Nietzsche : his life and works

^OBARTS

to

of

Rev. N. Cacciapuoti

M

PHILOSOPHIES ANCIENT AND MODERN

NIETZSCHE

RELIGIONS: ANCIENT AND MODERN

Animism. By EDWARD CLODD, author of The Story of Creation.
Pantheism. By JAMES ALLANSON PICTON, author of The Religion of the

Universe.
The Religions Of Ancient China. By Professor GILES, LL. D. , Professor

of Chinese in the University of Cambridge.
The Religion Of Ancient Greece. By JANE HARBISON, Lecturer at

Newnham College, Cambridge, author of Prolegomena to Study of Greek

Religion.
Islam. By the Rt. Hon. AMEER ALI SYED, of the Judicial Committee of His

Majesty's Privy Council, author of The Spirit of Islam and Ethics of Islam.
Magic and Fetishism. By Dr. A. C. HADDON, F.R.S., Lecturer on

Ethnology at Cambridge University.
The Religion Of Ancient Egypt. By Professor W. M. FLINDERS PETRIE,

F.R.S.
The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria. By THEOPHII.US G. PINCHES,

late of the British Museum.
Early Buddhism. By Professor RHYS DAVIDS, LL.D., late Secretary of

The Royal Asiatic Society.
Hinduism. By Dr. L. D. BARNETT, of the Department of Oriental Printed

Books and MSS., British Museum.
Scandinavian Religion. By WILLIAM A. CRAIOIE, Joint Editor of the

Oxford English Dictionary.
Celtic Religion. By Professor ANWYL, Professor of Welsh at University

College, Aberystwyth.

The Mythology of Ancient Britain and Ireland. By CHARLES

SQUIRE, author of The Mythology of the British Islands.

Judaism. By ISRAEL ABRAHAMS, Lecturer in Talmudic Literature in Cam
bridge University, author of Jewish Life in the Middle Ages.

The Religion of Ancient Rome. By CYRIL BAILEY, M.A.

Shinto, The Ancient Religion of Japan. By W. G. ASTON, C. M. G.

The Religion of Ancient Mexico and Peru. By LEWIS SPENCE, M.A.

Early Christianity. By S. B. BLACK, Professor at M'Gill University.

The Psychological Origin and Nature of Religion. By Professor

J. H. LEUBA.

The Religion of Ancient Palestine. By STANLEY A. COOK.
Mithraism. By W. J. PHYTHIAN-ADAMS.

PHILOSOPHIES

Early Greek Philosophy. By A. W. BENN, author of The Philosophy of

Greece, Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century.
Stoicism. By Professor ST. GEORGE STOCK, author of Deductive Logic,

editor of the Apology of Plato, etc.
Plato. By Professor A. E. TAYLOR, St. Andrews University, author of

The Problem of Conduct.
Scholasticism. By Father RICKABY, S. J.
Hobbes. By Professor A. E. TAYLOR.
Locke. By Professor ALEXANDER, of Owens College.
Comte and Mill. By T. WHITTAKER, author of The Neoplatonists Apollo-

nius of Tyana and other Essays.
Herbert Spencer. By W. H. HUDSON, author of An Introduction to

Spencer's Philosophy.
Schopenhauer. By T. WHITTAKER.

Berkeley. By Professor CAMPBELL FRASER, D.C.L., LL.D.
Swedenborg. By Dr. SEW ALL.

Nietzsche : His Life and Works. By ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI.
Bergson, By JOSEPH SOLOMON.
Rationalism. By J. M. ROBERTSON.
P-iagmatism. By D. L. MURRAY.
Rudolf Eucken. By W. TUDER- JONES.

NIETZSCHE

His Life and Works

By

ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI

AUTHOR OF

4 WHO IS TO BE MASTER OF THE WORLD?"
AND C NOTES TO ZARATHUSTRA *

Preface by
DR. OSCAR LEVY

LONDON
CONSTABLE fef COMPANY LTD

10 ORANGE STREET LEICESTER SQUARE
1914

PREFACE

THE commission for a book on Nietzsche, to form
the latest addition to a series of famous philoso
phers, is most certainly a sign that the age of
adversity, through which the earlier Nietzscheans
had to struggle, has at last come to an end. For
ten consecutive years they had had no reply what
ever to their propaganda, and their publications,
loud as some of them were, proved as ineffective as
cannon shots fired into the eternity of interplane
tary space. Finally, however, when the echo was
at last heard, it gave back nothing like the
original sound : it was an echo of groans and
moans, an echo of roaring disapproval and hissing
mockery. Yet the years rolled on and on — and
so did the printing-presses — hissing and roaring
as much as ever — but at last, their thunders grew
tamer and more subdued — the tempest of their
fury seemed to die away in the distance — occa
sionally a slight mutter was still to be heard,

NIETZSCHE

but no more flashes and hisses — and suddenly a
streak of blue was observed over the horizon,
followed by a ray and smile of sunlight — and
a soft zephyr of subdued and tentative compli
ments — and when our Nietzsche edition had
begun to appear in its stately volumes we were
enabled to receive from our former enemies on
both sides of the Atlantic ' respectful congratula
tions.'

And now all iny brave friends are radiant
with joy and optimism. Like the wanderer in
the fairy tale, while the storm of disgust and loud
reproach was raging, they wrapped themselves all
the more closely in their cloaks, and no impudent
wind could tear a shred of garments from them,
but now that the sun of approval has set in,
they would fain get out of their armour and
enjoy the fine weather as a reward for past
perils. Has not the spring come at last ? Are
not the gay flowers at our feet meant to welcome
the victorious warriors ? . . , Are not the ladies
— ladies that from time immemorial have loved
the warrior (especially when he is successful) —
smiling at us more gloriously even than the sun ?
... Sun, ladies, flowers, smiles — was there ever
a nicer combination ? . . .

But, alas ! there is an unimaginative creature
vi

PREFACE

among the guests, an earnest face among the
cheerful, a disbeliever among the faithful, a dark
countenance amid the bright assembly ; — a being
who, in glaring contrast to the sun, the smiles, and
the gaily-coloured dresses and sunshades, is keep
ing a tight hold upon a dark umbrella — for he
has an uncontrollable mistrust of English
weather !

And I may claim that I not only know the
meteorological conditions of England, but also
those of the whole of modern Europe. I know
them so well that I have the greatest doubts
whether Nietzsche's influence will be strong
enough to withstand the terrible hurricane of
democracy which in our age is sweeping every-
thing before it, and leaving a level plain in its
rear. Nietzsche may have been ever so right,
but Truth and Righteousness do not always pre
vail in this world of ours, indeed, they don't : the
Bible itself, that otherwise optimistic book, lets
this grand secret out once and only once — in the
story of Job. The ' happy ending ' in that book
will deceive no realistic observer: it was added
to the story, as it is added to modern plays
and novels, for the edification and comfort
of the audience: the true story of Job was
without it, as was the true story of many
vii

NIETZSCHE

a brave man, as was the true story of that
great pope, who on his deathbed came out with
the confession : ' Dilexi justitiam et odi iniquita-
tem, propterea morior in exsilio,'1 a confession
which went in the very teeth of his own virtue-
rewarding creed with its happy-go-lucky trust in
the moral order of the universe.

Nietzsche may have been right, therefore he
may be unsuccessful. I myself regard Nietzsche's
views on art, religion, psychology, morality, as
extremely sound ; I think they are proved both
by history and by common experience; I even
suspect that they could be confirmed by science,
if only science would give up looking at the
world through the coloured spectacles of demo
cratic prejudice . . . but then, it is so difficult to
give up this democratic prejudice; for it is by no
means simply a political opinion. Democracy,
as a political creed, need terrify no one; for
political creeds succeed each other like waves of
the sea, whose thunder is loud and whose end is
froth; but jjie driving power behind democracy
is not a political one, it is religious — it is Christi-
jmity,. A mighty religion still, a religion which
has governed the world for two thousand years,

1 ' I have loved justice and I have hated iniquity, therefore
I die in exile. '

viii

PREFACE

which has influenced all philosophies, all litera
tures, all laws, all customs up to our own day, till
it has finally filtered into our hearts, our blood,
our system, and become part and parcel of our
selves without our being aware of it. At the
present moment we are all instinctive Christians.
Even if this Christian religion has been severely
wounded by Nietzsche's criticism — and I believe
this to be the case — I beg to suggest that a
wounded lion may still have more strength than
all the fussy, political, rationalistic, agnostic, non
conformist, Nietzschean and super-Nietzschean
mice put together.

It was all the braver, therefore, on Nietzsche's
part to assail such a mighty enemy, and to attack
him exactly on the spot where attack was most
needed, if victory were to be won. Nietzsche
clearly recognised that the canons of criticism
had until now only been directed against the
outer works of that stalwart fortress — at dog
matic, at supernatural, at ecclesiastical Christi- ^
anity, and that no one had yet dared to aim right
at the very heart of the creed — its morality,
which, while the shamfighters were at work
outside, was being enormously strengthened and
consolidated from within. This morality, how
ever, Nietzsche recognised as intimately con-
ix

NIETZSCHE

nected with modern democracy — and behind the
rosebush of democracy with its flowery speeches
and its fraternity- and liberty-blossoms, Nietzsche
clearly saw the dragon of anarchy and dissolution
lurking. It was the mortal fear of annihilation
and ruin which gave Nietzsche the daring to
fulminate against our religion with such imperish
able Dithyrambics. He was the first to mean
the phrase, ( dcrasez I'infdme ! ' which in Voltaire's
mouth was only an epigrammatic exclamation.
For Nietzsche's great forerunner on the Continent,
Wolfgang Goethe, who was also just as well aware
how it would all end, was much too prudent a
man to lay his innermost heart bare to his
enemies, he — the grand old hypocrite of Weimar
— gauged the power of the contrary current
correctly, and wisely left the open combat against
Christianity and democracy to his great colleague
— to that man of tragic wit, to Heinrich Heine.

And there were others on the Continent — very
few to be sure, and no politician or man of science
or woman among them — others who saw the drift
of modern ideas: all of them poets. For poets
are prophets: their sensitive organisation feels
the fall of the glass first, while their pluck and
their pride, their duty and their desire to face
the storm drive them into the very thick of it.

PREFACE

The German poet Hebbel, the French novelist
Stendhal, were amongst them. A new Matthew
Arnold — the object of my wish for this country —
would perhaps like to include another poet, the
Frenchman Alfred de Vigny, in whose journal
are to be found those awe-inspiring words against
democracy: 'Alas! it is thou, Democracy, that
art the desert! it is thou who hast shrouded
and bleached everything beneath thy monticles
of sand ! Thy tedious flatness has covered every
thing and levelled all! For ever and ever the
valley and the hill supplant each other ; and only
from time to time a man of courage is seen:
he rises like a sand-whirl, makes his ten paces
towards the sun, and then falls like powder to
the ground. And then nothing more is seen
save the eternal plain of endless sand.'

Goethe and Hebbel, Stendhal and Heinrich
Heine, Alfred de Vigny and Friedrich Nietzsche,
all made their ten steps towards the sun and are
now sleeping peacefully beneath the dry sands of
Christian democracy. Their works are read, to
be sure ; but alas ! how few understand their
meaning! I see this and I shudder. And I
remember another moment in my life — a moment
of perturbation too— a moment in which an idea
overcame me, which has been haunting me ever
xi

NIETZSCHE

since. I was on a visit to Mrs. Forster-Nietzsche,
in her villa high up amongst the hills of Weimar,
waiting in the drawing-room for my hostess to
enter. It was the first time that I had stood
upon the holy ground where Friedrich Nietzsche
gave up his heroic soul, and I was naturally
impressed ; my eyes wandered reverently around
the scene, and I suddenly noticed some hand
writing on the wall. The handwriting consisted
of a powerful letter N which the ingenious
builder had engraved profusely upon the oak
panels of the room. The N, of course, reminded
me of another big N, connected with another
big name, — the N which used to be engraved
together with the imperial crown and eagle upon
the plate and regalia of Napoleon Bonaparte.
There was another victim of democracy: the
man who, elevated by its revolutionary wave,
tried to stifle and subdue the anarchical flood,
was swallowed up as ignominiously as its other
implacable opponent, the plucky parson's son of
the vicarage of Rocken.

The mighty sword in the beginning and the
mighty pen at the end of the last century were
alike impotent against — Fate. No doubt, I saw
in that moment, as though lit up by a flashlight,
the fate of Europe clearly before my eyes. A
xii

PREFACE

fate — an iron fate. A fate unavoidable for a
continent that will have no more guides, no
more great men. A fate unavoidable for an age
that spills its best blood with the carelessness of
ignorance. A fate unavoidable for a people that
is driven by its very religion to disobedience and
anarchy. And I thought of my own race, which
has seen so many fates, so many ages, so many
empires decline — and there was I, the eternal
Jew, witnessing another catastrophe. And I
shuddered, and when my hostess entered I had
not yet recovered my breath.

Gruesome, isn't it ? But what if it should not
come true? 'There are no more prophets to
day/ says the Talmud scornfully. Well, unlike
my ancestor Jonah, who became melancholic
when his announcement of the downfall of
Nineveh was not fulfilled, I beg to say that I
on the contrary shall be extremely delighted to
have proved a false prophet. But I shall keep
my umbrella all the same.

OSCAR LEVY.

54 RUSSELL SQUARE,
LONDON, W.C.

xiii

CONTENTS

PAGE

i. NIETZSCHE'S LIFE, «...,!
ii. NIETZSCHE THE A MORALIST, . * * . 19

in. NIETZSCHE THE MORALIST, . . . . 41

iv. NIETZSCHE THE EVOLUTIONIST, . . .58

v. NIETZSCHE THE SOCIOLOGIST, . . . .75

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION, .... 97

BOOKS USEFUL TO THE STUDENT, . . .101

XV

ABBREVIATIONS USED IN REFERRING TO
SOME OF NIETZSCHE'S WORKS

D. D. = Dawn of Day.
Z. = Thus Spake Zarathustra.
G. E. = Beyond Good and Evil.
G. M. = The Genealogy of Morals,
Aph. = Aphorism,

NIETZSCHE
CHAPTER I

LIFE AND WORKS

' HOLY be thy name to all coming generations !
In the name of all thy friends, I, thy pupil, cry
out our warmest thanks to thee for thy great
life.

' Thou wast one of the noblest and purest men
that ever trod this earth.

'And although this is known to both friend
and foe, I do not deem it superfluous to utter
this testimony aloud at thy tomb. For we
know the world ; we know the fate of Spinoza !
Around Nietzsche's memory, too, posterity may
cast shadows ! And therefore I close with the
words : Peace to thy ashes ! ' *

This view, expressed by Peter Gast, Nietzsche's
staunchest friend and disciple, at his master's
graveside, in August 1900, may be regarded

1 Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsche's by Frau Forster-Nietzsche.
A I

NIETZSCHE

as typical of the Nietzsche enthusiast's atti
tude towards his master. On the other hand
we have the assurance of Nietzsche's opponents
and enemies that nothing could have been more
utterly disastrous to modern society, more per
nicious, dangerous, and ridiculous than Nietzsche's
_ life-work.

At the present day Nietzsche is so potent a
force and his influence is increasing with such
rapidity that, whatever our calling in life may
be, it behoves us to know precisely what he
stands for, and to which of the opinions above
given we should subscribe. As a matter of fact,
the inquirer into the life and works of this in
teresting man will find that he has well-nigh as
many by-naines as he has readers, and not the
least of our difficulties in speaking about him will
be to give him a fitting title, descriptive of his
mission and the way in which he understood it.

Some deny his right to the title ' philosopher ' ;
others declare him to be a mere anarchist ; and a
large number regard all his later works as no
more than a shallow though brilliant reversal of
every accepted doctrine on earth.

In order to be able to provoke so much diversity
of opinion, a man must be not only versatile but
forcible. Nietzsche was both. There is scarcely

2

LIFE AND WORKS

a subject in the whole range of philosophical
thought which he does not attack and blow up ;
and he hurls forth his hard, polished missiles in a
manner so destructive, and at the same time with
such accuracy of aim, that it is no wonder a
chorus of ill-used strongholds of traditional
thought now cry out against him as a disturber
and annihilator of their peace. Yet, through all
the dust, smoke, and noise of his implacable war
fare, there are both a method and a mission to be
discerned — a method and a mission in the pursuit
of which Nietzsche is really as unswerving as he
seems capricious.

Throughout his life and all his many recanta-'
tions and revulsions of feeling, he remained
faithful to one purpose and to one, jiiin — the
elevation of j the type man. However bewildered
we may become beneath the hail of his epigrams,
treating of every momentous question that has
ever agitated the human mind, we still can
trace this broad principle running through all
his works: his desire to elevate man and to
make him more worthy of humanity's great past.

Even in his attack on English psychologists,
naturalists, and philosophers, in The Genealogy of
Morals, what are his charges against them ? He
says they debase man, voluntarily or involuntarily,

3

NIETZSCHE

by seeking the really operative, really imperative
and decisive factor in history precisely where the
intellectual pride of man would least wish to
find it, i.e. in vis inertice, in some blind and
accidental mechanism of ideas, in automatic and
purely passive adaptation and modification, in
the compulsory action of adjustment to environ
ment.

Again, in his attack on the evolutionists' so-
called ' struggle for existence/ of which I shall
speak more exhaustively later, it is the suggestion
that life — mere existence in itself — is worthy of
being an aim at all, that he deprecates so pro
foundly. And, once more, it is with the_ view
of elevating man and his^ aspirations that he
levels the attack.

Whatever we may think of his methods,
therefore,! at least his aim was sufficiently lofty
and honourable, and we must bear in mind
that he never shirked the duties which, /rightly
or wrongly, he imagined would help him to
achieve it.

What was Nietzsche? If we accept his own
definition of the philosopher's task on earth, we
must place him in the front rank of philosophers.
For, according to him, the creation of new values,
new principles, new standards, is the philosopher's

4

LIFE AND WORKS

sole raison d'etre ; and this he certainly accom
plished. If, on the other hand, with all the
* school ' philosophers, we ask him to show us
his system, we shall most surely be disappointed.
In this respect, therefore, we may perhaps need
to modify our opinion of him.

Be that as it may, it is safe to maintain that
he was a_ poet of no mean order ; not a mere
versifier or rhapsodist, but a poet in the old
Greek sense of the word, i.e. a maker. In our
time such men are so rare I that we are apt to
question whether they exist at all, for poetasters
have destroyed our faith in them. Goethe was
perhaps the last example of the type | in modern
Europe, and although we may recall the scientific
achievements of men like Michelangelo, Leonardo
da Vinci and Galileo, we are not sufficiently ready
to associate their divining and intuitive power
in the department of science jwith their purely
artistic and poetic achievements, despite the fact
that the two are really inseparable.

Knowing the high authority (with which poets
of this order | are wont to speak, it might be
supposed ! that we should approach Nietzsche's
innovations in the realm of science I with some
respect,'1 not in spite of, jbut precisely owing to,
his great poetic genius. Unfortunately to-day

5

NIETZSCHE

this no longer follows. Too thoroughly have we
divorced science jfrom emotion and feeling (very
wrongly, as even Herbert Spencer and Buckle
both declared), and now, wherever we see emotion
or a suggestion of passion, we are too apt to
purse our lips and stand on our guard.

When we consider that Nietzsche was ultimately
to prove the bitterest enemy of Christianity, and
the severest critic of 'the ecclesiastic J his ante
cedents seem, to say the least, remarkable. His
father, Karl Ludwig Nietzsche, born in 1813,
was a clergyman of the German Protestant
Church ; his grandfather had also taken orders ;
whilst his grandmother on his father's side was
descended from a long line of parsons. Nor do
things change very much when we turn to his
mother's family; for his maternal grandfather,
Oehler, was also a clergyman, and, according to
Nietzsche's sister, he appears to have been a very
sound, though broad, theologian.

Yet, perhaps, it is we who are wrong in seeing
anything strange in the fact that a man with
such orthodox antecedents should have developed
into a prophet and reformer of Nietzsche's stamp ;
for we should remember that only a long tradi
tion of discipline and strict conventionality, lasting
over a number of generations, is able to rear that

6

LIFE AND WORKS

will-power and determination which, as the lives
of most great men have shown, are the first con
ditions of all epoch-making movements started
by single individuals.

Friedrich Nietzsche was born at Rocken near
Liitzen, in the Prussian province of Saxony, on
the 15th of October 1844. From his earliest
childhood onwards the boy seems to have been
robust and active and does not appear to have
suffered from any of the ordinary ailments of
infancy. In the biography written by his sister
much stress is laid upon this fact, while the
sometimes exceptional health enjoyed by his
parents and ancestors is duly emphasised by the
anxious biographer. Elisabeth Nietzsche (born
in July 1846), the biographer in question, is
perfectly justified in establishing these facts with
care ; for we know that our poet philosopher died
insane, and many have sought to show that his
insanity was hereditary and could be traced
throughout his works.

Nietzsche's father died in 1849, and in the
following year the family removed to Naumburg.
There the boy received his early schooling, first
at a preparatory school and subsequently at
the Gymnasium — the Grammar School — of the
town. As a lad, it is said that he was fond of

7

NIETZSCHE

military games, and of sitting alone, and it
appears that he would recline for hours at his
grandmother Nietzsche's feet, listening to her
reminiscences of the great Napoleon. Towards
the end of 1858 Mrs. Nietzsche was offered a
scholarship for her son, for a term of six years,
in the Landes-Schule, Pforta, so famous for the
scholars it produced. At Pforta, where the dis
cipline was very severe, the boy followed the
regular school course and worked with great
industry. His sister tells us that during this
period he distinguished himself most in his
private studies and artistic efforts, though even
in the ordinary work of the school he was
decidedly above the average. It was here, too,
that he first became acquainted with Wagner's
compositions, and a word ought now perhaps to
be said in regard to his musical studies.

Music, we know, played anything but a minor
role in his later life, as his three important
essays, Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, The Case
of Wagner, and Nietzsche contra Wagner, are
with us to prove. I fear, however, that it will
be impossible to go very deeply into this question
here, save at the cost of other still more im
portant matters which have a prior claim to our
attention. Let i$ then suffice to say that, as a

8

LIFE AND WORKS

boy, Nietzsche's talent had already become so
noticeable that for some time the question which
agitated the elders in his circle of relatives and
friends, among whom were some competent
judges, was whether he should not give up all
else in order to develop his great gift. In the
end, however, it was decided that he should
become a scholar, and although he never entirely
gave up composing and playing the piano, music
never attained to anything beyond the dignity
of a serious hobby in his life. In saying this I
naturally exclude his critical writings on the
subject, which are at once valuable and im
portant.

Nietzsche's six years at Pforta were responsible
for a large number of his subsequent ideas.
When we hear him laying particular stress upon
the value of rigorous training free from all senti
mentality ; when we read his views concerning
austerity and the importance of law, order and
discipline, we must bear in mind that he is
speaking with an actual knowledge of these
things, and with profound experience of their
worth. The excellence of his philological work
may also be ascribed to the very sound training
he received at Pforta, and the Latin essay which
he wrote on an original subject (Theognis, the

9

NIETZSCHE

great aristocratic poet of Megara) for the leaving
examination, laid the foundation of all his sub
sequent opinions on morality.

Nietzsche left Pforta in September 1864 and
entered the University of Bonn, where he studied,
philology and theology. The latter he aban
doned six months later, however, and in the
autumn of 1865 he left Bonn for Leipzig, whither
his famous teacher Ritschl had preceded him.
Between 1865 and 1867 his work at Leipzig
proved of the utmost importance to his career.
Hellenism, Schopenhauer and Wagner now entered
into his life and became paramount influences
with him, and each in its way determined what
his ultimate mission was to be. Hellenism drew
him ever more strongly to philology and to the
problem of culture in general; Schopenhauer
directed him to philosophy, and Wagner taught
him his first steps in a subject which was to be
the actual Leit-motif of his teaching — I refer to
the question of Art.

His work during these two years, arduous
though it was, in no way affected his health, and,
despite his short-sight, he tells us that he was
then able to endure the greatest strain without
the smallest trouble. Being of a robust and
energetic nature, however, he was anxious to dis-

10

LIFE AND WORKS

cover some means of employing his bodily strength,
and it was for this reason that, regardless of the
interruption in his work, he was enthusiastic at
the thought of becoming a soldier.

In the autumn of 1867 he entered the fourth
regiment of Field Artillery, and it is said that
he performed his duties to the complete satis
faction of his superiors. But, alas, this lasted but
a short time ; for, as the result of an unfortunate
fall from a restive horse, he was compelled to
leave the colours before he had completed his
term of service.

In October 1868, after a serious illness, the
student returned to his work at Leipzig, and now
that event took place which was perhaps the
most triumphant and most decisive in his career.
It was Nietzsche's ambition to get his doctor's
degree as soon as possible and then to travel.
Meanwhile, however, others were busy determin
ing what he should do. Some philological
essays which he had written in his student days,
and which, owing to their excellence, had been
published by the ' Rheinisches Museum/ had at
tracted the attention of the educational Board of
Bale. One of the Board communicated with
Ritschl concerning Nietzsche, and the reply the
learned scholar sent was so favourable that the
n

NIETZSCHE

University of Bale immediately offered Ritschl's
favourite pupil their Professorship of Classical
Philology. This was an exceptional honour, and,
to crown it, the University of Leipzig quickly
granted Nietzsche his doctor's degree without
further examination — truly a remarkable occur
rence in straitlaced and formal Germany !

His first years at Bale are chiefly associated in
our minds with his inaugural address : ' Homer
and Classical Philology/ with his action in regard
to the Franco-German war, and with his lectures
on the 'Future of our Educational Institutions.'
I can do no more than refer to these here, but
as regards the war it is necessary to go into
further detail.

In July 1870, hostilities opened between France
and Prussia. Now, although Nietzsche had been
forced to become a naturalised Swiss subject in
order to accept his appointment at Bale, he was
loth to remain inactive while his own country
men fought for the honour of Germany. He
could not, however, fight for the Germans with
out compromising Switzerland's neutrality. He
therefore went as a hospital attendant, and in
this capacity, after obtaining the necessary leave,
he followed his former compatriots to the war.
According to Elisabeth Nietzsche, it was this act

12

LIFE AND WORKS

of devotion which was the cause of all her brother's
subsequent ill-health. In Ars-sur-Moselle, while
tending the sick and wounded, Nietzsche con
tracted dysentery from those in his charge. With
his constitution undermined by the exertions of
the campaign, he fell very seriously ill, and had
to be relieved of his duties. Long before he was
strong enough to do so, however, he resumed his
work at Bale ; and now began that second phase
of his life during which he never once recovered
the health he had enjoyed before the war.

In January 1872 Nietzsche published his first
book, The Birth of Tragedy. It is really but a
portion of a much larger work on Hellenism which
he had always had in view from his earliest
student days, and it may be said to have been
prepared in two preliminary lectures delivered
at Bale, under the title of the 'Greek Musical
Drama/ and ' Spcratesjmd Tragedj.' The work
was received with enthusiasm by Wagnerians;
but among Nietzsche's philological friends it
succeeded in rousing little more than doubt and
suspicion. It was a sign that the young pro
fessor was beginning to ascribe too much import
ance to Art in its influence upon the world, and
this the dry men of science could not tolerate.

Between 1873 and 1876, Nietzsche, while still
13

NIETZSCHE

at Bale, published four more essays which, for
matter and form, proved to be among the most
startling productions that Germany had read since
Schopenhauer's prime. Their author called these
essays Thoughts out of Season, and his aim in
writing them was undoubtedly the regeneration
of German culture. The first was an attack on
German Philistinism, in the person of David
Strauss, the famous theologian of Tubingen,
whom Nietzsche dubbed the 'Philistine of Culture/
and was calculated to check the extreme smug
ness which had suddenly invaded all depart
ments of thought and activity in Germany as the
result of the recent military triumph.

The second, The Use and Abuse of History,
was a protest against excessive indulgence in the
'historical sense,' or the love of looking back
wards, which threatened to paralyse the intelli
gence of Germany in those days. In it Nietzsche
tries to show how history is for the few and not
for the many, and points out how rare are those
who have the strength to endure the lesson of
experience.

In the third, Schopenhauer as Educator, Nietz
sche pits his great teacher against all other dry-
as-dust philosophers who make for stagnation in
philosophy.

LIFE AND WORKS

The fourth, Richard Wagner in Bayreuth,
contains Nietzsche's last word of praise as a
friend of the great German musician. In it we
already see signs of his revulsion of feeling ; but
on the whole it is a panegyric written with love
and conviction.

The only one |of the four Thoughts out of Season
(which created much comment ,'was the first,; con
cerning David Strauss, |and this gave rise to a
loud outcry against (the daring young philologist.

Nietzsche had been very unwell throughout
this period. Dyspepsia and headaches, brought
on partly by overwork, racked him incessantly,
and, in addition, he was getting ever nearer and
nearer to a final and irrevocable breach with the
greatest friend of his life — Richard Wagner.
After obtaining leave from the authorities he went
to Sorrento, where, in the autumn of 1876, he
began work on his next important book, Human,
All- too-human, the book which was to part him
for ever from Wagner. In February 1878 the
first volume was ready for the printer, and was
published almost simultaneously with Wagners
Parsifal, which work, as is well known, was the
death-blow to Nietzsche's faith in his former

idol

In Human, All-too-human, Nietzsche as a

15

NIETZSCHE

philosopher is not yet standing on his own legs,
as it were. He is only just beginning to feel his
way, and is still deeply immersed in the thought
of other men — more particularly that of the
English positivists. As a work of transition,
however, Human, All- too- Human is exceedingly
interesting, as are also its sequels Miscellaneous
Opinions and Apophthegms (1879) and The
Wanderer and his Shadow (1880). But in none
of these, as the author himself admits, is there
to be found that certainty of aim and treatment
which characterised his later writings,

In 1879, owing to ill-health, Nietzsche was
compelled to resign his professorship at the
University of Bale, and the spring of that year
saw him an independent man with an annual
pension of 3000 francs, generously granted to him
by the Board of Management on the acceptance
of his resignation. With this pension and a small
private income derived from a capital of about
£1400, he was not destitute, though by no means
affluent, and when we remember that he was
obliged to defray the expenses of publication in
the case of almost every one of his books, we may
form some idea of his actual resources.

From this time forward Nietzsche's life was
spent in travelling and writing. Venice, Marien-

16

LIFE AND WORKS

bad, Ziirich, St. Moritz in the Ober-Engadine, Sils
Maria, Tautenberg in Thuringia, Genoa, etc., etc.
were among the places at which he stayed, ac
cording to the season ; and during the year 1880
his health materially improved. In January 1881
he had completed the manuscript of the Dawn
of Day, and is said to have been well satisfied
with his condition.

In the Dawn of Day Nietzsche for the first
time begins to reveal his real personality. This
book is literally the dawn of his great life work,
and in it we find him grappling with all the
problems which he was subsequently to tackle
with such a masterly and courageous hand. It
appeared in July 1881 and met with but a poor
reception. Indeed, after the publication of the
last of the Thoughts out of Season Nietzsche
appears to have created very little stir among
his countrymen — a fact which, though it greatly
depressed him, only made him redouble his
energies.

In September 1882 The Joyful Wisdom was
published — a book written during one of the
happiest periods of his life. It is a veritable fan
fare of trumpets announcing the triumphal entry
of its distinguished follower Zarathustra. With
it Nietzsche's final philosophical views are
B ' 17

NIETZSCHE

already making headway, and it is full of
the love of life and energy which permeates the
grand philosophical poem which was to come
after it.

Disappointed by the meagre success of his
works, and hurt by the attitude of various friends,
Nietzsche now retired into loneliness, and, settling
down on the beautiful bay of Rapallo, began work
on that wonderful moral, psychological, and
critical rhapsody, Thus Spake Zarathustra, which
was to prove the greatest of his creations.
During the years 1883-84, the three first parts
of this work were published, and, though each
part was issued separately and met with the same
cold reception which had been given to his other
works of recent years, Nietzsche never once lost
heart or wavered in his resolve. It required,
however, all the sublime inspirations which we
find expressed in that wonderful Book for all
and None, to enable a man to stand firmly and
absolutely alone amid all the hardships and
reverses that beset our anchorite poet throughout
this period.

It was about this time that Nietzsche began to
take chloral in the hope of overcoming his
insomnia; it was now, too, that his sister — the
only relative for whom, despite some misunder-

18

LIFE AND WORKS

standings, lie had a real affection — became
engaged to a man with whom he was utterly out
of sympathy ; and all the while negotiations, into
which Nietzsche had entered with the Leipzig
University for the purpose of securing another
professorial chair, were becoming ever more
hopeless.

In the course of this exposition I shall have to
treat of the doctrines enunciated in Thus Spake
Zarathustra — indeed, seeing that this work con
tains all Nietzsche's thought in a poetical form, it
would be quite impossible to discuss any single
tenet of his philosophy without in some way
referring to the book in question. I cannot
therefore say much about it at present, save that
it is generally admitted to be Nietzsche'j3_o£>us
magnum. Besides the philosophical views ex
pounded in the four parts of which it consists,
the value of its autobiographical passages is
enormous. In it we find the history of his most
intimate experiences, ! friendships, feuds, ) disap
pointments, triumphs, : and the like ; ' and the
whole is written in a style so magnetic and
poetical, that, as a specimen of belles-lettres
alone, entirely apart from the questions it treats,
the work cannot and ought not to be overlooked.

Although there is now scarcely a European
19

NIETZSCHE

language into which Zaraihustra has not been
translated, although the fame of the work, at
present, is almost universal, the reception it met
with at the time of its publication was so unsatis
factory, and misunderstanding relative to its
teaching became so general, that within a year of
the issue of its first part, Nietzsche was already
beginning to see the necessity of bringing his
doctrines before the public in a more definite and
unmistakable form. During the years that
followed — that is to say, between 1883 and 1886
— this plan was matured, and between 1886 and
1889— the year of our author's final breakdown,
three important books were published which may
be regarded as prose-sequels to the poem Zara
ihustra. These books are : Beyond Good and
Evil (1886), The Genealogy of Morals (1887), and
The Twilight of the Idols (1889); while the post
humous works The Will to Power (1901) and the
little volume Antichrist, published in 1895, when
its author was lying hopelessly ill at Naumburg,
also belong to the period in which Nietzsche
wished to make his Zaraihustra clear and com
prehensible to his fellows. In the ensuing
chapters it will be my endeavour to state briefly
all that is vital in the works just referred to.
What remains to be related of Nietzsche's life is
20

LIFE AND WORKS

sad enough, and is almost common knowledge.
When his sister Elizabeth married Dr. Forster
and went to Paraguay with her spouse, Nietzsche
was practically without a friend, and, had it not
been for Peter Gast's devotion and help, he would
probably have succumbed to his constitutional
and mental troubles much sooner than he actually
did. Before his last breakdown in Turin, in
January 1889, the only real encouragement he is
ever known to have received in regard to his
philosophical works came to him from Copenhagen
and Paris. In the latter city it was Taine who
committed himself by praising Nietzsche, and in
the former it was Dr. George Brandes, a clever
and learned professor, who delivered a series of
lectures on the new message of the German
philosopher. The news of Brandes' success in,
Copenhagen in 1888 greatly brightened Nietz
sche's last year of authorship, and he corre
sponded with the Danish professor until the end.
It has been rightly observed that these lectures'
were the dawn of Nietzscheism in Europe.

As the result of over- work, excessive indulgence
in drugs, and a host of disappointments and
anxieties, Nietzsche's great mind at last collapsed
on the 2nd or 3rd of January 1889, never again
to recover.

21

NIETZSCHE

The last words he wrote, which were subse
quently found on a slip of paper in his study,
throw more light upon the tragedy of his break
down than all the learned medical treatises that
have been written about his case. * I am taking
narcotic after narcotic,' he said, ' in order to drown
my anguish ; but still I cannot sleep. To-day I
will certainly take such a quantity as will drive
me out of my mind/

From that time to the day of his death (25th
August 1900) he lingered a helpless I and uncon
scious invalid, first in the care of his aged
mother, and ultimately, when Elizabeth returned
a widow from Paraguay, as his sister's beloved
charge.

For an opinion of Nietzsche during his last
phase I cannot do better than quote Professor
Henri Lichtenberger of Nancy, who saw the
invalid in 1898 ; and with this sympathetic
Frenchman's valuable observations, I shall draw
this chapter to a close : —

' In the gradual wane of this enthusiastic lover
of life, of this apologist of energy, of this prophet of
Superman there is something inexpressibly sad —
inexpressibly beautiful and peaceful. His brow is
still magnificent — his eyes, the light of which
seems to be directed inwards, have an expression

22

LIFE AND WORKS

which is indefinably and profoundly moving.
What is going on within his soul ? Nobody can
say. It is just possible that he may have pre
served a dim recollection of his life as a thinker
and a poet.'

NIETZSCHE

CHAPTER II

NIETZSCHE THE AMORALIST

FROM a casual study of Nietzsche's life it might be
gathered that he had little time for private
meditation or for any lonely brooding over
problems foreign' to his school and university
studies. Indeed, from the very moment when it
was decided that he should become a scholar, to
the day when the University of Leipzig granted
him his doctor's degree without examination, his
existence seems to have been so wholly occupied
by strenuous application to the duties which his
aspirations imposed upon him that, even if he had
had the will to do so, it would seem that he could
not have had the leisure to become engaged in
any serious thought outside his regular work.
Nevertheless, if we inquire into the matter more
deeply, we find to our astonishment, that during
the whole of that arduous period — from his
thirteenth to this twenty-fourth year — his
imagination did not once cease from playing
24

NIETZSCHE THE AMORALIST

around problems of the highest import, quite un
related to his school and university subjects.

In the introduction to The Geneaology of
Morals, he writes as follows : — ' . . . while but a
boy of thirteen the problem of the origin of evil
haunted me : to it I dedicated, in an age when
we have in heart half-play, half-God, my first
literary child-play, my first philosophical com
position ; and, as regards my solution of the
problem therein, well, I gave, as is but fair, God
the honour, and made him Father of evil.' 1 And
then he continues : ' A little historical and
philological schooling, together with an inborn
and delicate sense regarding psychological ques
tions, changed my problem in a very short time
into that other one: under what circumstances
and conditions did man invent the valuations
good and evil ? And what is their own specific
value?'

This problem, as stated here, seems stupendous
enough ; in fact, it would be difficult, in the whole
realm of human thought, to discover a question
of greater moment and intricacy; and yet we
shall see that Nietzsche was just as much born
to attack and solve it as Cardinal Newman
seems, from the Apologia pro Vita Sua,

1 See also D.D. Aph. 81.
25

NIETZSCHE

to have been born to the Roman Catholic
Church.

If we reflect a moment, we find that 'good'
and 'evil' are certainly words that exercise a
tremendous power in the world. To attach the
word ' good ' to any thing or deed is to give it
the hall-mark of desirability : on the other hand,
to attach the word ' evil ' to it is tantamount to
proscribing it from existence. Even in the old
English proverb, 'Give a dog a bad name and
hang him,' we have a suggestion of the enormous
force which has been compressed into the two
monosyllables 'good' and 'bad,' and before we
seriously take up the problem, it were well to
ponder a while over the really profound signifi
cance of these two words.

Nietzsche, as we have already observed, was
never in any doubt as to their importance : his
life passion was the desire to solve the meaning,
the origin, and the intrinsic value of the two
terms ; and he did not rest until he had achieved
his end.

Let us now examine what morality — what
'good' and 'evil' — means to almost everybody
to-day. In the minds of nearly all those people
who are neither students nor actual teachers of
philosophy, there is a superstition that 'good*
26

NIETZSCHE THE AMORALIST

is a perfectly definite and absolute value, and
that 'evil' is known unto all. Few seem to
doubt that the meaning of these words has been
fixed once and for ever. The ordinary European
lives, reads, and sleeps, year in, year out, under
the delusion that all is quite clear in regard to
right and wrong. Such a person is, of course,
somewhat abashed when you tell him that a
certain people in the East practise infanticide and
call it good or that a certain people in the West
always separate at meals and eat apart and call
this good. He usually gets over the difficulty,
however, by saying that they know no better,
and when at last he is hard pressed, and is bound
to admit that views of good and bad, sometimes
the reverse of his own, actually do preserve and
unite people in strange lands, he takes refuge in
the hope that all differences may one day be
broken down and that the problem will thus be
solved.

No such facile shelving of the question, how
ever, could satisfy Nietzsche. From the very
outset he freed himself from all national and
even racial prejudices, and could see no particular
reason why the kind of morality now prevailing
in Europe, or countries like Europe, must
necessarily and ultimately overcome and supplant
27

NIETZSCHE

all others. He therefore attacked the question
with a perfectly open mind, and asked himself
whether he quite understood the part the terms
'good' and 'evil' have played in human
history.

Is morality — its justification in our midst and
its mode of action — comprehended at all ? — He
replies to this question so daringly and so up
rightly, that at first his clearness may only
bewilder us.

These terms ' good ' and ' evil/ he tells us, are
merely a means to the acquisition of power.
And, indeed, in the very resistance we offer when
he attempts to criticise our notions of morality,
we tacitly acknowledge that in this morality our
strength does actually reside. ' No greater power
on earth was found by Zarathustra than good
and evil ' 1 ' No people could live without first
valuing ; if a people will maintain itself, however,
it must not value as its neighbour valueth.' 2

In the last sentence we have seized Nietzsche's
clue to the whole question. If you would main
tain yourself, you cannot and must not value
as your neighbour values. Good and evil, then,
are not permanent absolute values; they are
transient, relative values, serving an end which
1 £., p. 67. a Z., p. 65.

28

NIETZSCHE THE AMORALIST

can be explained in terms of biology and anthro
pology.

But now let us halt a moment, for the sake of
clearness, and let us inquire precisely how
Nietzsche himself was led to this conclusion.

In the summer of 1864, when he was in his
twentieth year, he was given some home work
to do which he was expected to have ready by
the end of the holidays. It was to consist of a
Latin thesis upon some optional subject, and he
chose ' Theognis, the Aristocratic Poet of Megara.'

While preparing the work he was struck with
the author's use of the words ' good ' and ' bad '
as synonymous with aristocratic and plebeian,
and it was this valuable hint which first set him
on the right track. Theognis and his friends,
being desirous of making their power prevail,
were naturally compelled to regard any force
which assailed that power as bad — ' bad,' in the
sense of * dangerous to their order of power ' ;
and thus it came to pass that Theognis, as an
aristocrat in the heat of a struggle between an
oligarchy and a democracy, spoke of the demo
cratic values as ' bad ' and of those of his own party
as ' good.'

The writing of this essay had other conse
quences which I shall only be able to refer to
29

NIETZSCHE

in the next chapter ; but at present let it suffice
to say that, in recognising the arbitrary use made
by Theognis of the epithets good and bad
in designating the oligarchy and the democracy
respectively, Nietzsche was first induced to look
upon morality merely as a weapon in the struggle
for power, and he thus freed himself from all
the usual bias which belongs to the absolutist's
standpoint. Hence his claim to the surname
' amoralist,' and his use of the phrase ' Beyond
Good and Evil,' as the title of one of his greatest
works.

Let us, however, remember that although
Nietzsche did undoubtedly take up a position
beyond good and evil, in order to free himself
temporarily from the gyves of all tradition, still
this attitude was no more than a momentary one,
and he ultimately became as rigid a moralist as
the most exacting could desire. It was a new
.morality, however, or perhaps a forgotten one,
which he ultimately preached, and with the view of
preparing the ground for it he was in a measure
obliged to destroy old idols. 'He who hath to
be a creator in good and evil/ says Zarathustra,
' verily, he hath first to be a destroyer, and to
break values to pieces.' l

1 z.t p. 138.
30

NIETZSCHE THE AMORALIST

Assuming the position of the relativist, then,
Nietzsche observed that all morality, all use of
the words ' good ' and ' evil/ is only an artifice for
acquiring power. Turning to the animal king
dom, he went in search of support for his views,
and very soon discovered that, in biology at
least, no fact was at variance with his general
hypothesis.

In nature every species of organic being be
haves as if its kind alone ought ultimately to
prevail on earth, and, whether it try to effect
this end by open aggression or cowardly dissim
ulation, the motive in both cases is the same.
The lion's good is the antelope's evil. If\the
antelope believed the lion's good to be its good,
it would go and present itself without further
ado before the lion's jaws. If the lion believed
the antelope's good to be its good it would
adopt vegetarianism forthwith and eschew its
carnivorous habits for the rest of its days.
Again, no parasite could share the notions of
good and evil entertained by its victim, neither
could the victims share the notions of good and
evil entertained by the parasite. Everywhere,
then, those modes of conduct are adopted and
perpetuated by a species, which most conduce to
the prevalence and extension of their particular

NIETZSCHE

kind, and that species which fails to discover the
class of conduct best calculated to preserve and
strengthen it gets overcome in the war of con
duct which constitutes the incessant struggle
for power.

Now, applying the knowledge to man, what
did Nietzsche find ? He found there was also a
war being waged between the different modes of
conduct which now prevail among men, and that
what one man sets up as good is called evil by
another and vice versa. But of this he soon
became convinced, that whenever and wherever
good and evil had been set up as absolute
values, they had been thus elevated to power with
the view of preserving and multiplying one
specific type of man.

All moralities, therefore, were but so many
Trades Union banners flying above the heads
of different classes of men, woven and upheld
by them for their own needs and aspirations.

So far, so good. But then, if that were so,
the character of a morality must be determined
by the class of men among whom it came into
being.

We shall see that Nietzsche did not hesitate
to accept this conclusion, and that if for a
moment he declared : ' No one knoweth yet what

NIETZSCHE THE AMORALIST

is good and what is evil ! ' the next minute he
was asking himself this searching question:
'Is our morality — that is to say, the particular
table of values which is gradually modifying us
— compatible with an ideal worthy of man's in
heritance and past ? '

If Nietzsche has been called dangerous, per
nicious and immoral, it is because people have
deliberately overlooked this last question of his.
No thinker who states and honestly sets out
to answer this question, as Nietzsche did, de
serves to be slandered, as he has been slandered,
by prejudiced and interested people intent on
misunderstanding only in order that they may
fling mud more freely.

Nietzsche cast his critical eye very seriously
around him, and the sight of the modern world
led him to ask these admittedly pertinent ques
tions : ' Is that which we have for centuries held
for good and evil, really good and evil ? Does
our table of ethical principles seem to be
favouring the multiplication of a desirable
type ? '

In answering these two inquiries, Nietzsche
unfortunately stormed the most formidable strong
holds of modern society — Christianity and
Democracy ; and perhaps this accounts for the
c 33

NIETZSCHE

fact that his fight was so uneven and so hopeless.
The strength of modern Europe, if indeed there
be any strength in her, lies precisely on the side
of Christianity and Democracy, the grandmother
and the mother of what is called ' progress,'
' modernity ' ; and in assailing these, Nietzsche
must have known that he was engaging in a hand-
to-hand struggle with stony-hearted adversaries
unaccustomed to giving quarter and unscrupulous
in their methods.

Nietzsche clearly saw that if all moral codes are
but weapons protecting and helping to universalise
distinct species of men, then the Christian re
ligion with its ethical principles could be no
exception to the rule. It must have been created
at some time and in some place by one who had
the interests of a certain type of man at heart,
and who desired to make that type paramount.
Now if that were really so, the next question that
occurred to Nietzsche's mercilessly logical mind
was this: 'Is the Christian religion, with its
morality, tending to preserve and multiply a
desirable type of man ? '

To this last question Nietzsche replies most
emphatically 'No!'

But, before going into the reasons of this flat
negative, let us first pause to consider the age and

34

NIETZSCHE THE AMORALIST

the circumstances in which our author wrote and
thought

Long before Nietzsche had reached his prime
David Strauss had published his Life of Jesus ;
in 1863, when Nietzsche was still in his teens,
Renan published his Vie de Jesus, and in the
meantime Charles Darwin had given his Origin
of Species to the world. These books had been
read by a Europe that had already studied Hume
and Lamarck, Kant and Schopenhauer, and in all
directions a fine ear could not help hearing the
falling timbers of Christian dogma.

In the midst of this general work of destruction
it was almost impossible for Nietzsche to remain
unmoved or indifferent, and very soon he found
that he too was drawn into the general stream of
European thought ; but only to prove how com
pletely he was independent of it, and in every
way superior to it.

He contemplated the work of the destroyers for
some time with amused interest; and then it
suddenly occurred to him to inquire whether
these zealous and well-meaning housebreakers
were really doing any lasting good, or whether all
their efforts were not perhaps a little misguided.
True, they were pulling the embellishments from
the walls and were casting the most cherished
35

NIETZSCHE

idols of the Christian Faith into the dust. But
the walls themselves, the actual design of the
edifice, remained untouched and as strong as ever.
A few broken stones, a few complaints from the
priestly archaeologists who wished to preserve
them, and then all the noise subsided ! Europe
remained as it was before — that is to say, still in
possession of a stronghold of Christianity, merely
divested of its superflous ornament.

Nietzsche soon perceived that, in spite of all
the rubbish and refuse which such people as Kant,
Schopenhauer, Strauss, Renan and others had
made of Christian dogma, the essential core of
Christianity, the vital organ of its body— its
morality — had so far remained absolutely intact.
Nay, he saw that it was actually being plastered
up and restored by scholars and men of science
who vowed that they could proffer reasonable,
rationalistic, and logical grounds in support of it.

Just as Christian dogma and metaphysics had
been rationalised and philosophically proved by
the scholars of the Middle Ages, and even as late
as Leibnitz ; so, now, Christian morality was being
presented in a purely philosophical garb by the
intellects of Europe.

Having relinquished the dogma as no longer
tenable, all scholars and men of science were try-

36

NIETZSCHE THE AMORALIST

ing with redoubled vigour to bolster up Christian
ethics with elaborate text-books and learned
treatises. There were some who accepted it all
as if it were innate in human nature, and attributed
it to a ' moral sense ' ; there were others — good-
natured biologists — who were likewise desirous of
leaving it whole, and who declared with conviction
that it was the natural outcome of the feelings of
pleasure and pain ; and there were yet others who
assumed that it must have been evolved quite
automatically out of expediency and non-
expediency.

Not one of these would-be rationalists, however,
halted at the Christian terms ' good ' and ' bad '
themselves, in order to ask himself whether, like
all the other notions of good and evil prevailing
elsewhere under the shelter of other religions,
these, the Christian notions, might not have been
invented at some particular time by a certain
kind of man, simply with the view of preserving
and universalising his specific type. Breathless
from their efforts at getting rid of the dogma, they
did not dream that perhaps the most important
part of the work still remained to be done.

Nietzsche went to the very foundation of the
Christian edifice. He pointed to its morality and
said : if we are going to measure the value of this

37

NIETZSCHE

religion, let us cease our petty quarrels concern
ing the truth or falsehood of such stories as the
loss of the Gadarene swine, or the miracle of the
loaves and fishes, and let us throw the whole of
Christian morality into the scales and appraise its
precise worth as a system of ethics. Nietzsche
would have scorned to quarrel with the Church,
as Huxley did ; for much more important issues
were at stake. The worth of a religion is measured
by its morality ; because by its morality it moulds
and rears men and reveals the type of man who
ultimately wishes to prevail by means of it.

With the metaphysics and the dogma of
Christianity in ruins all around him, therefore,
Nietzsche took a step very far in advance of the
rationalistic iconoclasts of his age. He attacked
Christian morals, and declared them to be, like
all other morals, merely a weapon in the hands of
a certain type of man, with which that type
struggled for power.

But bold as this step was, it constituted but
the first of a series, the next of which was to dis
cover the type which had laid the foundations of
the Christian ideal. If it could be proved that
these Christian values had been created by a
noble species with the object of perpetuating that
species, then Christianity would come forth from
5*

NIETZSCHE THE AMORALIST

the inquiry vindicated to the hilt, and all the
damage done to its dogma would not have de
terred Nietzsche from standing by it and uphold-
it to his very last breath. Alas ! Things turned
out somewhat differently and Nietzsche was not
by any means the least pained by the result.
Pursuing the inquiry with his usual unflinching
and uncompromising honesty, and avoiding no
conclusion however unpleasant or fatal, Nietzsche,
the scion of a profoundly religious house, the
lover of order and tradition, with the blood of
generations of earnest believers in his veins,
finally found himself compelled to renounce and
even to condemn, root and branch, the faith which
had been the strength and hope of his forebears.

Before turning to the next chapter, where I
shall explain how he came to regard this step as
inevitable, it should be said concerning Nietzsche's
philosophy in general, that it is essentially and
through and through religious and almost pro
phetic in spirit. No careful reader of his works
can doubt that Nietzsche was a deeply religious
man. A glance at Thus Spake Zarathustra
alone would convince any one of this ; while in
his constant references to religion throughout his
works, as ' a step to higher intellectuality/ l as ' a
1 o. K,p. 81.
39

NIETZSCHE

means to invaluable contentedness/1 as 'a measure
of discipline,' 2 as a powerful social factor,3 a more
substantial confirmation of the fact is to be found.

It is well to bear in mind, however, throughout
our study of Nietzsche, that he had a higher type
always in view ; that he was also well aware that
this type could only be attained by the strict
observance of a new morality, and that if he
opposed other forms of morality — more parti
cularly the Christian form — it was because he
earnestly believed that they were rearing an
undesirable and even despicable kind of man.

' Yerily men have made for themselves all their
good and evil. Verily they did not take it : they
did not find it : it did not come down as a voice
from heaven/4

' Behold, the good and just ! Whom do they
hate most ? Him who breaketh up their tables of
values ; the breaker, the law-breaker : he, however,
is the creator.' 6

' Verily a muddy stream is man. One must be
at least a sea to be able to absorb a muddy stream
without becoming unclean/

' Behold, I teach you Superman : he is that
sea ; in him your great contempt can sink.' 6

1 O. E.t p. 81. &G. E., p. 80. 3 G. M., 3rd Essay., Aph. 15.
4 Z., p. 67. • Z., p. 20. 6 Z., p. 8.

40

NIETZSCHE THE MORALIST

CHAPTER III

NIETZSCHE THE MORALIST

CONCEIVING all forms of morality to be but
weapons in the struggle for power, Nietzsche con
cluded that every species of man must at some
time or other have taken to moralising, and must
have called that 'good' which its instincts
approved, and that 'bad' which its enemies'
instincts approved. In Beyond Good and Evil,1
however, he tells us that after making a careful
examination ' of the finer and coarser moralities
which have hitherto prevailed or still prevail on
earth/ he found certain traits recurring so re
gularly together, and so closely connected with
one another, that, finally, two primary types of
morality revealed themselves to him. That is to
say, after passing the known moralities of the
world in review, he was able to classify them
broadly into two types.

1 A ph. 260.

41

NIETZSCHE

He observed that throughout human history
there had been a continual and implacable war
between two kinds of men ; it must have begun
in the remotest ages, and it continues to this day.
It is the war between the powerful and the im
potent, the strong and the weak, the givers and
the takers, the healthy and the sick, the happy
and the wretched. The powerful formed their
concept of 'good,' and it was one which justified
their strongest instincts. The impotent likewise
acquired their view of the matter, which was
often precisely the reverse of the former view.

In this way Nietzsche arrived at the follow
ing broad generalisation : that all the moralities of
the world could be placed under one of two heads,
Master Morality or Slave Morality.

In the first, the master morality, it is the oak
which contends : I must reach the sun and spread
broad branches in so doing; this I call 'good,'
and the herd that I shelter may also call it good.
In the second, the slave morality, it is the shrub
which says : I also want to reach the sun, these
broad branches of the oak, however, keep the
sun from me, therefore the oak's instincts are
'bad/

It is obvious that these two points of view exist
and have existed everywhere on earth. Apart
42

NIETZSCHE THE MORALIST

from national and racial distinctions, mankind
does fall into the two broad classes of master and
slave, or ruler and subject. We also know that
each of these classes must have developed its
moral code, and must have tried to protect its
conduct and life therewith. But, what we did not
know until Nietzsche pointed the fact out to us,
was : which morality is the more desirable and
the more full of promise for the future ? Admit
ting that the master and the slave moralities are
struggling for supremacy still, which of them
ought we to promote with every means in our
power? — which of them is going to make life
more attractive, more justifiable, and more accept
able on earth ?

These are now questions of the utmost import
ance; because it is precisely now that pessimism,
nihilism, and other desperate faiths are beginning
to set their note of interrogation to human exist
ence, and to shake our belief even in the desir
ability of our own survival.

It is now time for us to discover whence arises
this contempt and horror of life, and to lay the
blame for it either at the door of the master or
of the slave morality.

In order that we may understand how to set
forth upon this inquiry, let us first form a mental
43

NIETZSCHE

image of the two codes as they must have been
evolved by their originators.

Nietzsche reminds us before we start, however,1
that in most communities the two moralities have
become so confused and mingled, in order to
establish that compromise which is so dear to the
hearts of the peaceful, that it would be almost a
hopeless task to seek any society on earth in
which they are now to be seen juxtaposed in
sharp contrast. Be this as it may, in order to
recognise the blood of each when we come across
it, we have only to think of what must have
occurred when the ruling caste and the ruled
class took to moralising.

Taking the ruling caste first, it is clear that in
their morality, all is good which proceeds from
strength, power, health, well-constitutedness, hap
piness, and awfulness ; for the motive force behind
the people who evolved it was simply the will to
discharge a plenitude, a superabundance, of
spiritual and physical wealth. A consciousness
of high tension, of a treasure that would fain give
and bestow, — this is the mental attitude of the
nobles. The antithesis ' good ' and ' bad ' to this
first class means the same as 'noble' and
' despicable.' ' Bad ' in the master morality must
1 O. E,, p. 227.
44

NIETZSCHE THE MORALIST

be applied to the coward, to all acts that spring
from weakness, to the man with ' an eye to the
main chance,' who would forsake everything in
order to live.

The creator of the master morality was he who,
out of the very fulness of his soul, transfigured all
he saw and heard, and declared it better, greater,
more beautiful than it appeared to the creator of
the slave morality. Great artists, great legislators,
and great warriors belong to the class that created
master morality.

Turning now to the second class, we must bear
in mind that it is fhe product of a community in
which the struggle for existence is the prime life-
motor. There1; inasmuch as oppression, suffering,
weariness, and servitude are the general rule, all
will be regarded as good that tends to alleviate
pain. yPity, the obliging hand, the warm heart,
patience, industry, and humility, — these are un
doubtedly the virtues we shall here find elevated
to the highest places; because they are useful
virtues ; they make life endurable ; they are help
ful in the struggle for existence. To this class,
all that proceeds from strength, superabundance
of spiritual or bodily power, or great health, is
looked upon with loathing and mistrust, while
that which is awful is the worst and greatest evil.
45

NIETZSCHE

He is good who is amenable, kind, unselfish, meek,
and submissive ; that is why, in all communities
where slave morality is in the ascendant, a ' good
fellow ' always suggests a man in possession of a
fair modicum of foolishness and sentimentality.

The creator of slave-morality was one who, out
of the poverty of his soul, transfigured all he saw
and heard, and declared it smaller, meaner, and
less beautiful than it appeared to the creator of
the master values. Great misanthropists, pessi
mists, demagogues, tasteless artists, nihilists,
spiteful authors and dramatists, and resentful
saints belong to the class that created slave-
morality.

The first order of values are active, creative,
Dionysiac. The second are passive, defensive,
venomous, subterranean ; to them belong 'Adapta
tion/ 'adjustment,' and 'utilitarian relationship
to environment.'

Now, seeing that mankind is undoubtedly
moulded by the nature of the values which
prevail over it, it is manifestly of paramount im
portance to the philosopher to know which order
of values conduces to rear the most desirable
species of man, and then to advocate that order,
with all the art and science at his disposal.

Nietzsche saw two lines of life: an ascending

NIETZSCHE THE MORALIST

and a descending line. At the end of the one he
pictured an ideal type, robust in mind and body,
rich enough in spirit and vigour to make giving
and bestowing a necessary condition of its exist
ence ; at the end of the other line he already per
ceived degeneracy, poverty of blood and spirit,
and a sufficiently low degree of vitality to make
parasitism a biological need.

He believed that the first, or noble morality,
when it prevailed, made for an ascending line of
life and therefore favoured the multiplication of a
desirable type of man ; and he was now equally
convinced that whenever ignoble or slave morality
was supreme, life not only tended to follow the
descending line, but that the very men whose
existence it favoured were the least likely to stem
the declining tide. Hence it seemed to him that
the most essential of all tasks was to ascertain
what kind of morality now prevailed, in order
that we might immediately transvalue our values,
while there was still time, if we believed this
change to be necessary.

What then are our present values ? Nietzsche
replies most emphatically — they are Christian
values.

In the last chapter we saw that although
Christian dogma was very rapidly becoming mere

47

NIETZSCHE

wreckage, its most earnest opposers and destroyers
nevertheless clung with fanatical faith to Chris
tian morality. Thus, in addition to the vast
multitude of those professing the old religion,
there was also a host of atheists, agnostics,
rationalists, and materialists, who, as far as
Nietzsche was concerned, could quite logically be
classed with those who were avowedly Christian.
And, as for the remainder — a few indifferent and
perhaps nameless people, — what could they
matter? Even they, perhaps, if hard pressed,
would have betrayed a sneaking, cowardly trust
in Christian ethics, if only out of a sense of
security; and with these the total sum of the
civilised world was fully made up.

Perhaps to some this may appear a somewhat
sweeping conclusion. To such as doubt its
justice, the best advice that can be given is to
urge them to consult the literature, ethical, philo
sophical, and otherwise, of those writers whom
they would consider most opposed to Christianity
before the publication of Nietzsche's works ; and
they will then realise that, with very few excep
tions, mostly to be found among uninfluential and
uncreative iconoclasts, the whole of the Western
civilised world in Nietzsche's time was firmly
Christian in morals, and most firmly so, perhaps,

NIETZSCHE THE MORALIST

in those very quarters where the dogma
of the religion of pity was most honestly
disclaimed.

It had therefore become in the highest degree
necessary to put these values under the philo
sophical microscope, and to discover to which
order they belonged. Was Christianity the pur
veyor of a noble or of a slave morality ? The reply
to this question would reveal the whole tendency
of the modern world, and would also answer
Nietzsche's searching inquiry : ' Are we on the
right track ? '

Pursuing Nietzsche's method as closely as we
can, let us now turn to Christianity, as we find
it to-day, and see whether it is possible to bring
its values into line with one of the two broad
classes spoken of in this chapter.

In the first place, Nietzsche discovers that
Christianity is not a world-approving faith. The
very pivot upon which it revolves seems to be the
slandering and depreciating of this world, together
with the praise and exaltation of a hypothetical
world to come. To his mind it seems to draw
odious comparisons between the things of this
earth and the blessings of heaven. Finally, it
gushes in a very unsportsmanlike manner over
an imaginary beyond, to the detriment and dis-
D 49

NIETZSCHE

advantage of a ' here/ of this earth, of this life,
and posits another region — a nether region — for
the accommodation of its enemies.1

What, now, is the mental attitude of these
' backworldsmen,' as Nietzsche calls them, who
can see only the world's filth ? Who is likely to
need the thought of a beyond, where he will live
in bliss while those he hates will writhe in hell ?
Such ideas occur only to certain minds. Do they
occur to the minds of those who, by the very
health, strength, and happiness that is in them,
transfigure all the world — even the ugliness in it
— and declare it to be beautiful ? Do they occur
to the powerful who can chastise their enemies
while their blood is still up ? Admitting that
the world may be surveyed from a hundred
different standpoints, is this particular standpoint
which we now have under our notice, that of a
contented, optimistic, sanguine type, or that of
a discontented, pessimistic, ansemic one ?

' To the pure all things are pure ! —I, however,
say unto you: To the swine all things are
swinish.' 2

Nietzsche's sensitive ear caught curious notes
in the daily dronings of those around him — notes

1 John xii. 25 ; 1 John ii. 15, 16 ; James iv. 4.

2 Z., p. 249.

SO

NIETZSCHE THE MORALIST

that made him suspicious of the whole melody
of modern life, and still more suspicious of the
chorus executing it.

He heard to his astonishment: . . . 'the
wretched alone are the good ; the poor, the im
potent, the lowly alone are good ; only the
sufferers, the needy, the sick, the ugly are pious ;
only they are godly; them alone blessedness
awaits — but ye, the proud and potent, ye are for
aye and evermore the wicked, the cruel, the lust
ful, the insatiable, the godless ; ye will also be, to
all eternity, the unblessed, the cursed, and the
damned.' 1

He continued listening intently, and, with his
ear attuned anew, these sentiments broke strangely
upon his senses : —

'Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is
the Kingdom of Heaven.

'Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall
be comforted.

' Blessed are the meek : for they shall inherit
the earth.

' Blessed are the peacemakers : for they shall
be called the children of God.' 2

There was no time for brooding over stray
thoughts; there was still much to be seen and

1 O. M.t 1st Essay, Aph. 7. 2 Matthew r.

51

NIETZSCHE

heard. When you want to catch some one nap
ping, you keep your eye eagerly upon him, and
turn neither to the right nor to the left. Nietz
sche, it must be remembered, was at this stage
treading softly towards Europe whom he believed
to be c napping.'

In his lonely hermit cell he was able to catch
all the sounds that rose from the city beneath
him, and he heard perhaps more than the in
habitants themselves.

He could see them all fighting and quarrelling,
and he was cheered, because he knew that where
the great fight for power ceases, the standard of
life falls. But some he saw were wounded, others
were actually unfit for the battlefield, a large
number looked tired and listless, and there were
yet others — a goodly multitude — who were re
sentful at the sight of their superiors and who,
like sulky children, dropped their arms in a pet
and declared that they would not play any more.
And what were all these feeble and less viable
mortals doing ? They were crying aloud, and
making their deepest wishes known. They
were elevating their desiderata to the highest
places amongst earthly virtues — and driving
back the others with words \ Nietzsche thought
of Reynard the Fox, who, at the very moment

52

NIETZSCHE THE MORALIST

that he was about to be hanged, and with
the rope already round his neck, succeeded by
his dialectical skill in persuading the crowd
to release him. For Nietzsche could hear the
weary, the wounded, and the incapable of the
fight, crying quite distinctly through their lips
parched for rest : ' Peace is good ! Love is good !
Love for one's neighbour is good ! Ay, and even
love for one's enemy is good ! ' 1

And some cried : ' It is God that avengeth me ! '
to those who oppressed them, and others said:
' The Lord avenge me ! ' 2

Whereupon Nietzsche thought of the Jehovah
of the Old Testament, the God of revenge and
thunderbolts ; he recalled the sentiment : ' Ye
shall chase your enemies and they shall fall
before you by the sword/ and he wondered how
this had come to mean ' love your enemies/ in
the New Testament. Had another type of
men perhaps made themselves God's mouth
piece ?

Yes, that must be so ; for, in their holy book,
he caine across this passage, ascribed to one of
their greatest saints :

1 Matthew xxiii. 39 ; Mark xiii. 31 ; Luke x. 27 ; Matthew
v. 44.

8 Luke xviii. 7, 8 ; Romans xii. 19 ; Revelation vi. 10.

53

NIETZSCHE

' Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of
this world ?

'For after that in the wisdom of God the
world by wisdom knew God, it pleased God by
the foolishness of preaching to save them that
believe.

'. . . . Not many wise men after the flesh,
not many mighty, not many noble are called :

( But God hath chosen the foolish things of the
world to confound the wise : and God hath chosen
the weak things of the world to confound the
things which are mighty :

' And base things of the world, and things
which are despised, hath God chosen, yea and
things which are not, to bring to nought things
that are.' *

Here, Nietzsche tells us, he began to hold his
nose ; but he still listened ; for there was yet
more to be heard. From the smiles that were
breaking over the lips of those who read the above
words, he gathered that they must have overcome
their unhappiness. Yes, indeed, they had. But
what did they call it? This was important —
even the Christian view of unhappiness seemed
significant to Nietzsche in this inquiry.

Their unhappiness, their wretchedness, they

1 1 Corinthians i. 20, 21, 26, 27, 28.

54

NIETZSCHE THE MORALIST

called a trial, a gift, a distinction ! Not really ?
Yes indeed ! As Nietzsche points out : * They
are wretched, no doubt, all these mumblers and
underground forgers, though warmly seated to
gether. But they tell us their wretchedness is a
selection and distinction from God, that the dogs
which are loved most are whipped, that their
misery may perhaps also be a preparation, a trial,
a schooling ; perhaps even more — something
which at some time to come will be requited and
paid back with immense interest in gold. No !
in happiness. This they call ' blessedness.' l

At this point Nietzsche declares that he could
stand it no longer. ' Enough, enough ! Bad air !
Bad air ! ' he cried. ' Methinks this workshop of
virtue positively reeks.'

He had now realised in whose company he had
been all this time.

nThese people who halted at nothing in order
to" elevate their weaknesses to the highest place
among the virtues, and to monopolise goodness
on earth— who called that good which was tame
and soft and harmless, because they themselves
could only survive in litters of cotton wool ; who
coloured the earth with the darkness that was in

1 O. M., 1st Essay, Aph. 14. See also Epistle to the
Hebrews xii. 6, and Revelation iii. 19.

55

NIETZSCHE

their own bodies ; — who did not scruple to dub all
manly and vital virtues odiously sinful and wicked,
and who preferred to set the life of the whole world
at stake, rather than acknowledge that it was pre
cisely their own second-rate, third-rate, or even
fourth-rate, vitality which was the greatest sin of
all ; who in one and the same breath preached their
utilitarian ' universal love ' to the powerful, and
then sent them to eternal damnation in another
world/ Nietzsche asks, are these people the sup
porters of a noble or of a slave morality ?

The answer is obvious, and we need not labour
the point. But it was so obvious to the lonely
hermit, that the thought of it filled him with
horror and dread, and he was moved to leave his
cell and to descend into the plain, while there
was yet time, with the object of urging us to
transvalue our values.

In Christian values, Nietzsche read nihilism,
decadence, degeneration, and death. They were
calculated to favour the multiplication of the
least desirable on earth : and, as such, despite his
antecedents, and with his one desire, ' the eleva
tion of the type man,' always before him, he
condemned Christian morality from top to
bottom. This magnificent attempt on the part
of the low, the base, and the worthless, to estab-

56

NIETZSCHE THE MORALIST

lish themselves as the most powerful on earth,
must be checked at all costs, and with terrible
earnestness he exhorts us to alter our values.

' 0 my brethren, with whom lieth the greatest
danger to the whole human future? Is it not
with the good and the just ?

' Break up, break up, I pray you, the good and
the just ! '

This condemnation of Christian values, as
slave values — which Nietzsche regarded as his
greatest service to mankind — he says he would
write on all walls. He tells us he came just in
the nick of time; to-morrow might be too
late.

' It is time for man to fix his goal. It is time
for man to plant the germ of his highest hope.

' His soil is still rich enough for that purpose.
But that soil will one day be too poor and
exhausted, and no lofty tree will any longer be
able to grow thereon/ l

1 Z., p. 12.

57

NIETZSCHE

CHAPTER IV

NIETZSCHE THE EVOLUTIONIST

' TRANSVALUE your yahies or parish i ' This was
the message of the hermit Nietzsche to the
people inhabiting the valley into which he had
descended. ' Transvalue your values ! '—that is
to say, make them what they once were, noble,
life-approving, virile! For two thousand years
the roll of the world-wheel had been reversed —
Stendhal had said that many years before
Nietzsche lived — but it was left to Nietzsche,
Stendhal's admirer and pupil, to teach and
prove this fact. Stendhal, too, had cried out
against the tameness, the lukewarmness, the
effeminacy of society; but Nietzsche took up
this cry with a voice more brazen than Stendhal's
at a time when mankind was in much greater
need of it. Stendhal had pointed enthusiasti
cally to the sun and to the passion of the south,
and had donned a moral respirator whenever he

c8

,V«r

NIETZSCHE THE EVOLUTIONIST

turned to face the grey and depressing atmo
sphere of northern ideas and northern tepidness.
Nietzsche follows his master's hint with alacrity,
but in doing so converts Stendhal's clarion notes
into thunder, and the glint of Stendhal's rapier
into strokes of lightning.1

When Nietzsche began to write Europe was
suffering from the worst kind of spiritual illness
— weakness of will. Everywhere comfort and
freedom from danger were becoming the highest
ideals; everywhere, too, virtue was being con
founded with those qualities which led to the
highest possible amount of security and tame,
back-parlour pleasures; and man was gradually
developing into a harmless domesticated type of
animal, capable of performing a host of charm
ing little drawing-room tricks which rejoiced the
hearts of his womenfolk.

Sleep seemed to be the greatest accomplish
ment. It had become all important to have a
good night's rest, and everything was done to
achieve this end. A man no longer asked his
heart what it dictated, when he stood irresolute
before a daring deed, he simply consulted Mor
pheus, who warned him that he could not
promise him a soft pillow if he did anything

i Q. E.t Aplis. '254, 255, 256.
59

NIETZSCHE

that was ever so slightly naughty. In the end,
Morpheus would prevail, and thus all Europe
was beginning to snore peacefully the whole
night through, with marvellous regularity, while
manliness rotted and danger dwindled.1

Nietzsche protested against this state of affairs:
— ' What is good ? ye ask. To be brave is good.
Let the little schoolgirls say : To be good is sweet
and touching at the same time. Ye say, a good
cause will hallow even war ? I say unto you :
a good war halloweth every cause. War and
courage have done greater things than love ! ' 2

' I pass through this people and keep mine eyes
open : they have become smaller, and ever become
smaller : the reason thereof is their doctrine of
happiness and virtue.

' For they are moderate also in virtue — because
they want comfort. With comfort, however,
moderate virtue only is compatible. *

' Of man there is little here : therefore do their
women make themselves manly. For only he
who is man enough, will save the woman in
woman.

'In their hearts, they want simply one thing
most of all : that no one hurt them.

1 See Schopenhauer on The Vanity and Suffering of Life.
8 Z.t p. 52.

60

NIETZSCHE THE EVOLUTIONIST

' That, however, is cowardice, though it be
called virtue.' l

Some there were, of course, who were conscious
of the dreadful condition of things, and who
deplored it, without, however, being able to put
their finger on the root of the evil. Such people
were most of them pessimists, and, at the time
that Nietzsche lived, Schopenhauer was their
leader.

Sensitive, noble-minded, artistic people, de
prived by rationalistic and atheistic teachers of
the belief in God, felt the ignobleness of Euro
pean hopes and aspirations, and knowing of no
better creed and possessing the intelligence to
see the hopelessness of things under the rule of
the values which then prevailed, they succumbed
to a mood of utter despair, subscribed to Scho
penhauer's horror and loathing of the world, and
regarded the very optimism of childhood with
suspicion and scorn.

For a while Nietzsche, too, was an ardent and
devoted follower of Schopenhauer. Godlessness
was bad enough to endure: but Godlessness in a
world of un-pagan and effeminate manhood, was
too much for the loving student of classical anti
quity, and he turned to Schopenhauer as to one

1 Z., pp. 204, 205, 206.

61

NIETZSCHE

who, he thought, would understand how to steel
his heart against life's misery.

But this opiate did not maintain its sway over
Nietzsche long. Our poet was of a type too
courageous and too vigorous to be able to
surrender himself so completely to sorrow and
to Buddhistic consolations. Gradually he began
to regard the humble and resigned attitude of
the pessimist before life's hardships and modern
ity's greyness as unworthy of a spirited and
active man. Slowly it dawned upon him that
the root of the evil lay, not in the constitution of
the earth, but in man himself, and in man's
actual values. If man could be roused to pursue
higher ideals ; if he could be moved to kill the
poisonous snake of ignoble values that had
crawled into his throat and choked him while he
was in slumber ; 1 in fact, if man could surpass
himself and regard the reversal of the world's
engines, for the last two thousand years, as
Stendhal had done — that is to say, as the
grossest error and most ridiculous faux pas that
had ever been made — then, Nietzsche thought,
pessimism and Schopenhauer might go to the
deuce, and conscious, sensitive, intellectual, and
artistic Europe would once more be able to smile
1 Z., pp. 192, 193.

62

NIETZSCHE THE EVOLUTIONIST

instead of shuddering at the thought of mankind's
former qualities.

Thus it was the condemnation of modern
values, together with the thought of man's being
able to surpass himself, which gave Nietzsche
the grounds and the necessary strength for
abandoning pessimism and embracing that wise
optimism which characterises the whole of his
works after The Joyful Wisdom.

True, God was dead; but that ought only to
make man feel more self-reliant, more creative,
prouder. Undoubtedly God was dead : but man
could now hold himself responsible for himself.
He could now seek a goal in manhood, on earth,
and one that was at least within the compass of
his powers. Long enough had he squinted
heavenwards, with the result that he had
neglected his task on earth.1

' Dead are all Gods ! ' Nietzsche cries, ' now we
will that Superman live ! ' 2

We are now before Nietzsche the evolutionist,
and we must define him, relatively to those other
evolutionists with whom we, as English people,
are already familiar.

To begin with, then, let us dispose of the
fundamental question : Nietzsche's concept of life.

1 See Z., p. 98 tt seq. 2 Z., p. 91.

63

NIETZSCHE

We have had life variously defined for us by our
own writers, and perhaps one among Nietzsche's
greatest contemporaries in England — Herbert
Spencer — defined it in the most characteristically
English fashion. Spencer said : ' Life is activity/
or ' the continuous adjustment of internal relations
to external relations/ Now there is absolutely
nothing in either of these definitions, no sugges
tion or hint, which would lead the most suspicious
to conjecture what life really is. 'Activity'
reveals nothing of life's passions, its hate, its
envy, its covetousness, its hard, inexorable prin
ciples; the process of the continual adjustments
of internal relations to external relations might
mean the serpent's digestion of its prey, or the
training of an opera singer's voice, and it might
also be a scientific formula for a 'moral order
of things.'. Both definitions are delightfully
unheroic and vague ; though they do not com
promise the writer they compromise with every
thing else, and to start out with them is to
shelve the question in a way which allows of our
subsequently weaving all the romance and sweet
ness possible into life, and of making it as
pretty as a little nursery story.

Nietzsche, always eager for a practical and
tangible idea, naturally could not accept these

NIETZSCHE THE EVOLUTIONIST

two definitions as expressing anything profound
about life at all. Looking into the face of nature,
and reading her history from the amoeba with its
predatory pseudo-podia, to the lion with its
murderous prehensile claws, he defined life
practically, uprightly, and bravely, as * appropria
tion, injury, conquest of the strange and weak,
suppression, severity, obtrusion of its own forms,
incorporation, and, at least, putting it mildest,
exploitation.' l

Thus, as we see, from the start Nietzsche
closes his eyes at nothing, he does not want life to
be a pretty tale if it is not one. He wants to
know it as it is : for he is convinced that this is
the only way of arriving at sound principles as to
the manner in which human existence should be
led.

' Appropriation/ then, he takes as a fact : he
does not argue it away, any more than he tries to
argue away 'injury,' ' conquest of the strange and
weak/ ' suppression/ and ' incorporation.' These
things are only too apparent, and he states them
bravely in his definition. We know life is all
this ; but how much more comfortable it is, when
we are sitting in our soft easy-chairs before our
cheerful fires, to think that life is merely activity !

1 O. E.y p. 226.
a 65

NIETZSCHE

To believe that there is a moral order in the
universe is to believe that these unpleasant
things in Nietzsche's definition will one day be
overcome. This was the position Christianity
assumed from the start. But, though it was
excusable in a religion fighting for power, and
compelled to use nice and attractive words for its
followers, to suppose that all the misery on earth
will one day be transformed by God's wisdom into
perfect bliss ; such an attitude is quite unpardon
able in the case of a philosopher or even of a poet.
When Browning chanted smugly : ' God 's in His
heaven : All 's right with the world,' he confessed
himself a mediocre spirit with one stroke of the
pen. And when Spencer wrote that the blind
process of evolution ' must inevitably favour all
changes of nature which increase life and augment
happiness,' he did the same. We may now per
haps understand Nietzsche's impatience of his
predecessors and contemporaries, who refused to
see precisely what he saw in the face of nature.

But even in his extended definition of life, the
modern biologist brings himself no nearer to
Nietzsche's honest standpoint, and for the follow
ing reasons : —

The modern biologist says, this ' activity ' he
speaks of has a precise meaning. It connotes
66

NIETZSCHE THE EVOLUTIONIST

' the struggle for existence/ or in other words :
'self-defence/ (Again he is looking at life
through moral or Christian glasses; because if
everything on earth is done in self-defence, even
the devil himself is argued out of existence, and
God remains creator of the ' good ' alone.)
Nietzsche replies by denying this flatly. He
says that the definition is again inadequate. He
warns us not to confound Malthus with nature.1
He admits that the struggle occurs, but only as
an exception. ' The general aspect of life is not
a state of want or hunger ; it is rather a state of
opulence, luxuriance, and even absurd prodigality
— where there is a struggle, it is a struggle for
power.' —Will to power and not will to live is
motivgJbrCG^Qf Hfe.

' Wherever I found living matter/ he says, ' I
found will to power, and even in the servant I
found the yearning to be master.

' Only where there is life, there is will : though
not will to live, but thus I teach thee — WILL TO
POWER.' 2

Is there no aggression without the struggle for
existence ? Is there no voluptuousness in a
position of power for its own sake ? Of course

1 Twilight of the Idoh, Part 9, Aph. 14.

2 Z., pp. 136, 137.

67

NIETZSCHE

there is ! And one wonders how these English
biologists could ever have been schoolboys with
out noticing these facts. As Nietzsche points out,
however, they are every one of them labouring
under the Christian ideal still — in spite of all their
upsetting of the first chapter of Genesis, and in
spite of all their blasting of the miracles. But,
if life is the supreme aim of all, how is it that
many things are valued higher than life by living
beings ? If the will to live sometimes finds itself
overpowered by another will — more particularly
in great warriors, great prophets, great artists,
and great heroes — what is this mightier force
which thus overpowers it ? We have heard what
Nietzsche calls it — it is the Will to Power.

' Psychologists should bethink themselves
before putting down the instinct of self-preserva
tion as the cardinal instinct of an organic being.
A living thing seeks above all to discharge
its strength — life itself is Will to Power; self-
preservation is only one of the indirect and most
frequent results thereof.' l

In spite of everything we have already said,

Nietzsche's disagreement with our own biologists

may still seem to many but a play upon words.

A moment's meditation, however — more particu-

1 G. E.y p. 20.

68

NIETZSCHE THE EVOLUTIONIST

larly over the passage just quoted — will show
that it is really much deeper than this. It is one
thing to regard an animal as a mere automaton,
prowling around to satisfy its hunger, and happy to
remain inactive when the sensation of hunger is
appeased, and quite another to regard an animal
as a battery of accumulated forces which must
be discharged at all costs (and for good or evil),
with only temporary lapses of purely self-
preservative desires and self-preservative actions.
All the different consequences of these two views
will occur to the thinker in an instant.

Upon this basis, then, the Will to Power,
Nietzsche builds up a cosmogony which also
assumes that species have been evolved; but
again, in the processes of that evolution he is at
variance with Darwin and all the natural-
selectionists.

Nietzsche cannot be persuaded that 'mechanical
adjustment to ambient conditions,' or ' adaptation
to environment ' — both purely passive, meek, and
uncreative functions — should be given the im
portance, as determining factors, which the
English and German schools give them. With
Samuel Butler, he protests against this 'pitch
forking of mind and spirit out of the universe,'
and points imperatively to an inner creative will

69

NIETZSCHE

in living organisms, which ultimately makes
environment and natural conditions subservient
and subject. In the Genealogy of Morals l he
makes it quite clear that he would ascribe the
greatest importance to a power in the organism
itself, to ' the highest functionaries in the animal
in which the life-will appears as an active and
formative principle/ and that even in the matter
of the mysterious occurrence of varieties (sports)
he would seek for inner causes. Darwin himself
threw out only a hint in this direction ; that is
why it is safe to suppose that, if Nietzsche and
Darwin are ever reconciled, it will probably be
precisely on this ground. In the Origin of
Species, speaking of the causes of variability,
Darwin said : * . . . There are two factors, namely
the nature of the organism, and the nature of the
conditions. The former seem to be much the
more important? for nearly similar variations
sometimes arise under, as far as we can judge,
dissimilar conditions ; and on the other hand,
dissimilar variations arise under conditions which
appear to be uniform.'

Thus differing widely from the orthodox school
of evolutionists, Nietzsche nevertheless believed

1 Second Essay, Aph. 12.

2 The italics are mine. — A. M. L.

70

NIETZSCHE THE EVOLUTIONIST

their hypothesis to be sound ; but once more he
has an objection to raise. Why did they halt
where they halted ?

If the process is a fact, if things have become
what they are, and have not always been so ; then
why should we rest on our oars ? If it was
possible for man to struggle up from barbarism,
and still more remotely from the lower Primates,
and reach the zenith of his physical development ;
why, Nietzsche asks, should he not surpass
himself and attain to Superman by evolving in
the same degree volitionally and mentally ?

' The most careful ask to-day : " How is man
preserved ? " But Zarathustra asketh as the only
and first one : " How is man surpassed ? " l

' All beings (in your genealogical ladder) have
created something beyond themselves, and are ye
going to be the ebb of this great tide ?

' Behold I teach you Superman ! ' 2

And now, again, at the risk of being mono
tonous, I must point to yet another difference
between Nietzsche and the prevailing school of
evolutionists. Whereas the latter, in their
unscrupulous optimism, believed that out of the
chaotic play of blind forces something highly
desirable and ' good ' would ultimately be evolved;
1 z., p. 351. 2 z., p. 6.

NIETZSCHE

whereas they tacitly, though not avowedly, be
lieved that their 'fittest' in the struggle for
existence would eventually prove to be the best —
in fact that we should ' muddle through ' to per
fection somehow, and that something really noble
and important would be sure to result from John
Brown's contest with Harry Smith for the highest
place in an insurance office, for instance ;
Nietzsche disbelieved from the bottom of his
heart in this chance play of blind and meaning
less tendencies. He said : Given a degenerate,
mean, and base environment and the fittest to
survive therein will be the man who is best
adapted to degeneracy, meanness, and baseness —
therefore the worst kind of man. Given a com
munity of parasites, and it may be that the
flattest, the slimiest, and the softest, will be the
fittest to survive. Such faith in blind forces
Nietzsche regarded merely as the survival of the
old Christian belief in the moral order of things,
togged out in scientific apparel to suit modern
tastes. He saw plainly, that if man were to be
elevated at all, no blind struggle in his present
conditions would ever effect that end ; for the
'; present conditions themselves make those the
] fittest to survive in them who are persons of
/ absolutely undesirable gifts and propensities.

72

NIETZSCHE THE EVOLUTIONIST

He declared (and here we are in the very heart
of Nietzscheism) that nothing but a total change
in these conditions, a complete transvaluation of
all values, would ever alter man and make him
more worthy of his past. For it is values, values,
and again values, that mould men, and rear men,
and create men ; and ignoble values make ignoble
men, and noble values make noble men ! Thus
it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
truth without end — for men,

Nietzsche realised ' all that could still be made
out of man, through a favourable accumulation
and augmentation of human powers and arrange
ments ' ; he knew ' how unexhausted man still is
for the greatest possibilities, and how often in
the past the type man has stood in mysterious
and dangerous crossways, and has launched forth
upon the right or the wrong road, impelled
merely by a whim, or by a hint from the giant
Chance.'1 And now, he was determined that
whether man wished to listen or not, at least
he should be told of the ultimate disaster that
awaited him, if he continued in his present
direction. For, there was yet time !

It is to higher men that Nietzsche really
makes his appeal, the leaders and misleaders of
1 o. E., P. 130.
73

NIETZSCHE

the mob. He had no concern with the multitude
and they did not need him. The world had seen
philosophies enough which had advocated the
cause of the ' greatest number ' — English libraries
were stacked with such works. What was re
quired was, to convert those rare men who give
the direction— the heads of the various throngs —
the vanguard.

' Awake and listen, ye lonely ones ! From the
future, winds are coming with a gentle beating
of wings, and there cometh good tidings for
fine ears.

^ Ye lonely ones of to-day, ye who stand apart,
ye shall one day be a people : from you, who have
chosen yourselves, a chosen people shall arise
and from it Superman.' l

1 Z.,. 89.

74

NIETZSCHE THE SOCIOLOGIST

CHAPTER V

NIETZSCHE THE SOCIOLOGIST

FOR Nietzsche, as we are beginning to see, a
fitting title is hard to find. Unless we coin new
names for things that have not yet been given
names, Nietzsche remains without a title among
his fellow thinkers. He has been called the
'arch-anarchist/ which he is not; he has been
called the 'preacher of brutality/ which he is
not ; he has been called the ' egoist/ which he is
not. But all these titles were conferred upon
him by people whose interest it was to reduce
him in the public's esteem. If he must be
named, however, and we suppose he must, the
best title would obviously be that which would
distinguish him most exactly from his colleagues.
Now, how does Nietzsche stand out from the
ranks of almost all other philosophers ? By the
fact that he was throughout his life an ' Advocate
of Higher Man.' Whereas other philosophers
75

NIETZSCHE

and scholars had always thought they had some
divine message to impart in the cause of the
' greatest number ' ; Nietzsche — the typical miner
and underminer — believed that his mission was
to stand for a neglected minority, for higher men,
for the gold in the mass of quartz.

No title therefore could be more fair, and at
the same time more essentially descriptive, than
the ' Advocate of Higher Man/ and in giving this
title to Nietzsche, we immediately outline him
against that assembly of his colleagues who were
' Advocates of the Greatest Number.'

It is of the first importance to humanity that
its higher individuals should be allowed to attain
their full development, for only by means of its
heroes can the human race be led forward step
by step to higher and ever higher levels. In
view of the fact that Nietzsche realised this, some
of his principles, when given general application,
may very naturally appear to be both iniquitous
and subversive, and those who read him with the
idea that he is preaching a gospel for all are
perfectly justified if they turn away in horror
from his works. The mistake they make, how
ever, is to suppose that he, like most other
philosophers with whom they are familiar, is an
advocate of the greatest number.

NIETZSCHE THE SOCIOLOGIST

Let us take a single instance. In The Honey
Sacrifice1 the phrase 'Become what thou art,'
occurs. Now it is obvious that however legiti
mate this command may be when applied to the
highest and best, it becomes dangerous and
seditious when applied to each individual of the
mass of mankind. And this explains the number
of errors that are rife concerning Nietzsche's
gospel. Whenever Nietzsche spoke esoterically,
his enemies declared that he was pronouncing
maxims for the greatest number; whenever he
spoke for the greatest number, as he does again
and again in his allusions to the mediocre, he
was accused of speaking esoterically. How would
any other philosophy have fared under such
misrepresentation and calumny ?

Nietzsche couHiiot4^1ie¥e-m--eqmlityf for witk-
ilLhim, justice ' Those

to whom it gives pleasure to think that men are
equal, he conjures not to confound pleasure with
truth, and, like Professor Huxley, he finds himself
obliged to recognise 'the natural inequality of
men.'

But, far from deploring this fact, he would
fain have accentuated and intensified it. This
inequality, to Nietzsche, is a condition to be

1 Z., chap. Ixi.

77

NIETZSCHE

exploited and to be made use of by the legislator.
The higher men of a society in which gradations
of rank are recognised as a natural and desirable
condition constitute the class in which the hopes
of a real elevation of humanity may be placed.
The Divine Manu, Laotse, Confucius, Muhammad,
Jesus Christ — all these men, who in their sublime
arrogance actually converted man into a mirror
in which they saw themselves and their doctrines
reflected, and who in thus converting man into
a mirror really made him feel happy in the
function of reflecting alone : — these leaders are the
types Nietzsche refers to when he speaks of higher
men.

Ruling, like all other functions which require
the great to justify them, has fallen into dis
repute, thanks to the incompetent amateurs that
have tried their hand at the game. As in the
Fine Arts, so in leading and ruling; it is the
dilettantes that have broken our faith in human
performances. The really great ruler reaches
hjsKftT^ an epoch, a party, a

nation or the world, to the best advantage of
each of these; but it does not follow that the
motive power propelling him should necessarily
be the conscious pursuit of the best advantage
of those he rules, — this is merely a fortuitous

78

NIETZSCHE THE SOCIOLOGIST

circumstance curiously associated with greatness
in ruling, — generally speaking, however, his only
conscious motive is the gratification of his in
ordinate will to power.

~~The innocent fallacy of democracy lies in
supposing that by a mere search, by a mere
rummaging and fumbling among a motley popu
lace, one man or several men can be found,
who are able to take the place of the rare and
ideal ruler. As if the mere fact of searching and
rummaging were not in itself a confession of
failure, — a confession that this man does not
exist ! For if he existed he would have asserted
himself! He would have needed no democratic
exploration party to unearth him.

' There is no sorer misfortune in all human
destiny, than when the powerful of the earth
are not at the same time the first men. Then
everything becometh false and warped and
monstrous.' 1

'For, my brethren, the best shall rule: the
best will rule ! And where the teaching is
different, there — the best is lacking.' 2^~

Here we observe that Nietzsche advocated an
aristocratic arrangement of society. A firm
believer in tradition, law, and order, and, in spite

1 £., p. 299. 2 Z., pp. 256, 257.

79

V\i

4vu<r Jit*

NIETZSCHE

of his opponents' accusations, an undaunted
enemy of Anarchy and laisser- alter, he saw in
Socialism and Democracy nothing more than
two slave organisations for the raising of every
individual to his highest power. Individuality
made as general as possible ; or, in other words,
Socialism and Democracy meant to Nietzsche
the annihilation of all higher aims and hopes.
It meant valuing all the weeds and noble plants
alike, and with such a valuation the noble plants,
TTemg in the minority, must necessarily suffer
and ultimately die out^ Where everybody is
somebody, nobody is anybody. Socialism, i.e.
organised Individualism, seemed to Nietzsche
merely the reflection in politics of the Christian
principle that all men are alike before God.
Grant immortality to every Tom, Dick, and
Harry, and, in the end, every Tom, Dick, or
Harry will believe in equal rights before he can
even hope to reach Heaven. But to deny the
privileges of rare men implies the proscription
from life of all high trees with broad branches, —
those broad branches that protect the herd from
the rain, but which also keep the sun from the
envious and ambitious shrub, — and thus it would
mean that the world would gradually assume the
appearance of those vast Scotch moors of gorse

80

NIETZSCHE THE SOCIOLOGIST

and heather, where liberalism and mediocrity
are rampant, but where all loftiness is
dead.

Nietzsche was a profound believer in the value
of tradition, in the value of general discipline
lasting over long periods. He knew that all
that is great and lasting and intensely moving
has been the result of the law of castes or of
the laws governing the individual members of
a caste throughout many generations.1 This
building up of the rare man, of the great man
Tof tfre ffljjjvfttod type in a Darwinian sense) as
every scientist is aware, is utterly frustrated by
anything in the way of injudicious and careless
cross-breeding (see Darwin on the degeneration
of the cultivated types of animals through the
action of promiscuous breeding), by democratic
mesalliances of all kinds, and by the laisser alter
which is one of the worst evils of that kind of
freedom which tends to prevail when the slaves
of a community have succeeded in asserting and
expressing their insignificant and miserable little
individualities.

Believing all this, Nietzsche could not help but
Advocate the rearing of a select and aristocratic
caste, and in none of his exhortations is he more

1 O. E., Aph. 188.
F 8l

NIETZSCHE

sincere than when he appeals to higher men to
sow the seeds of a nobility for the future.

' 0 my brethren, I consecrate you to be, and
show unto you the way unto a new nobility. Ye
shall become procreators and breeders and sowers
of the future.

' Verily, ye shall not become a nobility one might
buy, like shopkeepers with shopkeepers' gold.
For all that hath its fixed price is of little worth.

' Not whence ye come be your honour in
future, but whither ye go ! Your will, and your
foot that longeth to get beyond yourselves, — be
that your new honour ! ' «.-»«- ' ;

'Your children's land ye shall love (be this
your new nobility), the land undiscovered in the
remotest sea! For it I bid you set sail and
seek ! ' l

s 'Every elevation of the type man,' says
Nietzsche, 'has hitherto been the work of an
aristocratic society — and so will it always be — a
society believing in a long scale of gradations of
rank and differences of worth among human
beings, and requiring slavery in some form or
other. Without the £>a#/ios of distance, such as
grows out of the incarnated differences of classes,
ojit of the constant outlooking and downlooking

NIETZSCHE THE SOCIOLOGIST

of the ruling caste on subordinates and instru
ments, and out of their equally constant practice
of obeying and commanding, of keeping down and
keeping at a distance — that other more mysterious
pathos could never have arisen, the longing for an
ever new widening distance within the soul itself,
the formation of ever higher, rarer, further, more
extended, more comprehensive states, in short,
just the elevation of the type ' man/ the con
tinued ' self-surmounting of man/ to use a moral
formula in a super-moral sense/ l^

I cannot attempt to giveji full account of the
society Nic^che L would fain have seen established
on earth. It will be found exhaustively described
in Aph. 57 of the Antichrist : while in the book of
Manu (Max Muller's ' Sacred Books of the East/
No. 25), similar sociological prescriptions are to be
found, correlated with all the imposing machinery
of divine revelation, supernatural authority, and
religious earnestness.

Briefly, Nietzsche says this : —

It is ridiculous to pretend to treat every one

without regard to those natural distinctions

which are manifested by superior intellectuality,

or exceptional muscular strength, or mediocrity

of spiritual and bodily powers, or inferiority of

1 O. E.t p. 223.

83

NIETZSCHE

both. He tells us that it is not the legislator,
but nature hersejj, who establishes these broad
classes, and to ignore them when forming a
society would be just as foolish as to ignore the
order of rank among materials and structural
principles when building a monument. Though
the base of a pyramid does not require to be of
the very finest marble, we know it must be both
broad and massive. Nietzsche declares that no
society has any solidarity wbich^is^ not founded
uporL a broad basis of mediocrity. Though the
stones get fewer in the layers as we ascend to the
top of the pyramid, we know that their grada
tion is necessary if the highest point is to be
reached. Nietzsche believes in the long scale
of gradations of rank with the ascending line
leading always to the highest — even if he be only
a single individual. Though the very uppermost
point consists of a single stone, it is around that
single stone that the weather will rage most
furiously and the sun shine most gorgeously.
That single stone will be the first to cleave the
heavy shower, and the first, too, to meet the
lightning. Nietzsche says : 'Life always becomes
harder towards the summit, — the cold increases,
responsibility increases.' l

1 Antichrist, Aph. 57.

84

NIETZSCHE THE SOCIOLOGIST

* Saepius ventis agitatur ingens
pinus, et celsae graviore casu
decidunt turres, feriuntque summos

fulgura monies.'1— HORACE, Carm. n. x.

Thus he would have the intellectually superior,
those who can bear responsibility and endure hard
ships, at the head. Beneath them are the warriors,
the physically strong, who are ' the guardians of
right, the keepers of order and security, the king
above all as the highest formula of warrior, judge,
and keeper of the law. The second in rank are
the executive of the most intellectual.' And
below this caste are the mediocre. ' Handicraft,
trade, agriculture, science, the greater part of art,
in a word, the whole compass of business activity,
is exclusively compatible with an average amount
of ability and pretension.' At the very base of
the social edifice, Nietzsche sees the class of man
who thrives best when he is well looked after and
closely observed, — the man who is happy to
serve, not because he must, but because he is
what he is, — the man uncorrupted by political
and religious lies concerning equality, liberty, and
fraternity, — who is half conscious of the abyss
which separates him from his superiors, and who

1 ' The big pine is more often shaken by the winds : the
higher a tower, the heavier is the fall thereof, and it is th«
tops of the mountains that the lightning strikes.'

85

NIETZSCHE

is happiest when performing those acts which are
not beyond his limitations.

He forestalls this sketch of his ideal society by
enunciating the moral code wherewith he would
transvalue our present values, and I shall now
give this code without a single remark or com
ment, feeling quite sure that the reader who has
understood Nietzsche so far will not require any
assistance in seeing that it is the necessary and
logical outcome of the rest of his teaching.

' What is good ? All that increases the feeling
of power, will to power, power itself in man.

' What is bad ? — All that proceeds from weak
ness.

' What is happiness ? — The feeling that power
increases, that resistance is overcome.

' Not contentedness, but more power ; not peace
at any price, but warfare ; not virtue, but capacity
(virtue in the Renaissance style, virtu free from
any moralic acid).j

I cannot well close this chapter on Nietzsche's
sociological views without touching upon two of
the most important elements in modern society,
arid his treatment of them. I refer to ' altruism '

1 Antichrist, Aph. 2.

86

NIETZSCHE THE SOCIOLOGIST

and to ' pity/ I am more particularly anxious to
express myself clearly on these two points, inas
much as I know how many erroneous opinions
are current in regard to Nietzsche's attitude
towards them. In all gregarious communities, as
is well known, altruism and pity have become
very potent life-preserving factors, and it would be
hard to find in Europe to-day, a city, a town, or a
village, in which these two qualities are not con
sidered the most creditable of virtues. Now,
apart from the fact that this excessive praise of
compassion and selflessness is a sign of slave
values being in the ascendant, we must bear in
mind two things : (1) that under our present
system of society, in which cruelties are per
petrated far more brutal than any that could be
found in antiquity, a sort of maudlin sentimen
tality has arisen among the oppressing classes,
whereby they attempt to counterbalance their
deeds of oppression with lavish acts of charity.
This sentimentality is a sign that their conscience
is no longer clean for the act of oppressing ;
because in their heart of hearts they feel them
selves unworthy of being at the top : (2) that
wherever two or three human beings collect
together, a certain modicum of altruism and
compassion is a prerequisite of their social unity.

87

NIETZSCHE

Dismissing observation one as the mere expres
sion of a regrettable fact which scarcely requires
substantiation, and which is responsible for more
than three-quarters of the anomalies that char
acterise modern Western civilisation ; and passing
over the suggestion that the excessive praise of
compassion and selflessness denotes an ascendency
of slave values (for we have dealt with this ques
tion in Chapter in.), let us turn to the more
abstract proposition enunciated in observation
two and try to grasp Nietzsche's treatment
of it.

In the first place, let us understand that there
are two kinds of pity and selflessness, just as
there are two kinds of generosity. There is the
pity, the selflessness and the generosity which is
preached and praised as a virtue by him who
urgently requires them because he is ill-consti
tuted, needy, and hungry ; and there is the pity,
the selflessness and the generosity which suggests
itself to the man overflowing with health, trust in
the future, and confidence in his own powers. To
such a man, pity, selflessness, and generosity are
a means of discharging a certain plenitude of
power, and in his case giving and bestowing are
natural functions. In the first instance, the
three virtues are preached from a utilitarian

88

NIETZSCHE THE SOCIOLOGIST

standpoint which tends to increase an undesirable
type; in the second, they are the sign of the
existence of a desirable type.

Let us hear Nietzsche —

' A man who says : " I like that, I take it for my
own, and mean to guard it and protect it from
every one " ; and the man who can conduct a
case, carry out a resolution, remain true to an
opinion, keep hold of a woman, punish and over
throw insolence ; a man who has his indignation
and his sword, and to whom the weak, the suffer
ing, the oppressed, and even the animals will
ingly submit and naturally belong; in short, a
man who is a master by nature — when such a
man has sympathy, well ! that sympathy has
value ! But of what account is the sympathy of
those who suffer ! or of those even who preach
sympathy ! ' l

Wherever we find anything akin to 'pity/ even in
nature: the suckling of the young, the maintenance
of dependants (the lion's attitude towards the
jackal), the protection of the helpless young (as
in many fish and mammals), it is always the
superabundance of the giver and his Will to
Power which creates the pitiful act.

But the pity which most of us understand as

1 O. E., p. 257.
89

NIETZSCHE

virtue in Europe to-day, is merely a sort of
sickly sensitiveness and irritability towards pain,
an etteminate absence of control in the presence
of suffering, which has nothing whatever to do
with our powers of alleviating the misery we
contemplate, and which is only compatible either
with excessive sentimentality or with weak and
overstrained nerves. In that case all it does is
to add to the misery of this world, and to elevate
to a virtue that which is perhaps one of the
saddest signs of the times. It is then indis
criminate, rash, and short-sighted, and gives rise
to more evil than it tries to dispel.

' Ah, where in the world have there been greater
follies than with the pitiful ? And what in the
world hath caused more suffering than the follies
of the pitiful ?

4 Woe unto all loving ones who have not an
elevation which is above their pity ! ' 1

The legislator or the leader (and it is to him,

remember, that Nietzsche appeals), is often obliged

to leave dozens to die by the wayside, and has to

do so with a clean conscience. If themarchjie

is organising requires certain sacrifices, he must

be ready to make them ; the slavish pity, then,

which would sacrifice the greater to the less, must

1 Z., pp. 104, 105.

90

NIETZSCHE THE SOCIOLOGIST

have been overcome by him in his own heart,
and he must have learnt that hardness which is
wider in its sympathies, more presbyopic in its
love, and less immediate in its effect. But he
alone can feel like this who has something to give
to those he leads, i.e. his protection and guidance,
hispromise ofjt better ]and.

' Myself I would sacrifice to my design, and my
neighbour as well — such is the language of
creators.

' All creators, however, are hard.' 1

Now turning to the question of egoism cru et
vert, which, according to some, is the very basis
and core of Nietzscheism, what are the points
which strike us most in Nietzsche's standpoint ?
To begin with, in this question, as in all others,
his honesty is paramount, and we become con
scious of it the moment we read his first line on
the subject. Where Nietzsche discusses matters
of which others are wont to speak with heaving
breasts, florid language, and tearful voices, he
takes particular pains to be clear, concise, cal
culating and cold — hence perhaps the hatred he
has provoked in those who depend for their effect
upon the impression of benevolence which their
watery eyes, their cracked, good-natured voices,
1 z., 105.

NIETZSCHE

and their high-falutin' words make upon a
multitude.

Nietzsche puts his finger on the very centre of
the question of egoism. He simply says: 'Not
every one has the right to be an egoist. Whereas
in some egoism would be a virtue, in others it
may be an insufferable vice which should be
stamped out at all costs.'

In whom then is egoism a vice ?

Obviously in him who is physiologically botched,
below mediocrity in spirit and body, mean, de
spicable, and even ugly.

Egoism in such a man means concentrating
certain interests, and not always the least valu
able, upon the promotion and enhancement of an
undesirable element in society. The egoism of
him who is below mediocrity is a form of tyranny
which leads to nothing, save, perhaps, a Heaven
where the haute volte will consist of the whole
scum and dross of humanity. Such egoism leads
humanity downwards : it practically says : ' I, the
bungled and the botched, I the poor in spirit and
body, I the mean, despicable and ugly, want my
kind to be all-important, paramount and on the
top — I the least desirable wish to prevail/ But
this egoism would mean humanity's ruin, it
would mean humanity's suicide and annihilation:
92

NIETZSCHE THE SOCIOLOGIST

it would certainly mean humanity's degradation.
When such egoism says : ' I will have all/ the
only decent retort is deafness. When such egoism
says : ' I have as much right to live and flourish
as the well-constituted, the superior in spirit and ,
body, the beautiful and the happy/ wisdom replies 1
with a shrug of its shoulders. And when such
egoism preaches altruism — then ! Then woe to all
those who are tempted to practise one virtue more !
Woe to humanity ! Woe to the whole world !

There is, on the other hand, a form of egoism,
which is both virtuous and noble. It is the
egoism of him whose multiplication would make
the world better, more desirable, happier, healthier,
superior in spirit and body. Egoism in such a
case is a moral duty ; wherever, in such a case,
giving, bestowing — altruism in fact — is not com
patible with survival, then egoism becomes the
highest principle of all, and it is in such circum
stances that altruism may become a vice.
Now let us hear Nietzsche's own words : —
' Selfishness/ he says, ' has as much value as
the physiological value of him who possesses it :
it may be very valuable or it may be vile and
contemptible. Each individual may be looked
at with respect to whether he represents an
ascending or a descending line of life. When
93

NIETZSCHE

that is determined, we have a canon for deter
mining the value of his selfishness. If he re
present the ascent in the line of life, his value is
in fact very great — and on account of the collec
tive life which in him makes a further step, the
concern about his maintenance, about providing
his optimum of conditions, may even be extreme.
... If he represent descending development,
decay, chronic degeneration, or sickening, he has
little worth, and the greatest fairness would have
him take away as little as possible from the well-
\ constituted. He is then no more than their parasite.'1
x This is all clear enough ; but it is quite con
ceivable that a misunderstanding of it might lead
to the most perverted notions of what Nietzsche
actually stood for, and when I hear people in
veighing against the so-called egoism of his
teaching, and declaring it poisonous on that
account, I often wonder whether they have really
made any attempt at all to comprehend the above
passage, and whether there is not perhaps some
thing wrong with language itself, that a thought
which to some seems expressed so clearly and
unmistakably, should still prove confusing and
incomprehensible to others.

Speaking once more to higher men, then,
1 The Twilight of the Idols, Par. 10, Aph. 33.

94

NIETZSCHE THE SOCIOLOGIST

Nietzsche tells them, with some reason on his
side, that altruism may be their greatest danger,
that altruism may be even their greatest tempta
tion, that there are times when they must avoid
it as they would avoid a plague. In periods of
gestation, when plans and dreams of plans for
the elevation of themselves and their fellows are
taking shape in their minds, altruism may lure
them sideways, it may make them diverge from
their path, and it may make mankind one great
thought the poorer. In this sense, and in this
sense alone, does our author deprecate the al
truistic virtues ; but, again, I venture to remind
readers that it is the simplest thing on earth to
awaken suspicion against him by declaring, as
some have declared, that his deprecation of y*
altruism applies to all.

No greater nonsense could be talked about
Nietzsche than to say that he preached universal
egoism. Universal egoism as opposed to select
egoism is behind all the noisiest movements to
day — it is behind Socialism, Democracy, Anarchy,
and Nihilism — but it is not behind Nietzscheism,
and nobody who reads him with care could ever
think so.

With these observations in mind, we can read
the following passages from Thus Spake Zara-
95

NIETZSCHE

thustra without either surprise or indignation;
indeed we may even learn a new valuation from
them which will alter our whole outlook on life,
though no such sudden revulsion of feeling need
necessarily follow a study of Nietzsche's doctrine.
Only when we have given his thoughts time to
become linked up and co-ordinated in our minds
are we likely to find that our view of the world has
become in the least degree transformed.

' Do I advise you to love your neighbour ?
Rather do I advise you to flee from your neigh
bour and to love the most remote.

'^Higher than love to your neighbour is love
unto the most remote future man.

' It is the more remote (your children and your
children's children) who pay for your love unto
your neighbour.1

' Your children's land ye shall love (be this love
your new nobility !), the land undiscovered in the
remotest sea ! For it I bid your sails seek and
seek!

' In your children ye shall make amends for
being the children of your fathers : all the past
shall ye thus redeem ! This new table do I place
over you ! ' 2

1 Z., pp. 69, 70. a ^.,p. 248.

96

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

WHEN we have done rubbing our eyes and ears at
the dazzling and startling novelty of all we have
seen and heard, let us ask ourselves calmly and
dispassionately what sort of man this is who has
led us thus far ! into regions which, from their
very unfamiliarity and exoticness, may have
seemed to us both unpleasant and forbidding.

This is no time for apologetics, or for pleading
extenuating circumstances. Even if Nietzsche's
doctrines have been presented ' in a form I too un
diluted to be inviting, it would scarcely mend
matters, now, to beg pardon for them ; ;and I have
no intention of doing anything of the sort. But
these questions may be put without any fear of
assuming a penitential attitude, and I do not
hesitate to put them : Was the promise of Nietz
sche's life fulfilled ? Did the task he started out
with, ' the elevation of the type man,' receive his
best strength, his best endeavours, his sincerest
application? However fundamentally we may
G 97

NIETZSCHE

disagree with his conclusions, were they reached
by means of an upright attempt) at grappling with
the problems ? To all of these questions there is
but one answer, and that answer clears Nietzsche
of all the slander and calumny to which he has
been submitted j for the last thirty years.

However often we may think he has erred, it is
nonsense any longer to speak of him as an
anarchist, an advocate of brutality, a supporter of
immorality in its worst modern sense, and a
guardian saint of savage passions. If I have led
any readers to suspect that he was all this, I can
only entreat them to turn as soon as possible to
the original works themselves, and there they will
find that it was I who was wrong.

Personally I believe, as Hippolyte Taine, Dr.
George Brandes and Wagner believed, that Nietz
sche's work is greater than his own or the next
generation could ever suspect. Questions such as
Art, the future of Science, and the future of
Religion, which Nietzsche treats with his customary
skill, I have been unable to find room for, in this
work. But in each of these departments, I believe
(and in this belief I am by no means alone) that
Nietzsche's speculations may prove of the very
highest value.

Already in Biology there are signs that Nietz-
98

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

sche's conclusions are gaining ground. In Art, as
I hope to be able to show elsewhere, his doctrines
are likely to effect! a salutary revolution: while, in
the departments of history, psychology, 1 juris
prudence and metaphysics, specialists will doubt
less arise who will attempt to make innovations
under his leadership.

For the present, though the outlook is brighter
than it was, Nietzscheism — that is to say : free-
spiritedness, ! intellectual bravery ; the ability to
stand alone when every one else j has his arm
linked j in something ; I the courage to face un
pleasant, fatal, >and disconcerting truths, — has not
much hope of very general acceptance, among
those to whom it really ought to appeal. Calumny,"
which had a long start, 'has deafened many to the
cause and will continue deafening a larger number
still, until the truth is ultimately known. Yet it
is to be hoped that readers may learn to be less
satisfied than they have been heretofore with
second-hand accounts of what Nietzsche stood
for, and that very shortly everybody who is in-__
terested in the matter will be able to reply to the
slanderer with facts culled from Nietzsche's life
and works.

* Mine enemies have grown strong,' says Zara-
99

NIETZSCHE

thustra, ' and have disfigured the face of my
teaching, so that my dearest friends have to blush
for the gifts I gave them.' 1

' But like a wind I shall one day blow amidst
them, and take away their breath with my spirit ;
thus my future willeth it.

'Verily a strong wind is Zarathustra^to all low
lands ; |and his enemies and everything that
spitteth and spewethlhe counselleth with such
advice : Beware of spitting against the wind/ 2

1 Z.,pp. 95, 96. 2 Z., p. 116.

TOO

BOOKS USEFUL TO THE STUDENT
OF NIETZSCHE

BIOGRAPHIES : —

Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsche's, by Mrs. Forster-

Nietzsche.

Erinnerungen an Friedrich Nietzsche, by Deussen.
Nietzsche, sein Leben und sein Werk, by Kaoul Richler.

EDITIONS OF WORKS.

The complete works of Friedrich Nietzsche. Edited
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Friedrich Nietzsche's Werke. Library Edition 15 vols.

Pocket Edition (very good) 10 vols.

MONOGRAPHS.

Belart, Nietzsche's Ethik.

Nietzsche's Metaphysik.

Nietzsche und Richard Wagner.

Brandes, G., Menschen und Werke.
Common, Thos., Nietzsche as Critic.
Fouill^e, A., Nietzsche et I'Immoralisme.
Gaultier, J., De Kant & Nietzsche.

Nietzsche et la Rtforme philosophique.

Kennedy, J. M., The Quintessence of Nietzsche.
IOI

NIETZSCHE

Lichtenberger, H., La Philosophie de Nietzsche.

Miigge, Nietzsche His Life and Works.

Sera, Leo, On the Tracks of Life.

Tienes, Nietzsche's Stellung zu den Grundfragen der

Ethik genetisch dargestellt.
Tille, A., Von Darwin bis Nietzsche.
Zeitler, J., Nietzsche's Aesthetik.

NIETZSCHE'S WORKS : Authorised Version : edited by Dr.
Oscar Levy.

Thoughts out of Season. 2
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The Birth of Tragedy. 2s. Qd.
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Thus Spake Zarathustra. 6s.
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