The gist of Nietzsche

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1

*

The

Gist of j^iefesche ;

<* . » *

. w "■ *

Arranged by

HENRY L. MENCKEN

Author of

THE PHILOSOPHY OF
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

%\

&

Boston
JOHN W. LUCE* & COMPANY

x ■ i

I

'r

• * •

* . ■ " ..

■-:■ - •■ •

• * a .

Copyright 1910
By L E Bassett

INTRODUCTION

9S9823

i

INTRODUCTION.

t

There is no need, at this late day,
to offer excuses for a little book of stray
thoughts from Nietzsche. His princi-
pal ideas have been making great prog-
ress since his death, and it is no exaggera-
tion to say that many of them have found
acceptance, at second hand, among folk
who have yet to become aware of their
author, save as a vague name. They
appear, now and again, in the most un-
likely quarters, and some trace of them
is to be found in all contemporary specu-
lation. Whether or not they are sound
is a problem for the race to solve by
experience.

In the following pages a few of
Nietzsche's most interesting sayings are
arranged under general headings. They
show, of course, nothing of his wonder-
fully acute processes of ratiocination,
but only his conclusions. Nevertheless,
they may serve to give some notion of
the manner, as wpil as of the matter, of
his philosophy. /He was, first of all, a
ruthless destroyer — the most savage and

I

i

resolute, it is probable that Christian
morals and Christian civilization have
ever had to face. Therefore, these ex-
tracts are confined chiefly to his objec-
tions and objurgations, and leave for the
reader's own inquiry his efforts to create. /

i

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was
born at Rocken in Prussian Saxony, Oc-
tober 15, 1844 and was the son of a coun-
try pastor, tie was educated in country
schools, at the academy of Pforta and at
the universities of Bonn and Leipzig. In
1869 the latter university made him a
doctor of philosophy, and he became
professor of classical philology at Basle.
There he remained ten years, retiring
upon a pension in 1879. In 1870 he
served in the Franco-Prussian war as a
hospital steward, being unable to go as
a combatant because he had become a
naturalized Swiss on accepting the Basle
appointment. He attracted attention be-
fore he was thirty by a number of acute
studies in Greek literature and civiliza-
tion, but it was not until 1877 that he
really entered the arena as a philosopher.
In that year the first volume of his first
distinctive book, "Menschliches allzu
Menschliches" was published. During
the twelve years that followed he wrote

nearly a dozen books, and in them his
system of philosophy was gradually elab-
orated. As a result of exposure in the
war, his health was poor after 1870, and
he spent much time in Italy and the Alps.
In 1889 he lost his mind. His sister,
Elizabeth Forster-Nietzsche, cared for
him in her home at Weimar until his

death, August 25, 122?' ^* s aut °biogra-
phy and several other books appeared
posthumously. Nietzsche never married.

THE GIST OF NIETZSCHE

i

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• »

INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM.

WE should not let ourselves be v\wv\
burnt for our opinions them 1 WdW
selves, of which we can never bt<-*&&\*>
quite sure, but we may perhaps do so forp^^fAw
the right to hold and change them.

A snake which is unable to change itsS,
skin will perish. So will all intellects \
that are prevented from changing their y
opinions ; they cease to be intellects. /

Convictions are more dangerous ene-
mies to truth than lies.

2 NIETZSCHE '

He who has attained something of

intellectual freedom cannot regard him-

;self othcMise /than as a wanderer on

fekrth, and not as -a .traveller towards some

.; g^ali for .none exists. But he will have

"his eyes open and watch what happens in

the world. Such a man will have many

hours of sadness when he wanders in the

fields of knowledge as in a desert, but he

will experience also morning-hours of

* radiant happiness, when many pleasures j

surround him, gifts of the free spirits who .

dwell in the mountains and forests of soli- I

tude, and, like him, are philosophers and

wanderers.

I

I
I

I

MORALITY

MORALITY.

WHAT is good? A llrtiat increases
t he feeling of power— the will t o
power — power itselt— in man ! \^

What is baa? An tnat comes from ^
weakness !

What is happiness? The feeling
that power increases — that resistence is
being overcome!

Let us have, not contentedness, but _
more power — not peace at any price, but
warfare — not virtue, but efficiency!

The weak must perish! That is the
first principle of our charity. And we
must help them to do so.

What is more dangerous to^ the
human race than any crime? Active
sympathy for the weak! Christianity!

i — Der Antichrist, 2

^ Life is essentially the appropriation, y
the injury, the vanquishing of the un-
adapted and weak. Its object is to ob-
trude its own forms and insure its own

/

NIETZSCHE

unobstructed functioning. Even an or-
ganization whose individuals forebear
in their dealings with one another (a
healthy aristocracy, for instance) must,
if it would live and not die, act hostilely
toward all other organizations. It must
endeavor to gain ground, to obtain ad-
vantages, to acquire ascendancy. And
this is not because it is immoral, but be-
cause it lives and all life is will to
>ower. •

nseits von Gut und Bose, 259

/ In itself an act of injury, violation,
1/ exploitation or annihilation cannot be
wrong, for life operates, essentially and
fundamentally, by injuring, violating,
exploiting and annihilating, and cannot
even be conceived of as existing other-
wise. One must admit, indeed, that
from the highest biological standpoint,
conditions under which the so-called
rights of others are recognized must be
ever regarded as exceptional conditions
— that is to say, as partial restrictions of\
•the instinctive power-seeking will to live !
of the individual, made to satisfy the

I more powerful will to live of the mass*'

\

il

MORALITY

V

Thus small units of power are sacrificed j^
tcTUreate large units. To regard the
rights of others as being inherent* in ^
them, and not as mere compromises for )
the benefit of the mass-unit, is to enun- j
date a principle hostile to life itself.

— Zur Geneologie der Moral, II, £i-

•

Morality not only commands in-
numerable terrible means for preventing
critical hands being laid on her; her se-
curity depends still more upon a sort of
enchantment at which she is phenom-
enally skilled. That it to say, she knows
how to enrapture. She appeals to the
emotions; her glance paralyzes the rea-
son and the will Ever since there

has been talking and persuading on
earth, she has been the supreme mistress
of seduction,

— Morgenrote, preface, 3

A double wall is set up against the
continued testing, selection and criticism
of moral values. On one hand stands

6 NIETZSCHE

revelation, and on the other veneration
and tradition. The authority of the
moral law is based upon two assumptions
— first that God gave it, and secondly,
that the wise men of the past obeyed it.

— Der Antichrist, 57

V

Among the ancient master races the
antithesis "good and bad" signified prac-
tically the same as "noble and contempt-
ible." The despised ones were the
cowards, the timid, the insignificant, the
self-abasing — the dog-species of men
who allowed themselves to be misused —
the flatterers and, above all, the liars.

The master type of man regards

*"* himself as a sufficient judge of worth.
He does not seek approval ; his own feel-
ings determine his conduct. "What is
injurious to me," he reasons, "is injurious
in itself." This type of man honors
whatever qualities he recognizes in him-

%

f^^ i self; his morality is self-glorification^

(^ He has a feeling of plentituae and pow-

er and the happiness of high tension.

\ He helps the unfortunate, perhaps, but

it is not out of pity. The impulse, when

it comes at all, rises out of his supera-

MORALITY

bundance of power — his thirst to func-
tion. He honors his own power, and he
knows how to keep it in hand. He joy-
fully exercises strictness and severity
over himself and he reverences all that
is strict and severe The master-
morality of this master caste is irritating
to the taste of the present day because
of its fundamental principle that a man
has obligations only to his equals — that
he may act as he pleases toward all of
lower rank and all that are foreign.

— Jenseits von Gut und Bose, 260

By the slave-morality of Christian-
ity the impotence which does not

retaliate for injuries is falsified into
"goodness;" timorous abjectness becomes
"humility;" subjection to those one hates
is called "obedience," and the one who -
desires and commands this impotence, /
abjectness and subjection is called God.
The inoffensiveness of the weak, their

cowardice ,their standing at the

door, their unavoidable time-serving and
waiting — all these things get good names.
"The inability to get revenge is translated n
into an unwillingness to get revenge, and^Jr

j

8 NIETZSCHE

becomes "forgiveness," a virtue

They are wretched, these mutterers and
forgers, but they say that their wretched-
ness is of God's choosing* and even call
it a distinction that he confers upon
them. The dogs that ate liked best,
they say, are beaten most. Their
wretchedness is a test, a preparation, a
schooling, something which will be paid
for, one day, in happiness. They call
this "bliss."

— Zur Geneologie der Moral, I, 14

Y During the Prae-historic or Prae-

Sioral Period, the value of an action was
etermined by its after-effects, which
made men think well or ill of it. But
during the last ten thousand years — the
Moral Period — the origin of an action,
and not its consequences, has determined
its value. Is it not once more necessary
to reconsider values, on the threshold of
the Ultra-Moral Period? Moral inten-
tion has been a prejudice, premature and
provisional, and ought to be surmounted.

CASTES

a

CASTES.

>c.

T^HE-ord&J Lpf castes is th e dominant t? aT ^
law of nature, against which no 1^ -
m erely human agency can prevail.
In fYgry bfa 1 tby g^n ery there are t hree
br oad ca stes, **arh if which has its nwn
morality, its own work, its own notion of
perfection and its own sense of mastery.
The first caste comp rises Jjiosejvho are

nhvin^ftly superior to the rnflss jptellert-

ually ; the secmdJua^diides those, whose
superiority |S chi efly mu scular, and the
thjrd is made up of the indifferent. The
thir d cast e, ver y naturally, is the most
numerous, but the fksjLis. the most pow-
erful.

To this highest paste belongs the w
privilege of representing hflflnty, h a ppi-

npgg and gnodness on earth Its

memherfi^arrflpt th p WH r1 ^ * g rnp y fin ^ it

and make, the best of it They find

their happiness in those things which* to
lesser men, would spell ruin — in the
labyrinth, in severity toward themselves
and others, in effort. Their delight is
self- govern ment ; with thenT asceticism

Y

(io

NIETZSCHE

».•

j i-"

becomes naturalness, necessity, instinct.
A difficult task is regarded by them as
a privilege ; to play with burdens which
would crush others to death is their rec-
reation. They are the most venerable
species o£men. They are ttie most cheer-
ful, the most amiable. They__nile^be-
cause they are what they are. They are
not at liberty to take second rank.

The sec ond caste includes th e guard-
ians aocLkdepers of order and security —
the warriors, the nobles, the Icing — above
all, as the highest types of warriors, the
judges and defenders of the law. They
execute the. mandjaies^ of th e first caste,
relieving the latter of all that is coarse
and menial in the work pi ruling.

At the bottom are the workers —
the men of handicraft, traded "agriculture
and the greater part of art and science.
It is the law of. nature^ that they should
be public utilities — that they should be
jwheels-anxLfunctions. The onlyTEInd of J
happiness of which they are capable
makes intelligent machines of them. For
the mediocre, it is happiness to be me-
diocre. In them the mastery of one
thing — i. e. specialization — is an instinct.

It is unworthy of a profound in-
tellect to see in mediocrity itself an ob-

CASTES 1 1

jection. It is K indejg d^. a, necessity of
human existence iojLiinlyjnjhe pxesence
of a horde of average men is-ihe-sxcep-
tional man a possibility.

Whom do I hate L most_ among the
men of today? The socialist who under-
mines the workingman's healthy instincts, „
who takes from him his feeling of con-
tentedness with his existence, who
makes him envious, who teaches him re-'
venge There is nojyrong in un-
equal rights ; k lies in the vain pretension
to equal rights.

— Der Antichrist, 57

There have always been hordes of
men, and a grea ter number ofjjiosg who

obeyed than thos^yho. commanded. The
need of obedience has become a kind of
formal consciehceiiOnen. They accept
all that authorities — rulers, parents,
masters, laws, class prejudices or public
opinion — declare unto them. But this
instinctive obedience is transmitted at
the expense of the art of commanding.
The commanding class have become
ashamed, and justify themselves by play-
ing the role of executors of the orders of

/.

12 NIETZSCHE

higher authorities, such as ancestors, the
constitution, the laws, or the Diety; or
perhaps they claim to be first servants of
the herd, or instruments of the public
weal. The gregarious man nowadays
would fain claim to be the only legit-
imate person, and he puts forward his
shortsighted utilitarian virtues, which
render him gentle, tractable and useful,
as the only virtues. They replace com-
manders by assemblies of clever men
from among themselves.

Every improvement of the type
Man has been the work of an aristocrat-
ic society — and it will always be so — a
society with a long hierarchy, of rank
and differences among man, and based
on slavery in one sense or another. With-
out the sentiment of distance thus evolved
there could not have been developed the
desire to augment the distances in the in-
terior of the soul — the psychic force
characteristic of the noble caste.

One does not hate so long as one
despises ; but only when one deems a per-
son one's equal or superior*

\

CHRISTIANITY 13

r

CHRISTIANITY.

I condemn Christianity. I bring against
the Christian church the most ter-
rible accusation ever voiced. It is to
me the greatest of all imaginable cor-
ruptions; it has sought to bring about
the ultimate corruption. It has left
nothing uncontaminated by its depravity;
it has made every valuable thing worth-
less, every truth a lie, every honest im-
pulse a baseness of soul.

Let anyone dare speak to me of its
"humanitarian" blessings! To do away
with distress has always been counter to
its fundamental policy; it has lived by
distress* it has created distress in order
to make itself necessary and eternal.
Consider, for example, the consciousness
of sin; it remained for the church to
enrich mankind with that state of dis-
tress! And "the equality of souls

before the Lord;" that falsehood, that
excuse for the rancor of the degraded,
that explosive idea which has grown in-
to revolution and the decadence of all

14 NIETZSCHE

society — is Christian dynamite! "Hu-
manitarian" blessings of Christianity I
Pooh! It breeds out of humanities n
self-crucifixion, an art of self-y^ation,
a will to the lie at any price, a repug-
nance and contempt for all healthy and
honest instincts! These are for me the
blessings of Christianity!

Parasitism is the sole praxis of the
church — drinking out all blood, all love,
all hope in life, with its anaemic ideals
of holiness — the other world as an in-
spiration to the negation of every reality
— the cross as the rallying sign for the
most underhand conspiracy that has ever
existed — against health, beauty, well-
being, courage, intelligence, benevolence
of soul — against life itself/

This eternal accusation against
Christianity I shall write on all walls,
wherever there are walls (I have letters
for making even the blind see) ; I call
Christianity the one great curse, the one
great intrinsic depravity, the one great
instinct for revenge (of. the weak upon
the strong) for which no expedient is
sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterrane-
an, mean — I call it the one immortal
blemish upon the human race ! ^

Der Antichrist, 62

s

CHRISTIANITY 15

A Jesus Christ was only possible in
Jewish landscape — I mean to say, in a
landscape over which hangs continually
the gloomy and majestic thunder-cloud
of the angry Jahveh. Only there could
the rare and sudden outburst of a single
ray of sunshine be held to be a miracle
of "Love," as a ray of the most undetf*
served mercy. Only there could Christ
have dreamed of his rainbow and his
heavenly ladder on which God descend-
ed to man; everywhere else bright
weather and sunshine were too much the
rule, too commonplace.

16 NIETZSCHE

MARRIAGE.

^t^f^TERE I a god, and a benevolent
/yy one, the marriages of men would
( annoy me more than anything-

v . else. Very far, indeed, may a man pro-
gress in the seventy (nay, thirty) years
of his life — it is marvelous even 'to the
gods I But when we see him hang up
his inheritance and the fruit of his
struggles and victory — the laurel-
wreath of his humanity — upon some pil-
lar where the first girl that comes along
may pick it to pieces; when we see how
much better he understands acquisition
than preservation ; nay, when we see how
blind he is to the fact that by procreation
\ he may enter into an even more trium-
phant life — then, indeed, do we grow
^ impatient, saying: "In the long run,
nothing whatever will be made of hu-
manity; the individual is squandered;
flThe fortuitousness of marriage makes all
/I rational and ordered progress impos-
/ sible!"

MARRIAGE 17

Marriage: by this name do I call
the will of two to create that which is
greater than either. I call marriage rev-
erence unto each other as unto those
capable of such a will.

Let this be the significance and the
/Truth of thy marriage. But that which
the many call marriage — alas, what call
I that?

Alas I that soul-poverty of two I
Alas I that soul-filth of two I Alas I that
miserable dalliance of two I

And yet they call it marriage, and
that marriage is made in heaven!

Well, I like it not — that heaven of
the useless I Nay, I like them not — those
beasts caught in heavenly nets I

Laugh not at such marriages I What
child hath not reason to weep over its
parents?

Worthy and ripe for working out

(the destiny of the world appeared this

man unto me — but when I saw his wife

/ the world seemed to be a madhouse

Here cometh a man who fought for
truth like a hero — and at last won a little
dressed-up lie. He calleth it his mar-
riage !

Here cometh one who was reserved
in intercourse and chose his familiars

18 NIETZSCHE

fastidiously — and then, suddenly, he
spoiled his company forever. He calleth
it his marriage I

A third looked for a servant with
the soul of an angel. He became the
servant of a woman I

— Also sprach Zarathustra, I

It is ludicrous when a mob of
paupers decrees the abolition of hered-
itary rights, and it is not less ludicrous
when the childless presume to mold the
legislation of a country. They have not
enough cargo in their ships to steer a safe
course into the ocean of the future. But
it seems to me just as ludicrous for a man
/who has chosen the acquisition of the
I most knowledge and the solution of the
/ largest problems for his lifework, to bur-
den himself with the care of a family

for he thereby stretches a veil before

his telescope, and through it the rays of
l.the distant stars can scarcely pass. Thus
^X arrive at the conclusion that, in matters
f of the highest philosophical consequence,
r the views of all married men are du-
/ bious.
— Menschliches allzu Menschliches, 436

MARRIAGE 19

The natural inclination of all wo-
men to a quiet, uniform, untrouElecTex-
lstence operates inevitably against

the herpi> impii1ft«m-£kf -th e free fl pj ri^

Without being aware of it, women act
like a person who would remove the
stones from the path of a mineralogist, \
lest his feet come in contact with them,r
despite the fact that he has gone forth 1
for the very purpose of coming in con- !
tact with them.

— Menschliches allzu Menschliches, 431

"The Flying Dutchman" preaches
the sublime doctrine that woman makes
even the most arrant vagabond settle
down — or, in Wagnerian jargon, "saves"
him. Here I take the liberty to ask a
question. Granted that all this is true,
is it also desirable? What becomes of
the Wandering Jew, once he is adored
and settled down by a woman? He*^
ceases to be the eternal seeker I He mar-
ries — and is of no more interest to us!
Translated into actuality, what I mean
is this: that the great danger to artists, to^
geniuses — for they are Wandering Jews!
— lies in women. Adoring women are

20 NIETZSCHE

their ruin. Hardly any man has suf-
ficient strength of character to resist be-
ing corrupted — being "saved" — when he
finds himself treated as a god.

""* ____. _____ _____

— Der Fall Wagner, 3

">

PARENTHOOD 21

PARENTHOOD.

THOU art young, and thou wishest
for a wife and a child? I ask thee:
art thou a man who darest wish
for a child?

Art thou a victorious one, a self-
subduer, a commander of thy senses, a
master of thy virtues? Thus I inquire
of thee.

In thy wish, doth one hear the an-
imal — or necessity? Or loneliness? Or
discord with thyself?

I would that victory and freedom
were in thy longing for a child I If thou
hast victory and freedom, it is meet to

build them monuments

But first thou must build thyself I

— Also sprach Zarathustra, I

22 NIETZSCHE

WOMEN.

EVERYTHING in women is a rid-
dle, and everything in women hath
one answer; its name is child-bear-
ing.

Man is for woman a means. The
end is always the child. But what is
woman for man?

Two things are needed by the true
man: danger and play. Therefore, he
seeketh woman as the most dangerous of
toys.

Man should be educated for war,
and woman for the recreation of the
warrior. Everything else is folly

Let woman be a toy, pure and deli-
cate as a jewel, and illumined by the vir-
tues of the world that is to come.

Let a ray of starlight shine in your
love I Let the hope be in your heart:
"Would that I might give birth to the
superman I

Let man fear woman when she lov-
eth, for then she sacrificeth everything
to that love, and nothing else hath value
to her

WOMEN 23

Man's happiness lieth in "I will!"
Woman's happiness lieth in "He will I"

Thou goest to women? Forget not
thy whip I

— Also sprach Zarathustra, I

The qualities in woman which in-
spire respect — or fear — are her greater
naturalness, her flexibility and craft, her
tigress-claw, her naivete, her uneduca-
bility, her instinctive cruelty, her im-
mense passions and virtues. In spite of
this fear, she excites pity by appearing
more afflicted, more fragile, more nec-
essitous of love, and more liable to disil-
lusions than any other creature. Man
has been arrested before woman with
one foot already in tragedy I Is woman
about to be disenchanted?

It is a crime and a mistake to keep
women ignorant of erotics during the
years of education previous to their
marriage. Their frail ideas too often
break down after so suddenly experienc-
ing the combination of a god and an an-
imal in the man they love.

24 NIETZSCHE

To be mistaken about the problem
of woman, to overlook sex-antagonism, to
dream of equal rights, duties, etc., are
typical signs of shallow-mindedness. A
profound man can only, like Orientals,
consider woman as property, as a being
whose predestined mission is domesticity.

LIBERTY 25

LIBERTY.

THE worth of a thing often lies, not
in what one attains with it, but in
what one pays for it — what it costs.
Let me give an example. Democracy
immediately ceases to mean freedom as
soon as it is attained ; afterward, there is
no more mischievous or more bitter

enemy of liberty It undermines the

will to power, it gives the levelling ten-
dency the authority of a moral impulse,
it makes people small, cowardly and sat-
isfied. . . . But democracy produces quite
different effects so long as it is being
fought for; it then, in fact, furthers
freedom in a powerful manner. On
looking into the matter more accurately,
we see that it is the warfare itself which
produces these effects — a warfare for
liberal institutions which, as warfare, al-
lows iVliberal instincts to have sway.
And warfare prepares a man for free-
dom^For. what is ireedQmiL^ < Ih£.jgill
to be responsible for oneself. The will
to keep one's distance. The will to be-

26 NIETZSCHE

come indifferent to hardship, severity,
privation, to life itself. The will to
sacrifice men to one's cause — and oneself,
too. ^Freedom i mplies that the manly in-
stincts. wh iHylftlipht in war and victory,
have dominion ov^r^ll other instincts —
including the innfinrf f" he "hnpftvii The
man who is truly free treafTff^unHer foot
that contemptible species of security
dreamt of by shopkeepers, Christians,

"cows, women, Englishmen and other
democrats. The free man is a. warrior!
How is freedom to be measured, in in-

^ dividuals, as well as in nations? By the
resistence which has to be overcome~T>y

** the effort which it costs to preserve
autonomy. We must seek the highest
type of freeman where the greatest re-
sistence is constantly being overcome —
five paces from tyranny, close to the
threshold of thraldom. . . .Those peoples
who were worth something, who became
worth something, never won their great-
ness under liberal institutions. Great

\ danger made something out of them
which deserves our reverence — that sort 11
of danger which first teaches us to know \
our resources, our virtues, our shield and I

" sword, our genius — which compels us to I
be strong Those great forcing- •

LIBERTY 27

houses of the strong — the strongest spe-
cies of man that has hitherto existed — the
aristocratic commonwealth of Rome and
Venice, understood the word freedom as
I understand it; that is. to say, as some-
thing which one has and has not, as
something which one eternally desires
and eternally wins by conquest.

— Gotzendammerung, IX, 38

* ,'

28 NIETZSCHE

THE LABOR PROBLEM.

THE fact that there is now a labor
problem is to be blamed upon stu-
pidity — or, at the bottom, upon that
degeneration of the will to power which

is the cause of all stupidity I do

not at all understand what people want
to do with the workingman, now that
they have made a question of him. He
finds himself situated far too advantage-
ously to refrain from asking further
questions himself, and always with de-
creasing modesty. The majority, at last,
is now on his side. There is no longer
any hope that a modest and humble spe-
cies of human being, after the Chinese
type, will constitute itself into a work-
ing class. It would have been the ration-
al course to build up such a class

but what have people done? Everything
to annihilate even the germ of the pre-
requisite for such a course I By the
most appalling thoughtlessness they haVe
destroyed the instincts by virtue of which
the workingman becomes possible as a

LABOR 29

class. He has been made capable of
military service, he has been given the
right of combination and the right of
the franchise. No wonder he already
feels his class-existence as a state of
disagreeable necessity (o£" in terms of
morality, as injustice) I But what do
people want? Let it be asked once more.
If they want to realize an end, they must
be willing to use sensible means to that
end. If they want to have slaves, it is
foolish to educate them to be masters.

— Gotzendammerung, IX, 40

3 o NIETZSCHE

PROGRESS.

ARE wc really becoming more
moral? The fact that all the world
believes we are is in itself a reason
to doubt it. We modern men — very
delicate, very easily injured, giving and
demanding consideration in a hundred
ways — we flatter ourselves with the no-
tion that this delicate humanity of ours,
this realized unanimity in forbearance,
helplessness and mutual trust, is a sign
of progress, and that because of it we are
above the men of the Renaissance.
Every age, however, thinks of itself in
this manner; it is obliged to think thus.
But it is certain that we could not live
under Renaissance conditions. We can-
not even conceive ourselves living under
them. Our nerves would not stand it,
not to speak of our skins. But our in-
capacity is no proof of progress. It only
shows that we have reached a different,
a later condition; that we are weaker,
tenderer and more easily injured. Out
of this change humanitarian morality has

PROGRESS 31

been evolved. If we could think of our-
selves as lacking our present tenderness,
(our lateness, our physiological senility)
our humanitarian morality would forth-
with lose its value. No morality has any

value in itself. " C"V

— Qfif Zen j£ mmerun gj iXj 37

Many chains have been put upon
man in order that he may learn to behave
less like an animal: and in truth he has
become more gentle, intellectual, bright
and cautious than any other animal. Now,
however, he suffers from the effects of
these chains and the lack of pure air and
free movement. These chains are — I re-
peat it again and again — the heavy and
overpowering errors of mQral, religious,
metaphysical concepts. When the chains
and their effects have been cast off, the
first great goal is reached; the separation
of man from beast. We are now just be-
ginning to cast off the chains, and for this
we need the greatest caution,

32 NIETZSCHE

THE CRIMINAL.

THE criminal type is the type of the
strong man under unfavorable con-
ditions — the strong man who has
been made sick. He lacks the wildness,
with its freer and more dangerous en-
vironment — a state of existence in which
all that is offensive and defensive in his
instincts is regarded as right. His vir-
tues are put under the ban by society,
and so most powerful impulses in-
stinctive to him become associated with
depressing concepts — with fear, suspi-
cion and disgrace. This, unluckily, is
almost the recipe for producing physio-
logical degeneration. The man who
must do secretly and by stealth, and in
the face of constant danger, the thing
that he can best do, and that he most
desires to do — this man inevitably be-
comes anaemic. And because his yield-
ing to his instincts is followed inevitably
by danger, persecution and calamity, his
/sentiment toward those instincts changes.
He begins to regard them, in a word,

THE CRIMINAL YJ 33

as harmful. In our domesticated, me-
fdiocre, emasculated society, a man com-
ing from the mountains or from seafar-
ing adventures, with his natural instincts
unimpaired, necessarily degenerates into
• ij a criminal, — or almost necessarily, for
: there are, of course, cases in which such
a man proves himself stronger than soci-
ety. The Corsican Napoleon offers the

^most celebrated example . . Let us

generalize the criminal. Let us look
into the character of those persons who,
for any reason whatever, lack the good
opinion of the public — who know that
they are not regarded as useful members
of society — who have the Chandala's
feeling that they are counted inferior,
outcast, unworthy and defiling. All such
men take on a subterranean color in their
thoughts and actions ; everything in them
becomes paler than in those whose lives

are lived in daylight But almost

all classes of men whom we now honor
once lived in this semi-sepulchural at-
mosphere — the scientific man, artist, the
genius, the free spirit, the actor, the mer-
chant, the great discoverer. As long, in-
deed, as the priest passed for the highest
type of man, every truly valuable class
was depreciated But the time comes

34 NIETZSCHE

— I promise it! — when the priest will be
regarded as the lowest type — as the most
mendacious, the most disreputable vari-
ety of human being.

— Gotzendammerung, IX, 45

FAITH 35

FAITH.

ALL great intellects are skeptical
strength and masterful intel-
ligence reveal themselves by skep-
ticism. Men of fixed conviction are not
worth consulting when an effort is being
made to determine the fundamental val-
uations. Convictions are prisons. Men
who hold to them do not see far enough
— thev do not see below themselves. But
to be entitled to a voice in the determina-
tion of values one must be able to see five
hundred convictions below oneself — be-
hind oneself. An intellect which reaches
out for the great truths, and for the
means to their attainment, is necessarily

skeptical On the other hand, the

need of a belief, of something that is

unconditioned by yea or nay is a

need of weakness. The man of faith, the
true believer of any kind, is necessarily

a dependent man Every variety of

belief is, in itself, an exaggeration of self-
ab(%jfation

— Der Antichrist, 54

/

36 NIETZSCHE

It is so little true that a martyr
oroves the truth of his cause that I am
constrained to deny that a martyr ever

has anything to do with the truth

Martyrdoms have been a great misfor-
tune in history, for they have seduced.
The inference of all idiots (women and
the mob included) that a doctrine for
which a man lays down his life (or
which, like primitive Christianity, en-
genders an epidemic of the desire to die
for it) is necessarily an important one —
this inference has always been an un-
speakable drag upon the search for the

truth The martyrs, in a word, have

injured the truth Even at the pres-
ent time some sort of persecution is all
that is needed to give an honorable name
to the most indifferent doctrine. But is
it true that the credibility of a doctrine
is altered in the slightest degree by the
fact that someone is willing to die for
it? No; an error which thus becomes
honorable is merely an error which takes
on an additional capacity for seduction.
Do you fancy, Messrs. the theologians,
that we will give you a chance to suffer
martyrdom for your lies? The right way
to refute an error is to lay it respectfully
on ice; it is just so that one refutes

FAITH 37

theologians. It showed the grand his-
torical stupidity of all persecutors that
they gave an honorable aspect to the
cause of their opponents — that they
added to it, as a free gift, the additional
fascination of martyrdom. Woman is ^
still prostrate on her knees before one J
error because she has been told that
someone died for it on the cross. But is
the cross an argument?

Der Antichrist, 53

r"

38

NIETZSCHE

FREE WILL.

WE have no longer any sympathy
with the notion of free .will ; we
know only too well what it is —
the most disreputable of all theological
devices for making men "responsible"
(that is, in their sense of the word) so that
they become dependent upon theologians.
. . .Whenever you encounter an attempt
to establish responsibility, you will al-
ways find a yearning to punish and con-
demn at the bottom of it . . . The dognqfl of

for the

luroose

all
i. e. wit!

tsntmn ^f hnrlmct finffy 1 he Old pSy-

[ology — will-psychology — would have
been impossible but for the fact that
its originators (the priests at the head of
the old commonwealths) wanted to

V create for themselves a right to impose
punishment — or a right for God to do so.

imagin ed to^aJi£ejn_oxder

piin j>heH— |n_ order that thevHmight he
r Tound guilty. "Consequently, eVCfy~act

FREE WILL 39

■-_■-_ _ _ _____■ . ,M ■■■■■ — ■■_— _ _i_.ii.i__ ■__■_■■■■■-—— — i ■■ _» .— u ■

had to be thought j^i^u^o luntary, an d
the origTiT Tjf ever _ / act hadto be thought
of^as^i^sidingTIa jconS ^ciotrsnessr— WFwho
haveTentered uponlTiilovtment in the op-
posite direction — we ' immoralists who
endeavor, with our will to power, to rid
the world of its notions of guilt and pun-
isHment, and to cleanse psychology, his-
tory, nature and society from these
notions — we face, in these days, no more
fundamental antagonism than that of the
theologians, who, with their notion of a
"moral order of the world," go on taint-
ing the innocence of life with punish-
ment and guilt. Christianity is the hang-
man's metaphysicl

— Gotzendammerung, VI, 7

4 o NIETZSCHE

PATRIOTISM.

WE good Europeans are not
French enough to "love man-
kind." A man must be afflicted
by an excess of Gallic eroticism to ap-
proach mankind with ardor. Mankind!
Was there ever a more hideous old wom-
an among all the old women? No,

we do not love mankind I On the other

hand, we are not German enough to ad-
vocate nationalism and race hatred, or to
take delight in that national blood-
poisoning which sets up quarantines be-
tween the nations of Europe. We are too
unprejudiced for that — too perverse, too
fastidious, too well-informed, too much
traveled. We prefer to live on mountains

— apart, unseasonable We are too

diverse and mixed in race to be patriots.
We are, in a word, good Europeans — the
rich heirs of milleniums of European

thought

We rejoice in everything which,
like ourselves, loves danger, war, adven-
ture — which does not make compromises,

PATRIOTISM 41

, 11-—. — 1" ■

nor let itself be captured, conciliated or

faced We ponder over the need of

a new order of things — even of a new
slavery, for the strengthening and eleva-\
tion of the human race always involves \
the existence of slaves. ;

— Die frohliche Wissenschaft, 277

1
1

42 NIETZSCHE

THE SUPERMAN.

/
/

/T teach you the superman I Man is

I som^fhing that shall be surpassed.

What have ye done to surpass him?

All beings that have come into the
world heretofore have created something
beyond themselves. Are ye going to be
the ebb of the tide? Are ye going back
to the animal or ahead to the superman?.

WhaKJtojnari is the apef —A joke or
a sore shame. Man shall be the same to
the superman — a joke or a sore shame.

Ye have made your way from worm
to man, but much within you is still
worm. Once ye were apes, but even now
man is but an ape greater than any ape. . .

Behold, I teach you the superman!

— Also sprach Zarathustra, I

Man is a rope connecting animal
and superman — a rope over a~ preci-
pice

THE SUPERMAN 43

■■ ■ ■ ■ -^— •*— ■— ■ — ii 1 ■ ■ 1 » » »

The greatness of man lies in this:
that he is a bridge and not a goal. The
thing that can be loved in man is this:
that he is a transition and an exit

I love those who do not seek beyond
the stars for reasons to perish and be
sacrificed, but who sacrifice themselves
to earth that earth may one day bring
forth the superman.

— Also sprach Zarathustra, I

44 NIETZSCHE

BEAUTY.

NOTHING is more conditioned, or
rather, restricted, than our notion
of the beautiful. A person who
tried to think of it as detached from de-
light of man in himself would immedi-
ately lose his way. The "beautiful-in-
itself" is an expression only and not even
a concept. In considering beauty, man
always posits himself as the standard of
perfection; in some cases he even wor-
ships himself as that standard. A species
cannot possibly do otherwise than thus
say yea to itself. Its lowest instinct,
that of simple self-preservation and self-
expression, casts its shadow upon even
such sublimities. Man affects to believe
that the world itself is overcharged with
beauty: he forgets that he himself is the
cause of it. He alone has endowed it
with beauty — and only, alas I with very

human, all-too-human beauty I Man

mirrors himself in things. He counts
everything beautiful which reflects his
likeness. When he calls a thing beauti-

\

BEAUTY 45

- — ' ■

ful he merely displays his conceit in his
species.

— Gotzendammerung, IX, 19

Nothing is beautiful, except man;
all aesthetics are founded upon this
naivete; it is their first truth. Let us
straightway add their second ; nothing is

ugly, except the degenerating man

Whatever is ugly weakens and troubles
man. It reminds him of deterioration,
danger, impotence; he actually suffers
loss of power in contemplating it. When-
ever man is depressed he has a sense of
the proximity of something "ugly." His
sense of power, his will to power, his
courage, his pride — all sink with the
ugly and rise with the beautiful. The
ugly is instinctively recognized as a sign
and symptom of degeneration; that
which reminds us in the remotest manner
of degeneracy prompts us to pronounce
the verdict of "ugly." Every indication
of exhaustion, heaviness, age or lassi-
tude; every variety of constraint, such
as a cramp or paralysis; and above all,
the odour,color and likeness of decom-
position or putrefaction, be it attenuated
even to a mere symbol — all these things

46 NIETZSCHE

call for the same reaction, the evaluation
"ugly." A hatred is thereby excited —
and what is it that man hates? There
can be no doubt; it is the decline of his
type. That hatred is inspired by the most
profound instinct of the species ; there is
horror, foresight, profundity and far-
reaching vision in it — it is the profoundest
of all hatreds. On account of it, art is
profound.

— Gotzendammerung, IX, 20

ART 47

ART.

THE fight against a purpose in art is
always a fight against the moraliz-
ing tendency in art — against its sub-
ordination to morality. "Art for art's
sake" means "The devil take morality!"

But when the purpose of the ethical

preacher and the improver of mankind
has been excluded from ,art, it does not
at all follow that art itself is without a
purpose, without a goal, without mean-
ing "No purpose at all, rather than

a moral purpose!" — this is mere passion
speaking. A psychologist, on the con-
trary, asks the question : What does all
art do? Does it not praise? Does it not
glorify? Does it not select? Does it
not bring into prominence? In all these
cases it strengthens or weakens certain
valuations Is this only an ac-
cident?

— Gotzenddmmerung, IX, 24

/

48 NIETZSCHE

DEATH.

NATURAL death is death under the
most contemptible conditions. It
is involuntary death, death at the

wrong time, a coward's death .We

should desire a different kind of death —
voluntary, conscious, not accidental or

by surprise When a man does away

with himself he does the noblest thing in
the world. By doing it, he almost proves
his right to live.

— Gotzendammerung, IX, 36

Under certain conditions it is im-
proper to live any longer. Continued
vegetation in cowardly dependence upon
physicians and prescriptions, after the
meaning of life, the right to life, has
been lost, should entail the profound con-
tempt of humanity.

— Gotzendammerung, IX, 36

DEATH ' 49

Natural death is destitute of ration-
ality. It is really irrational death, for
the pitiable substance of the shell deter-
mines how long the kernel shall endure.
The pining, sottish prison-warder de-
cides the hour at which his noble prisoner
is to die Th e enlightened reg ula-
ti on and control or d eatn belongs to~the
mora lity, oi the tuturg .
— M?hschliches allzu Menschliches, III

1 8 5

I sing unto you my death, my free
death, which cometh because I will it!

And when shall I will it? He who
hath a goal and an heir wishest death to
come at the right time for goal and heir.

And out of reverence for goal and
heir he will hang up no more withered
wreaths in the sanctuary of life.

And whosoever wisheth fame, must
in due season say farewell to honor, and
achieve the difficult task of departing at
the right time.

One must cease to be eaten at \hC\
time one tasteth best. He who would be
loved for long must know that.

— A ho sprach Zarathustra, I.

So NIETZSCHE

MINOR SAYINGS.

V % \ /HAT does not kill me, strength-
ens me.

W

Help thyself; then everyone else
helps thee.

How is it? Is man only a mistake
of God? Or God only a mistake of
man?

I

Contentment is a prophylactic. Has
any woman who knew she was well
dressed ever caught cold? __ . ^

There is a hatred of lying due to a
sensitive notion of honor; there is also
a hatred of lying due to the fact that it
is forbidden by a divine command.
Thus, a man may be too cowardly to tell
lies.

/ - How little is required for happiness 1
The sound of a bagpipe 1

The most important fruit of human
effort in the past is that we need no

L MINOR SAYINGS 51

' / longer live in dread of wild beasts,
( barbarians, god* and our own dreams.

r>

Civilization aims at making all good
things — honors, treasure, fair women —
accessible even to cowards.

Dante — the hyena poetizing in
1 tombs !

\ y Zola— the delight to stink!

\

/

' 1/ George Sand — a milch-cow with a

grand manner!

Sainte-Beuve — a female, after all>
with a woman's revengefulness and a wo-
an's sensousness!

u

* The Brothers Goncourt — the two
Ajaxes struggling with Homer; music
by Offenbach!

The greatest modern event — that
fGod is dead — that the Christian God
1 has become unworthy of belief — has now
(begun to cast its shadows over Europe.

/ The philosopher has to be the bad

^conscience of his age.

Nothing is rarer among moralists

* and saints than rectitude.

y.

52 NIETZSCHE

At the bottom of all distinguished
races the beast of prey is not to be mis-
taken — the magnificent blood beast roam-
ing wantonly in search of prey and vic-
tory.

You say that a good cause will sanc-
tify even war I I tell you that a good
war will sanctify any cause 1

You should love peace as a means to
V new war, and the short peace more than
the long.

This new table, brethren, I put up
for you: "Be hard!"

/~ He who cannot lie doesn't know
Cwhat truth is.

» / ^ The idealist is incorrigible; if one
y casts him out of his heaven, he makes an
_ ideal of his hell.

There is a superfluity of goodness
which is like wickedness.

FRANCE 53

FRANCE.

LL that Europe has known of sensi- * f~) C)

bility, of taste, and nobleness has
been the work and creation of
France. Even today France is the refuge
of the most intellectual and refined cult-
ure, and is still the great school of taste.
Schopenhauer is more to this France of
taste than he ever was to the Germans-
Heine has long since passed into the flesh
and blood of the best Parisian lyrics ; and
Hegel, in the person of Taine, exercises
an almost tyrannical sway. As to Wag-
ner, the more French music adapts itself
to the exigencies of the modern soul,
the more will it become Wagnerized.

97

54 NIETZSCHE

WEAKNESS

BELIEF of some kind is -always
most urgently needed when Will
i$ lacking. For Will, as the love
of command, is the distinguishing char-
acteristic of strength and independence.
The less a man understands the art. of
commanding, the more he longs for a
commander, be it a person, a belief, or
a conviction. We are therefore perhaps
not far wrong if we consider the two
world-religions, Buddhism and Christ-
ianity, as having their origin, and es-
pecially their sudden expansion, in an im-
mense weakness and decrease of voIiTion.
Both religions found a desire existing
for a "Thou shalt," a desire caused by
a disease of Will-power. They offered
happiness to numberless weak souls, for
they taught them fanaticism; and fan-
aticism is the only exercise of the Will
to which the feeble and the uncertain can
attain, through a kind of hypnotising of
their whole sensual and intellectual sys-
tem, which results in the over-nourish-

WEAKNESS 55

ment and over-development of one single
point of view. This one point of view
dominates them — and this the Christian
calls his Faith.

/

56 NIETZSCHE

INTELLECTUAL JEALOUSY.

THERE is this difference between
sociable and solitary intellectual na-
tures ; the former are contented with
anything, as soon as their intellects have a
communicable, favorable version of it;
but the lonely souls have their silent rapt-
ure, their speechless agony. They loath
the ingenious, brilliant display of their in-
nermost problems as sincerely as seeing
their beloved too gaudily dressed; they
watch her with mournful eyes, as though
with a dawning suspicion that she is de-
sirous of pleasing others. Such is the
jealousy which all lonely thinkers and
passionate dreamers display with regard
to "esprit."

THE GENTLEMAN 57

THE GENTLEMAN.

THE demeanor of high-born persons
shows plainly that in their minds
the consciousness of power is ever-
present. Above all things, they strive to
avoid a show of weakness, whether it
takes the form of inefficiency or of a too-
easy yielding to passion or emotion. They
never sink exhausted into a chair. On the
train, when the vulgar try to make them-
selves comfortable, these higher folk
avoid reclining. They do not seem to
get tired after hours of standing at court.
They do not furnish their houses in a com-
fortable, but in a spacious and dignified
manner, as if they were the abodes of a
taller race of beings.

To a provoking speech, they reply
with politeness and self-possession — and
not as if horrified, crushed, abashed, en-
raged or out of breath, after the manner
of plebeians. The aristocrat knows how
to preserve the appearance of ever-pres-
ent physical strength, and he knows, too,
how to convey the impression, that his soul

58 NIETZSCHE

and intellect are a match to all dangers
and surprises, by keeping up an unchang-
ing serenity and civility, even under the
most trying circumstances.

Morgenrote, § 201.

THE JEWS 59

THE JEWS.

/ *TT* HE Jews will either become the
I masters of Europe or lose Europe,
•*■ as they once lost Egypt. And it
seems to be improbable that they will lose
again. In Europe, for eighteen centur-
ies, they have passed through a school
more terrible than that known to any
other nation, and the experiences of this
time of stress and storm have benefitted
the individual more than the community.
In consequence, the resourcefulness and
alertness of the modern Jew are extraor-
dinary In times of extremity, the

people of Israel less often sought refuge
in drink and suicide than any other race
of Europe. Today, every Jew finds in
the history of his forebears a voluminous
record of coolness and perseverance in
terrible predicaments — of artful cunning
and clever fencing with chance and mis-
fortune. The Jews have hid their brave-
ry under the cloak of submissiveness ;
their heroism in facing contempt surpas-
ses that of the saints. People tried to

»/

60 NIETZSCHE

make them contemptible for twenty cen-
turies by refusing them all honors and
dignities and by pushing them down into
the mean trades. The process did not
make them cleaner, alas! but neither did
it make them contemptible.

Morgenrote § 205.

1

PRESS COMMENT

on

THE PHILOSOPHY OF
NIETZSCHE.

"He (Mr. Mencken) has writ-
ten one of the most interesting
and instructive books that has
come from the American press in
many a long day"
— The Educational Review, (Edited
by Nicholas Murray Butler.)

"As time goes on Nietzsche,
Wagner and Ibsen bid fair to be-
come, if they have not already
reached that eminence, the most
widely discussed Europeans of the
latter nineteenth century ... It does
not flaunt obscurities in the face
* ' of the unenlightened reader nor
does it offend the knowledge of
the Nietzsohean expert. After read-
ing Mr. Mencken, we need no
longer look at Nietzsche askance."
— Boston Evening Transcript

"It is an illuminating and
eventful work. His clear and con-
cise exposition of the 'overlord
and underman' system of social
regulation, elaborated in Nietz-
sche's works, should command a
large measure of popular interest
and attention."
— Philadelphia North American,

"Though we dissent profound-
y/\y from the appreciation of Nietz-
sche expressed in this volume,
(The Philosophy of Freidrich
Nietzsche), we have to thank the
author for his keen analysis and
clear statement of the ideas and
principals that characterize the
philosophy of the Superman."
—The Catholic World.

THE PHILOSOPHY

of

FREIDRICH NIETZSCHE

by

Henry L. Mencken

The standard work in English
on the subject of Nietzsche's phil-
osophy.

Mr. Mencken, after presenting
a careful biography to the reader,
proceeds to analyze and arrange
in logical sequence Nietzsche's
philosophic system. The result is
a full, clear and impartial presen-
tation of the teachings of this
most radical thinker whose influence
is so apparent in all progressive
thought of the present time.

The subject is presented not
only in a thoughtful but entertain-
ing style while the keen insight
which the author has into the in-
fluences which this philosophy is
exercising in all fields of activity
today adds greatly to its value.

Crown octavo. Cloth, with
etched portrait. 325 pages.

Price $2. net. Postage 15 cents.

John W. Luce and Company
Boston

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