hates it as a symbol of impotence. The anarchist school heralds its downfall as the end of tyranny ; Nietzsche sees in its downfall the means of establishing a far greater tyranny, that of the Over-Man. The anarchist school works against the State as an instrument of class-domination and in the interests of the masses ; Nietzsche thunders against the State as an instrument for the protection and creation of mediocrity, and in the interests, not of the masses, whom he despises, but of the Over-Man.
It is therefore a very flagrant error to confound Nietzsche with the anarchist school of theorists. Both desire the downfall of the State, but both ap- proach the question from totally different standpoints. The anarchist conception of society is the exactly diametrical opposite to that of Nietzsche. The anarchist school desires the complete downfall of the state, in order to inaugurate the era of anarchy. But what is more precisely Nietzsche's position ?
In the first place, Nietzsche does not desire so complete a downfall of the State, perhaps, as we might imagine. Nietzsche is essentially and primordially an autocrat, and so far as the State represents Authority — that is to say, so far as the State represents the Will of Power, the will to dominate — Nietzsche is perhaps willing to accept it. But, you reply, this is precisely what the State does represent. The
82 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
State is the symbol of authority versus anarchy, and the anarchists are logical in wishing to bring about its downfall, but Nietzsche is less logical in wishing the same thing.
But this argument shows a misunderstanding of Nietzsche's conception of authority, and also a mis- understanding of what is meant by the authority of the State. And indeed Nietzsche's conception of the State is intimately bound up with his whole philo- sophical teaching. Nietzsche, we must remember, is an autocrat, and an enemy of the democratic ideal. But Nietzsche is more than a mere autocrat. He is an ' autocrat who aims at the establishment of an auto- cracy which shall govern by reason- of its strength, by reason of its power, by reason of the terror and awe and respect, and also veneration, which it inspires. The autocracy which Nietzsche sees as the ideal of the future shall be one in which rigid exclusiveness prevails ; in which admittance to its ranks shall be dependent on the strength, the prowess, the courage, the intelligence, the anthropological superiority, of each member ; in which each shall be free to develop himself to the utmost degree, in boundless freedom, or almost boundless, at anyrate in a freedom to which the only limits are those set by his own strength and capacity. The Nietzschean autocracy shall be one to which only the fittest shall be admitted, a narrow circle composed of the elect alone, of those who are the creators of the values which humanity worships, and each member shall conquer admittance only by his deeds ; but the deeds which shall gain for him admittance shall be deeds of daring and prowess, both intellectual and physicaV\vhich no State could permit, for it is such deeds as these which destroy the State and falsify its aim and raison-d' etre. '' In our
THE STATE 83
present civilised world we know only the degenerate criminal, crushed by the hostility and contempt of society, the criminal who distrusts himself, who often seeks to belittle and excuse his act — ^in short, a type of criminal who has failed ; and we forget that every great man was a criminal, only not in miserable style, but in great style — we forget that every great act is a crime." ^ The great man of the future, he who is alone worthy to be a master and a ruler of men, who is alone worthy to enter the ranks of the autocracy of the Over-Men, he must necessarily be a criminal — that is to say, a man who knows not good and bad, because he is above them ; a man who is the scourge of humanity ; who, in order to realise the expansion of his personality, needs humanity as a field for experiments, as a field in which he can sow suffering broadcast, for every great man needs to inflict suffer- ing, for every great man is warlike and hard-hearted and needs great hecatombs in order to attain his object. The aim of the Over-Man is a great aim, and it is the realisation of life in its entirety, in all its infinite possibilities ; and, in the great game which the Over- Man plays with Destiny, humanity is but a pawn.
Such is the authority which Nietzsche would set up, an authority of blood and iron, dominating humanity by its strength, by the awe and veneration which that strength inspires, an authority which has attained its position through countless hecatombs, through tears and suffering, which has posed the greatest and deepest problems which confront the human mind and resolved them, which has lived through perils innumerable and which has through its perils become hardened, become fitted to occupy the position which it occupies, that of creator of the tables
Werke," xv. 355.
1 «'
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of values which shall constitute the faith of the world. The autocrat of the future, the Over-Man, is the embodiment of strength and beauty, who is beautiful in his strength, and who is strong enough to give full vent to all his passions, and also strong enough to restrain those passions, and to prevent them from flowing over and destroying life.
It ensues that the autocracy of Nietzsche will exist not by any means for the benefit of humanity at large, for it will be a scourge to humanity, for it will be the master with the iron glove, and humanity will be the slave and the drudge. Thus alike by its final aim, by its composition, and by its immediate aims, this autocracy will be the exact opposite of all con- temporary states, whether autocratic or constitu- tional. Its final aim will be itself and its own development in strength and in beauty ; its com- position will be that of the most elect : of the fittest of the fit, of the bravest of the brave, of the strongest of the strong ; and its immediate aim will be the exploitation and scourging of humanity as the chief means to its own consolidation.
If we turn now to the State of to-day, whether it be autocratic or constitutional, we find at once that every act which qualifies for admittance into the autocracy of to-morrow is condemned. The State of to-day is essentially moral ; while the Over-Man is nothing if not profoundly immoral. The object of the State is not the creation of beauty, nor the development of individual power and independence. Its object is the development of mediocrity ; its object is the creation of a flat, colourless ideal of uniformity, which is certainly not beautiful, and which is certainly not the symbol of strength. The aim of the State is the " good " man, the '' correct ''
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man ; its ideal is the staid man of business, or the placid and conservative '' bourgeois '' who lives on his income and leads an honourable, a sedate, and a quiet life. The State has its philosophy, which inculcates respect of the law, of the moral law, and enjoins the worship of the trinity of the Good, the Beautiful and the True. The State is the enemy of all initiative or independence. Whether it be Russia or France, an absolute monarchy or a republic, initiative and independence are considered by the State as its most redoubtable foes. How could the modern State accommodate a Julius Caesar or a Cesare Borgia or a Napoleon ? These creators of their own values, these dominators and tyrants of humanity, were themselves the State, they were themselves the incarnation of the Will of Power, they personified Power under its most redoubtable aspect.
The State, however, is not redoubtable. The State is not the creation of courage or of prowess or of great- ness of any sort. The State has been created in order to render the life of the greater number toler- . able — ^that is to say, its object is the curbing and eventual suppression of the passions which surge up in the human soul and which threaten the peace and good digestion of one's neighbour. The State needs order and peace, and also the '* peace of mind.''
But the State represents a principle of authority, you object ; and in order to obtain authority you must have power. There is no such thing as authority without power of some sort.
Certainly. The State possesses authority ; but there are two sorts of authority. There is the authority which is obtained by the superabundance of force and energy, such as was realised, for instance, in Napoleon. And there is the authority which is
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obtained by all sorts of intrigues, of backstairs plot- ting, of cunning tricks, of baseness and meanness and slyness ; and such is the authority of the State.
The State proclaims itself moral, but it is in reality profoundly immoral and disgustingly immoral. This is a first proof of its weakness, of the mean and degen- erate physique of those who control it ; for the great sign of strength is to be able to proclaim oneself immoral, at least to oneself. Napoleon gave himself out as actuated by moral motives ; but that was because humanity is too unintelligent to understand the immoralist ; and to himself Napoleon also con- fessed himself. But the rulers of the modern State are full of self-deception ; they lie to themselves, they deceive themselves deliberately, until they begin actually to believe in themselves and in their virtue ; they blind themselves with big words and pious attitudes, and the reason for their deUberate self- deception is that they are afraid to examine them- selves to the bottom, afraid to look the truth in the face. Here is a first proof of cowardice, of weakness, and of hypocrisy.
Under cover of this *' tartufferie,'' the most tortuous intrigues and plottings are carried on. Those who, to-day, rule the State, or aspire to rule it, not being strong enough, or courageous enough, or bold enough, to assert their supremacy by strong, cour- ageous and bold means, have resort to all sorts of crooked and unclean methods. The democratic State, with its shameless place-hunting and deception of the electors, with its corruption and jobbery, is typical of that sort of power which is represented by the State. That power is acquired by means of corruption and jobbery — is not the French republic a striking instance ? — and he who employs the most
THE STATE 87
underhand methods, he who possesses the most crooked brain, he who is most practised in the art of unscrupulous intrigue, of backstairs plotting, and of self-deception, he arrives at a goal and takes charge of the helm of the State. The contests of political parties, are they contests of principles or of per- sonal ambitions, mean and sordid ? Incontestably of the latter. The regime of democracy, with all its scandals, has discouraged those who possess any real value, those who are brave and who look upon the interests of the race, and of the race of the future, as the highest aim of activity.
The democratic State hates the great man, and the absolutist State hates the great man, because the great man is the redoubtable enemy who would do away, and mercilessly, with all the place-hunters and blood-suckers who, by means of tortuous intrigue, hold at present the reins of power. The advent of the great man means the death of the place-hunter. And therefore the State proscribes the great man, and outlaws him.
And how do they keep hold of their places, these jobbers and intriguers ? By means of specious promises — not to improve the condition of the race by cultivating systematically its anthropologically superior elements, oh no ! But by promises to the mass, by luring on the mass, by holding out visions of future happiness, by exciting the covetousness and envy and hatred and malice of the mass. And thus does the State become the greatest foe of progress, thus does it seek to multiply the inferior elements at the cost of the superior, for it is only in the inferior elements that the State finds its support.
The results of the activity of the State have long been manifest in Europe ; and biologists have re-
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peatedly called attention to the growing degeneracy of the race as the result of the policy consistently pursued by those to whom is confided the responsi- bility of governing. It is notorious that Darwin was extremely pessimistic as to the future of the race, and his views are also those of Galton, Vacher de Lapouge, Sergi, Ploetz, and of all eugenists in Europe or America. '* If we grant that this struggle for existence really does exist — and as a matter of fact it sometimes does occur — its results unfortunately are the exact opposite of those which the Darwinist school desires, and which one ought to desire with it. The struggle results generally in the discomfiture of the strong, of the favoured exceptions. The race does not increase in strength ; its weaklings are always triumphant over its strong men, because the former are more numerous and more clever. Darwin forgot to reckon with the intellect ('' Geist ''). . . . The weaklings possess greater intelligence. ... I understand by intelligence, as it is easy to see, slyness, cautiousness, patience, deceit, great self-possession, and everything which we call mimicry ; to this latter a large part of our so-called virtue belongs.'' ^
To sum up : the State is a creation of the weaker elements of the race who, by dint of their greater cautiousness, slyness, deceit, trickery and self- possession, have succeeded in outmanoeuvring the stronger and fiercer elements. The State is the instrument of protection of these weak and treacher- ous elements. The power in the State is represented by those among the inferior race who have succeeded in outwitting and outdeceiving their competitors. The rule of the State is the rule of jobbers and place- hunters, who need peace and order and quiet in order
> " Werke," viii. 128.
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that they may pursue their labours undisturbed ; and who, in order to keep the power in their hands, are forced to resort to all manner of bribery, including the holding out of visions of the future which appeal to the worse passions of the masses, which tempt their cupidity and excite their malice and envy. The result of this dependence of the political place-holders on the masses is the enactment of legislative measures in the highest degree prejudicial to the well-being of the race as a whole, prejudicial to individual liberty and initiative, and prejudicial to social progress and organisation.
The State, therefore, is one of the chief obstacles to the realisation of that ideal of force, of beauty, and of integral life which Nietzsche preached. Within the precincts of the State, only the superfluous can find place. There where the State ends, there begins the great man, the Over-Man, who can, indeed, seize the helm of the State and say with Louis the Four- teenth: ''L'etat c'est moi"; but in so doing he places himself outside the State, above the State, and uses the State in order to assert his own power and domin- ation. Then, and then only, does the State become a symbol of the Will of Power.
CHAPTER IV
THE MORAL LAW
The State is one of the great obstacles to the reaUsa- tion of Nietzsche's ideal. But the State itself is not an accidental growth. It is the expression of the Will of Power, but of the Will of Power of an inferior race, which seeks to assert itself by underhand and tortuous means. But the State is, as it were, but a secondary expression of the Will of Power ; its justification, in the eyes of those who defend it on sociological grounds, is not that it is the means of exploiting the working classes at the expense of the mercantile '' bourgeoisie,'' ^ its justification, its ultimate justification, is a purely moral one. The institution of the State is the best means, if not the sole means, of preserving law and order, and — morality.
All our social institutions are, in final resort, reducible to moral institutions. The State — the Law — the Constitution — the People's Charter — are all expressions of a desire to live in harmony with the moral law. Some anthropologists — ^for instance, Quatrefages — have gone so far as to assert that man is a religious animal ; which means that man is a moral animal, moral by nature, by instinct, by birth. Immorality is thus a crime against nature.
And it is a fact that every philosophical, social
^ F. Bninetiere : ** Sur les Chemins de la Croyance. Premiere fetape. L'Utilisation du Positivisme," p. ii (Paris, 1905).
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and other system which has been invented, from Socrates to Renouvier, has been a system based on morahsm. However divergent on other points, everyone has been agreed as to the existence of the moral law and as to the necessity of obeying that law. The monistic materialism of Haeckel and Biichner is quite as rigid on this point as the " Imitatio Christi/' Whether orthodox or heterodox in matters of religion, certain it is that every thinker, or every thinker with, perhaps, the exception of the pre-Socratian Hellenic philosophers and of Max Stirner in the middle of the nineteenth Christian century — every thinker, with these exceptions, has been orthodox with regard to the moral law. This law, mysterious, undefined and intangible, has been the arbitrator to which all causes have appealed, whose decision is final and irrevocable. The *' Rechtsstaat '' of Kant and Fichte is grounded on the principle that the individual shall be regarded as an end in himself and not as a means, which is a distinctly moral principle. The whole school of classical liberalism is based on a moral basis. Every party, every social system, every philosophy, when wishing to justify itself, seeks to show that its doctrines are the most in harmony with the moral law. And, as a matter of fact, that system which is considered to contain the strongest dose of moralism is also held to be the most justified.
All this belief in a moral law, in a categorical imperative, is based on the belief that, as M. Ferdin- and Brunetiere expresses it, '' truth is something exterior to us and above us, removed by its very definition from the fluctuations of personal opinion." The Moral Law is exterior to man, and superior to him. Over and above the world of nature is super-
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jDOsed the moral world, the world of " SoUen/' the world of the categorical imperative. The world of morals dominates the world of nature ; and the history of the evolution of the world is, in a sense, the history of the conflict between these two worlds, humanity becoming civilised in the measure that the world of morals asserts its supremacy, and relapsing into barbarism whenever the world of nature gains the upper hand.
Man is perpetually torn by the contest within him. On the one hand, his natural instincts and passions seek to assert themselves, refuse to be suppressed, and fight for existence. On the other hand, these natural instincts and passions are perpetually opposed by the mysterious voice of conscience, that terribly talkative personage which moralists have invented in order to represent the moral world. Every time a natural instinct or passion of man seeks to assert itself, it finds itself opposed by a *' still, small voice " which murmurs : '* That is immoral, therefore it is wrong.'' Thus is morality a sort of counter-balance to nature.
As long as morality was connected with religion, its imperative was less flagrantly absurd. For man, doubtless realising the abnormal position which he occupied, he, grain of matter or speck of dust, being opposed, as a moral creature, to the boundless and immoral universe, invented another world, which he imagined in the likeness of this present world, only superposed to the latter, only far greater, because eternal, because creator of the world of nature in which he lives. And thus the balance turned to the advantage of himself and of the moral world ; for the latter being represented by a fraction of the natural world, and by the whole of the supernatural
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world and its supernatural powers, was the only world which counted for aught. By this means the world of nature was rendered despicable, was belittled, calumnied, represented as the work of the '' Powers of Darkness,'' while the moral world, with its supernatural sanctions, overwhelming and overshadowing the natural world, became the '' real " world.
The task of Christianity, which identified the good with the divine, and which taught that every- thing good came from God, and everything evil from the devil — that is to say, from the world of nature which is the devil's creation — was thus ren- dered easy. And in truth the moral law requires a supernatural sanction. We have only to compare the Gospels, which can be understood of every child, with the laborious and herculean efforts of Kant, in order to understand the difficulty of establishing what the French call '' une morale laique " on a firm basis.
However, we will pass over the religious aspect of the question, which will be discussed later on, and confine ourselves to the morale laique — that is to say, to the moral law without supernatural sanction of any sort, which pretends to find its basis either in the human conscience, or else attempts its justifica- tion as a sociological necessity, pure and simple. And, in truth, it is seldom that an attempt is made nowadays to prove the existence of the moral law on purely theological grounds. Even the professed apologists of the various religious beliefs are aware of the extremelv unstable nature of those beliefs, and are glad to find some more solid foundation for morality than the existence of God. For theologians in distress, as well as for all those who, although rejecting openly supernatural beliefs, nevertheless
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cling to their belief in morality and in the moraJ law as a last remnant of the old faith, Kant, with his '' Critique of Practical Reason/' has proved a welcome benefactor.
What Nietzsche claimed to do was to place him- self above and beyond the moral law, above and beyond the good and the bad. From this objective standpoint he claimed to have reversed all the tables of values which humanity has worshipped up till now, and to substitute for them his own new tables, whose laws should be the opposite of those pro- claimed by the lawgivers of past times and up till the present day.
Immoralism is the basis of Nietzsche's creed, and yet Nietzsche is compelled to admit the existence of certain rules which govern human society ; and the best proof of this is that he arrives at the estab- lishment of two distinct systems of morals : that of the masters and that of the slaves. But we must admit that Nietzsche's new table of values which he would substitute for the one prevailing at the present moment, may fairly claim to be a table of immoral values. For, if we admit that sympathy, respect for the rights of others, goodness of heart, are " moral " qualities, it is incontestable that hard- ness, cruelty, contempt for the supposed rights of the weaker, are immoral.
Another question is that of Nietzsche's originality. Evidently Nietzsche is not the first philosopher to question the validity of the Kantian imperative, with its notion of absolute and immutable duty. To take only one example, Nietzsche's own master, Schopenhauer, had made a luminous and exhaus- tive critique of the Kantian imperative. But
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Schopenhauer had admitted, and very distinctly preconised, the value of morality and the necessity of morality for humanity. But this is precisely what Nietzsche calls in question, and the fundamental problem of the value of the very notion of morality itself is his starting point. '' Morality has been the neutral territory on which, in spite of all mistrust, disagreement and contradiction, one has met in common accord ; it is the sacred haven of peace, where philosophers and thinkers rest from their efforts, where they breathe and live again," he declares in the " Gaya Scienza.'' But Nietzsche has " circumnavigated the idealist lake '' and dis- covered new lands, far removed from this neutral territory of morality. '' We nameless, unprece- dented, almost incomprehensible early products of a future which is still a riddle — we need a new means to a new end — namely, new health, better, stronger, more resisting, merrier health than that which has prevailed up till now. He whose soul longs to have made acquaintance with all the values and all the desires which humanity has nursed up till now, who longs to have circumnavigated this idealist lake, who wishes to learn from his own experience, as is fitting in a conqueror and explorer of Ideals ... he must first of all possess robust health — robust health, such as one must always conquer and reconquer, because one must also perpetually sacrifice it ! . . . And now, after having been a long while on our journey, we Argonauts of the Ideal, perhaps more courageous than clever, often enough shipwrecked, and yet healthier than our opponents could wish us — dangerously healthy, in fact — it seems as if, as a reward, an undiscovered Land, stands before our eyes, whose frontiers no one
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knows, a land beyond all other lands, a world so overflowingly wealthy in beauty, in strange things, in mystery, in terrifying and also divine things, as to excite beyond measure our curiosity and our desire of possession/' *
But before this promised land of the future, this Canaan of milk and honey, can be conquered, it is essential that the moral prejudices which prevail to-day should disappear. For what in reality is this moral law of which philosophers are for ever talking, and which is thrust on us at every moment until its presence becomes an obsession ? It is certain that the moral law first originated with man. The rest of nature is absolutely and profoundly immoral. So long as the old teleological conception of the world-processes prevailed, so long as man was opposed to nature, was represented as something distinct from, and higher than, nature, it could be asserted that man was a moral being. And, as a matter of fact, the moral law finds its only true sanction, its only reasonable sanction, in religion. For, on the supposition that God exists, that a supernatural world is above the world of nature, and superposed to it, and dominating it, this super- natural world could be held as representing, as incarnating, the moral law ; and thus man '' created in God's image," in the image of the world of morals, is an essentially, and a primordially, moral creature ; and thus also the world of morals, incarnated in the Omnipotent Power of God, is the only world that counts, this world of ours being a mere atom, a mere passing fantasy of the omnipotent Power.
From this Biblical point of view, the explanation of the moral law, and its justification, are rendered
' " Werke," v. 342, 343.
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easy. The essence of man being moral, immorality is contrary to man's essence, to that which is funda- mental in his character, as well as being a sin against his creator and benefactor. From this point of view, also, the moral imperative is categorical and admits of no discussion. In order to raise the moral law above the fluctuations of personal opinion, and place it there where alone its nature can be regarded as eternal, as immutable, it is necessary to associate it with a higher Power which is also eternal and immutable.
But the progress of exegesis has rendered this basing of the moral law on alleged eternal and immutable religious truth very dangerous ; and all those who are far-sighted and clear-headed enough to understand the consequences of modern exegetical research on supernatural beliefs, are anxious to seek some more solid foundation for the moral law than a vanishing faith. To these persons, as we have said, Kant has proved a benefactor, and the success of Kant, as Nietzsche remarks, must be attributed to the fact that the Konigsberg philosopher was a theologian in disguise. Nietzsche has understood Kant's work better than Heinrich Heine understood it. He saw that the two volumes of the ''Critique'' are not opposed to each other; and he saw that, in the '' Critique of Pure Reason," Kant strove not only to demonstrate the impossi- bility of attaining to any knowledge of the world of noumena, but that by showing the insufficiency of our sensible intuition, and by maintaining the absence of any intelligible intuition, he also placed the entities of the world of noumena — God, soul, immortality — outside the reach of hostile criticism. These entities, already sheltered from hostile criticism by the " Critique of Pure Reason," are
G
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subsequently reintroduced as postulates of Practical Reason, as necessitated by the existence of the categorical imperative, taken by Kant for proven a priori.
But Kant's system of practical reason has long been attacked on various sides. The most important breaches in the system have been effected by the utilitarian and evolutionist schools, and by Schopen- hauer. Knowing as he did the work of Bentham and John Stuart Mill, being himself a disciple of Schopen- hauer, and following immediately on Spencer, Nietzsche could hardly pretend to have been the first to call in question the value of the Kantian imperative with its characteristics of universality and universal necessity. But the English utilitarians, he argued, have contented themselves with a history of the evolution of morals, without calling in question the fundamental validity of the moral law itself. Further they have given us a history of morals which is mis- leading, which is unhistorical, and which is false and unhistorical because these utilitarians have allowed themselves to be blinded by prejudice, and have identified everywhere the good with the useful, the bad with the useless, which is incorrect.
But to return to our question. We do not propose to examine here Nietzsche's own conception of the genealogy of morals or the value of the immoralist doctrine. We are examining the obstacles which Nietzsche finds in the way of establishing his ideal of life in all its power and plenitude, of life overflowing with exuberant vitality and seeking to manifest itself and to expend its strength by all the means in its power, by the creation of beauty, by the infliction of suffering, by seeking to know all the secrets of life, its joys and tears, its hopes and disappointments, its
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adventures and hardships. And one of the chief obstacles to the reaUsation of this ideal of super- abundant life is the existence of the moral law.
The moral law signifies the subordination of man to an external power, just as the religious law does. Morality, as Max Stirner pointed out in '' Der Einzige und sein Eigentum,'' is religion in disguise. Nietzsche has no knowledge of Stirner's work, nor does he appear even to have heard of Stirner or of that curious, rigorously logical and unanswerable book '' The Unique and his Property,'' for we should otherwise certainly find an elaborate eulogy of Stirner in his works. But Nietzsche says a lot of what Stirner said before him, as he has also said some things which Renan and Taine, Flaubert and Stendhal in the nineteenth. La Rochefoucauld in the eighteenth, century have said. Stirner pointed out with merci- less logic that the subordination of man to a moral law is the subordination of man to an external power, just as is the case with the religions. And this moral law is something exterior to man, something alien to man, for man is a part of nature, and nature is profoundly immoral. The world of the supernatural having been destroyed by modern exegetical research, and the world of the supernatural being the raison- d'etre of the world of morals, the world of morals disappears also. For is it not ridiculous and unreason- able to suppose man, an insignificant parcel of nature, opposed to the whole of the rest of nature ? And if we declare man to be the '' summit of creation " what do we mean ? If we mean that man is the centre of creation and the end of all creation, we fall into the error of the geocentric theory, which supposes this planet of ours to be the centre of the universe ; we fall back into the teleological error, which supposes
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a reason {" Zweck ") in the world-process, which sees in the world-process the reflection of a conscious Will ; and here are we back at the theistic point of view. If, however, we mean that man is the most perfect specimen of creation from the physical standpoint, we are wrong on a matter of fact. Physically, man is absolutely inferior to the carnivora, and if he possesses any superiority it resides in his more developed brain-power, which however does not at all com- pensate for his physical inferiority. So that if we accept the existence of a moral law, independent and autonomous, unconnected with any theistic idea, we arrive at the paradoxical result of opposing man, as a moral creature, to the rest of nature, which is im- moral.
But this is precisely what does distinguish man from the brute, and from inorganic nature, you reply. There is implanted in each one of us a moral law, identical in its ultimate aim for all times and in all places, and this moral law speaks to us through the voice of conscience. Our conscience commands, and we obey. We disobey, and our conscience tortures us with its reproaches.
To this objection Nietzsche has replied by a " critique " of the human conscience, which, although scattered throughout his various books, forms a whole, complete and rigorous. It is time for us to examine this notion of conscience, and to put in question its validity.
After examination we find, as a matter of fact, that our '' conscience " is but another term for the accumu- lation of all our instincts, whether these be derived from heredity or from education or from habit, which is a second nature. We have, all of us, accumu- lated in our physical and mental constitution an
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indefinite quantity of tendencies, which we call congenital tendencies, which are derived from parents and ancestors. These accumulated tendencies, which cause us to resemble our parents and ancestors in a degree more or less considerable, play a very import- ant role in our mental as well as in our physical life. In our physical life their influence is somatically obvious. In our mental life their influence is not less obvious, only it is necessary sometimes to search for it. It is evident that ancestral influences must be taken into account in judging of the value of ''conscience.'' The "conscience'' of one man, with certain ancestral influences behind him, will be totally different to that of another man conditioned by totally different ancestral influences. One man is pious, one is naturally disposed to the study of natural science, another is brutal, another is of a delicate and refined disposition, one is frank and candid, another is ruse and Machiavellian ; one is full of exuberant life, another is sickly and weak ; and the '' conscience " of each — that is, his manner of thinking, of reasoning, and of judging persons and things — will be shaped accordingly.
And then the influence of education and of the surrounding environment must be taken into con- sideration. We cannot maintain that a hooligan, brought up in an atmosphere of filth and vice, will have the same conscience as a man brought up in the home of an aristocrat of St James's. And the aristo- crat of the West End is certain to have a conscience quite differently formed to the conscience of a man who has been brought up among the Quakers. But these are extreme examples of a universal law. That law is that no two men are alike ; that the differences resulting from heredity and education, sometimes
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reduced to a minimum, sometimes raised to a maxi- mum, are always present and always active. And how much of our supposed '' conscience " is merely the result of heredity and education ? Here we have two men, two friends. The one is religiously disposed from childhood up ; he is educated in a religious family ; he goes to Oxford, where religious idealism is the prevailing sentiment ; he rarely, if ever, travels, he is never taken away from the influence of the family and home life. The other man is by nature sceptical, apt at reasoning ; circumstances cause him to travel extensively, to see many lands and many peoples ; he has no family influence to counteract the ever-growing spirit of independence and self-reliance which emancipates him from all re- ligious trammels, which prepares him to receive every new idea, every new influence, with sympathy. The conscience of the first man will be deeply tinged with that religious and somewhat austere influence which is derived from his family life, and from university influences, which can be great. The conscience of the second man will reflect the emancipating influence exercised by travelling, by much intercourse with foreign peoples and ideals ; for the education of travel is as powerful in the influence it exerts as the educa- tion of a university. Here are two men totally different in character ; this difference will be mani- fested in the manner in which they appreciate events ; the '' conscience '' of each will be different.
And then the question arises : why do you con- sider such and such an act to be right, such other one to be wrong ? Because my conscience tells me it is right or wrong, you say. But why is your conscience thus called in as arbitrator ? What claim has it to infallibility ? Your conscience is a part of yourself.
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It has been formed by all sorts of accumulations of influences, hereditary and mesological. How can a part of yourself be infallible ? How can that part of a whole which is immoral be moral ? And by what standard do you judge of the righteousness of your judgments, of the judgments of your conscience ? Obviously, you judge and you appreciate according to your mental habits, and your mental habits are simply the result of heredity and education. And WHY do you obey your conscience ? Answer that question, my friend. Is your obedience real or feigned ? Do you listen to the voice of conscience as a hypocrite, who needs to cloak his vices with the mantle of virtue ? Do you listen as a coward, afraid to probe your conscience to the bottom ? Do you listen mechanically, because you are too indolent to examine your conscience ? Do you listen and obey as a soldier listens to and obeys his officer, automatically, without reflecting ? For there are many ways of listening to the voice of conscience. But there is another question : every judgment which you make, which you say your conscience makes, is it disinterested, or is it selfish, egotistical ? '* You embrace your neighbour and have soft words for him. But I say unto you : your love of your neighbour is but. your love of yourself, falsified." Already La Rochefoucauld had expressed the same idea, and had called attention to the interested and egotistical character of all our acts. But whereas La Rochefoucauld merely denied the reality of altruism, but maintained the theory of the supreme value of altruism, Nietzsche denies, not merely the reality of altruistic sentiments, but the value of them. Egoism is the best, and the greatest, and the only real thing in life. Everything else is phantasm, and
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perhaps error ; but egoism, the love of Hfe, and the affirmation of one's Hfe and of oneself, is real and tangible. And it is a natural sentiment, perhaps the only natural one. What is unnatural, what is unreal, what is very distinctly ugly, is the masquerading of egoism under the mantle of altruism, disinterested- ness, and other specious and sonorous words. Every act which we commit is inspired by egoism. And how could it be otherwise ? An act which is not inspired by the desire to preserve our own life — that is to say, to affirm our own life — must be an act inspired by the contrary desire — namely, the desire to destroy life. But the characteristic of modern pessimism is precisely a fear of its own logical consequences. The pessimist, who regards life as an evil, takes refuge in scepticism. '* When to-day a philosopher gives it to be understood that he is no sceptic . . . the world hears the announcement with regret ; one examines him curiously, not without shyness, one would like to ask so many questions . . . yes, there is no doubt about it, among his frightened hearers, whose number is legion, he passes henceforth for a dangerous man. It seems to them as if they heard a distant, terrifying noise, as if some new explosive were being tried, some mental dynamite, perhaps some newly discovered Russian nihilin, by this pessimist bonce voluntatis, who not only says No, and desires the Non-Being, but also — horrible thought ! — puts his negative theories into practice." * There seems no doubt about it ; theoretically pessimism may flourish, as it indeed does to-day ; but, practically, its consequences are avoided — that is to say, suicide is avoided. Which does not mean that other consequences, scepticism, the denial of will-power, the disgust of life, do not follow ; and
^ " Werke/' vii. 152.
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these consequences are as bad as, perhaps worse in their ultimate consequences than, general suicide.
However, pursuing our examination, we find that the greatest disgust of life, every form of asceticism and mortification, nay, suicide itself, are but expres- sions of the sentiment of egoism. Schopenhauer's theory of suicide, as being in reality the strongest affirmation of the desire of life, is well known. But all those conditions of life preconised by Schopenhauer as means to abolishing in us that desire of life, mortifications of the flesh, asceticism, sequestration, self-torture, slow and gradual voluntary suicide — are these conditions of life really expressions of the nega- tion of the desire of life ? No ; he who mortifies his body, subjects it to every privation and torture, is perhaps the most egotistical of us all. For he is ready to sacrifice all those conditions which are commonly regarded as rendering life tolerable, in order to satisfy his desire of life, his desire for affirming life, his desire for pleasure. The ascetic enjoys life after his fashion ; and his asceticism merely proves that his conception of an enjoyable life differs from the ordinary con- ception, that he himself is an abnormal creation, probably a pathological one. The same argument which Schopenhauer has rightly employed against the theory of suicide as an act inspired by hostility to life, may equally be applied to the ascetic ideal.
We are egotistical in our love — we are most thoroughly egotistical in our love for others, which is egoism strengthened and fortified. We love others as a means of conquering them, as a means of seducing them ; our love is but an expression of our Will of Power and of domination.
But if there is nothing but egoism, and if altruism is but a term devoid of any reality, what becomes of
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the reality of the moral law, whose foundation is altruism ? The utilitarian school have maintained that the interest of all and the interest of each coincide in the long run. But, in the first place, this is reducing the categorical imperative to a mere calculation of profit and loss. And, in the second place, the utilitarian theory is demonstrably wrong in fact. Individual interests are not invariably identical with the interests of society. The interests of the masters are not only not identical, but are very greatly opposed, to the interests of the populace.
Thus the whole of the categorical imperative of the conscience reduces itself upon examination to the mental habits acquired partly from heredity, partly from education. And this imperative of the con- science, by what is it controllable ? By the con- science ? Here we are at a deadlock. And yet the reply must be affirmative. The conscience, accumulation of mental habits derived from different sources, controls itself. For the '' conscience of humanity '' is a phantom. The '' conscience of humanity " is a term embracing all the different consciences of the myriads of individuals which compose humanity, each of them differing, in a degree more or less great, from the others.
The truth seems to be this : the instincts of every man — that is to say, that which is fundamental in our nature — incite us to affirm life in every circum- stance, incite us to realise life in all its plenitude, to live wholly. The so-called moral law is an accumulation of mental prejudices, due to various historical conditions, which have caused the stronger races, those who could afford to live according to their instincts and to give full vent to their passions, to be vanquished by the weaker races, triumph the
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concrete symbol of which is the Christian reHgion, the reUgion of sympathy and pity. These weaker races, weaker physically and mentally, had never- theless more cunning, more patience, more rusS than their adversaries. Their weapon was the moral law, first under the form of a revelation from God, subsequently under the form of the categorical imperative. The moral law is merely the expression of the ideals of this weaker race — that is to say, of their character, which is at once treacherous and lying and revengeful and cowardly and miserably weak. The victory of Christianity has done more for the establishment of the moral law than any other event in the history of the world. The moral law has laid hold of humanity. And yet when we come to examine this law, this moral imperative, what do we find ? An accumulation of mental habits, derived partly from heredity, partly from education, partly from experience, controllable by nothing except itself, whose claim to infallibility and immutability is absurd, but which tyrannises us, although it is but our own creation, the fruit of a somewhat morbid imagination.
Another point to be noticed in connection with the moral law is its extreme anti-natural, anti-vital tendency. Morality is the greatest enemy of life and of all that is fundamental in life. In the name of morality we are called upon to crush out or at any rate to fight bitterly against our instincts, against that which lies at the very root of life, against that which conditions life. This in itself, and if it were alone, would suffice to condemn morality. The aim of life, the only possible aim of life, is the affirmation of itself, because the object of life, as far as we know the only object, is to live,
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and to manifest itself, and to realise all its possi- bilities. The strong man, the real man, he who loves life and is not afraid of it, loves all that life contains, its risks and adventures, its tears and sufferings, its disappointments and disillusions, as much as its joys and victories. And the great passions, all of them are but signs of exuberant and healthy vitality, of a vitality which seeks to break down the barriers imposed on it by artificial means, such as the moral law, and which seeks the only life worth living, the integral life. For the great man all the passions are equally legitimate, equally necessary to the affirmation of life ; hate as much as love, revenge as much as sympathy, lust as much as chastity, anger as much as goodness ; and hate, revenge, lust, anger, brutality, hardness of heart, are the virile passions, the only passions worthy of the great man and of the strong man, who knows how to give vent to them, and who is sufficiently his own master to know how and when to control them. *' The mastery over one's passions, not their destruc- tion or weakening ! The greater the force of the will, the greater the amount of liberty which can be granted to the passions of the soul. The great man is great on account of the freedom with which he gives vent to his passions, and through the still greater power which he manifests in keeping these wild animals in check and placing them at his service." ^ But the weaker race, the masses, with their instinctive hatred of the strong and the mighty, at the hands of whom they have had so often to suffer, have condemned in the moral law all these virile passions as ''immoral.*' They have invented the '' good man," he who is also the weak man and
' " Werke," xv. 480.
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the inferior type of humanity, and who is too weak, too degenerate to know the supreme beauty and joy of giving vent to the most intense passions that surge within the human breast in complete hberty, the joy of giving vent to those virile passions as a luxury, of employing them as a means of affirming and of satisfying life ; only he who is powerful enough to possess great passions and yet be so complete a master of them as to be able to control them, who can give them all liberty, so as to taste thus the full joy of life, and yet withhold them when they menace his safety ; only he can know the value of the passions.
" For every strong man who has remained true to nature, love and hate, gratitude and revenge, kindness and anger, yes and no, are but one. One is good on condition that one can also be bad ; one is bad because one could not otherwise be good. Whence came that plague and that anti- natural ideology which abolished this dualism ? — which held out onesidedness as the ideal ? Whence this hemiplegic condition of virtue, this discovery of the ' good man '? ... It is required that man should cut himself off from every instinct, by reason of which he can be converted into an enemy, or on account of which he can inflict damage, or can be angry, or can plan revenge ? . . . This anti-natural conception corresponds with that dualistic idea of a wholly good and a wholly bad Being (God, Spirit, Man), the first of which sums up all positive, the latter all negative, forces, intentions and conditions. . . . This conception does not therefore even deem it necessary that every contradiction between good and bad shall condition reciprocally its antithesis. On the contrary, the bad must disappear and the
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good alone remain, the one has a right to existence, the other should not exist at all." ^
This conception is anti-natural and false. One- sideness is contrary to nature. Our passions, being part of our nature, are intended to be manifested, subject to the ultimate control of the Will. There is no question of morality here ; the maintenance of life, the consolidation and affirmation of life, which is the only object of life so far as we know, demands that free play shall be given to the passions, certainly ; but it also demands that the passions shall be in the service of man, and not man in the service oj his passions. He alone has a right to give free play to his passions, to the great and dangerous passions of hate and revenge and lust of conquest, who is also the master of his passions, to whom the passions are as a luxury, and a luxury necessary to the full realisa- tion of life, but which must be kept in hand, like unto the pack of hounds obedient to the call of the huntsman. To be the slave of one's passions — like the criminal of the slums — ^is a sign of degeneracy and weakness. But the moral law condemns all the virile passions, because those who invented it were not strong enough to know the value of these pas- sions, because the}^ could not give vent to them without at once allowing themselves to be dominated by them ; and thus the virile passions represented to them, to these weaklings, an element destructive of life. Not with impunity can one give free play to one's passions ; one must be worthy of this luxury, and rich enough to afford it, rich enough in strength and in Will-Power. And then the stronger races have invariably utilised the weaker ones as a field of experiments for the play of their passions.
^ " Werke," xv. 219, 220.
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Thus have the weaker races, the inventors of the moral law, suffered doubly from the passions, suffered through themselves and suffered through others, and it is but natural on their part that the passions should be condemned by them.
But it does not ensue that this condemnation of the passions is not profoundly anti-natural. The passions are a sign of healthy and exuberant vitalit}^ ; like most things, they must not be used abusively ; their use has its limits, a limit well defined, and the penalty of overstepping which is decay and death. But the strong man knows his strength ; he knows the limit of his strength ; and he can afford to give vent to his passions, he must give vent to them, not only as a safety-valve, but a means of enriching life and completing life. The man who knows no pas- sions is a weak man, a hemiplegic, miserable creature. It is not the brigand or the '* man of prey '* that is a pathological manifestation, but the ''good man,'' he who lives shut up in his narrow corner, knowing nothing of those almost boundless expanses of life which only the bold and the brave can explore. The passions are the expression of our '' primitive self,'' a remnant of the '' brute," but beautiful in the revelation which they afford of the strength of life, of the manifold wealth of life.
Morality is a partial paralysis of life. For, as a matter of fact, it does paralyse the energies of the man who listens to its commands. It orders him to sacrifice himself for others — that is to say, it orders him to suppress the chief, the only, incitement to action, which is the prospect of enriching and beautifying his own life. It orders him to consecrate all his activity, all his energy, all his capacity, not to the embellishment of his own existence or to the
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development of his own creative power, but for the benefit of others, of others who will neither benefit by his activity nor be grateful for it. Thus does morality not only paralyse Hfe, it renders it ugly, it destroys whatever beauty may be in it.
It destroys its beauty by substituting for a mani- fold and exuberant variety a dull and sickening uniformity ; or at least by trying to substitute such a uniformity, for it seems as if the attainment of this odious ideal were at least difficult. '' Let us consider the utter unintelligence of such a statement as : ' Thus and thus ought man to be.' Reality shows us a beautiful richness of types, an extrava- gant exuberance of forms and changes ; and some wretched stick-in-the-corner moralist comes up and says : ' No ! Man ought to be otherwise.' He even knows, this church mouse, how and what man ought to be — he paints his image of man on the wall and cries, ' Ecce Homo.' But even when the moralist turns to the solitary individual and says to him : ' Thus and thus shouldest thou be,' he does not cease making himself ridiculous. The individual is a piece of Fate, something which belongs to the past and to the future, a law and a necessity for everything which is and which will be. To say to him ' Change thyself ' is equivalent to desiring the world to change itself, indeed to move back- wards." ^
The moral law is thus another of the great obstacles to the realisation of Nietzsche's ideal. The mere fact of causing man to subordinate his personality to an external power, is in itself a hindrance to the integral life. And if it be replied that man's con- science is not external to him, it may be replied that
* ''Werke," viii. 89, 90.
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it is not, indeed, external to him in reality, but that it is an accumulation of prejudices, habits and experiences, derived either from heredity or from the surrounding environment ; only the categorical imperative supposes the conscience as commanding to man in the name of — what ? In the name of Reason, reply moralists since Kant. But this Reason, what sort of abstract entity is it ? If we look further, we find that all the categorical impera- tives which command man to obey the summons of his conscience in the name of some higher power, merely command him to obey the summons of his prejudices, habits and experiences, in the name of — ? In the name of those same mental habits.
H
CHAPTER V
THE RELIGIONS
We have said already that Nietzsche's is a deeply religious character. Taking the word religion in the sense of being the cult of an ideal, few thinkers have been so idealistic, so passionately idealistic, as the creator of Zarathustra. But to say of Nietzsche that his was a religious nature, in the sense of belonging to any particular creed, would be absurd. If there has never been a greater idealist than Friedrich Nietzsche, there has never been a greater atheist. Zarathustra is the destroyer of God, he teaches perpetually that " God is dead.'' But the idea of an anthropomorphic God in itself may have been indifferent to Nietzsche. Himself a convinced atheist, he nevertheless never re- garded religious belief with hostility. The sectarian animosity and ferocious narrowmindedness of a French Radical and Freemason was, of course, a thing un- known to a spirit like Nietzsche's. But what Nietz- sche hates in the idea of God, what he attacks most bitterly in that idea, is the '' moral God," the God of Christianity, the God of the poor and humble, the God of love and forgiveness and sympathy. It is against the Christian conception of God, not against the conception of God in itself, that his attacks are directed. His attacks against God are directed against those who have created the Christian God, against the " slaves," against the Jews, against the rabble, whose ideal is the ideal of Christianity, whose
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character is reflected in the God of their creation. Nietzsche has no objection to the conception of God in itself, provided that God be represented as the Will of Power — that is to say, provided he be a God created by a strong race and reflecting the character of that race, their might and courage and insouciance and lust of conquest. Such a God was Jahweh, the old God of Israel, the mysterious and jealous God, echoes of whose might reach us in the Old Testament. '' A race which believes in itself still has its own god. It honours in the God those conditions thanks to which it has been successful — it symbolises its own desires, its own consciousness of power, in a Being to whom it can be thankful for that consciousness. He who is rich, gives ; a proud people need a god to whom they can sacrifice. Religion under such con- ditions is a form of gratitude. One is thankful for oneself, for one's power ; therefore one needs a god. Such a god must be both useful and harmful, he must be able to be at once friend and foe, one admires in him things good and bad. That anti-natural castra- tion of a god which reduces him to a god of the just only, would in this case be quite unwished for. One needs the bad god as well as the good one, for it is not precisely to tolerance of humanitarianism that one owes one's own existence. What would be the use of a god to whom anger, revenge, envy, sarcasm, cunning, violence, were unknown ? To whom even the glorious ardeurs of the hour of triumph and destruction were perhaps unknown ? One would not understand such a deity ; why should one have him ? But when a race decays, when it feels its belief in the future, its hope of liberty, finally vanishing ; when submission appears to it as the most useful policy, and the virtues of the slave present themselves to the
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conscience of its members as a condition of existence ; then must also the idea of the god change. The god becomes nervous, fearful, humble, recommends the ' peace of mind,' preaches against hatred, recom- mends cautiousness and ' love,' both of friend and foe ; he is perpetually moralising, he becomes every- body's god, becomes a private gentleman, becomes cosmopolitan. Formerly he represented a people, the force of a great people, all that is aggressive and thirsting after power in the soul of a great people ; now he is merely the ' good ' god. As a matter of fact there is no other alternative for gods : either they symbohse the Will of Power — and in this case they are national or racial gods ; or else they symbolise the impotency to attain power — and in this case they are necessarily good." ^
A god symbolising the Will of Power was Jahweh, the old God of Israel. '' The history of Israel is invaluable as a typical history of the denaturalisation of natural values ; I can cite five examples of this. Originally, especially in the time of the Kings, Israel stood in a natural — that is, in a right — relation to all things. Its Jahweh was the expression of the consciousness of power, of self-satisfaction, of belief in self ; one expected from Jahweh victory and salvation, one expected from him that nature should bring forth what was necessary to the people — especially rain. Jahweh is the God of Israel and consequently the God of Justice and Right : this is the logic of every race which is great and powerful, and which has good conscience of its power." ^ But as time went on came the Assyrian conquest and the Babylonian captivity, and the belief in themselves,
^ " Werke/' viii. 232, 233. ^ Ihid. 244, 245.
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the hope of the future, the hope of, and confidence in, victory, gradually disappeared and gave place to a feeling of despair, of resignation, of submission. It was during the Babylonian captivity that the greatest transformation seems to have taken place. Exiled from their land, prisoners among a strange and '' heathen " race, the people of Israel's spirit was broken, the old aggressive spirit, long undermined, was finally vanquished, and '' resignation " and *' submission to Fate '' took its place. This change in the character of the people was, of course, reflected in the change undergone by their conception of the deity. Jahweh, the '' jealous God,'' the god of victory and conquest, was gradually replaced by another god, more cosmopolitan, more humane, by a god of pity and love, the god suited to the character of a subject-race, and the exact opposite to the god of the conquering race. Out of this god, growing ever more humane, ever more moral — that is to say, ever weaker — was evolved the Christian conception of God, the ideal deity of the rabble, of all that which is weak and miserable and unhappy and unsuccessful, and who lust after the power they are impotent to attain except by ruse and cunning.
But the Christian God, poor as is his conception, has gradually been succeeded by a yet poorer and more vaporous sort of God.
'' When the conditions of exalted life, when every- thing strong, brave, domineering, proud has been eliminated from the idea of God, when he sinks step by step to a mere symbol of weariness, to a sheet- anchor for the drowning, when he becomes the god of the poor, of sinners and of invalids par excel- lence, and when the predicate " Messiah," '' Re- deemer," becomes a predicate of the divinity in
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general : what story does such a transformation, such a reduction of the idea of God, recount ? The ' Kingdom of God ' has certainly been enlarged. . . . But the god of the ' greater number,' the democrat among the gods, was nevertheless anything but a proud heathen deity. He remained a Jew, he re- mained the god of the back parlour, of all the dark corners and hiding-places of the unhealthy quarters of the globe. His world-empire remained an under- ground empire, a hospital, a ghetto-empire. And God himself, so pale, so feeble, so degenerate ! Even the palest among pale persons, the metaphysicians themselves, succeeded in getting hold of him. And, like spiders, they spun around him so long, until at last, hypnotised by their movements, he became himself a spider and a metaphysician. Now we see him projecting the world out of himself * sub specie Spinozae ' — and now we watch him as he gradually transfigures himself into something ever thinner and paler ; he becomes an ' Ideal,' a ' pure Spirit,' an ' Absolute ' a ' thing in itself ! ' . . . The fall of a God : God becomes the ' thing in itself ! ' * . . ."
Thus when Nietzsche attacks the idea of God, it is in reality the idea of the moral law which he attacks. He attacks that ideal, which he represents to be the ideal of the slaves, of the toilers, of the masses, of the rabble, of those who are impotent to attain power and yet lust after power. Unable to subdue or subjugate the strong races, the masters, by physical force and in open combat, they adopt all sorts of tortuous means, cunning, ruse, patience, hypocrisy, in order to vanquish those strong races and to conquer power for themselves. The most gigantic piece of " tar- tuff erie," of cunning and ruse, ever adopted for ' " Werke," viii. 234, 235.
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the subjugation and castration of the strong man, is the Christian rehgion. The triumph of this reHgion marks the triumph of the slaves. They have triumphed through having made their ideals — ideals of revenge and hatred and envy, sharpened by their consciousness of impotency — the ideals of universal and necessary good. They have trans valuated all the natural values. For the strong man, good is synony- mous with strong, with beautiful, with powerful and mighty. For the weak man, the slave, who has to bear the weight of the might, exercised without com- punction, of the strong man, good is, on the contrary, synonymous with weakness, with impotency, with ugliness and poverty. '' Blessed are the meek, ' blessed are the merciful, blessed are the ' pure in heart.' " The ideal of the slaves, the ideal of weak- ness and impotency and ugliness, is raised by Chris- tianity into an universal law. The slaves need mercy, because they are afraid of their masters, because they are cowardly ; they exalt humility, because obsequi- ousness is part of the character of the slave ; they exalt the '' purity of heart,'' they talk about the " advent of the Kingdom of God," in order to cloak their own envy, hatred and malice against all that which they are not, which they cannot possess, beauty, strength, mental and material wealth. With the triumph of Christianity, triumph due to the degener- acy of the stronger races brought on by their own fault and by their neglect of biological law, the values of the slaves (good=weak=humble=merciful= sickly and poor) triumphed also, and became *' universal laws," prevailing at all times and in all places. Never was greater effrontery shown.
During nineteen centuries Christianity has retarded the progress of civilisation and obstructed the onward
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march of humanity. But Christianity is itself but a successor of the old Jewish religion, it is itself essen- tially Jewish, the creation of Jews, reflecting all the prejudices and mental habits of the Jews. " The Jews are the most remarkable people in the history of the world, because, having been confronted by the question of Being and Not Being, they have, with quite uncanny self-consciousness, preferred Being at any price ; this price was the radical falsifxation of nature, of everything natural, of all reality, both of the inner and of the outer world. They shut them- selves out from all those conditions under which a people can live, and under which a people may live, they created, out of their own imagination, a concep- tion of the world opposed to all natural conditions ; one after the other they have inverted religion, ritual, morality, history, psychology, in the most pernicious way, and have set them in opposition to their natural value. . . . The Jews are on this account the most epoch-making people in the history of the world ; through their influence they have falsified humanity to such a degree that the Christian can feel himself an anti-Semite without even having conscience of himself as the final consequence of Judaism.'' ^
The victory of Christianity has been the most pernicious event in the history of the world, because it has signified the elimination of one standard of morals and the complete monopoly of another and baser set. The genealogy of morals is to be explained on anthropological grounds. There are, or were originally, two systems of morals in contradiction with each other. The one is the system of the masters. The race of the masters, the superior race, the race
^ " Werke," viii. 243.
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which Gobineau and Nietzsche, together with the modern school of anthroposociology, identify with the Aryan race, homo europceus, whose physical and mental superiority is accompanied by parallel anthropological features which appear to denote a report of causality between the two — this race has its system of morals which is exclusively its own. For this race of strong and brave men, for this race of conquerors, good is identical with strong, with brave, with aristocracy, of sentiment and taste, with the lust of conquest and revenge, with everything which affirms life and by which life manifests itself. On the other hand, this race of conquerors will consider as bad everything by which life is weakened or dimin- ished, will consider bad as identical with weak, with cowardly, with lack of refinement in taste and senti- ment ; for it the cardinal virtue will be hardness of heart, and the cardinal vice sympathy. And this standpoint is natural when we consider that the characteristics of the race are intrepidity and insouciance in the face of danger and death, love of adventure and conquest ; that its members are accustomed to inflict hardship and suffering on them- selves, and therefore consider it right to inflict hard- ship and suffering on others. Again, the standpoint of the weaker race, of the race of slaves, is natural, when we consider that its chief characteristic is impotency, and that it is perpetually suffering from the inroads of the '' barbarians,'' as it terms the superior race. Conscious of its impotency, of its smallness and of its ugliness, the weaker race still thirsts after power. Especially does it thirst after revenge for all that it has suffered at the hands of its enemies. But how attain to that power, unless by tortuous and subterraneous means ? The weaker
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race are gifted with greater cunning, greater ruse, and above all greater patience, than the race of con- querors, accustomed to fight in the open and to deal swift and crushing blows. Thirsting after power, the slaves utilise those qualities which they possess, cunning, ruse, patience ; and the Christian religion is a result, and a tremendous result, of the exercise of these qualities. In the Christian religion every- thing is denaturalised. Good is rendered synony- mous with weak, with sickly, with poor, with ugly ; the '' peace of mind," and forgiveness even of one's enemies, are preached ; and so well have the masses done their work that this table of values, the slaves' table of values, has completely ousted the other table of values, that of the conquerors and masters who know neither forgiveness nor peace of mind. The slaves' table of values has been erected into a universal and immutable law.
The Christian religion was the work of the rabble, of the lowest classes of the populace. Its triumph was the triumph of a base instinct, thirsting for power and yet conscious of its impotency, and employing every subterranean means to attain its end. First among these means is hypocrisy, and of the most ignoble sort. This talk about the " elect," about " sanctity," about '' the Kingdom of God," about *' love " and " forgiveness," is the basest of hypocrisies, designed to cloak all the envy, hatred and malice of a weak and impotent race, conscious of its impotency and of its repulsiveness. In a brilliant page, Nietzsche has described the process of " manufacturing the Christian ideal."
'' * Would someone like to descend into the mysteri- ous catacombs where one can witness the manu-