l<
PHILOSOPHY OF
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
BY HENRY L. MENCKEN
I shall be told, I suppose, that my philosophy it comfortlese
because I speak the truth ; and people prefer to believe that
everything the Lord made is good. If you are one such, go to
the priests, and leave philosophers in peace !
Arthur SchoptnkaMtr.
LONDON
T. FISHER UNWIN
MCMVIII
Copyright, 1908
By Henry L. Mknckbh
COLONIAL PRESS
Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds < Co.
Boston, U.S.A.
/
INTRODUCTION
The philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and the music
(and quasi-music) of Richard Strauss: herein we have
our modern substitutes for Shakespeare and the musical
glasses. There is no escaping Nietzsche. You may hold
him a hissing and a mocking and lift your virtuous skirts
as you pass him by, but his roar is in your ears and his
blasphemies sink into your mind. He has colored the
thought and literature, the speculation and theorizing,
the politics and superstition of the time. He reigns as king
in the German universities where, since Luther's
day, all the world's most painful thinking has been done
and his echoes tinkle, harshly or faintly, from Chicago
to Mesopotamia. His ideas appear in the writings of
men as unlike as Roosevelt and Bernard Shaw ; even the
newspapers are aware of him. He is praised and berated,
accepted and denounced, canonized and damned. Pythag-
orus had no more devout disciples and Spinoza had no
more murderous and violent foes. Wherefore it may be
a toil of some profit to examine his ideas a bit closely;
to differentiate between what he said in his books and
what his apostles and interpreters and enemies say or
think he said ; and in the end, perhaps, to find out what
he meant.
viii INTRODUCTION
Despite the notion of those who know him but by
name or ill-fame, there is nothing cryptic or mysterious
about Nietzsche. His ideas are ever clear. Curiously
enough, the popular comprehension of his philosophy suf-
fers by this very fact, for the world has come to regard the
metaphysic as something properly and necessarily occult
and to expect its expounders, if they would seem truly
wise, to show the abysmal turgidity of a Kant and the
wild, cabalistic imbecility of Revelations. When there
arises a prophet like Nietzsche, who thinks his thoughts
accurately and puts them into the vulgar tongue, he is
commonly suspected to be some sort of fantastic and
preposterous joker. Instead of accepting his prophecy
in its surface sense, his audience sees, in its very obvious-
ness, a new and extraordinarily confusing form of riddle.
Such is the curse that rabbinism, in and out of the church,
has laid upon the propagation of ideas.
Nietzsche's literalness is the hall mark of his entire
philosophy. He is the high priest of the actual, and
the divine mysteries seem to him to be but so many gro-
tesque lunacies. Stripping an idea of its holiness and
romance, its antiquity and authority, he burrows down
into the heart of it and tries to estimate it in terms of its
actual probability and reasonableness. That a thing is
sacred or venerable or ancient or beautiful does not
interest him. The question is asked invariably, Is it
true ? If he concludes that it is not, he says so, and if it
happens to be something that is regarded with unusual
reverence by the majority of men which means some-
thing whose inviolability is accepted without inquiry or
the shadow of doubt he says so with unusual heat and
INTRODUCTION ix
clamor. He is, indeed, the king of all axiom smashers
and the arch dissenter of the age. To him such words
as good and godly have no meaning whatever. He regards
them as mere scarecrows and bugaboos, invented and
employed by sophists and doctrinaires to ward off that
free inquiry which would put their fallacies to rout.
Reduced to elementals, Nietzsche's philosophy consists
of the following propositions :
i. That the ever-dominant and only inherent impulse
in all living beings, including man, is the will to remain
alive the will, that is, to attain power over those forces
which make life difficult or impossible.
2. That all schemes of morality are nothing more than
efforts to put into permanent codes the expedients found
useful by some given race in the course of its successful
endeavors to remain alive.
3. That, despite the universal tendency to give these
codes authority by crediting them to some god, they are
essentially man-made and mutable, and so change, or
should change, as the conditions of human existence in
the world are modified.
4. That the human race should endeavor to make its
mastery over its environment more and more certain,
and that it is its destiny, therefore, to widen more and
more the gap which now separates it from the lower races
of animals.
5. That any code of morality which retains its perma-
nence and authority after the conditions of existence
which gave rise to it have changed, works against this
upward progress of mankind toward greater and greater
efficiency.
x INTRODUCTION
6. That all gods and religions, because they have for
their main object the protection of moral codes against
change, are inimicable to the life and well-being of healthy
and efficient men.
7. That all the ideas which grow out of such gods
and religions such, for example, as the Christian ideas
of humility, of self-sacrifice and of brotherhood are
enemies of life, too.
8. That human beings of the ruling, efficient class
should reject all gods and religions, and with them the
morality at the bottom of them and the ideas which grow
out of them, and restore to its ancient kingship that primal
instinct which enables every efficient individual to
differentiate between the things which are beneficial to
him and the things which are harmful. I
Here we have the bare framework or skeleton of Niet-
zsche's system. How it leads to a rejection of Christianity
and democracy; how it points out a possible evolution
of the human race through the immoralist to the super-
man ; how it combats the majority of the ideas held holy
and impeccable by mankind today all of this is set forth
in the pages that follow. The aim of this book is to trans-
late Nietzsche into terms familiar to everyone to show
the exact bearing of his philosophy upon matters which
every man must consider every day. Nietzsche dealt
chiefly with generalizations and abstractions, and when
he descended to imminent concerns he naturally selected
those things which most interested his countrymen. In
this book his conclusions are applied to the things which
most interest the two great races whose tongue i s Eng lish.
To this extent paraphrase has been admitted, but in all
INTRODUCTION *
statements of fundamental doctrines there has been a
faithful and literal rendering of the original text a
rendering interrupted, of course, whenever it has seemed
necessary to explain or elucidate, by foot-note, parable
or digression.
In the biographical portion of this book an v effort has
been made to show the growth of Nietzsche's system,
from its beginning in mute consciousness to its maturity
in clear and unmistakable propositions. In the last part
an attempt has been made to trace out the origin of this
system in the ideas of other men ; to show how it agrees
or disagrees with human experience; and finally, to
estimate its influence upon the great and little men of
the world today and its probable influence tomorrow.
It is high time for the race of Darwin and Huxley to know
Nietzsche better. When his ideas are calmly weighed,
they may be rejected, but it will be infinitely better to
weigh and reject them thus than to condemn them out of
hand and without knowing what they are.
Nietzsche himself believed that he was but a link in an
endless chain and that, in the course of time, his doc-
trines would be overthrown by the philosophy of better
men. Be this as it may, the fact is apparent that he
fought a good fight and made his fellow men his debtors.
Error was his enemy and he was ever merciless in com*
bating it, even when the combat meant a war upon him-
self. He attacked men, gods and devils, but his purpose
was ever the lofty one of discovering the truth. It is the
fashion among the adherents of the old order to berate him
for his ferocity, and to urge the sorrows of his darkened
life against him, but some day, perhaps, the world will
zu INTRODUCTION
learn to give men of his kind the honor that is their due.
It is a fine thing to face machine guns for immortality and
a medal, but isn't it fine, too, to face calumny, injustice
and loneliness for the truth which makes men free ?
CONTENTS
NIETZSCHE THE MAN
CHAPTER
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
I.
J II.
y/lll.
v"iv.
V.
V vi.
V vii.
VIII.
IX.
X.
XI.
XII.
XIII.
XIV.
I.
II.
III.
Boyhood and Youth ....
The Beginnings of the Philosopher
Blazing a New Path
The Prophet of the Superman
The Philosopher and the Man
NIETZSCHE THE PHILOSOPHER
Dionysus vs. Apollo 63
The Origin of Morality 74 J
Beyond Good and Evil . . . ~ . .88
PAGB
3
16
27
40
So
The Superman 100
Eternal Recurrence 117
Christianity . . . . . . .126
Truth 147
Civilization 162
Women and Marriage 174
Government 192
Crime and Punishment 208
Education 216
Sundry Ideas 226
Nietzsche vs. Wagner 242
~>
NIETZSCHE THE PROPHET
Nietzsche's Origins ....
Nietzsche as a Teacher
Nietzsche and His Critics
Books and Articles about Nietzsche
xiii
255
270
295
322
NIETZSCHE THE MAN
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
BOYHOOD AND YOUTH
Friedrich Nietzsche was a preacher's son, brought
up in the fear of the Lord. It is the ideal training for
sham -smashers and freethinkers. Let a boy of alert,
restless intelligence come to early manhood in an atmos-
phere of strong faith, wherein doubts are blasphemies
and inquiry is a crime, and rebellion is certain to appear
with his beard. So long as his mind feels itself puny
beside the overwhelming pomp and circumstance of pa-
rental authority, he will remain docile and even pious.
But so soon as he begins to see authority as something
ever finite, variable and all-too-human when he begins
to realize that his father and his mother, in the last analy-
sis, are mere human beings, and fallible like himself
then he will fly precipitately toward the intellectual wail-
ing places, to think his own thoughts in his own way and
to worship his own gods beneath the open sky.
As a child Nietzsche was holy ; as a man he was the
3
4 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
symbol and embodiment of all unholiness. At nine he
was already versed in the lore of the reverend doctors,
and the pulpit, to his happy mother a preacher's
daughter as well as a preacher's wife seemed his logical
and lofty goal; at thirty he was chief among those who
held that all pulpits should be torn down and fashioned
into bludgeons, to beat out the silly brains of theologians.
The awakening came to him when he made his first
venture away from the maternal apron-string and fire-
side : when, as a boy of ten, he learned that there were
many, many men in the world and that these men were of
many minds. With the clash of authority came the end
of authority. If A. was right, B. was wrong and B.
had a disquieting habit of standing for one's mother, one's
grandmother or the holy prophets. Here was the beginning
of intelligence in the boy the beginning of that weighing
and choosing faculty which seems to give man at once
his sense of mastery and his feeling of helplessness. The
old notion that doubt was a crime crept away. There
remained in its place the new notion that the only real
crime in the world the only unmanly, unspeakable
and unforgivable offense against the race was un-
reasoning belief. Thus the orthodoxy of the Nietzsche
home turned upon and devoured itself.
The philosopher of the superman was born on October
15th, 1844, at Rocken, a small town in the Prussian
province of Saxony. His father, Karl Ludwig Nietzsche,
was a country pastor of the Lutheran Church and a man
of eminence in the countryside. But he was more than a
mere rural worthy, with an outlook limited by the fringe
of trees on the horizon, for in his time he had seen some-
BOYHOOD AND YOUTH 5
thing of the great world and had even played his humble
part in it. Years before his son Friedrich was born he had
been tutor to the children of the Duke of Altenburg. The
duke was fond of him and took him, now and then, on
memorable and eventful journeys to Berlin, where that
turbulent monarch, King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, kept a
tinsel court and made fast progress from imbecility to acute
dementia. The king met the young tutor and found
him a clever and agreeable person, with excellent opinions
regarding all those things whereon monarchs are wont to
differ with mobs. When the children of the duke became
sufficiently saturated with learning, the work of Pastor
Nietzsche at Altenburg was done and he journeyed to
Berlin to face weary days in the anterooms of ecclesiastical
magnates and jobbers of places. The king, hearing by
chance of his presence and remembering him pleasantly,
ordered that he be given without delay a vicarage worthy
of his talents. So he was sent to Rocken, and there, when
a son was born to him, he called the boy Friedrich Wil-
helm, as a graceful compliment to his royal patron and
admirer.
There were two other children in the house. One was
a boy, Josef, who was named after the Duke of Alten-
burg, and died in infancy in 1850. The other was a girl,
Therese Elisabeth Alexandra, who became in after years
her brother's housekeeper, guardian angel and biographer.
Her three names were those of the three noble children
her father had grounded in the humanities. Elisabeth
who married toward middle age and is best known as Frau
Forster- Nietzsche tells us practically all that we know
about the Nietzsche family and the private life of its dis-
6 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
tinguished son. x The clan came out of Poland, like so
many other families of Eastern Germany, at the time of
the sad, vain wars. Legend maintains that it was noble
in its day and Nietzsche himself liked to think so. The
name, says Elisabeth, was originally Nietzschy. " Ger-
many is a great nation," Nietzsche would say, " only
because its people have so much Polish blood in their^ veins.
... I am proud of my Polish descent. I remember that
in former times a Polish noble, by his simple veto, could
overturn the resolution of a popular assembly. There were
giants in Poland in the time of my forefathers." He
wrote a tract with the French title " L'Origine de la jamille
de Nietzsche " and presented the manuscript to his sister,
as a document to be treasured and held sacred. She tells
us that he was fond of maintaining that the Nietzsches
had suffered greatly and fallen from vast grandeur
for their opinions, religious and political. He had no
proof of this, but it pleased him to think so.
Pastor Nietzsche was thrown from his horse in 1848
and died, after a lingering illness, on July 28th, 1849, when
Friedrich was barely five years old. Frau Nietzsche then
moved her little family to Naumburg-on-the-Saale "a
Christian, conservative, loyal city." The household
consisted of the mother, the two children, their paternal
grandmother and two maiden aunts the sisters of the
dead pastor. The grandmother was something of a blue-
stocking and had been, in her day, a member of that queer
circle of intellectuals and amateurs which raged and
roared around Goethe at Weimar. But that was in the
long ago, before she dreamed of becoming the wife of one
1 "Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsche's" 3 vols. Leipsic, 1895-7-9.
BOYHOOD AND YOUTH 7
preacher and the mother of another. In the year '50 she
was well of all such youthful fancies and there was no
doubt of the divine revelations beneath her pious roof.
Prayers began the day and ended the day. It was a house
of holy women, with something of a convent's placidity
and quiet exaltation. Little Friedrich was the idol in the
shrine. It was the hope of all that he would grow up into
a man illimitably noble and impossibly good.
Pampered thus, the boy shrank from the touch of the
world's rough hand. His sister tells us that he disliked
the bad little boys of the neighborhood, who robbed bird's
nests, raided orchards and played at soldiers. There
appeared in him a quaint fastidiousness which went
counter to the dearest ideals of the healthy young male.
His school fellows, in derision, called him " the little
pastor " and took delight in waylaying him and venting
upon him their grotesque and barbarous humor. He
liked flowers and books and music and when he went
abroad it was for solitary walks. He could recite and
sing and he knew the Bible so well that he was able to
dispute about its mysteries. " As I think of him," said
an old school-mate years afterward, " I am forced irre-
sistibly into a thought of the 12-year-old Jesus in the
Temple." " The serious introspective child, with his
dignified politeness," says his sister, " seemed so strange
to other boys that friendly advances from either side were
out of the question."
There is a picture of the boy in all the glory of his
first long-tailed coat. His trousers stop above his shoe-
tops, his hair is long and his legs seem mere airy filaments.
As one gazes upon the likeness one can almost smell the
8 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
soap that scoured that high, shiny brow and those thin,
white cheeks. The race of such seraphic boys has died out
in the world. Gone are their slick, plastered locks and
their translucent ears! Gone are their ruffled cuffs and
their spouting of the golden text !
Nietzsche wrote verses before he was ten: pious,
plaintive verses that scanned well and showed rhymes and
metaphors made respectable by ages of honorable em-
ployment. His maiden effort, so far as we know, was an
elegy entitled " The Grave of My Father." Later on he
became aware of material things and sang the praises of
rose and sunset. He played the piano, too, and knew his
Beethoven well, from the snares for the left hand in
" Fur Elise " to the raging tumults of the C minor sym-
phony. One Sunday it was Ascension day he went
to the village church and heard the choir sing the Halle-
lujah Chorus from " The Messiah." Here was music
that benumbed the senses and soothed the soul and, boy
as he was, he felt its supreme beauty. That night he cov-
ered pages of ruled paper with impossible pot-hooks. He,
too, would write music !
Later on the difficulties of thorough-bass, as it was
taught in the abyssmal German text-books of the time,
somewhat dampened his ardor, but more than once during
his youth he thought seriously of becoming a musician.
His first really ambitious composition was a piano piece
called " Mondschein auj der Pussta " " Moonlight on
the Pussta." Whether the Pussta was a river, a mountain
or a mere creature of the imagination does not appear.
All the same we may conjure up a picture of little Friedrich
playing this maiden opus of a quiet evening in Naumburg,
BOYHOOD AND YOUTH 9
while mother, grandmother, sister and aunts gathered
round and marvelled at his genius. In later life he wrote
songs and sonatas, and if an enemy is to be believed
an opera in the grand manner. His sister, in her biog-
raphy, prints some samples of his music. Candor
compels the admission that it is even worse than it sounds.
Nietzsche, at this time, still seemed like piety on a
monument, but as much as he revered his elders and as
much as he relied upon their infallibility, there were yet
problems which assailed him and gave him disquiet.
When he did not walk and think alone, his sister was his
companion, and to her he opened his heart, as one might
to a sexless, impersonal confessor. In her presence,
indeed, he really thought aloud, and this remained his
habit until the end of his life. His mind, awakening,
wandered beyond the little world hedged about by doting
and complacent women. Until he entered the gymnasium
that great weighing place of German brains he
shrank from open revolt, and even from the thought of it,
but he could not help dwelling upon the mysteries that rose
before him. There were things upon which the scriptures,
search them as he might, seemed to throw no light, and
of which mothers and grandmothers and maiden aunts
did not discourse. " One day," says Elisabeth, " when he
was yet very young, he said to me : ' You mustn't expect
me to believe those silly stories about storks bringing
babies. Man is a mammal and a mammal must get his
own children for himself.' " Every child, perhaps,
ponders such problems, but in the vast majority knowledge
must wait until it may enter fortuitously and from without.
Nietzsche did not belong to the majority. To him ideas
io FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
were ever things to be sought out eagerly, to be weighed
calmly, to be tried in the fire. For weal or for woe,
the cornerstones of his faith were brought forth, with
sweat and pain, from the quarry of his own mind.
Nietzsche went to various village schools public and
private until he was ten, dutifully trudging away each
morning with knapsack and lunch-basket. He kissed his
mother at the gate when he departed and she was waiting
for him, with another kiss, when he returned. As happiness
goes, his was probably a happy childhood. The fierce
joy of boyish combat of fighting, of robbing, of slaying
was never his, but to a child so athirst for knowledge,
each fresh discovery about the sayings of Luther, the
lions of Africa, the properties of an inverted fraction
must have brought its thrill. But as he came to the last
year of his first decade, unanswerable questions brought
their discontent and disquiet as they do to all of us.
There is a feeling of oppression and poignant pain in facing
problems that defy solution and facts that refuse to fit
into ordered chains. It is only when mastery follows that
the fine stimulation of conscious efficiency drowns out all
moody vapors.
When Nietzsche went to the gymnasium his whole
world was overturned. Here boys were no longer mute
and hollow vessels, to be stuffed with predigested learning,
but human beings whose approach to separate entity was
recognized. It was possible to ask questions and to argue
moot points, and teaching became less the administration
of a necessary medicine and more the sharing of a delight-
ful meal. Your German school- master is commonly a
martinet, and his birch is never idle, but he has the saving
BOYHOOD AND YOUTH n
grace of loving his trade and of readily recognizing true
diligence in his pupils. History does not record the name
of the pedagogue who taught Nietzsche at the Naumburg
gymnasium, but he must have been one who ill deserved
his oblivion. He fed the eager, inquiring mind of his little
student and made a new boy of him. The old unhealthy,
uncanny embodiment of a fond household's impossible
dreams became more likeable and more human. His
exclusiveness and fastidiousness were native and ineradi-
cable, perhaps, for they remained with him, in some degree,
his whole life long, but his thirst for knowledge and yearn-
ing for disputation soon led him to the discovery that there
were other boys worth cultivating: other boys whose
thoughts, like his own, rose above misdemeanor and
horse-play. With two such he formed a quick friendship,
and they were destined to influence him greatly to the end
of his youth. They organized a club for mutual culture,
gave it the sonorous name of " Der litter arischen Vereini-
gung Germania " (" The German Literary Association ")
and drew up an elaborate scheme of study. Once a week
there was a meeting, at which each of the three submitted
an essay or a musical composition to the critical scrutiny
of the others. They waded out into the deep water. One
week they discussed " The Infancy of Nations," and after
that, " The Daemonic Element in Music," " Napoleon
III " and " Fatalism in History." Despite its praise-
worthy earnestness, this program causes a smile and
so does the transformation of the retiring and well-
scrubbed little Nietzsche we have been observing into the
long, gaunt Nietzsche of 14, with a yearning for the com-
panionship of his fellows, and a voice beginning to grow
12 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
comically harsh and deep, and a mind awhirl with unutter-
able things.
Nietzsche was a brilliant and spectacular pupil and
soon won a scholarship at Pforta, a famous and ancient
preparatory academy not far away. Pforta, in those days,
was of a dignity comparable to Eton's or Harrow's. It
was a great school, but tradition overpowered it. Violent
combats between amateur sages were not encouraged:
it was a place for gentlemen to acquire Euclid and the
languages in a decent, gentlemanly way, and not an arena
for gawky country philosophers to prance about in. But
Nietzsche, by this time, had already become a frank rebel
and delighted in elaborating and controverting the doc-
trines of the learned doctors. He drew up a series of
epigrams under the head of " Ideen " and thought so well
of them that he sent them home, to astonish and alarm
his mother. Some of them exhibited a quite remarkable
faculty for pithy utterance as, for example, " War
begets poverty and poverty begets peace " while others
were merely opaque renderings of thoughts half formed.
He began to believe in his own mental cunning, with a
sincerity which never left him, and, as a triumphant proof
of it, he drew up a series of syllogisms designed to make
homesickness wither and die. Thus he wrestled with life's
problems as his boy's eyes saw them.
All this was good training for the philosopher, but to
the Pforta professors it gave disquiet. Nietzsche became
a bit too sure of himself and a bit too arrogant for disci-
pline. It seemed to him a waste of time to wrestle with
the studies that every oafish baron's son and future guards-
man sought to master. He neglected mathematics and
BOYHOOD AND YOUTH
!3
gave himself up to the hair-splitting of the Eleatics and the
Pythagoreans, the Sophists and the Skeptics. He pro-
nounced his high curse and anathema upon geography and
would have none of it. The result was that when he went
up for final examination he writhed and floundered miser-
ably and came within an ace of being set down for further
and more diligent labor with his books. Only his remark-
able mastery of the German language and his vast knowl-
edge of Christian doctrine a legacy from his pious
childhood saved him. The old Nietzsche the shrink-
ing mother's darling of Naumburg was now but a
memory. The Nietzsche that went up to Bonn was a
young man with a touch of cynicism and one not a little
disposed to pit his sneer against the jurisprudence of the
world: a young man with a swagger, a budding mous-
tache and a head full of violently novel ideas about every-
thing under the sun.
Nietzsche entered Bonn in October, 1864, when he was
just 20 years old. He was enrolled as a student of philology
and theology, but the latter was a mere concession to
family faith and tradition, made grudgingly, and after the
first semester, the reverend doctors of exegetics knew him
no more. At the start he thought the university a delight-
ful place and its people charming. The classrooms and
beer gardens were full of young Germans like himself,
who debated the doings of Bismarck, composed eulogies of
Darwin, sang Rabelaisian songs in bad Latin, kept dogs,
wore ribbons on their walking sticks, fought duels, and
drank unlimited steins of pale beer. In the youth of every
man there comes over him a sudden yearning to be a good
fellow: to be " Bill " or " Jim" to multitudes, and to
z-#
14 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
go down into legend with Sir John Falstaff and Tom
Jones. This melancholy madness seized upon Nietzsche
during his first year at Bonn. He frequented the theatres
and posed as a connoisseur of opera boufte, malt liquor
and the female form divine. He went upon students'
walking tours and carved his name upon the mutilated
tables of country inns. He joined a student corps, bought
him a little cap and set up shop as a devil of a fellow. His
mother was not poor, but she could not afford the outlays
that these ambitious enterprises required. Friedrich
overdrew his allowance and the good woman, no doubt,
wept about it, as mothers will, and wondered that learning
came so dear.
But the inevitable reaction followed. Nietzsche was not
designed by nature for a hero of pot-houses and duelling
sheds. The old fastidiousness asserted itself that
queer, unhealthy fastidiousness which, in his childhood,
had set him apart from other boys, and was destined, all
his life long, to make him shrink from too intimate contact
with his fellow-men. The touch of the crowd disgusted
him : he had an almost insane fear of demeaning himself.
All of this feeling had been obscured for awhile, by the
strange charm of new delights and new companions, but
in the end, the gloomy spinner of fancies triumphed over
the university buck. Nietzsche resigned from his student
corps, burned his walking sticks, foreswore smoking and
roistering, and bade farewell to Johann Strauss and
Offenbach forever. The days of his youth of his care-
free, merry gamboling were over. Hereafter he was
all solemnity and all seriousness.
" From these early experiences," says his sister, " there
BOYHOOD AND YOUTH 15
remained with him a life-long aversion to smoking, beer-
drinking and the whole biergemuthlichkeit. He main-
tained that people who drank beer and smoked pipes
were absolutely incapable of understanding him. Such
people, he thought, lacked the delicacy and clearness of
perception necessary to grasp profound and subtle prob-.
lems."
n
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE PHILOSOPHER
At Bonn Nietzsche became a student of Ritschl, the
famous philologist, 1 and when Ritschl left Bonn for
Leipsic, Nietzsche followed him. All traces of the good
fellow had disappeared and the student that remained
was not unlike those sophomores of medieval Toulouse
who " rose from bed at 4 o'clock, and having prayed to
God, went at 5 o'clock to their studies, their big books
under their arms, their inkhorns and candles in their
hands." Between teacher and pupil there grew up a bond
of strong friendship. Nietzsche was taken, too, under
the wing of motherly old Frau Ritschl, who invited him to
her afternoons of coffee and cinnamon cake and to her
evening soire*es, where he met the great men of the univer-
sity world and the eminent strangers who came and went.
To Ritschl the future philosopher owed many things,
indeed, including his sound knowledge of the ancients, his
first (and last) university appointment and his meeting
with Richard Wagner. Nietzsche always looked back
1 Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl (1806- 1876), the foremost philologist of
modern times. He became a professor of classical literature and
rhetoric in 1839 anc * founded the science of historical literary criticism,
as we know it to-day.
16
BEGINNINGS OF THE PHILOSOPHER
23
persons impractical enough to spend their days and nights
in the study of philology.
In 1870 came the Franco- Prussian war and Nietzsche
decided to go to the front. Despite his hatred of all the
cant of cheap patriotism and his pious thankfulness that
he was a Pole and not a German, he was at bottom a
good citizen and perfectly willing to suffer and bleed for
his country. But unluckily he had taken out Swiss
naturalization papers in order to be able to accept his ap-
pointment at Basel, and so, as the subject of a neutral
state, he had to go to the war, not as a warrior, but as a
hospital steward.
Even as it was, Nietzsche came near giving his life to
Germany. He was not strong physically he had suffered
from severe headaches as far back as 1862 and his hard
work at Basel had further weakened him. On the battle-
fields of France he grew ill. Diphtheria and what seems
to have been cholera morbus attacked him and when he
finally reached home again he was a neurasthenic wreck.
Ever thereafter his life was one long struggle against dis-
ease. He suffered from migraine, that most terrible disease
of the nerves, and chronic catarrh of the stomach made him
a dyspeptic. Unable to eat or sleep, he resorted to narcotics,
and according to his sister, he continued their use through-
out his life. " He wanted to get well quickly," she says,
" and so took double doses." Nietzsche, indeed, was a
slave to drugs, and more than once in after life, long before
insanity finally ended his career, he gave evidence of
it.
Despite his illness he insisted upon resuming work,
but during the following winter he was obliged to take a
24 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
vacation in Italy. Meanwhile he had delivered lectures
to his classes on the Greek drama and two of these he
revised and published, in 1872, as his first book, " Die
Geburt der Tragddie" (" The Birth of Tragedy").
Engelmann, the great Leipsic publisher, declined it, but
Fritsch, of the same city, put it into type. x This book
greatly pleased his friends, but the old-line philologists
of the time thought it wild and extravagant, and it almost
cost Nietzsche his professorship. Students were advised
to keep away from him, and during the winter of 1872-3,
it is said, he had no pupils at all.
Nevertheless the book, for all its iconoclasm, was an
event. It sounded Nietzsche's first, faint battle-cry and
put the question mark behind many things that seemed
honorable and holy in philology. Most of the philologists
of that time were German savants of the comic- paper sort,
and their lives were spent in wondering why one Greek
poet made the name of a certain plant masculine while
another made it feminine. Nietzsche, passing over such
scholastic futilities, burrowed down into the heart of Greek
literature. Why, he asked himself, did the Greeks take
pleasure in witnessing representations of b itter , hopeless
c onflict s, and .how did this form of entertainment arise
among them? Later on, his conclusions will be given at
length, but in* this place it may be well to sketch them in
1 Begun in 1869, this maiden work was dedicated to Richard Wagner.
At Wagner's suggestion Nietzsche eliminated a great deal of matter in
the original draft. The full title was The Birth of Tragedy from the
Spirit of Music,** but this was changed, in 1886, when a third edition
was printed, to " The Birth of Tragedy, or Hellenism and Pessimism."
Nietzsche then also added a long preface, entitled "An Attempt at
Self-Criticism." The material originally excluded was published in 1896.
BEGINNINGS OF THE PHILOSOPHER 25
outline, because of the bearing they have upon his later
work, and even upon the trend of his life.
In ancient Greece, he pointed out at the start, Apollo
was the god of art of life as it was recorded and inter-
preted and Bacchus Dionysus was the god of life itself
of eating, drinking and making merry, of dancing and
roistering, of everything that made men acutely conscious
of the vitality and will within them. The difference be-
tween tKe things they represented has been well set forth
in certain homely verses addressed by Rudyard Kipling
to Admiral Robley D. Evans, U. S. N. :
Zogbaum draws with a pencil
And I do things with a pen,
But you sit up in a conning tower,
Bossing eight hundred men.
To him that hath shall be given
And that's why these books are sent
To the man who has lived more stories
Than Zogbaum or I could invent.
Here we have the plain distinction: Zogbaum and
Kipling are apollonic, while Evans is dionysian. Epic
poetry, sculpture, painting and story-telling are apollonic :
they represent, not life itself, but some one man's visualized
idea of life. But dancing, great deeds and, in some cases,
music, are dionysian : they are part and parcel of life as
some actual human being, or collection of human beings,
is living it.
Nietzsche maintained that Greek art was at first
apollonic, but that eventually there appeared a dionysian
26 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
influence the fruit, perhaps, of contact with primitive,
barbarous peoples. Ever afterward there was constant
conflict between them and this conflict was the essence
of Greek tragedy. As Sarcey tells us, a play, to hold our
attention, must depict some sort of battle, between man
and man or idea and idea. In the melodrama of today
the battle is between hero and villain; in the ancient
Greek tragedy it was between Apollo and Dionysus,
between the life contemplative and the life strenuous,
between law and outlaw, between the devil and the
seraphim.
Nietzsche, as we shall see, afterward applied this dis-
tinction in morals and life as well as in art. He called
himself a dionysian and the crowning volume of his
system of philosophy, which he had barely started when
insanity overtook him, was to have been called " Diony-
m
BLAZING A NEW PATH
Having given birth, in this theory of Greek tragedy,
to an idea which, whatever its defects otherwise, was at
least original, understandable and workable, Nietzsche
began to be conscious, as it were, of his own intellect
or, in his sister's phrase, " to understand what a great
man he was." He led a lonely and morose life at Basel,
with an occasional visit to Richard Wagner who lived
then in Switzerland and not far away as his only
recreation. In the prim, scholastic society of the univer-
sity town he played no part whatever. To one of his turn
of mind, indeed, the whole atmosphere of the place must
have been oppressive. He was not a man to bear with
equanimity the unctuous complacency of college dons
and dignitaries, and he was devoid entirely of those graces
which make a young professor a welcome guest at univer-
sity dinner parties and a favorite of each frau professorin.
His headaches, his sacrileges and his callous savagery
made him more enemies than friends. To dispute with
him, to controvert him, or even to agree with him, was a
decidedly hazardous business.
There are critics who see in all this proof that Nietzsche
showed signs of insanity from early manhood, but as a
27
28 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
matter of fact it was his abnormally accurate vision and
not a vision gone awry, that made him stand so aloof
from his fellows. In the vast majority of those about him
he saw the coarse metal of sham and pretense beneath
the showy gilding of learning. He had before him, at
close range, a good many of the great men of his time
the int ellectua ls whose word was law in the schools. He
saw them on parade and he saw them in their shirt sleeves.
What wonder that he lost all false reverence for them and
began to estimate them in terms, not of their dignity and
reputation, but of their actual cr edibili ty and worth?
It was inevitable that he should compare his own ideas
to theirs, and it was inevitable that he should perceive the
difference between his own fanatical striving for the truth
and the easy dependen ce upon pr eceden t and formula
which lay beneath their blooming bombast. Thus there
arose in him a fiery loathing for all authority, and a firm
belief that his o wn opinio n regarding any matter to which
he had given thought was as sound, at the least, as any
other man's. Thenceforth the assertive " ich" began to
besprinkle his discourse and his pages. " I condemn
r jl y Christianity. J have given to mankind. . . . I was never
yet modest. . . . J think. ... 7 say. . . . I do. . . ."
Thus he hurled his javelin at authority until the end.
To those about him, perhaps, Nietzsche seemed wild
and impossible, but it is not recorded that any one ever
looked upon him as ridiculous. His high brow, bared by
the way in which he brushed his hair ; his keen eyes, with
their monstrous overhanging brows, and his immense, un-
trimmed moustache gave him an air of alarming earnest-
ness. Beside the pedagogues about him with their
BLAZING A NEW PATH
29
well-barbered, professorial beards, their bald heads and
their learned spectacles he seemed like some incompre-
hensible foreigner. The exotic air he bore delighted him
and he cultivated it assiduously. He regarded himself
as a Polish grandee set down by an unkind fate among
German shopkeepers, and it gave him vast pleasure when
the hotel porters and street beggars, deceived by his
disorderly facade, called him " The Polack."
Thus he lived and had his being. The inquisitive boy
of old Naumburg, the impudent youth of Pforta and the
academic free lance of Bonn and Leipsic had become
merged into a man sure of himself and contemptuous of
all whose search for the truth was hampered or hedged
about by any respect for statute or precedent. He saw
that the philosophers and sages of the day, in many of
their most gorgeous flights of logic, started from false
premises, and he observed the fact that certain of the
dominant moral, political and social maxims of the time
were mere foolishness. It struck him, too, that all of this
faulty ratiocination all of this assumption of outworn
doctrines and dependence upon exploded creeds was
not confined to the confessedly orthodox. There was
fallacy no less disgusting in the other camp. The professed
apostles of revolt were becoming as bad as the old crusaders
and apologists.
Nietzsche harbored a fevered yearning to call all of
these false prophets to book and to reduce their fine axioms
to absurdity. Accordingly, he planned a series of twenty-
four pamphlets and decided to call them " Unzeitgemdsse
Betrachtungen," which may be translated as " Inopportune
Speculations," or more clearly, " Essays in Sham-Smash-
3 o FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
ing." In looking about for a head to smash in essay
number one, his eye, naturally enough, alighted upon that
of D avid Straus s, the favorite philosopher and fashionable
iconoclast of the day. Strauss had been a preacher but
had renounced the cloth and set up shop as a critic of
Christianity. 1 He had labored with good intentions, no
doubt, but the net result of all his smug agnosticism was
that his disciples were as self-satisfied, bigoted and preju-
diced in the garb of agnostics, as they had been before as
Christians. Nietzsche's clear eye saw this and in the first
of his little pamphlets, " David Strauss, der Bekenner und
der Schrijtsteller " (" David Strauss, the Confessor and the
Writer"), he bore down upon Strauss' bourgeoise pseudo-
skepticism most savagely. This was in 1873.
" Strauss," he said, " utterly evades the question, What
is the meaning of life? He had an opportunity to show
courage, to turn his back upon the P hilistine s, and to boldly
deduce a ne w moral ity from that constant warfare which
destroys all but the fittest, but to do this would have
required a love of truth infinitely higher than that which
spends itself in violent invectives against parsons, miracles
and the historical humbug of the resurrection. Strauss
had no such courage. Had he worked out the Darwinian
doctrine to its last decimal he would have had the Philis-
tines against him to a man. As it is, they are with him.
He has wasted his time in combatting Christianity's non-
essentials. For the idea at the bottom of it he has pro-
1 David Friedrich Strauss (1808-74) sprang into fame with his "Das
Leben Jem," 1835 (Eng. tr. by George Eliot, 1846), but the book which
served as Nietzsche's target was " Der alte und der neue Glaube " (" The
Old Faith and the New"), 1872.
BLAZING A NEW PATH 31
posed no substitute. In consequence, his philosophy is
stale."
As a distinguished critic has pointed out, Nietzsche's
attack was notable, not only for its keen analysis and
ruthless honesty, but also for its courage. It required no
little bravery, three years after Seclan, to tell the Germans
that the new culture which constituted their pride was
rotten, and that, unless it were purified in the fire of abso-
lute truth, it might one day wreck their civilization.
In the year following Nietzsche returned to the attack
with a criticism of history, which was then the fashionable
science of the German universities, on account, chiefly,
of its usefulness in exploding the myths of Christianity.
He called his essay " Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der
Historie jiir das Leben " ("On the Good and Bad Effects
of History upon Human Life ") and in it he took issue
with the reigning pedagogues and professors of the day.
There was much hard thinking and no little good writing
in this essay and it made its mark. The mere study of
history, argued Nietzsche, unless some definite notion
regarding the destiny of man were kept ever in mind, was
misleading and confusing. There was great danger in
assuming that everything which happened was part of
some divine and mysterious plan for the ultimate attain-
ment of perfection. As a matter of fact, many historical
events were meaningless, and this was particularly true
of those expressions of " governments, public opinion and
majorities " which historians were prone to accentuate.
To Nietzsche the ideas and doings of peoples seemed
infinitely less important than the ideas and doings of
1 " David Strauss, der Bekenner und der Schriftsteller" 7.
32 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
exceptional individuals. To put it more simply, he
believed that one man ,, Hanni bal, was of vastly more im-
portance to the world than all the other Carthaginians
of his time taken together. Herein we have a reappearance
of Dionysus and a foreshadowing of the herrenmoral and
superman of later days.
Nietzsche's next essay was devoted to Schopenhauer
and was printed in 1874. He called it " Schopenhauer
als Erzieher " (" Schopenhauer as a Teacher ") and in it
he laid his burnt offering upon the altar of the great pessi-
mist, who was destined to remain his hero, if no longer
his god, until the end. Nietzsche was already beginning
to read rebellious ideas of his own into " The World as
Will and Idea," but in two things the theory of will and
the impulse toward truth he and Schopenhauer were
ever as one. He preached a holy war upon all those
influences which had made the apostle of pessimism, in
his life-time, an unheard outcast. He raged against the
narrowness of university schools of philosophy and de-
nounced all governmental interference in speculation
whether it were expressed crudely, by inquisitorial laws
and the Index, or softly and insidiously, by the bribery of
comfortable berths and public honors.
" Experience teaches us," he said, " that nothing stands
so much in the way of developing great philosophers as
the custom of supporting bad ones in state universities.
... It is the popular theory that the posts given to the
latter make them ' free ' to do original work ; as a matter
of fact, the effect is quite the contrary. ... No state
f&A * would ever dare to patronize such men as Plato and
^ . U I Schopenhauer. And why? Because the state is always
BLAZING A NEW PATH 33
afraid of them. ... It seems to me that there is need
for a higher tribunal outside the universities to critically
examine the doctrines they teach. As soon as philosophers
are willing to resign their salaries, they will constitute such
a tribunal. Without pay and without honors, it will be
able to free itself from the prejudices of the age. Like
Schopenhauer, it will be the judge of the so-called culture
around it." *
Years later Nietzsche denied that, in this essay, he
committed himself irretrievably to the whole philosophy
of Schopenhauer and a fair reading bears him out. He
was not defending Schopenhauer's doctrine of renuncia-
tion, but merely asking that he be given a hearing. He
was pleading the case of foes as well as of friends : all he
asked was that the forum be opened to every man who had
something new to say.
1 Nietzsche regarded Schopenhauer as a king among
philosophers because he shook himself entirely free of the
dominant thought of his time. In an age marked, beyond
everything, by humanity's rising reliance uponjiuman
reason, he sought to show that reason was a puny offshoot
of an irresistible natural law the law of self-preservation.
Nietzsche admired the man's courage and agreed with
him in his insistence that this law was at the bottom of
all sentient activity, but he was never a subscriber to
Schopenhauer's surrender and despair. From the very
start, indeed, he was a prophet of defiance, and herein
his divergence from Schopenhauer was infinite. As his
knowledge broadened and his scope widened, he expanded
and developed his philosophy, and often he found it
x " Schopenhauer als Erzieher," 8.
34 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
necessary to modify it in detail. But that he ever turned
upon himself in fundamentals is untrue. Nietzsche at
40 and Nietzsche at 25 were essentially the same. The
germ of practically all his writings lies in his first book
nay, it is to be found further back : in the wild speculations
of- his youth.
The fourth of the " Unzeitgemasse Betrachtungen " (and
the last, for the original design of the series was not car-
ried out) was " Richard Wagner in Bayreuth." x This
was published in 1876 and neither it nor the general
subject of Nietzsche's relations with Wagner need be
considered here. In a subsequent chapter the whole
matter will be discussed. For the present, it is sufficient
to say that Nietzsche met Wagner through the medium
of Ritschl's wife; that they became fast friends; that
Nietzsche hailed the composer as a hero sent to make the
drama an epitome of the fife unfettered and unbounded,
of life defiant and joyful; that Wagner, after starting
from the Schopenhauer base, travelled toward St. Francis
rather than toward Dionysus, and that Nietzsche, after
vain expostulations, read the author of " Parsifal " out
of meeting and pronounced him anathema. It was all a
case of misunderstanding. Wagner was an artist, and not
a philosopher. Right or wrong, Christianity was beautiful,
and as a thing of beauty it called aloud to him. To Niet-
zsche beauty seemed a mere phase of truth.
1 According to Nietzsche's original plan the series was to have in-
cluded pamphlets on "Literature and the Press," "Art and Painters,"
" The Higher Education," " German and Counter-German," " War and
the Nation," "The Teacher," "Religion," "Society and Trade,"
" Society and Natural Science," and " The City," with an epilogue en-
titled "The Way to Freedom."
BLAZING A NEW PATH 35^
It was during this period of preliminary skirmishing
that Nietzsche's ultimate philosophy began to formulate
itself. He saw clearly that there was something radically
wrong with the German culture of the day that many
things esteemed right and holy were, in reality, unspeak-
able, and that many things under the ban of church and
state were far from wrong in themselves. He saw, too,
that there had grown up a false logic and that its taint was
upon the whole of contemporary thought. Men main-
tained propositions plainly erroneous and excused them-
selves by the plea that ideals were greater than actualities.
The race was subscribing to one thing and practicing
another. Christianity was official, but not" a single real
Christian was to be found in all Christendom. Thousands
bowed down to men and ideas that they despised and
denounced things that every sane man knew were neces-
sary and inevitable. The result was a flavor of dishonesty
and hypocrisy in all human affairs. In the abstract the
laws of the church, the state and society were looked
upon as impeccable, but every man, in so far as they
bore upon him personally, tried his best to evade
them.
Other philosophers, in Germany and elsewhere, had
made the same observation and there was in progress
a grand assault-at-arms upon old ideas. Huxley and
Spencer, in England, were laboring hard in the vineyard
planted by Darwin; Ibsen, in Norway, was preparing
for his epoch-making life-work, and in far America Andrew
\ D. White and others were battling to free education from
tKe Sonets of theology. Thus it will be seen that, at the
start, Nietzsche was no more a pioneer than any one of
36 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
a dozen other men. Some of these other men, indeed,
were far better equipped for the fray than he, and their
services, for a long while, seemed a great deal more impor-
tant. But it was his good fortune, before his working days
were over, to press the conflict much further afield than
the others. Beginning where they ended, he fought his
way into the very citadel of the enemy.
His attack upon Christianity, which is described at
length later on, well exemplifies this uncompromising
thoroughness. Nietzsche saw that the same plan would
have to be pursued in examining all other concepts
religious, political or social. It would be necessary to
pass over surface symptoms and go to the heart of things :
to tunnel down deep into ideas ; to trace out their history
and seek out their origins. There were no willing hands
to help him in this : it was, in a sense, a work new to the
world. In consequence Nietzsche perceived that he would
have to go slowly and that it would be needful to make
every step plain. It was out of the question to expect
encouragement: if the task attracted notice at all, this
notice would probably take the form of blundering opposi-
tion. But Nietzsche began his clearing and his road
cutting with a light heart. The men of his day might
call him accursed, but in time his honesty would shame
all denial. This was his attitude always: he felt that
neglect and opprobrium were all in his day's work and he
used to say that if ever the generality of men endorsed
any idea that he had advanced he would be convinced at
once that he had made an error.
In his preliminary path-finding Nietzsche concerned
himself much with the history of specific ideas. He
BLAZING A NEW PATH 37
showed how the thing which was a sin in one age became
the virtue of the next. He attacked hope, faith and
charity in this way, and he made excursions into nearly
every field of human thought from art to primary
education. All of this occupied the first half of the 70's.
Nietzsche was in indifferent health and his labors tired
him so greatly that he thought more than once of giving
up his post at Basel, with its dull round of lecturing and
quizzing. But his private means at this time were not
great enough to enable him to surrender his salary and so
he had to hold on. He thought, too, of going to Vienna to
study the natural sciences so that he might attain the
wide and certain knowledge possessed by Spencer, but
the same considerations forced him to abandon the
plan. He spent his winters teaching and investigating
and his summers at various watering-places from
Tribschen, in Switzerland, where the Wagners were his
hosts, to Sorrento, in Italy.
At Sorrento he happened to take lodgings in a house
which also sheltered Dr. Paul Re, the author of " Psy-
chological Observations," " The Origin of Moral Feel-
ings," and other metaphysical works. That Re*e gave
him great assistance he acknowledged himself in later
years, but that his ideas were, in any sense, due to this
chance meeting (as Max Nordau would have us believe)
is out of the question, for, as we have seen, they were
already pretty clear in his mind a long while before. But
R6e widened his outlook a great deal, it is evident, and
undoubtedly made him acquainted with the English
naturalists who had sprung up as spores of Darwin, and
with a number of great Frenchmen Montaigne, La-
38 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
rochefoucauld, La Bruyere, Fontenclle, Vauvenargues and
Chamfort.
Nietzsche had been setting down his thoughts and
conclusions in the form of brief memoranda and as he
grew better acquainted with the French philosophers, many
of whom published their works as collections of aphorisms,
he decided to employ that form himself. Thus he began to
arrange the notes which were to be given to the world as
" Menschliches allzu Menschliches " (" Human, Ail-too
Human "). In 1876 he got leave from Basel and gave his
whole time to the work. During the winter of 1876-7,
with the aid of a disciple named Bemhard Cron (better
known as Peter Gast) he prepared the first volume for
the press. Nietzsche was well aware that it would make
a sensation and while it was being set up his courage
apparently forsook him and he suggested to his publisher
that it be sent forth anonymously. But the latter would
not hear of it and so the first part left the press in 1878.
As the author had expected, the book provoked a fine
frenzy of horror among the pious. The first title chosen
for it, "Die Pjlugschar" ("The Plowshare "), and the
one finally selected, " Human, Ail-too Human," indicate
that it was an attempt to examine the underside of human
ideas. In it Nietzsche challenged the whole of current
morality. He showed that moral ideas were not divine, but
human, and that, like all things human, they were subject
to change. He showed that good and evil were but relative
terms, and that it was impossible to say, finally and abso-
lutely, that a certain action was right and another wrong.
He applied the acid of critical analysis to a hundred and
one specific ideas, and his general conclusion, to put it
BLAZING A NEW PATH 39
briefly, was that no human being had a right, in any
way or form, to judge or direct the actions of any other
being. Herein we have, in a few words, that gospel of
individualism which all our sages preach today. 1
Nietzsche sent a copy of the book to Wagner and the
great composer was so appalled that he was speechless.
Even the author's devoted sister, who worshipped him
as an intellectual god, was unable to follow him. Ger-
many, in general, pronounced the work a conglomeration
of crazy fantasies and wild absurdities and Nietzsche
smiled with satisfaction. In 1879 he published the second
volume, to which he gave the sub-title of " Vermischte
Meinungen und Spriiche " (" Miscellaneous Opinions and
Aphorisms ") and shortly thereafter he finally resigned
his chair at Basel. The third part of the book appeared
in 1880 as " Der Wanderer und sein Schatten " (" The
Wanderer and His Shadow "). The three volumes were
published as two in 1886 as " Menschliches allzu Mensch-
liches" with the explanatory sub -title, " Ein Buck jur
Frcie Geister " ("A Book for Free Spirits").
1 It must be remembered, in considering all of Nietzsche's writings,
that when he spoke of a human being, he meant a being of the higher
sort i. e. one capable of clear reasoning. He regarded the drudge
class, which is obviously unable to think for itself, as unworthy of con-
sideration. Its highest mission, he believed, was to serve and obey the
master class. But he held that there should be no artificial barriers
to the rise of an individual born to the drudge class who showed an
accidental capacity for independent reasoning. Such an individual, he
believed, should be admitted, ipso facto, to the master class. Naturally
enough, he held to the converse too. Vide the chapter on " Civilization."
IV
THE PROPHET OF THE SUPERMAN
Nietzsche spent the winter of 1879-80 at Naumburg,
his old home. During the ensuing year he was very ill,
indeed, and for awhile he believed that he had but a short
while to live. Like all such invalids he devoted a great
deal of time to observing and discussing his condition.
He became, indeed, a hypochondriac of the first water
and began to take a sort of melancholy pleasure in his
infirmities. He sought relief at all the baths and cures
of Europe : he took hot baths, cold baths, salt-water baths
and mud baths. Every new form of pseudo- therapy
found him in its freshman class. To owners of sanitoria
and to inventors of novel styles of massage, irrigation,
sweating and feeding he was a joy unlimited. But he
grew worse instead of better.
After 1880, his life was a wandering one. His sister,
after her marriage, went to Paraguay for a while, and
during her absence Nietzsche made his progress from the
mountains to the sea, and then back to the mountains
again. He gave up his professorship that he might spend
his winters in Italy and his summers in the Engadine.
In the face of all this suffering and travelling about, close
application, of course, was out of the question. So he
40
THE PROPHET OF THE SUPERMAN 41
contented himself with working whenever and however
his headaches, his doctors and the railway time-tables
would permit on hotel verandas, in cure-houses and
in the woods. He would take long, solitary walks and
struggle with his problems by the way. He swallowed
more and more pills; he imbibed mineral waters by the
gallon; he grew more and more moody and ungenial.
One of his favorite haunts, in the winter time, was a
verdant little neck of land that jutted out into Lake
Maggiore. There he could think and dream undisturbed.
One day, when he found that some one had placed a rustic
bench on the diminutive peninsula, that passersby might
rest, he was greatly incensed.
Nietzsche would make brief notes of his thoughts during
his daylight rambles, and in the evenings would polish and
expand them. As we have seen, his early books were sent
to the printer as mere collections of aphorisms, without
effort at continuity. Sometimes a dozen subjects are
considered in two pages, and then again, there is occasion-
ally a little essay of three or four pages. Nietzsche chose
this form because it had been used by the French philoso-
phers he admired, and because it well suited the methods
of work that a pain-racked frame imposed upon him.
He was ever in great fear that some of his precious ideas
would be lost to posterity that death, the ever- threaten-
ing, would rob him of his rightful immortality and the
world of his stupendous wisdom and so he made efforts,
several times, to engage an amanuensis capable of jotting
down, after the fashion of Johnson's Boswell, the chance
phrases that fell from his lips. His sister was too busy
to undertake the task: whenever she was with him her
42 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
whole time was employed in guarding him from lion-
hunters, scrutinizing his daily fare and deftly inveigling
him into answering his letters, brushing his clothes and
getting his hair cut. A number of young men, it would
appear, essayed the impossible service, but all departed
quickly. Finally, the philosopher's old friend, Re*e, dis-
covered a likely candidate in the person of Fraulein
Lou Salome", a young German woman. Fraulein Salome"
(who afterward became Frau Andreas - Salome*) was an
intellectual, but attractive person and her enthusiastic
admiration flattered Nietzsche into engaging her. No
more grotesque contrast than that which existed between
the ponderous and humorless prophet of the superman
and this superficial and flighty dilletante could be imagined.
From the start they clashed and after five months Nietzsche
sent her away. Later on, she printed a sort of fanciful
biography of the philosopher, full of extravagant eulogy
and truly feminine blunders. 1 Nietzsche's sister dismisses
it as a fabric of well-meant, but ridiculous errors and
misrepresentations .
Early in 1881 Nietzsche published " M or gemote "
(" The Dawn of Day "). It was begun at Venice in 1880
and continued at Marienbad, Lago Maggiore and Genoa.
It was, in a broad way, a continuation of " Menschliches
allzu Menschliches." It dealt with an infinite variety of
subjects, from matrimony to Christianity, and from
education to German patriotism. To all the test of
fundamental truth was applied : of everything Nietzsche
asked, not, Is it respectable or lawful ? but, Is it essentially
true ? These early works, at best, were mere note-books.
1 " Friedrich Nietzsche in seinen Werken; " Vienna, 1894.
THE PROPHET OF THE SUPERMAN 43
Nietzsche saw that the ground would have to be plowed,
that people would have to grow accustomed to the idea
of questioning high and holy things, before a new system
of philosophy would be understandable or possible. In
" Menschliches allzu Menschliches " and in " M or gemote "
he undertook this preparatory cultivation.
The book which followed, " Die jrohliche Wissen-
schajt n (" The Joyful Science ") continued the same task.
The first edition contained four parts and was published
in 1882. In 1887 a fifth part was added. Nietzsche
had now completed his plowing and was ready to sow his
crop. He had demonstrated, by practical examples, that
moral ideas were vulnerable, and that the Ten Command-
ments might be debated. Going further, he had adduced
excellent historical evidence against the absolute truth
of various current conceptions of right and wrong, and
had traced a number of moral ideas back to decidedly
lowly sources. His work so far had been entirely destruc-
tive and he had scarcely ventured to hint at his plans for
a reconstruction of the scheme of things. As he himself
says, he spent the four years between 1878 and 1882 in
preparing the way for his later work.
" I descended," he says, " into the lowest depths, I
searched to the bottom, I examined and pried into an old
faith on which, for thousands of years, philosophers had
built as upon a secure foundation. The old structures came
tumbling down about me. I undermined our old faith in
morals." r
This labor accomplished, Nietzsche was ready to set
forth his own notion of the end and aim of existence. He
1 Preface to " Morgenrote? 2; autumn, 1886.
44 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
had shown that the old morality was like an apple rotten
at the core that the Christian ideal of humility made
mankind weak and miserable; that many institutions
regarded with superstitious reverence, as the direct result
of commands from the creator (such, for instance, as the
family, the church and the state), were mere products
of man's " all-too-human " cupidity, cowardice, stupidity
and yearning for ease. He had turned the searchlight of
truth upon patriotism, charity and self-sacrifice. He
had shown that many tnings held to be utterly and un-
questionably good or bad by modern civilization were
once given quite different values that the ancient Greeks
considered hope a sign of weakness, and mercy the attribute
of a fool, and that the Jews, in their royal days, looked
upon wrath, not as a sin, but as a virtue and in general
he had demonstrated, by countless instances and argu-
ments, that all notions of good and evil were mutable and
that no man could ever say, with utter certainty, that one
thing was right and another wrong.
The ground was now cleared for the work of recon-
struction and the first structure that Nietzsche reared
was "Also sprach Zarathustra " (" Thus Spake Zo-
roaster "). This book, to which he gave the sub-title of
" Ein Buck jiir Alle und Keinen " (" A book for all and
none "), took the form of a fantastic, half- poetical half-
philosophical rhapsody. Nietzsche had been delving
into oriental mysticism and from the law-giver of the
ancient Persians he borrowed the name of his hero
Zoroaster. But there was no further resemblance between
the two, and no likeness whatever between Nietzsche's
philosophy and that of the Persians.
THE PROPHET OF THE SUPERMAN 45
The Zoroaster of the book is a sage who lives remote
from mankind, and with no attendants but a snake and
an eagle. The book is in four parts and all are made up of
discourses by Zoroaster. These discourses are delivered
to various audiences during the prophet's occasional
wanderings and at the conferences he holds with various
disciples in the cave that he calls home. They are decidedly
oriental in form and recall the manner and phraseology
of the biblical rhapsodists. Toward the end Nietzsche
throws all restraint to the winds and indulges to his heart's
content in the rare and exhilarating sport of blasphemy.
There is a sort of parody of the last supper and Zoroaster's
backsliding disciples engage in the grotesque and indecent
worship of a jackass. Wagner and other enemies of the
author appear, thinly veiled, as ridiculous buffoons.
In his discourses Zoroaster voices the Nietzschean idea
of the superman the idea that has come to be associated
with Nietzsche more than any other. Later on, it will be
set forth in detail. For the present, suffice it to say that
it is the natural child of the notions put forward in Niet-
zsche's first book, " The Birth of Tragedy," and that it
binds his entire life work together into one consistent,
harmonious whole. The first part of "Also sprach
Zarathustra " was published in 1883, the second part fol-
lowing in the same year, and the third part was printed
in 1884. The last part was privately circulated among
the author's friends in 1885, but was not given to the pub-
lic until 1892, when the entire work was printed in one
volume. As showing Nietzsche's wandering life, it may
be recorded that the book was conceived in the Engadine
and written in Genoa, Sils Maria, Nice and Mentone.
46 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
" Jenseits von Gut und Bose " (" Beyond Good and
Evil ") appeared in 1886. In this book Nietzsche elabo-
rated and systematized his criticism of morals, and under-
took to show why he considered modern civilization de-
grading. Here he finally formulated his definitions of
master- morality and slave-morality, and showed how
Christianity was necessarily the idea of a race oppressed
and helpless, and eager to escape the lash of its masters.
" Zur Genealogie der Moral " (" The Genealogy of
Morals "), which appeared in 1887, developed these prop-
ositions still further. In it there was also a partial return
to Nietzsche's earlier manner, with its merciless analysis
of moral concepts. In 1888 Nietzsche published a most
vitriolic attack upon Wagner, under the title of " Der
Fall Wagner " (" The Case of Wagner "), the burden of
which was the author's discovery that the composer,
starting, with him, from Schopenhauer's premises, had
ended, not with the superman, but with the Man on the
cross. " Gotzendammerung " (" The Twilight of the
Idols ") a sort of parody of Wagner's " G otter dammer-
ung " (" The Twilight of the Gods ") followed in 1889.
" Nietzsche contra Wagner " (" Nietzsche versus Wag-
ner ") was printed the same year. It was made up of
extracts from the philosopher's early works, and was
designed to prove that, contrary to the allegations of his
enemies, he had not veered completely about in his atti-
tude toward Wagner.
Meanwhile, despite the fact that his health was fast
declining and he was approaching the verge of insanity,
Nietzsche made plans for a great four volume work that
was to sum up his philosophy and stand forever as his
THE PROPHET OF THE SUPERMAN 47
magnum opus. The four volumes, as he planned them,
were to bear the following titles :
1. " Der Antichrist: Versuch einer Kritik des Christ-
enthums " (" The Anti-Christ: an Attempt at a
Criticism of Christianity ").
2. "Der jreie Geist: Kritik der Philosophie als einer
nihilistichen B ewe gun g " (" The Free Spirit : a
Criticism of Philosophy as a Nihilistic Move-
ment ").
3. "Der Immoralist: Kritik der verKdngnissvollsten
Art von Unwissenheit, der Moral " (" The Im-
moralist : a Criticism of That Fatal Species of
Ignorance, Morality ").
4. " Dionysus, Philosophie der ewigen Wiederkunjt "
(" Dionysus, the Philosophy of Eternal Recur-
rence ").
This work was to be published under the general title
of " Der Wille zur Macht: Versuch einer Umwerthung
alter Werthe " (" The Will to Power : an Attempt at a
Transvaluation of all Values "), but Nietzsche got no
further than the first book, " Der Antichrist:'' This he
wrote at great speed, between September 3rd and Septem-
ber 30th, 1888, but it was not published until 1895 six
years after the author had laid down his work forever.
In this same year C. G. Naumann, the great Leipsic
publisher, began the issue of a definitive eight-volume
edition of the philosopher's works, under the editorship
of Frau Forster-Nietzsche, Peter Gast, Dr. Fritz Koegel
and other friends and disciples. Later on his notes for
various books, both completed and projected, were pub-
lished in six additional volumes. His early essays upon
48 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
philological themes and a great variety of memoranda
were included. This collection is of interest to the stu-
dent who desires to make an exhaustive study of the
origin and development of Nietzsche's ideas, but it is
unfortunate that the editors chose to print so much in-
consequential matter. More of his early notes are in his
sister's biography. The philosopher, back in the 8o's,
began a sort of introspective autobiography under the
title of " Ecce Homo I " but so far it has not been
put into type.
In January, 1889, at Turin, after a severe attack of
migraine, Nietzsche became hopelessly insane and was
confined in a private asylum. In the summer of 1890 he
recovered sufficiently to be taken to his old home at
Naumburg, and when his mother died, in 1897, his sister
removed him to Weimar, where she bought a villa called
" Silberblick " (" Silver View "), in the suburbs. This
villa had a garden overlooking the hills and the lazy river
Ilm and a wide, sheltered veranda for the invalid's couch.
But his mind never became clear enough for him to resume
work. He had to grope for words, slowly and painfully,
and his physical strength left him.
This is something poignantly pathetic in the picture
of this valiant fighter this arrogant Ja-sager this
foe of men, gods and devils being nursed and coddled
like a little child. His old fierce pride and courage dis-
appeared and he became docile and gentle. " You and I,
my sister we are happy ! " he would say and then his
1 The house now shelters the Nietzsche-Archiv, a sort of library and
museum. To the more enthusiastic Nietzscheans of Germany it bears
the aspect of a holy shrine. Frau Forster-Nietzsche is in charge of it.
THE PROPHET OF THE SUPERMAN 49
hand would slip out from his bed-clothes and grasp that of
the tender and loving Lisbeth. Once she mentioned
Wagner to him. " Den habe ich sehr geliebt! " he said.
All his old fighting spirit was gone : he remembered only
the glad days and the dreams of his youth.
Nietzsche died on August 25th, 1900, in the gray of the
early morning.
THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE MAN
" My brother," says Frau Forster-Nietzsche, in her
biography, " was stockily and broadly built and was
anything but thin. He had a rather dark, healthy, ruddy
complexion. In all things he was tidy and orderly, in
speech he was soft-spoken, and in general, he was inclined
to be serene under all circumstances. All in all, he was
the very antithesis of a nervous man.
1 ' In the fall of 1888, he said of himself, in a reminiscent
memorandum : ' My blood moves slowly. A doctor who
treated me a long while for what was at first diagnosed as
a nervous affection said : " No, your trouble cannot be in
your nerves. I myself am much more nervous than
you."
" My brother, both before and after his long illness
seized him, was a believer in natural methods of healing.
He took cold baths, rubbed down every morning and was
quite faithful in continuing light, bed-room gymnas-
tics."
At one time, she says, Nietzsche became a violent
vegetarian and afflicted his friends with the ancient vege-
tarian horror of making a sarcophagus of one's stomach.
It seems surprising that a man so quick to perceive errors,
50
THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE MAN
5i
saw none in the silly argument that, because an ape's
organs are designed for a vegetarian diet, a man's are so
planned also. An acquaintance with elementary anatomy
and physiology would have shown him the absurdity of
this, but apparently he knew little about the human body,
despite his uncanny skill at unearthing the secrets of the
human mind. Nietzsche had read Emerson in his youth,
and those Emersonian seeds which have come to full flower
in the United States as the so-called New Thought move-
ment with Christian Science, osteopathy, mental telep-
athy, occultism, pseudo-psychology and that grand lodge
of credulous comiques y the Society for Psychical Research,
as its final blossoms all of this probably made its mark
on the philosopher of the superman, too.
Frau Forster-Nietzsche, in her biography, seeks to
prove the impossible thesis that her brother, despite his
constant illness, was ever well-balanced in mind. It is but
fair to charge that her own evidence is against her. From
his youth onward, Nietzsche was undoubtedly a neuras-
thenic, and after the Franco- Prussian war he was a con-
stant sufferer from all sorts of terrible ills some imagi-
nary, no doubt, but others real enough. In many ways,
his own account of his symptoms recalls vividly the long
catalogue of aches and pains given by Herbert Spencer in
his autobiography. Spencer had queer pains in his head
and so did Nietzsche. Spencer roved about all his life
in search of health and so did Nietzsche. Spencer's
working hours were limited and so were Nietzsche's. The
latter tells us himself that, in a single year, 1878, he was
disabled 118 days by headaches and pains in the eyes.
Dr. Gould, the prophet of eye-strain, would have us be-
52 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
lieve that both of these great philosophers suffered because
they read too much in their early days. 1 It is more likely,
however, that each was the victim of specific organic
diseases. Twenty years ago, the word neurasthenia was
appalling and bore upon its face something of the loath-
someness of scrofula or leprosy, but now we know that
neurasthenics are quite numerous, and that most of them,
for all their chronic sufferings, are good citizens. In
Nietzsche's case hard work and constant turmoil aggra-
vated the malady and it progressed, in a manner almost
classical, into hysteria, and then into melancholia and
insanity. 2
Nietzsche was an hysteric in 1875, and by 1880, as his
letters show, he was already exhibiting symptoms of
melancholia a sense of isolation and friendlessness,
acute suspiciousness and a foreboding of approaching
death. The hostility with which his philosophy was re-
ceived increased the depression caused by his physical
ills, but ever and anon the gorgeous egotism of the man
would flash forth and give him comfort.
" An animal, when it is sick," he wrote to Baron von
Seydlitz, in 1888, " slinks away to some dark cavern, and
so, too, does the bite philosophe. I am alone absurdly
alone and in my unflinching and toilsome struggle
against all that men have hitherto held sacred and ven-
1 Geo. M. Gould, M.D. (1848- ), ed. American Medicine, and au-
thor of a host of medical works. His eye-strain theory is applied to a
score of men of genius in " Biographic Clinics," 3 vols., Philadelphia :
I903-4-7.
3 Paul Dubois, M.D. : "The Psychic Treatment of Nervous Dis-
orders," Eng. tr. by S. E. Jelliffe, M. D., Ph. D., and W. A. White,
M. D. ; New York, 1906.
THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE MAN 53
erable, I have become a sort of dark cavern myself
something hidden and mysterious, which is not to be
explored. . . ." But the mood vanished as the words
were penned, and the defiant dionysian roared his chal-
lenge at his foes. " It is not impossible," he said, " that
I am the greatest philosopher of the century perhaps
even more than that ! I may be the decisive and fateful
link between two thousand centuries ! " *
Max Nordau 2 says that Nietzsche was crazy from birth,
but the facts do not bear him out. It is much more reason-
able to hold that the philosopher came into the world a
sound and healthy animal, and that it remained for over-
study in his youth, over- work and over drugging later on,
exposure on the battle field, functional disorders and
constant and violent strife to undermine and eventually
overthrow his intellect.
But if we admit the indisputable fact that Nietzsche
died a madman and the equally indisputable fact that his
insanity was not sudden, but progressive, we by no means
read him out of court as a thinker. A man's reasoning
is to be judged, not by his physical condition, but by its
own ingenuity and accuracy. If a raving maniac says
that twice two make four, it is just as true as it would be
if Pope Pius X or any other undoubtedly sane man were
to maintain it. Judged in this way Nietzsche's philosophy
is very far from insane. Later on we shall consider it as
a workable system, and point out its apparent truths and
apparent errors, but in no place (saving, perhaps, one)
1 Thomas Common : " Nietzsche as Critic, Philosopher, Poet and
Prophet;" London, 1901, p. 54.
8 " Degeneration;" Eng. tr. : New York, 1895 ; pp. 415-473.
54 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
is his argument to be dismissed as the phantasm of a
lunatic.
Nietzsche's sister says that, in the practical affairs of
life, the philosopher was absurdly impractical. He cared
nothing for money and during the better part of his life
had little need to do so. His mother, for a country pastor's
widow, was well-to-do, and when he was twenty-five
his professorship at Basel brought him 3,000 francs a
year. At Basel, in the late sixties, 3,000 francs was the
income of an independent, not to say opulent man.
Nietzsche was a bachelor and lived very simply. It was
only upon books and music and travel that he was ex-
travagant.
After two years' service at Basel, the university author-
ities raised his wage to 4,000 francs, and in 1879, when
ill health forced him to resign, they gave him a pension
of 3,000 francs a year. Besides that, he inherited 30,000
marks from one of his aunts, and so, altogether, he had an
income of $900 or $1,000 a year the sum which Herbert
Spencer regarded, all his life, as an insurance of perfect
tranquillity and happiness.
Nietzsche's passion and dissipation, throughout his life,
was music. In all his books musical terms and figures
of speech are constantly encountered. He played the
piano very well, indeed, and was especially fond of per-
forming transcriptions of the Wagner opera scores. " My
three solaces," he wrote home from Leipsic, " are Schopen-
hauer's philosophy, Schumann's music and solitary walks."
In his late youth, Wagner engrossed him, but his sympa-
thies were broad enough to include Bach, Schubert and
Mendelssohn. His admiration for the last named, in
THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE MAN 55
fact, helped to alienate him from Wagner, who regarded
the Mendelssohn scheme of things as unspeakable.
Nietzsche's own compositions were decidedly heavy
and scholastic. He was a skillful harmonist and contra-
puntalist, but his musical ideas lacked life. Into the
simplest songs he introduced harsh and far-fetched
modulations. The music of Richard Strauss, who pro-
fesses to be his disciple and has found inspiration in his
" Also sprach Zarathustra " would have delighted him.
According to W. J. Henderson, Strauss has achieved the
uncanny feat of writing in two keys at once. Such an effort
would have enlisted Nietzsche's keen interest.
All the same, his music was not a mere creature of the
study and of rules, and we have evidence that he was
frequently inspired to composition by bursts of strong
emotion. On his way to the Franco-Prussian war, he
wrote a patriotic song, words and music, on the train.
He called it " Adieu ! I Must Go ! " and arranged it for
men's chorus, a capella. It would be worth while to hear
a German tnannerchor, with its high, beery tenors, and
ponderous basses, sing this curious composition. Cer-
tainly no more grotesque music was ever put on paper
by mortal man.
Much has been written by various commentators about
the strange charm of Nietzsche's prose style. He was,
indeed, a master of the German language, but this mastery
was not inborn. Like Spencer he made a deliberate effort,
early in life, to acquire ease and force in writing. His
success was far greater than Spencer's. Toward the end
in " Der Antichrist" for instance he attained a
degree of powerful and convincing utterance almost
56 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
comparable to Huxley's. But his style never exhibited
quite that wonderful air of clearness, of utter certainty, of
inevitableness which makes the " Lay Sermons " so
tremendously impressive. Nietzsche was ever nearer to
Carlyle than to Addison. " His style," says a writer in the
Athenceum, " is a shower of sparks, which scatter, like
fireworks, all over the sky."
" My sense for form," says Nietzsche himself, " awak-
ened on my coming in contact with Sallust." Later on he
studied the great French stylists, particularly Laroche-
faucauld, and learned much from them. He became a
master of the aphorism and the epigram, and this skill,
very naturally, led him to descend, now and then, to mere
violence and invective. He called his opponents all sorts
of harsh names liar, swindler, counterfeiter, ox, ass,
snake and thief. Whatever he had to say, he hammered
in with gigantic blows, and to the accompaniment of fear-
some bellowing and grimacing. " Nervous, vivid and
picturesques, full of fire and a splendid vitality," says one
critic, " his style flashed and coruscated like a glowing
flame, and had a sort of dithyrambic movement that at
times recalls the swing of the Pindaric odes." Naturally,
this very abandon made his poetry formless and grotesque.
He scorned metres and rhymes and raged on in sheer
savagery. Reading his verses one is forced irresistibly into
the thought that they should be printed in varied fonts
of type and in a dozen brilliant inks.
Nietzsche never married, and so far as it is recorded
though he often talked of facing the sacrificial altar
he never fell in love. His sister tells us that, in his early
manhood, Schopenhauer's famous not to say notorious
THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE MAN 57
essay " On Women " greatly influenced him, and
that he was too good a European to have much admiration
of the German hausjrau, but she denies, with great vigor,
that he was the jrauenjeind (woman-hater) his acquaint-
ances thought him to be. She proves, by citing chapter
and verse, that he frequently considered the advisability
of marriage, but her own evidence shows that he invariably
decided against it, and that his scarcely- phosphorescent
passion, whenever it broke forth, commonly illumined
some impossible charmer. Nietzsche, during his wander-
ings, was much petted by women, and because his philos-
ophy bore the reputation of being blasphemous and inde-
cent he was quite a hero in the pump-rooms and on the
piazzas of many watering places, but nearly all of the
fair worshippers he singled out of the passing throng were
either safely married or infinitely antique. " For me to
marry," he soliloquized with grim humor in 1887, " would
probably be sheer asininity."
There are sentimental critics who hold that Nietzsche's
utter lack of geniality was due to his lack of a wife. A
good woman alike beautiful and sensible would
have rescued him, they say, from his gloomy fancies. He
would have expanded and mellowed in the sunshine of
her smiles, and children would have civilized him. The
defect in this theory lies in the fact that philosophers do
not seem to flourish amid scenes of connubial joy. High
thinking, it would appear, presupposes boarding house
1 The best English translation of this curious work, which deserves
a great deal more serious consideration than it usually gets, is that
made by T. B. Saunders and published in " Studies in Pessimism : a
Series of Essays by Arthur Schopenhauer; " London, 1890.
58 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
fare and hall bed-rooms. Spinoza, munching his solitary
herring up his desolate backstairs, makes a picture that
pains us, perhaps, but it must be admitted that it also
satisfies our sense of eternal fitness. A married Spinoza,
with two sons at college, another managing the family
lens business, a daughter busy with her trousseau and a
wife growing querulous and fat the vision, alas, is
preposterous, outrageous and impossible ! We must
think of philosophers as beings alone but not lonesome.
A married Schopenhauer or Kant or Nietzsche would be
unthinkable.
That a venture into matrimony might have somewhat
modified Nietzsche's view of womankind is not at all im-
probable, but that this change would have been in the direc-
tion of greater accuracy does not follow. He would have
been either a ridiculously henpecked slave or a violent do-
mestic tyrant. As a bachelor he was comparatively well-
to-do, but with a wife and children his thousand a year
would have meant genteel beggary. His sister had her
own income and her own affairs. When he needed her,
she was ever at his side, but when his working fits were
upon him when he felt efficient and self-sufficient she
discreetly disappeared. A wife's constant presence, day
in and day out, would have irritated him beyond measure
or reduced him to a state of compliance and sloth. Niet-
zsche himself sought to show, in more than one place, that
a man whose whole existence was colored by one woman
would inevitably acquire some trace of her feminine out-
look, and so lose his own sure vision. The ideal state
for a philosopher, indeed, is celibacy tempered by polyg-
amy. He must study women, but he must be free, when
THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE MAN 59
he pleases, to close his note book and go away and digest
its contents with an open mind.
Toward the end of his life, when increasing illness made
him helpless, Nietzsche's faithful sister took the place of
wife and mother in his clouding world. She made a home
for him and she sat by and watched him. They talked
for hours Nietzsche propped up with pillows, his old
ruddiness faded into a deathly white, and his Niagara
of a moustache showing dark against his pallid skin.
They talked of Naumburg and the days of long ago and
the fiery prophet of the superman became simple Brother
Fritz. We are apt to forget that a great man is thus
not only great, but also a man: that a philosopher, in
a life time, spends less hours pondering the destiny of the
race than he gives over to wondering if it will rain to-
morrow and to meditating upon the toughness of steaks,
the dustiness of roads, the stuffiness of railway coaches
and the brigandage of gas companies.
Nietzsche's sister was the only human being that ever
saw him intimately, as a wife might have seen him. Her
affection for him was perfect and her influence over him
perfect, too. Love and understanding, faith and gentle-
ness these are the things which make women the angels
of joyous illusion. Lisbeth, the calm and trusting, had
all in boundless richness. There was, indeed, something
noble, and almost holy in the eagerness with which she
sought her brother's comfort and peace of mind during
his days of stress and storm, and magnified his virtues after
he was gone.
NIETZSCHE THE PHILOSOPHER
i
DIONYSUS VERSUS APOLLO
In one of the preceding chapters Nietzsche's theory
of Greek tragedy was given in outline and its dependence
upon the data of Schopenhauer's philosophy was indi-
cated. It is now in order to examine this theory a bit more
closely and to trace out its origin and development with
greater dwelling upon detail. In itself it is of interest only
as a step forward in the art of literary criticism, but in its
influence upon Nietzsche's ultimate inquiries it has colored,
to a measurable extent, the whole stream of modern
thought.
Schopenhauer laid down, as his cardinal principle, it
will be recalled, the idea that, in all the complex whirl-
pool of phenomena we call human life, the mere will to
survive is at the bottom of everything, and that intelli-
gence, despite its seeming kingship in civilization, is
nothing more, after all, than a secondary manifestation of
this primary will. In certain purely artificial situations,
it may seem to us that reason stands alone (as when, for
example, we essay to solve an abstract problem in mathe-
matics), but in everything growing out of our relations as
human beings, one to the other, the old instinct of race-
and-self- preservation is plainly discernible. All of our
*3
64 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
acts, when they are not based obviously and directly
upon our yearning to eat and take our ease and beget our
kind, are founded upon our desire to appe ar superio r, in
some way or other, to our fellow men about us, and this
desire for superiority, reduced to its lowest terms, is
merely a desire to face the struggle for existence to eat
and beget under more favorable conditions than those
the world accords the average man. " Happiness is the
feeling that power increases that resistance is being
overcome." x
Nietzsche went to Basel firmly convinced that these
fundamental ideas of Schopenhauer were profoundly
true, though he soon essayed to make an amendment
to them. This amendment consisted in changing Schopen-
hauer's " will to live " into " will to power." That which
does not live, he argued, cannot exercise a will to live, and
when a thing is already in existence, how can it strive
after existence? Nietzsche voiced the argument many
times, but its vacuity is apparent upon brief inspection.
He started out, in fact, with an incredibly clumsy mis-
interpretation of Schopenhauer's phrase. The philoso-
pher of pessimism, when he said " will to live " obviously
meant, not will to begin living, but will to continue living.
Now, this will to continue living, if we are to accept words
at their usual meaning, is plainly identical, in every respect,
with Nietzsche's will to power. Therefore, Nietzsche's
amendment was nothing more than the coinage of a new
phrase to express an old idea. The unity of the two
philosophers and the identity of the two phrases are proved
a thousand times by Nietzsche's own discourses. Like
1 " Der Antichrist," $ 2.
DIONYSUS VERSUS APOLLO 65
Schopenhauer he believed that all human ideas were the
di.ect products of the unconscious and unceasing effort
of all living creatures to remain alive. Like Schopenhauer
he believed that abstract ideas, in man, arose out of
concrete ideas, and that the latter arose out of experience,
which, in turn, was nothing more or less than an ordered
remembrance of the results following an endless series
of endeavors to meet the conditions of existence and so
survive. Like Schopenhauer, he believed that the criminal
laws, the poetry, the cookery and the religion of a race were
alike expressions of this unconscious groping for the line
of least resistance.
As a philologist, Nietzsche's interest, very naturally,
was fixed upon the literature of Greece and Rome, and
so it was but natural that his first tests of Schopenhauer's
doctrines should be made in that field. Some time before
this, he had asked himself (as many another man had
asked before him) why it was that the ancient Greeks,
who were an efficient and vigorous people, living in a green
and sunny land, should so delight in gloomy tr aged ies.
One would fancy that a Greek, when he set out to spend
a pleasant afternoon, would seek entertainment that was
frivolous and gay. But instead, he often preferred to
see one of the plays of Thespis, ^Eschylus, Phrynichus
or Pratinus, in which the heroes fougnT hopeless"battles
with fate and died miserably, in wretchedness and de-
spair. Nietzsche concluded that the Greeks had this
liking for tragedy because it seemed to them to set forth,
truthfully and understandably, the conditions of life as
they found it: that it appeared to them as a reasonable
and accurate picture of human existence. The gods or-
66 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
dered the drama on the real stage of the world; the
dramatist ordered the drama on the mimic stage of the
theatre and the latter attained credibility and veri-
similitude in proportion as it approached an exact imita-
tion or reproduction of the former. Nietzsche saw that
this quality of realism was the essence of all stage plays.
" Only insofar as the dramatist," he said, " coalesces
with the priordial dramatist of the world, does he reach
the true function of his craft." " Man posits himself
as the standard ... A race cannot do otherwise than thus
acquiesce in itself." a In other words, man is interested
in nothing whatever that has no bearing upon his own
fate : he himself is his ow n hero . Thus the ancient Greeks
were fond of tragedy because it reflected their life in
miniature. In the mighty warriors who stalked the boards
and defied the gods each Greek recognized himself. In
the conflicts on the stage he saw replicas of that titanic
conflict which seemed to him to be the eternal essence
of human existence.
But why did the Greeks regard life as a conflict? In
seeking an answer to this Nietzsche studied the growth
of their civilization and of their race ideas. These race
ideas, as among all other peoples, were visualized and
crystallized in the qu alities , virtues and o pinio ns attributed
to the r acial god s. Therefore, Nietzsche undertook an
inquiry into the nature of the gods set up by the Greeks,
and particularly into the nature of the two gods who
controlled the general scheme of Greek life, and, in
consequence, of Greek art, for art, as we have seen, is
i " Die Geburt der Tragodie," 5.
" Gotzendammerung" ix, 19.
DIONYSUS VERSUS APOLLO 67
nothing more or less than a race's view or opinion of itself,
i. e. an expression of the things it sees and the conclusions
it draws when it observes and considers itself. These gods
were Apollo and Dionysus.
Apollo, according to the Greeks, was the inventor of
music, poetry and o rator y, and as such, became the god
oflill art. Under his beneficent sway the Greeks became
a race of artists and acquired all the refinement and
culture that this implies. But the art that he taught them
was essentially contemplative and s ubject ive. It de-
picted, not so much things as they were, as things as they
had been. Thus it became a mere record, and as such,
exhibited repose as its chief quality. Whether it were
expressed as sculpture, architecture, painting or epic
poetry, this element of repose, or of action translated into
repose, was uppermost. A painting of a man running, no
matter how vividly it suggests the vitality and activity of
the runner, is itself a thing inert and lifeless. Architecture,
no matter how much its curves suggest motion and its
hard lines the strength which may be translated into
energy, is itself a thing immovable. Poetry, so long as it
takes the form of the epic and is thus merely a chronicle
of past actions, is as lifeless, at bottom, as a tax list.
The Greeks, during Apollo's reign as god of art, thus
turned art into a mere inert fossil or record a record
either of human life itself or of the emotions which the
vicissitudes of life arouse in the spectator. This notion
of art was reflected in their whole civilization. They
became singers of songs and weavers of metaphysical
webs rather than doers of deeds, and the man who could
carve a flower was more honored among them than the
68 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
man who could grow one. In brief, they began to degen-
erate and go stale. Great men and great ideas grew few.
They were on the downward road.
What they needed, of course, was the shock of contact
with some barbarous, primi tive pe ople an infusion of
good red blood from some race that was still fighting for
its daily bread and had had no time to grow contempla-
tive and retrospective and fat. This infusion of red blood
came in good time, but instead of coming from without
(as it did years afterward in Rome, when the Goths
swooped down from the North), it came from within. That
is to say, there was no actual invasion of barbarian hordes,
but merely an auto-reversion to simpler and more primi-
tive ideas, which fanned the dormant energy of the Greeks
into flame and so allowed them to accomplish their own
salvation. This impulse came in the form of a sudden
craze for a new god Bac chus Dionysu s.
Bacchus was a rude, boisterous fellow and the very
antithesis of the quiet, contemplative Apollo. We re-
member him today merely as the god of wine , but in his
time he stood, not only for drinking and carousing, but
also for a whole system of art and a whole notion of
civilization. Apollo represented the life meditative;
Bacchus Dionysus represented the life strenuou s^ The
one favored those forms of art by which human existence
is halted and embalmed in some lifeless medium
sculpture, architecture, painting or epic poetry. The
other was the god of life in process of actual being, and so
stood for those forms of art which are not mere records or
reflections of past existence, but brief snatches of present
existence itself dancing, singing, music and the drama.
DIONYSUS VERSUS APOLLO 69
It will be seen that this barbarous invasion of the new-
god and his minions made a profound change in the whole
of Greek culture. Instead of devoting their time to writing
epics, praising the laws, splitting philosophical hairs and
hewing dead marble, the Greeks began to question all
things made and ordained and to indulge in riotous and
gorgeous orgies, in which thousands of maidens danced
and hundreds of poets chanted songs of love and war, and
musicians vied with cooks and vintners to make a grand
delirium of joy. The result was that the entire outlook
of the Greeks, upon history, upon morality and upon
human life, was changed. Once a people of lofty intro-
spection and elegant repose, they became a race of violent
activity and strong emotions. They began to devote
themselves, not to waiting down the praises of existence
as they had found it, but to the task of improving life and
of widening the scope of present and future human ac-
tivity and the bounds of possible human happiness. I
But in time there came a reaction and Apollo once
more triumphed. He reigned for awhile, unsteadily and
uncertainly, and then, again, the pendulum swung to the
other side. Thus the Greeks swayed from one god to
the other. During Apollo's periods of ascendancy they
were contemplative and imaginative, and man, to them,
seemed to reach his loftiest heights when he was most the
historian. But when Dionysus was their best-beloved,
1 " This enrichment of consciousness among the Greeks . . . showed
itself first in the development of lyric poetry, in which the gradual trans-
ition from the expression of universal religious and political feeling to
that which is personal and individual formed a typical process. " Dr.
Wilhelm Windelband, A History of Ancient Philosophy," tr. by H. E.
Cushman; p. 18 ; New York, 1901.
70 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
they bubbled over with the joy of life, and man seemed,
not an historian, but a maker of history not an artist,
but a work of art. In the end, they verged toward a safe
middle ground and began to weigh, with cool and calm,
the ideas represented by the two gods. When they had
done so, they came to the conclusion that it was not well
to give themselves unreservedly to either. To attain the
highest happiness, they decided, humanity required a
dash of both. There was need in the world for dionysians,
to give vitality an outlet and life a purpose, and there was
need, too, for apollonians, to build life's monuments and
read its lessons. They found that true civilization meant
a constant conflict between the two between the dreamer
and the man of action, between the artist who builds
temples and the soldier who burns them down, between the
priest and policeman who insist upon the permanence of
laws and customs as they are and the criminal and reformer
and conqueror who insist that they be changed.
When they had learned this lesson, the Greeks began
to soar to heights of culture and civilization that, in the
past, had been utterly beyond them, and so long as they
maintained the balance between Apollo and Dionysus
they continued to advance. But now and again, one god
or the other grew stronger, and then there was a halt.
When Apollo had the upper hand, Greece became too
contemplative and too placid. When Dionysus was the
victor, Greece became wild and thoughtless and careless
of the desires of others, and so turned a bit toward bar-
barism. This seesawing continued for a long while, but
Apollo was the final victor if victor he may be called.
In the eternal struggle for existence Greece became a
DIONYSUS VERSUS APOLLO 71
mere looker-on. Her highest honors went to Socrates^.;
a man who tried to reduce all life to syllogisms. Her
favorite sons were rhetoricians, dialecticians and philo-
sophical cobweb-spinners. She placed ideas above deeds.
And in the end, as all students of history know, the state
that once ruled the world descended to senility and decay,
and dionysians from without overran it, and it perished
in anarchy and carnage. But with this we have nothing
to do.
Nietzsche noticed that tragedy was most popular in
Greece during the best days of the country's culture,
when Apollo and Dionysus were properly balanced, one
against the other. This ideal balancing between the two
gods was the result, he concluded, not of conscious, but
of unconscious impulses. That is to say, the Greeks did
not call parliaments and discuss the matter, as they might
have discussed a question of taxes, but acted entirely
in obedience to their racial instinct. This instinct this
will to live or desire for power led them to feel, without
putting it into words, or even, for awhile, into definite
thoughts, that they were happiest and safest and most
vigorous, and so best able to preserve their national exist-
ence, when they kept to the golden mean. They didn't
reason it out ; they merely felt it.
But as Schopenhauer shows us, instinct, long exercised,
means experience, and the memory of experience, in the
end, crystallizes into what we call intelligence or reason.
Thus the unconscious Greek feeling that the golden mean
best served the race, finally . took the form of an idea :
i. e. that human life was an endless conflict between two
forces, or impulses. These, as the Greeks saw them, were
72 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
the dionysian impulse to destroy, to burn the candle, to
" use up" life; and the apollonian impulse to preserve.
Seeing life in this light, it was but natural that the Greeks
should try to exhibit it in the same light on their stage.
And so their tragedies were invariably founded upon some
deadly and unending conflict usually between a human
hero and the gods. In a word, they made their stage plays
set forth life as they saw it and found it, for, like all other
human beings, at all times and everywhere* they were
more interested in life as they found it than in anything
else on the earth below or in the vasty void above.
When Nietzsche had worked out this theory of Greek
tragedy and of Greek life, he set out, at once, to apply
it to modern civilization, to see if it could explain certain
ideas of the present as satisfactorily as it had explained
one great idea of the past. He found that it could : that
men were still torn between the apollonian impulse to
conform and moralize and the dionysian impulse to exploit
and explore. He found that all mankind might be divided
into two classes: the apollonians who stood for perma-
nence and the dionysians who stood for change. It was
the aim of the former to live in strict obedience to certain
invariable rules, which found expression as religion, law
and morality. It was the aim of the latter to live under
the most favorable conditions possible; to adapt them-
selves to changing circumstances, and to avoid the snares
of artificial, permanent rules.
Nietzsche believed that an ideal human society would
be one in which these two classes of men were evenly
balanced in which a vast, inert, religious, moral slave
class stood beneath a small, alert, iconoclastic, immoral,
DIONYSUS VERSUS APOLLO 73
progressive master class. He held that this master class
this aristocracy of efficiency should regard the slave
class as all men now regard the tribe of domestic beasts :
as an order of servitors to be exploited and turned to ac-
count. The aristocracy of Europe, though it sought to do
this with respect to the workers of Europe, seemed to him
to fail miserably, because it was itself lacking in true
efficiency. Instead of practising a magnificent opportun-
ism and so adapting itself to changing conditions, it stood
for formalism and permanence. Its fetish was property
in land and the worship of this fetish had got it into such
a rut that it was becoming less and less fitted to survive,
and was, indeed, fast sinking into helpless parasitism.
Its whole color and complexion were essentially apollonic. '
Therefore Nietzsche preached the gospel of Dionysus,
that a new aristocracy of efficiency might take the place of
this old aristocracy of memories and inherited glories.
He believed that it was only in this way that mankind
could hope to forge ahead. He believed that there was
need in the world for a class freed from the handicap
of law and morality, a class acutely adaptable and im-
moral; a class bent on achieving, not the equality of all
men, but the production, at the top, of the superman.
, l Vide the chapter on " Civilization."
y
THE ORIGIN OF MORALITY
It may be urged with some reason, by those who have
read the preceding chapter carefully , that the Nietzschean
argument, so far, has served only to bring us face to face
with a serious contradiction. We have been asked to
believe that all human impulses are merely expressions
of the primary instinct to preserve life by meeting the
changing conditions of existence, and in the same breath
we have been asked to believe, too, that the apollonian
idea which, like all other ideas, must necessarily be a
result of this instinct destroys adaptability and so tends
to make life extra hazardous and difficult and progress
impossible. Here we have our contradiction: the will
to live is ac hievin g, not life, but death. How are we to
explain it away ? How are we to account for the fact that
the apollonian idea at the bottom of Christian morality,
for example, despite its origin in the will to live, has an
obvious tendency to combat free progress ? How are we
to account for the fact that the church, which is based upon
this Christian morality, is, always has been and ever will
be a bitter and implacable foe of good health, intellectual
freedom, self-defense and every other essential factor
of efficiency?
74
THE ORIGIN OF MORALITY 75"
Nietzsche answers this by pointing out that an idea, /
while undoubtedly an effect or expression of the primary
life instinct, is by no means identical with it. The latter
manifests itself in widely different acts as conditions
change: it is necessarily opportunistic and variab le.
The former, on the contrary, has a tendency to survive
unchanged, even after its truth is transformed into falsity.
That is to say, an idea which arises from a true and
healthy instinct may survive long after this instinct itself,
in consequence of the changing conditions of existence,
has disappeared and given place to an instinct diametric-
ally opposite. This survival of ideas we call morality.
By its operation the human race is frequently saddled
with the notions of generations long dead and forgotten.
Thus we modern Christians still subscribe to the apol-
lonian morality of the ancient Jew s our moral fore-
bears despite the fact that their ideas were evolved
under conditions vastly different from those which con-
front us today. Thus the expressions of the life instinct,
by obtaining an artificial and unnatural permanence,
turn upon the instinct itself and defeat its beneficent
purpose. Thus our contradiction is explained.
To make this rather complicated reasoning more clear
it is necessary to follow Nietzsche through the devious
twists and windings of his exhaustive inquiry into the
origin of moral codes. In making this inquiry he tried
to rid himself of all considerations of authority and rev-
erence, just as a surgeon, in performing a difficult and
painful operation, tries to rid himself of all sympathy
and emotion. Adopting this plan, he found that a code /
of morals was nothing more than a system of customs^
76 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
laws and ideas which had its origin in the instinctive
desire of some definite race to live under conditions which
best subserved its own welfare. The morality of the
Egyptians, he found, was one thing, and the morality of
the Goths was another. The reason for the difference
lay in the fact that the environment of the Egyptians
the climate of their land, the nature of their food supply
and the characteristics of the peoples surrounding them
differed from the environment of the Goths. The morality
of each race was, in brief, its consensus of instinct, and
once having formulated it and found it good, each sought
to give it force and permanence. This was accomplished
by putting it into the mouths of the gods. What was once
a mere expression of instinct thus became the mandate
of a divine law-giver. What was once a mere attempt
to meet imminent and usually temporary conditions
of existence, thus became a code of rules to be obeyed
forever, no matter how much these conditions of existence
might change./ Wherefore, Nietzsche concluded that the*/
chief characteristic of a moral system was its tendency
to perpetuate itself unchanged, and to destroy all who
questioned it or denied it.y
Nietzsche saw that practically all members of a given
race, including the great majority of those who vio-
lated these rules, were influenced into believing them
1 II Thess. II, 15: " Hold the tradition which ye have been taught."
Eusebius Pamphilus : " Those things which are written believe ; those
things which are not written, neither think upon nor inquire after."
St. Austin : " Whatever ye hear from the holy scriptures let it favor
well with you ; whatever is without them refuse." See also St. Basil,
Tertullian and every other professional moralist since, down to John
Alexander Dowie and Emperor William of Germany.
/
THE ORIGIN OF MORALITY 77
or at least into professing to believe them utterly
and unchangeably correct, and that it was the main
function of all religions to enforce and support them by
making them appear as laws laid down, at the beginning
of the world, by the lord of the universe himself, or at
some later period, by his son, messiah or spokesman.
" Morality," he said, " not only commands innumerable
terrible means for preventing critical hands being laid
upon her : her security depends still more upon a sort of
enchantment at which she is phenomenally skilled. That
is to say, she knows how to enrapture. She appeals to the
emotions; her glance paralyzes the reason and the will.
. . . Ever since there has been talking and persuading on
earth, she has been the supreme mistress of seduction." 1
Thus " a double wall is put up against the continued test-
ing, selection and criticism of values. On one hand is
revelation, and on the other, veneration and tradition.
The authority of the law is based upon two assumptions /
first, that God gave it, and secondly, that the wise men
of the past obeyed it." 2 Nie tzsche came to the conclusion
that this universal tendency to submit to moral codes
this unreasonable, emotional faith in the invariable truth
of moral regulations was a curse to the human race and
the chief cause of its degeneration, inefficiency and un-
happiness. And then he threw down the gauntlet by
denying that an ever-present deity had anything to do with
framing such codes and by endeavoring to prove that,
far from being eternally true, they commonly became
false with the passing of the years. Starting out as ex-
pressions of the primary life-instinct's effort to adapt
1 " Morgenrote? preface, 3. 3 Der Antichrist," 57.
78 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
some individual or race to certain given conditions of
existence, they took no account of the fact that these
conditions were constantly changing, and that the thing
which was advantageous at one time and to one race was
frequently injurious at some other time and to another race/
This reduction of all morality to mere expressions of
expedience engaged the philosopher during what he calls
his " tunneling " period. To exhibit his precise method
of " tunneling " let us examine, for example, a moral idea
which is found in the code of every civilized country.
This is the notion that there is something inherently and
fundamentally wrong in the act of taking human life.
We have good reason to believe that murde r was as much
a crime 5,000 years ago as it is today and that it took
rank at the head of all conceivable outrages against
humankind at the very dawn of civilization. And why?
Simply because the man who took his neighbor's life
made the life of everyone else in his neighborhood pre-
carious and uncomfortable. It was plain that what he
had done once he could do again, and so the peace and
s ecuri ty of the whole district were broken.
Now, it is apparent that the average human being
desires peace and security beyond all things, because it is
only when he has them that he may satisfy his will to
live by procuring food and shelter for himself and by
becoming the father of children. He is ill-fitted to fight
for his existence ; the mere business of living and begetting
his kind consumes all of his energies : "the world, as a
world," as Horace Greeley said, " barely makes a living."
Therefore, it came to be recognized at the very beginning
of civilization, that the man who killed other men was a
THE ORIGIN OF MORALITY 79
foe to those conditions which the average man had to
seek in order to exist to peace and order and quiet and
security. Out of this grew the doctrine that it was im-
moral to commit murder, and as soon as mankind became
imaginative enough to invent personal gods, this doctrine
was put into their mouths and so attained the force and
authority of divine wisdom. In some such manner, said v
Nietzsche, the majority of our present moral concepts
were evolved. At the start they were mere echoes of a
protest against actions which made existence difficult and
so outraged and opposed the will to live.
As a rule, said Nietzsche, such familiar protests as that
against murder, which laid down the maxim that the
community had rights superior to those of the individual,
were voiced by the weak, who found it difficult to protect
themselves, as individuals, against the strong. One
strong man, perhaps, was more than a match, in the
struggle for existence, for ten weak men and so the latter
were at a disadvantage. But fortunately for them they
could overcome this by combination, for they were always
in an overwhelming majority, numerically, and in conse-
quence they were stronger, taken together, than the pha-
lanx of the strong. Thus it gradually became possible for
them to enforce the rules that they laid down for their
own protection which rules always operated against
the wishes and, as an obvious corollary, against the^ 5
best' interests of the strong. 1 When the time arrived
1 The fact that the state is founded, not upon a mysterious " social
impulse " in man, but upon each individual's regard for his own interest,
was first pointed out by Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), in his argument
against Aristotle and Grotius.
<jn k//w#i
!> tj**t
80 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
for fashioning religious systems, these rules were credited
to the gods, and again the weak triumphed. Thus the
desire of the weak among the world's early races of men,
to protect their crops and wives against the forays of the
strong, by general laws and divine decrees instead of by
each man fighting for his own, has come down to us in the
form of the Christian commandments: " Thou shalt not
steal. . . . Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house.
. . . Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his
manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass,
nor anything that is thy neighbor's."
J * Nietzsche shows that the device of putting man-made
rules of morality into the mouths of the gods a device
practiced by every nation in history has vastly increased
the respectability and force of all moral ideas. This is
well exhibited by the fact that, even today and among
thinking men, offenses which happen to be included in
the scope of the Ten Commandments, either actually or
by interpretation, are regarded with a horror which
seldom, if ever, attaches to offenses obviously defined and
delimited by merely human agencies. Thus, theft is
everywhere looked upon as dishonorable, but cheating
at elections, which is fully as dangerous to the body
politic, is commonly pardoned by public opinion as a
normal consequence of enthusiasm, and in some quarters
is even regarded as an evidence of courage, not to say of
a high and noble sense of gratitude and honor.
Nietzsche does not deny that human beings have a right
to construct moral codes for themselves, and neither does
he deny that they are justified, from their immediate stand-
point, at least, in giving these codes the authority and force
THE ORIGIN OF MORALITY 81
of divine commands. But he points out that this procedure
is bound to cause trouble in the long run, for the reason
that divine commands are fixed and invariable, and do
not change as fast as the instincts and needs of the race.
Suppose, for instance, that all acts of Parliament and
Congress were declared to be the will of God, and that,
as a natural consequence, the power to repeal or modify
them were abandoned. It is apparent that the world
would outgrow them as fast as it does today, but it is also
apparent that the notion that they were infallible would
paralyze and block all efforts, by atheistic reformers, to
overturn or amend them. As a result, the British and
American people would be compelled to live in obedience
to rules which, on their very face, would often seem
illogical and absurd.
- Yet the same thing happens to notions of morality.
They are devised, at the start, as measures of expediency,
and then given divine sanction in order to lend them
authority. In the course of time, perhaps, the race out-
grows them, but none the less, they continue in force
at least so long as the old gods are worshipped. Thus
human laws become divine and inhuman. Thus moral-
ity itself becomes immoral. Thus the old instinct whereby
society differentiates between good things and bad, grows
muddled and uncertain, and the fundamental purpose of
morality that of producing a workable scheme of
living is defeated. Thereafter it is next to impossible
to distinguish between the laws that are still useful and
those that have outlived their usefulness, and the man
who makes the attempt the philosopher who endeavors
to show humanity how it is condemning as bad a thing
82 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
that, in itself, is now good, or exalting as good a thing that,
for all its former goodness, is now bad this man is
damned as a heretic and anarchist, and according as
fortune serves him, is burned at the stake or merely read
out of the human race. 1
Nietzsche found that all existing moral ideas might be
divided into two broad classes, corresponding to the two
broad varieties of human beings the masters and the
slaves. Every man is either a master or a slave, and the
same is true of every race. Either it rules some other
race or it is itself ruled by some other race. It is impossible
to think of a man or of a people as being utterly isolated,
and even were this last possible, it is obvious that the
community would be divided into those who ruled and
those who obeyed. The masters are strong and are capable
of doing as they please; the slaves are weak and must
obtain whatever rights they crave by deceiving, cajoling
or collectively intimidating their masters. Now, since all
moral codes, as we have seen, are merely collections of
the rules laid down by some definite group of human beings
for their comfort and protection, it is evident that the
morality of the master class has for its main object the
preservation of the authority and kingship of that class,
while the morality of the slave class seeks to make slavery
as bearable as possible and to exalt and dignify those
things in which the slave can hope to become the appar-
ent equal or superior of his master.
The civilization which existed in Europe before the
1 The risk of such idol-smashing is well set forth at length by G.
Bernard Shaw in the preface to "The Quintessence of Ibsenism;"
London, 1904.
THE ORIGIN OF MORALITY 83
dawn of Christianity was a culture based upon master-
morality, and so we find that the theologians and moralists
of those days esteemed a certain action as right only when
it plainly subserved the best interests of strong, resource-
ful men. The ideal man of that time was not a meek and
lowly sufferer, bearing his cross uncomplainingly, but an
alert, proud and combative being who knew his rights
and dared maintain them. In consequence we find that
in many ancient languages, the words " good " and
" aristocratic " were synonymous. Whatever served to
make a man a nobleman cunning, wealth, physical
strength, eagerness to resent and punish injuries was
considered virtuous, praiseworthy and moral, 1 and on
the other hand, whatever tended to make a man sink to
the level of the great masses humility, lack of ambition,
modest desires, lavish liberality and a spirit of ready for-
giveness was regarded as immoral and wrong.
" Among these master races," says Nietzsche, " the
antithesis ' good and bad ' signified practically the same
as ' noble and contemptible ! ' The despised ones were
the cowards, the timid, the insignificant, the self-abasing
the dog-species of men who allowed themselves to be
misused the flatterers and, above all, the liars. It is a
fundamental belief of all true aristocrats that the common
people are deceitful. ' We true ones,' the ancient Greek
nobles called themselves.
1 Henry Bradley, in a lecture at the London Institution, in Jan.
1907, showed that this was true of the ancient Britons, as is demon-
strated by their liking for bestowing such names as Wolf and Bear upon
themselves. It was true, also, of the North American Indians and of
all primitive races conscious of their efficiency.
84 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
"It is obvious that the designations of moral worth
were at first applied to individual men, and not to actions
or ideas in the abstract. The master type of man regards
himself as a sufficient judge of worth. He does not seek
- m g^_ approval: his own feelings determine his conduct. * What
L 'J+JftA. is injurious to me,' he reasons, ' is injurious jn itself.'
f^+tL This type of man honors whatever qualities he recognizes
in himself: his morality is self-glorification. He has a
feeling of plentitude and power and the happiness of high
tension. He helps the unfortunate, perhaps, but it is not
out of sympathy. The impulse, when it comes at all, rises
out of his superabundance of power his thirst to func-
tion. He honors his own power, and he knows how to
keep it in hand. He joyfully exercises strictness and
severity over himself and he reverences all that is strict
and severe. ' Wotan has put a hard heart in my breast/
says an old Scandinavian saga. There could be no better
expression of the spirit of a proud viking. . . .
" The morality of the master class is irritating to the
taste of the present day because of its fundamental prin-
ciple that a man has obligations only to his equals ; that
he may act to all of lower rank and to all that are foreign
as he pleases. . . . The man of the master class has a
capacity for prolonged gratitude and prolonged revenge,
but it is only among his equals. He has, too, great re-
sourcefulness in retaliation ; great capacity for friendship,
and a strong need for enemies, that there may be an outlet
for his envy, quarrelsomeness and arrogance, and that by
I spending these passions in this manner, he may be gentle
towards his friends." x
1 " Jenseits von Gut und Bbse" 260.
THE ORIGIN OF MORALITY 85
By this ancient herrentnoral, or master-morality,
Napoleon Bonaparte would have been esteemed a god and
the Man of Sorrows an enemy to society. It was the eth-
ical scheme, indeed, of peoples who were sure of themselves
and who had no need to make terms with rivals or to seek
the good will or forbearance of anyone. In its light, such
things as mercy and charity seemed pernicious and im-
moral, because they meant a transfer of power from strong
men, whose proper business it was to grow stronger and
stronger, to weak men, whose proper business it was to serve
the strong. In a word, this master-morality was the moral-
ity of peoples who knew, by experience, that it was pleasant
to rule and be strong. They knew that the nobleman
was to be envied and the slave to be despised, and so they
came to believe that everything which helped to make a man
noble was good and everything which helped to make
him a slave was evil. The idea of nobility and the idea
of good were expressed by the same word, and this verbal
identity survives in the English language today, despite
the fact that our present system of morality, as we shall
see, differs vastly from that of the ancient master
races.
In opposition to this master-morality of the strong,
healthy nations there was the sklavmoral, or slave-morality,
of the weak nations. The Jews of the four or five centuries
preceding the birth of Christ belonged to the latter class.
Compared to the races around them, they were weak and
helpless. It was out of the question for them to conquer
the Greeks or Romans and it was equally impossible for
them to force their laws, their customs or their religion
upon their neighbors on other sides. They were, indeed,
86 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
in the position of an army surrounded by a horde of
irresistible enemies. The general of such an army, with the
instinct of self-preservation strong within him, does not
attempt to cut his way out. Instead he tries to make the
best terms he can, and if the leader of the enemy insists
upon making him and his vanquished force prisoners, he
endeavors to obtain concessions which will make this
imprisonment as bearable as possible. The strong man's
object is to take as much as he can from his victim; the
weak man's is to save as much as he can from his
conqueror.
The fruit of this yearning of weak nations to preserve
as much of their national unity as possible is the thing
Nietzsche calls slave-morality. Its first and foremost
purpose is to discourage, and if possible, blot out, all those
traits and actions which are apt to excite the ire, the envy,
or the cupidity of the menacing enemies round about.
Revenge, pride and ambition are condemned as evils.
Humility, forgiveness, contentment and resignation are
r rc~i esteemed virtues. s^The moral man is the man who has
p*JT*\ lost all desire to triumph and exult over his fellow- men
the man of mercy, of charity, of self-sacrifice. )
" The impotence which does not retaliate for injuries," N
says Nietzsche, " is falsified into * goodness ; ' timorous
abjectness becomes ' humility ; ' subjection to those one
hates is called ' obedience,' and the one who desires and / .
- commands this impotence, abjectness and subjection is
called God. ' The inoffensiveness of the weak, their
cowardice (of which they have ample store) ; their stand-
ing at the door, their unavoidable time-serving and waiting
all these things get good names. The inability to get
w
THE ORIGIN OF MORALITY 87^
revenge is translated into an unwillingness to get revenge, kj >
and becomes forgiveness, a virtue.
M They are wretched these mutterers and forgers ,5 a
but they say that their wretchedness is of God's choosing
and even call it a distinction that he confers upon them, tti *~J> >
The dogs which are liked best, they say, are beaten most. *~ i
Their wretchedness is a test, a preparation, a schooling fr-y
something which will be paid for, one day, in happiness.
They call that ' bliss.' " '
By the laws of this slave-morality the immoral man is
him, who seeks power and eminence and riches the
millionaire, the robber, the fighter, the schemer. The
act of acquiring property by conquest which is looked
upon as a matter of course by master-morality becomes
a crime and is called theft. The act of mating in obedience
to natural impulses, without considering the desire of ? ^ \ I
others, becomes adultery ; the quite natural act of destroy- *
ing one's enemies becomes murder. !
l " Zur Geneologie der Moral? I, 14.
>!%-*
Ill
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
Despite the divine authority which gives permanence
to all moral codes, this permanence is constantly opposed
by the changing conditions of existence, and very often
the opposition is successful. The slave-morality of the
ancient Jews has come down to us, with its outlines little
changed, as ideal Christianity, but such tenacious per-
sistence of a moral scheme is comparatively rare. As a
general rule, in truth, races change their gods very much
oftener than we have changed ours, and have less faith
than we in the independence of intelligence. In conse-
quence they constantly revamp and modify their moral
concepts. The same process of evolution affects even our
own code, despite the extraordinary tendency to perma-
nence just noted. Our scheme of things, in its funda-
mentals, has persisted for 2,500 years, but in matters of
detail it is constantly in a state of flux. We still call our-
selves Christians, but we have evolved many moral ideas
that are not to be found in the scriptures and we have
sometimes denied others that are plainly there. Indeed,
as will be shown later on, the beatitudes would have wiped
us from the face of the earth centuries ago had not our
forefathers devised means of circumventing them without
\S
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 89
openly questioning them. Our progress has been made,
not as a result of our moral code, but as a result of our
success in dodging its inevitable blight.
All morality, in fact, is colored and modified by oppor-
tunism, even when its basic principles are held sacred
and kept more or less intact. The thing that is a sin in
one age becomes a virtue in the next. The ancient Per-
sians, who were Zoroastrians, regarded murder and
suicide, under any circumstances, as crimes. The modern
Persians, who are Mohammedans, think that ferocity
and foolhardiness are virtues. The ancient Japanese, to
whom the state appeared more important than the man,
threw themselves joyously upon the spears of the state's
enemies. The modern Japanese, who are fledgling
individualists, armor their ships with nickel steel and fight
on land from behind bastions of earth and masonry.
And in the same way the moral ideas that have grown out
of Christianity, and even some of its important original
doctrines, are being constantly modified' and revised,
despite the persistence of the fundamental notion of self-
sacrifice at the bottom of them. In Dr. Andrew D. White's
monumental treatise " On the Warfare of Science with
Theology in Christendom " there are ten thousand proofs
of it. Things that were crimes in the middle ages are quite
respectable at present. Actions that are punishable by
excommunication and ostracism in Catholic Spain today,
are sufficient to make a man honorable in freethinking
England. In France, where the church once stood above
the king, it is now stripped of all rights not inherent in the
most inconsequential social club. In Germany it is a
penal offense to poke fun at the head of the state ; in the
go FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
United States it is looked upon by many as an evidence
of independence and patriotism. In some of the American
states a violation of the seventh commandment, in any
form, is a felony ; in Maryland, it is, in one form, a mere
misdemeanor, and another form, no crime at all.
" Many lands did I see," says Zarathustra, " and many
peoples, and so I discovered the good and bad of many
peoples. . . . Much that was regarded as good by one
people was held in scorn and contempt by another. I
found many things called bad here and adorned with
purple honors there. ... A catalogue of blessings is
posted up for every people. Lo ! it is the catalogue of
their triumphs the voice of their will to power ! . . .
Whatever enables them to rule and conquer and dazzle,
to the dismay and envy of their neighbors, is regarded by
them as the summit, the head, the standard of all things.
. . . Verily, men have made for themselves all their
good and bad. Verily they did not find it so : it did not
come to them as a voice from heaven. ... It is only
through valuing that there comes value."
To proceed from the concrete to the general, and to
risk a repetition, it is evident that all morality, as Niet-
// zsche pointed out, is nothing more than an expression of
expediency. 2 A thing is called wrong solely because a
definite group of people, at some specific stage of their
career, have found it injurious to them. The fact that
Cx/f-
1 " Also sprach Zarathustra * I.
+*. ""The word mos, from signifying what is customary, has come to
signify what is right." Sir Wm. Markby : " Elements of Law Considered
with Reference to General Principles of Jurisprudence : " pp. 1 18, 5th
ed., London, 1896.
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL gf
they have discovered grounds for condemning it in some
pronunciamento of their god signifies nothing, for the
reason that the god of aj>eorjleJs__ never ar^thing^nore
than a reflection o f_ their ideas for the time being. As
Prof? Otto Pfleiderer has shown, 1 Jesus Christ was a
product of his age, mentally and spiritually as well as
physically. Had there been no Jewish theology before
him, he could not have sought or obtained recognition as
a messiah, and the doctrines that he expressed had he
ever expressed them at all would have fallen upon
unheeding and uncomprehending ears.
Therefore it is plain that the Ten Commandments are
no more immortal and immutable, in the last analysis,
than the acts of Parliament. They have lasted longer, it
is true, and they will probably continue in force for many
years, but this permanence is only relative. Funda-
mentally they are merely expressions of expedience, like
the rules of some great game, and it is easily conceivable
that there may arise upon the earth, at some future day,
a race to whom they will appear injurious, unreasonable
and utterly immoral. " The time may come, indeed, when
we will prefer the Memorabilia of Socrates to the Bible." 2
Admitting this, we must admit the inevitable corollary
that morality in the absolute sense has nothing to do with
truth, and that it is, in fact, truth's exact antithesis.
Absolute truth necessarily implies eternal jtruth. The
statement that a man and a woman are unlike was true
on the day the first man and woman walked the earth
*In his masterly treatise, " Christfrin Origins," tr. by David A.
Huebsch: New York, 1906.
2 " Menschliches allzu Menschliches " III.
C^
k.\
9 2
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
and it will be true so long as there are men and women.
Such a statement approaches very near our ideal of an
*?? absolute truth. But the theory that humility is a virtue
^ ko is not an absolute truth, for while it was undoubtedly
true in ancient Judea, it was not true in ancient Greece
and is debatable, to say the least, in modern Europe and
America. The Western Catholic Church, despite its
extraordinarily successful efforts at permanence, has
given us innumerable proofs that laws, in the long run,
always turn upon themselves. The popes were infallible
when they held that the earth was flat and they were
infallible when they decided that it was round and so
we reach a palpable absurdity. n Therefore, we may lay
it down as an axiom that morality, in itself, is the enemy
of truth, and that, for at least half of the time, (by the
mathematical doctrine of probabilities,) it is necessarily
untrue, l '
If this is so, why should any man bother about moral
rules and regulations? Why should any man conform to
laws formulated by a people whose outlook on the universe
probably differed diametrically from his own ? Why should
any man obey a regulation which is denounced, by his
common-sense, as a hodge-podge of absurdities, and why
should he model his whole life upon ideals invented to
serve the temporary needs of a forgotten race of some
past age? These questions Nietzsche asked himself.
His conclusion was a complete rejection of all fixed codes
of morality, and with them of all gods, messiahs, prophets,
saints, popes, bishops, priests, and rulers. "
The proper thing for a man to do, he decided, was to
formulate his own morality as he progressed from lower
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 93^
to higher things. He should reject the old conceptions of
good and evil and substitute for them the human valua-
tions, good and bad. In a word, he should put behind
him the morality invented by some dead race to make
its own progress easy and pleasant, and credited to some
man-made god to give it authority, and put in the place
of this a workable personal morality based upon his
own power of distinguishing between the things which
benefit him and the things which injure him. He should
(to make the idea clearer) judge a given action solely by f
its effect upon his own welfare ; his own desire or will to /
live; and that of his children after him. All notions of/
sin and virtue should be banished from his mind. He'
should weigh everything in the scales of individual expe-
dience.
Such a frank wielding of a razor-edged sword in the
struggle for existence is frowned upon by our Jewish
slave-morality. We are taught to believe that the only
true happiness lies in self-effacement ; that it is wrong to
profit by the misfortune or weakness of another. But
against this Nietzsche brings the undeniable answer that
all life, no matter how much we idealize it, is, at bottom,
nothing more or less than exploitation. The gain of one
man is inevitably the loss of some other man. That
yfcne emperor may die of a surfeit the peasant must die of
\y starvation. Among human beings, as well as among the
ffj( ^bacilli in the hanging drop and the lions in the jungle,
A\ there is ever in progress this ancient struggle for exist-
ence. It is waged decently, perhaps, but it is none the less
savage and unmerciful, and the devil always takes the
hindmost.
94 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
" Life," says Nietzsche, "is essentially the appropriation,
the injury, the vanquishing of the unadapted and weak.
Its object is to obtrude its own forms and insure its own
unobstructed functioning. Even an organization whose
individuals forbear in their dealings with one another (a
healthy aristocracy, for example) must, if it would live
and not die, act hostilely toward all other organizations.
It must endeavor to gain ground, to obtain advantages, to
acquire ascendancy. And this is not because it is immoral,
but because it lives, and all life is will to power."
Nietzsche argues from this that it is absurd to put the
stigma of evil upon the mere symptoms of the great
struggle. " In itself," he says, " an act of injury, violation,
exploitation or annihilation cannot be wrong, for life
operates, essentially and fundamentally, by injuring,
violating, exploiting and annihilating, and cannot even
be conceived of out of this character. One must admit,
indeed, that, from the highest biological standpoint, con-
ditions under which the so-called rights of others are
recognized must ever be regarded as exceptional con-
ditions that is to say, as partial restrictions of the in-
stinctive power-seeking will-to-live of the individual, made
to satisfy the' more powerful will-to-live of the mass.
Thus small units of power are sacrificed to create large
units of power. To regard the rights of others as being
inherent in them, and not as mere compromises for the
benefit of the mass-unit, would be to enunciate a prin-
ciple hostile to life itself." 3
Nietzsche holds that the rights of an individual may
1 H Jenseits von Gut und Bbse" 259.
2 Zur Geneologie der Moral!'' II, 11.
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 95
be divided into two classes: those things he is able to
do despite the opposition of his fellow men, and those
things he is enabled to do by the grace and permission of
his fellow men. The second class of rights may be divided
again into two groups: those granted through fear and
foresight, and those granted as free gifts. But how do
fear and foresight operate to make one man concede rights
to another man? It is easy enough to discern two ways.
In the first place, the grantor may fear the risks of a
combat with the grantee, and so give him what he wants
without a struggle. In the second place, the grantor,
while confident of his ability to overcome the grantee, may
forbear because he sees in the struggle a certain diminu-
tion of strength on both sides, and in consequence, an
impaired capacity for joining forces in effective opposition
to some hostile third power.
And now for the rights obtained under the second head
by bestowal and concession. " In this case," says
Nietzsche, " one man or race has enough power, and more
than enough, to be able to bestow some of it on another
man or race." The king appoints one subject viceroy
of a province, and so gives him almost regal power, and
makes another cup-bearer and so gives him a perpetual
right to bear the royal cup. When the power of the grantee,
through his inefficiency, decreases, the grantor either
restores it to him or takes it away from him altogether.
When the power of the grantee, on the contrary, increases,
the grantor, in alarm, commonly seeks to undermine it
and encroach upon it. When the power of the grantee
remains at a level for a considerable time, his rights become
1 " Morgenrote" 112.
9 6
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
M vested " and he begins to believe that they are inherent
in him that they constitute a gift from the gods and are
beyond the will and disposal of his fellow men. As
Nietzsche points out, this last happens comparatively
seldom. More often, the grantor himself begins to lose
power and so comes into conflict with the grantee, and not
infrequently they exchange places. " National rights," says
Nietzsche, " demonstrate this fact by their constant lapse
and regenesis."
Nietzsche believed that a realization of all this would
greatly benefit the human race, by ridding it of some of
its most costly delusions. He held that so long as it sought
to make the struggle for existence a parlor game, with
rules laid down by some blundering god that so long
as it regarded its ideas of morality, its aspirations and its
hopes as notions implanted by the creator in the mind of
Father Adam that so long as it insisted upon calling
things by fanciful names and upon frowning down all
effort to reach the ultimate verities that just so long its
progress would be fitful and slow. It was morality that
burned the books of the ancient sages, and morality that
halted the free inquiry of the Golden Age and substituted
for it the credulous imbecility of the Age of Faith. It was
a fixed moral code and a fixed theology which robbed the
human race of a thousand years by wasting them upon
1 alchemy, heretic-burning, witchcraft and sacerdotalism.
Nietzsche called himself an immoralist. He believed
that all progress depended upon the truth and that the
truth could not prevail while men yet enmeshed themselves
in a web of gratuitous and senseless laws fashioned by
1 " Morgenrote," 112.
/Uit/jc^Cts %Wuf *~ ***'** h KrrAt\ ^ U h * */r
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
97
their own hands. He was fond of picturing the ideal
immoralist as " a magnificent blond beast " innocent
of " virtue " and " sin " and knowing only " good V and
" bad." Instead of a god to guide him, with command-
ments and the fear of hell, this immoralist would have his
own instincts and intelligence. Instead of doing a given
thing because the church called it a virtue or the current
moral code required it, he would do it because he knew that
it would benefit him or his descendants after him. Instead
of refraining from a given action because the church
^denounced it as a sin and the law as a crime, he would
mJ^I avoid it only if he were convinced that the action itself,
I or its consequences, might work him or his an injury.
y ' Such a man, were he set down in the world today, would
bear an outward resemblance, perhaps, to the most pious
and virtuous of his fellow- citizens, but it is apparent that
his life would have more of truth in it and less of hypocrisy
and cant and pretense than theirs. He would obey the
laws of the land frankly and solely because he was afraid
of incurring their penalties, and for no other reason, and
he would not try to delude his neighbors and himself into
believing that he saw anything sacred in them. He would
have no need of a god to teach him the difference between
right and wrong and no need of priests to remind him
of this god's teachings. He would look upon the woes
and ills of life as inevitable and necessary results of life's
conflict, and he would make no effort to read into them
the wrath of a peevish and irrational deity at his own or
his ancestors' sins. His mind would be absolutely free
of thoughts of sin and hell, and in consequence, he would
be vastly happier than the majority of persons about him.
98 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
All in all, he would be a powerful influence for truth in his
community, and as such, would occupy himself with the
most noble and sublime task possible to mere human
beings: the overthrow of superstition and unreasoning
faith, with their long train of fears, horrors, doubts, frauds,
injustice and suffering. 1
jfi Under an ideal government which Herbert Spencer
defines as a government in which the number of laws has
reached an irreducible minimum such a man would
prosper a great deal more than the priest-ridden, creed-
barnacled masses about him. In a state wherein com-
munistic society, with its levelling usages and customs,
had ceased to exist, and wherein each individual of the
master class was permitted to live his life as much as
possible in accordance with his own notions of good and
bad, such a man would stand forth from the herd in pro-
portion as his instincts were more nearly healthy and in-
fallible than the instincts of the herd. Ideal anarchy,
in brief, would insure the success of those men who were
wisest mentally and strongest physically, and the race
would make rapid progress.
It is evident that the communistic and socialistic forms
of government at present in fashion in the world oppose
such a consummation as often as they facilitate it. Civiliza-
tion, as we know it, makes more paupers than millionaires, *
* "It is my experience," said Thomas H. Huxley, "that, aside from
a few human affections, the only thing that gives lasting and untainted
pleasure in the world, is the pursuit of truth and the destruction of
error." See " The Life and Letters of T. H. Huxley," by Leonard
Huxley; London, 1900.
" Read the suicide tables and see how many despairing men, hope-
1 ss of keeping their homes together, pay with their lives the toil im-
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 99^
and more cripples than Sandows. Its most conspicuous
products, the church and the king, stand unalterably
opposed to all progress. Like the frog of the fable, which
essayed to climb out of a well, it slips back quite as often
as it goes ahead.
And for these reasons Nietzsche was an anarchist in
the true meaning of that much-bespattered word just
as Herbert Spencer and Arthur Schopenhauer were anar-
chists before him. ' '
posed upon them by squanderers of the public money." Helen Mathers
in P. T. O., Feb. 9, 1907, p. 180. This is one of Tolstoi's chief argu-
ments against all government.
IV
THE SUPERMAN
No doubt the reader who has followed the argument
in the preceding chapters will have happened, before now,
upon the thought that Nietzsche's chain of reasoning, so
far, still has a gap in it. We have seen how he started by
investigating Greek art in the light of the Schopenhauerean
philosophy, how this led him to look into morality, how
he revealed the origin of morality in transitory manifesta-
tions of the will to power, and how he came to the conclu-
sion that it was best for a man to reject all ready-made
moral ideas and to so order his life that his every action
would be undertaken with some notion of making it sub-
serve his own welfare or that of his children or children's
children. But a gap remains and it may be expressed in
the question : How is a man to define and determine his
ownjweHare and that of the race after him ?
Here, indeed, our dionysian immoralist is confronted
by a very serious problem, and Nietzsche himself well
understood its seriousness. Unless we have in mind some
definite ideal of happiness and some definite goal of
progress we had better sing the doxology and dismiss our
congregation. Christianity has such an ideal and such a
goal. The one is a Christ-like life on earth and the other
ioo
THE SUPERMAN 101
is a place at the right hand of Jehovah in the hereafter.
Mohammedanism, a tinsel form of Christianity, paints
pictures of the same sort. Buddhism holds out the tempt-
ing bait of a race set free from the thrall of earthly
desires, with an eternity of blissful nothingness. 1
The other oriental faiths lead in the same direction and
Schopenhauer, in his philosophy, laid down the doctrine
that humanity would attain perfect happiness only when
it had overcome its instinct of self-preservation that
is to say, when it had ceased to desire to live. Even Chris-
tian Science that most grotesque child of credulous
faith and incredible denial offers us the double ideal
of a mortal life entirely free from mortal pain and a harp
in the heavenly band for all eternity.
What had Nietzsche to offer in place of these things?
By what standard was his immoralist to separate the
good or beneficial things of the world from the bad
or damaging things? And what was the^goal that
the philosopher had in mind for his immoralist? The
answer to the first question is to be found in Nietzsche's
definition of the terms " good " and " bad." " All that
elevates the sense of power, the will to power, and power
itself " this is how he defined "good." "All that
proceeds from weakness " this is how he defined
" bad." Happiness, he held, is " the feeling that power
increases that resistance is being overcome." " I
preach not contentedness," he said, "but more power;
not peace, but war; not virtue, but efficiency. The weak
1 " Nirvana is a cessation of striving for individual existence "
that is, after death. See " Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology,"
vol. II, pp. 178 ; New York, 1902.
M<
102 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
and defective must go to the wall : that is the first principle
of the dionysian charity. And we must help them to go."
To put it more simply, Nietzsche offers the gospel of
prudent and intelligent selfishness, of absolute and utter
individualism. " One must learn," sang Zarathustra,
" how to love oneself, with a whole and hearty love, that
one may find life with oneself endurable, and not go gad-
ding about. This gadding about is familiar: it is called
' loving one'sjieighbor.' " 2 His ideal was an aristocracy
which regarded the proletariat merely as a conglomeration
of draft animals made to be driven, enslaved and exploited.
" A good and healthy aristocracy," he said, " must ac-
quiesce, with a good conscience, in the sacrifice of a legion
of individuals, who, for its benefit, must be reduced to
slaves andjools. The masses have no right to exist on
their own account : their sole excuse for living lies in their
usefulness as a sort of superstructure or scaffolding, upon
which a more select race of beings may be elevated/ 1
Rejecting all permanent rules of good and evil and all
notions of brotherhood, Nietzsche held that the aristo-
cratic individualist and it was to the aristocrat only
that he gave, unreservedly, the name of human being
must seek every possible opportunity to increase and
exalt his own sense of efficiency, of success, of mastery, of
power. Whatever tended to impair him, or to decrease
his efficiency, was bad. Whatever tended to increase it
at no matter what cost to others was good. There must
be a complete surrender to the law of natural selection
* " Der Antichrist? 2.
3 "Also sprach Zarathustra? III.
8 "Jenseits von Gift und Bbse? 258.
THE SUPERMAN 103
that invariable natural law which ordains that the fit shall
survive and the unfit shall perish. All growth must occur
at the top. The strong must grow stronger, and that
they may do so, they must waste no strength in the vain
task of trying to lift up the weak.
The reader may interrupt here with the question we
encountered at the start : how is the dionysian individualist
to know whether a given action will benefit him or injure
him ? The answer, of course, lies in the obvious fact that,
in every healthy man, instinct supplies a very reliable -
guide, and that, when instinct fails or is uncertain, experi- v "*"
ment must solve the problem. As a general thing, nothing
is more patent than the feeling of power the sense
of efficiency, of capacity, of mastery. Every man is con-
stantly and unconsciously measuring himself with his
neighbors, and so becoming acutely aware of those things
in which he is their superior. Let two men clash in the
stock market and it becomes instantly apparent that one
is richer, or more resourceful or more cunning than the
other. Let two men run after an omnibus and it becomes
instantly apparent that one is swifter than the other. Let
two men come together as rivals in love, war, drinking j/t,*/,
or holiness, and one is bound to feel that he has bested fas**
the other. Such contests are infinite in variety and in /** e4*
number, and all life, in fact, is made up of them. There-
fore, it is plain that every man is conscious of his power,
and aware of it when this power is successfully exerted
against some other man. In such exertions, argues
Nietzsche, lies happiness, and so his prescription for
happiness consists in unrestrained yielding to the will to
power. That all men worth discussing so yield, despite
>/
104 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
the moral demand for humility, is so plain that it scarcely
needs statement. It is the desire to attain and manifest
efficiency and superiority which makes one man explore
the wilds of Africa and another pile up vast wealth and
another write books of p hilosoph y and another submit
to pain and mutilation in the prize ring. It is this yearn-
ing which makes men take chances and risk their lives
and limbs for glory. Everybody knows, indeed, that in
the absence of such a primordial and universal emulation
the world would stand still and the race would die.
Nietzsche asks nothing more than that the fact be openly
recognized and admitted; that every man yield to the
yearning unashamed, without hypocrisy and without
wasteful efforts to feed and satisfy the yearning of other
men at the expense of his own.
It is evident, of course, that the feeling of superiority
has a complement in the feeling of inferi ority. Every
man, in other words, sees himself, in respect to some
talent possessed in common by himself and a rival, in one
of three ways : he knows that he is superior, he knows that
he is inferior, or he is in doubt. In the first case, says
Nietzsche, the thing for him to do is to make his superiority
still greater by yielding to its stimulation: to make the
gap between himself and his rival wider and wider. In
the second case, the thing for him to do is to try to make
the gap smaller : to lift himself up or to pull his rival down
until they are equal or the old disproportion is reversed.
In the third case, it is his duty to plunge into a contest
and risk his all upon the cast of the die. " I do not exhort
you to peace," says Zarathustra, "but to victory!" 1
1 " Also sprach Zarathustra" I.
THE SUPERMAN iof
If victory comes not, let it be defeat, death and annihila-
tion but, in any event, let there be a fair fight. Without
this constant strife this constant testing this constant
elimination of the unfit there can be n o progres s. " As
the smaller surrenders himself to the greater, so the
greater must surrender himself to the will to power and
stake life upon the issue. It is the mission of the greatest
to run risk and danger to cast dice with death."
Power, in a word, is never infinite : it is always becoming.
Practically and in plain language, what does all this
mean ? Simply that Nietzsche preaches a mighty crusade
against all those ethical ideas which teach a man to sacrifice
himself for the the oretical go od of his inferiors. A culture
which tends to e quali ze, he says, is necessarily a culture
which tends to rob the strong and so drag them down,
for the strong cannot give of their strength to the weak
without decreasing their store. There must be an unend-
ing effort to widen the gap; there must be a constant
search for advantage, an infinite alertness. The strong
man must rid himself of all idea that it is disgraceful to
yield to his acute and ever present yearning for still more
strength. There must be an abandonment of the old
slave-morality and a transvaluation of moral values. The
will to power must be emancipated from the bonds of
that system of ethics which brands it with infamy, and so
makes the one all-powerful instinct of every sentient
creature loathsome and abominable. j<&' r
It is only the under-dog, he says, that believes in equality. /
It is only the groveling and inefficient mob that seeks to \J\}* * J> *
reduce all humanity to one dead level, for it is only the "%^+iti
1 " Also sprack Zarathustra" II. ^ , v * //
** /***
106 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
mob that would gain by such leveling. " ' There are no
higher men,' says the crowd in the market place. ' We
are all equal; man is man; in the presence of God we
j are all equal ! ' In the presence of God, indeed ! But I
tell you that God is dead! " So thunders Zarathustra. *
That is to say, our idea of brotherhood is part of the mob-
morality of the ancient Jews, who evolved it out of their
" own helplessness and credited it to their god. We have
inherited their morality with their god and so we find it
difficult in the mass to rid ourselves of their point
of view. Nietzsche himself rejected utterly the Judaic
god and he believed that the great majority of intelligent
men of his time were of his mind. That he was not far
wrong in this assumption is evident to everyone. At the
present time, indeed, it is next to impossible to find a sane
.. ^ . man in all the world who believes in the actual existence
> ? * -> _
of the deity described in the old testament. All theology
is now an effort to explain away this god. Therefore,
argues Nietzsche, it is useless to profess an insincere con-
/ currence in a thcistic idea at which our common sense
revolts, and ridiculous to maintain the inviolability of an
ethical scheme grounded upon this idea.
It may be urged here that, even if the god of Judea is
dead, the idea of brotherhood still lives, and that, as a
matter of fact, it is an idea inherent in the nature of man,
and one that owes nothing to the rejected supernaturalism
which once fortified and enforced it. That is to say, it
may be argued that the impulse to self-sacrifice and mutual
help is itself an instinct. The answer to this lies in the
very patent fact that itis not. Nothing, indeed, is more
1 u Also sprach Zarathustra? IV.
THE SUPERMAN 107
apparent than the essential selfishness of man. In so far
as they are able to defy or evade the moral code without
shame or damage, the strong always exploit the weak.
The rich man puts up the price of the necessities of life
and so makes himself richer and the poor poorer. The
emperor combats democracy. The political boss opposes
the will of the people for his own advantage. The inventor
patents his inventions and so increases his relative superior-
ity to the common run of men. The ecclesiastic leaves
a small parish for a larger one because the pay is better
or " the field offers wider opportunities," i. e. gives him
a better chance to " save souls " and so increases his
feeling of efficiency. The philanthropist gives away
millions because the giving visualizes and makes evident
to all men his virtue and power. rt It is ever the same in
this weary old world: every slave would be a master if
he could. Therefore, why deny it ? Why make it a crime
to do what every man's instincts prompt him to do ? Why
call it a sin to do what every man does, insofar as he can ?
The man who throws away his money or cripples himself
with drink, or turns away from his opportunities we
call him a lunatic or a fool. And yet, wherein does he
differ from the ideal holy man of our slave- mo rahty t .7
the holy man who tortures himself, neglects his body, ^ 0-r ^
starves his mind and reduces himself to parasitism, that
the weak, the useless and unfit may have, through his
ministrations, some measure of ease? Such is the argu-
ment of the dionysian philosophy. It is an argument
for the actual facts of existence however unrighteous
and ugly those facts may be.
That the lifting up of the weak, in the long run, is an
108 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
unprofitable and useless business is evident on very brief
reflection. Philanthropy, considered largely, is inevitably
*\ f* a failure. Now and then we may transform an individual
pauper or drunkard into a useful, producing citizen, but
9 ,-t this happens very seldom. Nothing is more patent, indeed,
than the fact that charity merely converts the unfit who,
in the course of nature, would soon die out and so cease
to encumber the earth into parasites who live on
indefinitely, a nuisance and a burden to their betters.
The " reformed " drunkard always goes back to his cups :
its J A drunkardness, as every physician knows, is as essentially [u
incurable as congenital insanity. And it is the same
with poverty. We may help a pauper to survive by giving
him food and drink, but we cannot thereby make an
fc efficient man of him we cannot rid him of the unfitness
^~ which made him a pauper. There are, of course, ex-
ceptions to this, as to other rules, but the validity of the
rule itself will not be questioned by any observant man.
t/tt. ^ 8^ unquestioned, indeed, by those who preach the
doctrine of charity the loudest. They know it would be
absurd to argue that helping the unfit is profitable to
the race, and so they fall back, soon or late', upon the
argument that charity is ordained of God and that the
impulse to it is implanted in every decent man. Nietzsche
flatly denies this. Charity, he says, is a man-made idea,
with which the gods have nothing to do. Its sole effect
is to maintain the useless at the expense of the strong. In
the mass, the helped can never hope to discharge in full
their debt to the helpers. The result upon the race is
thus retrogression.
And now for our second question. What was the goal
THE SUPERMAN 109
Nietzsche had in mind for his immoralist ? What was
to be the final outcome of his overturning of all morality ?
Did he believe the human race would progress until men
became gods and controlled the sun and stars as they
now control the flow of great rivers ? Or did he believe that
the end of it all would be annihilation? After the pub-
lication of Nietzsche's earlier books, with their ruthless
tearing down of the old morality, these questions were
asked by critics innumerable in all the countries of Europe.
The philosopher was laughed at as a crazy iconoclast
who destroyed without rebuilding. He was called a
visionary and a lunatic, and it was reported and believed
that he had no answer : that his philosophy was doomed
to bear itself to the earth, like an arch without a keystone.
But in April, 1883, he began the publication of " Also
sprach Zarathustra " and therein his reply was written
large.
" I teach you," cries Zarathustra, " the superman !
Man is something that shall be surpassed. What, to
man, is the ape ? A joke or a shame. Man shall be the
same to the superman: a joke or shame. . . . Man is
a bridge connecting ape and superman. . . . The super-
man will be the final flower and ultimate expression of the
earth. I conjure you to be faithf ul to th e earth. . . to
cease looking beyond the stars for your hopes and rewards.
You must sacrifice yourself to the earth that one day it
may bring forth the superman." '
Here we hearken unto the materialist, the empiricist,
the monist par excellence. And herein we perceive dimly
the outlines of the superman. He will be rid of all delu-
1 "Also sprach Zarathustra," I.
no FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
sions that hamper and oppress the will to power. He will
be perfect in body and perfect in mind. He will know
everything worth knowing and have strength and skill
and cunning to defend himself against any conceivable
foe. Because the prospect of victory will feed his will to
power he will delight in combat, and his increasing capacity
for combat will decrease his sensitiveness to pain. Con-
scious of his efficiency, he will be happy ; having no illu-
sions regarding a heaven and a hell, he will be content.
He will see life as something pleasant something to be
faced gladly and with a laugh. He will say " yes " alike
to its pleasures and to its ills. Rid of the notion that there
is anything filthy in living that the flesh is abominable
and life an af flictio n 2 he will grow better and better
fitted to meet the conditions of actual existence. He will
be scornful, merciless and supremely fit. He will be set
AM< free from man's fear of gods and of laws, just as man has
'P 4 L l J been set free from the ape's fear of lions and of open
ijJ^ places.
To put it simply, the superman's thesis will be this:
that he has been put into the world without his consent,
that he must live in the world, that he owes nothing to the
other people there, and that he knows nothing whatever
of existence beyond the grave. Therefore, it will be his
effort to attain the highest possible measure of satisfaction
for the only unmistakable and genuinely healthy instinct
within him : the yearning to live to attain power
to meet and overcome the influences which would weaken
or destroy him. " Keep yourselves up, my brethren,"
> Galatians V, 19, 20, 21.
Job V, 7 ; XIV, 1 ; Ecclesiastes I, 1.
THE SUPERMAN in
cautions Zarathustra, " learn to keep yourselves up ! The
sea is stormy and many seek to keep afloat by your aid.
The sea is stormy and all are overboard. Well, cheer up
and save yourselves, ye old seamen ! . . . What is your
fatherland? The land wherein your children will dwell.
. . . Thus does your love to these remote ones speak:
' Disregard your neighbors ! Man is something to be
surpassed ! ' Surpass yourself at the expense of your
neighbor. What you cannot seize, let no man give you.
. . . Let him who can command, obey ! " The idea,
by this time, should be plain. The superman, in the
struggle for existence, asks and gives no quarter. He
believes that it is the destiny of sentient beings to progress
upward, and he is willing to sacrifice himself that his race
may do so. But his sacrifice must benefit, not his neigh-
bor not the man who should and must look out for
himself but the generations yet unborn.
It must be borne in mind that the superman will make a
broad distinction between instinct and ^passion that
he will not mistake the complex thing we call love, with
its costly and constant hurricanes of emotion, for the
instinct of reproduction that he will not mistake mere
anger for war that he will not mistake patriotism, with
all its absurdities and illusions, for the homing instinct.
The superman, in brief, will know how to renounce as well
as how to possess, but his renunciation will be the child,
not of faith or of charity, but of e xpedien cy. " Will
nothing beyond your capacity," says Zarathustra. " De-
mand nothing of yourself that is beyond achievement !
. . . The higher a thing is, the less often does it succeed.
1 " Also sprach Zarathustra? I.
H2 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Be of good cheer! What matter! Learn to laugh at
yourselves! . . . Suppose you have failed? Has not
the future gained by your failure ? " l The superman,
as Nietzsche was fond of putting it, must play at dice
with death. He must have ever in mind no other goal
but the good of the generations after him. He must be
willing to battle with his fellows, as with illusions, that
those who came after may not be afflicted by these enemies.
He must be supremely unmoral and unscrupulous. His
must be the gospel of eternal defiance.
Nietzsche, it will be observed, was unable to give any
very definite picture of this proud, heaven- kissing super-
man. It is only in Zarathustra's preachments to " the
higher man," a sort of bridge between man and superman,
that we may discern the philosophy of the latter. l\ On one
occasion Nietzsche penned a passage which seemed to
compare the superman to " the great blond beasts "
which ranged Europe in the days of the mammoth, and
from this fact many commentators have drawn the con-
clusion that he had in mind a mere two-legged brute, with
none of the higher traits that we now speak of as distinctly
human. But, as a matter of fact, he harbored no such idea.
In another place, wherein he speaks of three metamor-
phoses of the race, under the allegorical names of th e cam el,
the lion and the child, he makes this plain. The camel,
a hopeless beast of burden, is man. But when the camel
goes into the solitary desert, it throws off its burden and
becomes a lion. That is to say, the heavy and hampering
load of artificial dead-weight called morality is cast aside
and the instinct to live or, as Nietzsche insists upon
1 " Also sprach Zarathustra? IV.
THE SUPERMAN 113
regarding it, the will to power is given free rein. The
lion is the " higher man " the intermediate stage be-
tween man and superman. The latter appears neither
as camel nor Hon, but as a little child. He knows a little
child's peace. He has a little child's calm. Like a babe
in utero, he is ideally adapted to his environment J j
} Zarathustra sees man " like a camel kneeling down to
be heavy laden." What are his burdens ? One is " to
humiliate oneself." Another is " to love those who despise
us." In the desert comes the first metamorphosis, and
the " thou shalt " of the camel becomes the "I will " of
the Hon. And what is the mission of the lion ? " To
create for itself fr eedom far nag Tfrfl^g " After the
lion comes the child. It is " innocence and oblivion, a
new starting, a play, a wheel rolling by itself, a prime
motor, a holy asserting." The thought here is cast in the
heightened language of mystic poetry, but its meaning,
I take it, is not lost. 1 '
Nietzsche, even more than Schopenhauer, recognized
the fact that great mental progress in the sense that
mental progress means an increased capacity for grappling
with the conditions of existence necessarily has to ^
depend upon physical efficiency. In exceptional cases a
great mind may inhabit a diseased body, but it is obvious
that tins is not the rule. A nation in which the average
man had but one hand and the duration of life was but m ^^+
20 years could not hope to cope with even the weakest
nation of modern Europe. So it is plain that the first step
in the improvement of the race must be the improvement
of the body. Jesus Christ gave expression to this need
1 " Also sprach Zarathustra" I.
ii 4 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
by healing the sick, and the chief end and aim of all modern
science is that of making life more and more bearable.
Every labor-saving machine ever invented by man has
no other purpose than that of saving bo dily w ear and_tear.
Every religion aims to rescue man from the racking fear
of hell and the strain of trying to solve the great problems
of existence for himself. Every scheme of government
that we know is, at bottom, a mere device for protecting
human beings from injury and death.
Thus it will be seen that Nietzsche's program of progress
does not differ from other programs quite so much as,
at first sight, it may seem to do. He laid down the prin-
ciple that, before anything else could be accomplished,
we must have first looked to the human machine. As we
have seen, the intellect is a mere symptom of the will to
live. Therefore whatever removes obstacles to the free
exercise of this will to live, necessarily promotes and
increases intelligence. A race that was never incapaci-
tated by illness would be better fitted than any other race
for any conceivable intellectual pursuit: from making
money to conjugating Greek verbs. Nietzsche merely
states this obvious fact in an unaccustomed form.
His superman is to give his will to live or will to
power, as you please perfect freedom. As a result,
those individuals in whom this instinct most accurately
meets the conditions of life on earth will survive, and in
their offspring, by natural laws, the instinct itself will
become more and more accurate. That is to say, there
will appear in future generations individuals in whom
this instinct will tend more and more to order the perform-
ance of acts of positive benefit and to forbid the perform-
THE SUPERMAN 115
ance of acts likely to result in injury. This injury, it is
plain, may take the form of unsatisfied wants as well as
of broken skulls. Therefore, the man or superman
in whom the instinct reaches perfection will unconsciously
steer clear of all the things which harass and batter man-
kind today exhausting self-denials as well as exhausting
passions. Whatever seems likely to benefit him, he will
do; whatever seems likely to injure him he will avoid.
When he is in doubt, he will dare and accept defeat or
victory with equal calm. His attitude, in brief, will be
that of a being who faces life as he finds it, defiantly and
unafraid who knows how to fight and how to forbear
who sees things as they actually are, and not as they
might or should be, and so wastes no energy yearning for
the moon or in butting his head against stone walls.
" This new table, O my brethren, I put over you : Be
hard! "
1 Such was the goal that Nietzsche held before the human
race. Other philosophers before him had attempted
the same thing. Schopenhauer had put forward his idea
of a race that had found happiness in putting away its
desire to live. Comte had seen a vision of a race whose
every member sought the good of all. The humanitarians
of all countries had drawn pictures of Utopias peopled
by beings who had outgrown all human instincts who
had outgrown the one fundamental, unquenchable and
eternal instinct of every living thing : the desire to conquer,
to live, to remain alive. Nietzsche cast out all these fine
ideals as essentially impossible. Man was of the earth,
earthy, and his heavens and hells were creatures of his
1 Also sprach Zarathnstra" III.
n6 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
own vaporings. Only after he had ceased dreaming of
them and thrown off his crushing burden of transcendental
morality only thus and then could he hope to rise out
of the slough of despond in which he wallowed.
r '
v
ETERNAL RECURRENCE
In the superman Nietzsche showed the world a con-
ceivable and possible goal for all human effort. But there
still remained a problem and it was this : When the super-
man at last appears on earth, what then? Will there be
another super-superman to follow and a super-super-
superman after that? In the end, will man become the
equal of the creator of the universe, whoever or whatever
He may be ? Or will a period of decline come after, with
a return down the long line, through the superman to
man again, and then on to the anthropoid ape, to the
lower mammals, to the asexual cell, and, finally, to mere
inert matter, gas, ether and empty space?
/ Nietzsche answered these questions by offering the
theory that the universe moved in regular cycles and that
all which is now happening on earth, and in all the stars,
to the uttermost, will be repeated, again and again,
throughout eternity. In other words, he dreamed of a
cosmic year, corresponding, in some fashion, to the ter-
restrial year. Man, who has sprung from the elements,
will rise into superman, and perhaps infinitely beyond,
and then, in the end, by catastrophe or slow decline, he
will be resolved into the primary elements again, and the
whole process will begin anew.
"7
Q
n8 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
This notion, it must be admitted, was not original with
Nietzsche and it would have been better for his philosophy
and for his repute as an intelligent thinker had he never
sought to elucidate it. In his early essay on history he first
mentioned it and there he credited it to its probable in-
ventors the Pythagoreans. 1 It was their belief that,
whenever the heavenly bodies all returned to certain fixed
relative positions, the whole history of the universe began
anew. The idea seemed to fascinate Nietzsche, in whom,
despite his worship of the actual, there was an ever-
evident strain of mysticism, and he referred to it often
,. in his later books. The pure horror of it of the notion
that all the world's suffering would have to be repeated
.c_ t ; again and again, that men would have to die over and over
again for all infinity, that there was no stopping place or
. j final goal the horror of all this appealed powerfully to
his imagination. Frau Andreas- Salome* tells us that he
" spoke of it only in a low voice and with every sign of the
profoundest emotion " and there is reason to believe that,
at one time, he thought there rriight be some confirmation
of it in the atomic theory, and that his desire to go to Vienna
to study the natural sciences was prompted by a wish to
investigate this notion. Finally he became convinced
UfJ ^that there was no ground for such a belief in any of the
known facts of science, and after that, we are told, his
shuddering horror left him.
1 Pythagofus (B. C. 570-594) was a Greek who brought the doctrine
of the transmigration of souls from Egypt to Rome. In Southern
Italy he founded a religio-philosophical brotherhood, which, like all
other such excrescences, became, in the end, a political machine. He
1<6 was a well-educated man, but had a leaning toward mysticism, and a
it ./ 8 ood man y * ni craz y doctrines still afflict us.
> x++-
S
ETERNAL RECURRENCE
119
It was then possible for him to deal with the doctrine of
eternal recurrence as a mere philosophical speculation,
without the uncomfortable reality of a demonstrated
scientific fact, and thereafter he spent much time con-
sidering it. In " Also sprach Zarathustra " he puts it
into the brain of his prophet-hero, and shows how it well-
nigh drove the latter mad.
" I will come back," muses Zarathustra, " with this
sun, with this earth, with this eagle, with this serpent
not for a new life or a better life, but to the same life I am
now leading. I will come back unto this same old life,
in the greatest things and in the smallest, in order to teach
once more the eternal recurrence of all things." x **4>6"
In the end, Nietzsche turned this fantastic idea into a ^~*Jfl
device for exalting his superman. The superman is one
who realizes that all of his struggles will be in vain, and
that, in future cycles, he will have to go through them over
and over again. Yet he has attained such a superhuman
immunity to all emotion to all ideas of pleasure and
pain that the prospect does not daunt him. Despite
its horror, he faces it unafraid. It is all a part of life, and
in consequence it is good. He has learned to agree to
everything that exists even to the ghastly necessity
for living again and again. In a word, he does not
fear an endless series of lives, because life, to him,
has lost all the terrors which a merely human man sees
in it.
" Let us not only endure the inevitable," says Niet-
zsche, " and still less hide it from ourselves : let us love
it!"
1 " Also sprach Zarathustra," III.
J
I2 o FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
As Vernon Lee (Miss Violet Paget) has pointed out, this
idea is scarcely to be distinguished from the fundamental
tenet of stoicism . Miss Paget also says that it bears a
close family resemblance to that denial of pain which
forms the basis of Christian Science, but this is not true,
for a vast difference exists between a mere denial of pain
and a willingness to admit it, face it, and triumph over it.
But the notion appears, in endless guises, in many phil-
osophies and Goethe voiced it, after a fashion, in his
maxim, " Entbehren sollst du " (" Man must do without ").
The idea of eternal recurrence gives point, again, to a
familiar anecdote. This concerns a joker who goes to an
inn, eats his fill and then says to the innkeeper : " You
and I will be here again in a million years: let me pay
you then." " Very well," replies the quick-witted
innkeeper, " but first pay me for the beefsteak you
ate the last time you were here a million years ago."
Despite Nietzsche's conclusion that the known facts of
existence do not bear it out, and the essential impossibility
of discussing it to profit, the doctrine of eternal recurrence
is by no means unthinkable. The celestial cycle put
forward, as an hypothesis, by modern astronomy the
progression, that is, from gas to molten fluid, from fluid
to solid, and from solid, by catastrophe, back to gas again
is easily conceivable, and it is easily conceivable, too,
that the earth, which has passed through an uninhabit-
able state into a habitable state, may one day become
uninhabitable again, and so keep see-sawing back and
forth through all eternity.
But what will be the effect of eternal recurrence upon
i North American Review^ Dec, 1904.
/
c>* **
y
ETERNAL RECURRENCE 121
the superman ? The tragedy of it, as we have seen, will
merely serve to make him heroic. He will defy the universe
and say " yes " to life. Putting aside all thought of con-
scious existence beyond the grave, he will seek to live as
nearly as possible in exact accordance with those laws
laid down for the evolution of sentient beings on earth
when the cosmos was first set spinning. But how will he
know when he has attained this end ? How will he avoid
going mad with doubts about his own knowledge ? Niet-
zsche gave much thought, first and last, to this epistemo-
logical problem, and at different times he leaned toward
different schools, but his writing, taken as a whole, indi-
cates that the fruit of his meditations was a thorough-
going empiricism. The superman, indeed, is an empiricist
who differs from Bacon only in the infinitely greater range
of his observation and experiment. He learns by bitter
experience and he generalizes from this knowledge. An
utter and unquestioning materialist, he knows nothing
of mind except as a function of body. u To him specula-"'
tion seems vain and foolish: his concern is ever with
imminent affairs. That is to say, he believes a thing to be
true when his eyes, his ears, his nose and his hands tell
him it is true. And in this he will be at one with all those
men who are admittedly above the mass today. Reject
empiricism and you reject at one stroke, the whole sum of
human knowledge. "
When a man stubs his toe, for example, the facts that the
injured member swells and that it hurts most frightfully
appear to him as absolute certainties. If we deny that he
actually knows these things and maintain that the spectacle
of the swelling and the sensation of pain are mere creatures
122 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
of his mind, we cast adrift from all order and common-
sense in the universe and go sailing upon a stormy sea of
crazy metaphysics and senseless contradictions. There
are many things that we do not know, and in the nature
of things, never can know. We do not know why phospho-
rus has a tendency to combine with oxygen, but the fact
that it has we do know and if we try to deny we
do know it, we must deny that we are sentient beings,
and in consequence, must regard life and the universe as
mere illusions. No man with a sound mind makes any
such denial. The things about us are real, just as our
feeling that we are alive is real. 1
From this it must be plain that the superman will have
the same guides that we have, viz. : his i nstinct s and senses.
But in him they will be more accurate and more acute
than in us, because the whole tendency of his scheme of
things will be to fortify and develop thcm. a If any race
1 Vide the chapter on " Truth."
'It is very evident, I take it, that the principal function of all science
is the widening of our perceptions. The chief argument for idealism
used to be the axiom that our power of perception was necessarily
limited and that it would be limited forever. This may be true still, but
it is now apparent that these limits are being indefinitely extended, and
may be extended, in future, almost infinitely. A thousand years ago,
if any one had laid down the thesis that malaria was caused by minute
animals, he would have been dismissed as li lunatic, because it was evi-
dent that no one could see these animals, and it was evident, too that
is to say, the scientists of that time held it to be evident that this in-
ability to see them would never be removed, because the human eye
would always remain substantially as it was. But now we know that
the microscope may increase the eye's power of perception a thousand-
fold. When we consider the fact that the spectroscope has enabled us
to make a chemical analysis of the sun, that the telephone has enabled
us to hear 2,000 miles and that the x-rays have enabled us to see through
ETERNAL RECURRENCE 123
of Europe devoted a century to exercising its right arms,
its descendants, in the century following, would have right ^C ^
arms like piston-rods. *In the same way, the superman,
by subordinating everything else to his instinct to live,
will make it evolve into something very accurate and
efficient. His whole concern, in brief, will be to live as
long as possible and so to avoid as much as possible all
of those things which shorten life by injuring the body
from without or by using up energy within. As a result
he will cease all effort to learn why the world exists and
will devote himself to acquiring knowledge how it exists.
This knowledge how will be within his capacity even more
than it is within our capacity today. Our senses, as we
have seen, have given us absolute knowledge that stubbing
the toe results in swelling and pain. The superman's
developed senses will give him absolute knowledge about
everything that exists on earth. He will know exactly
how a tubercle bacillus attacks the lung tissue, he will
know exactly how the blood fights the bacillus, and he
will know exactly how to interfere in this battle in such a *ttch*u
manner that the blood shall be invariably victorious. In
a word, he will be the possessor of exact and complete ^
knowledge regarding the working of all the benign' and \ y* Li ~
malignant forces in the world about him, but he will not
bother himself about insoluble problems. He will waste
no time speculating as to why tubercle bacilli were sent
into the world : his instinct to live will be satisfied by his
success in stamping them out.
flesh and bone, we must admit without reservation, that our power of
perception, at some future day, may be infinite. And if we admit this \
we must admit the essential possibility of the superman.
124 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
The ideal superman then is merely a man in whom
instinct works without interference a man who feels
that it is right to live and that the only knowledge worth
while is that which makes life l onger a nd more bearab le.
The superman's instinct for life is so strong that its mere
exercise satisfies him, and so makes him happy. He
doesn't bother about the unknown void beyond the grave :
it is sufficient for him to know that he is alive and that
being alive is pleasant. He is, in the highest sense, a
utilitarian, and he believes to the letter in Auguste Comte's 1
dictum that the only thing living beings can ever hope to
accomplish on earth is to adapt themselves perfectly to
the natural forces around them to the winds and the
rain, the hills and the sea, the thunderbolt and the germ
of disease.
" I am a dionysian ! " cries Nietzsche. " I am an im-
moralist ! " He means simply that his ideal is a being
capable of facing the horrors of life unafraid, of meeting
great enemies and slaying them, of gazing down upon the
earth in pride and scorn, of making his own way and bear-
ing his own burdens. In the profane folk-philosophy of
every healthy and vigorous people, we find some trace of
this dionysian idea. " Let us so live day by day," says
a distinguished American statesman, " that we can look
any man in the eye and tell him to go to hell ! " We get
a subtle sort of joy out of this saying because it voices our
racia[ advanc e toward individualism and away from revela-
tion and rabbinism. We believe, at heart, in freedom, in
1 " Cours dt philosophic positive? tr. by Helen Martineau ; London,
1853-
ETERNAL RECURRENCE 125
toleration, in moral anarchy. We have put this notion into
innumerable homely forms.
Things have come to a hell of a pass
When a man can't wallop his own jackass !
So we phrase it. The superman, did he stalk the earth,
would say the same thing.
f~ 7/mA f*y .j/f'A^ut C2>*st+*. 9/+~/e//**^ ' f^ k- '
/# / y CHRISTIANITY
Nietzsche's astonishingly keen and fearless criticism
of Christianity has probably sent forth wider ripples than
any other stone he ever heaved into the pool of philistine
contentment. He opened his attack in " Menschliches allzu
Menschliches," the first book of his maturity, and he was
still at it, in full fuming and fury, in " Der Antichrist,"
the last thing he was destined to write. The closing
chapter of " Der Antichrist " his swan song contains
his famous phillipic, beginning " I condemn." It recalls
Zola's " f accuse " letter in the Dreyfus case, but it is
infinitely more sweeping and infinitely more uproarious
and daring.
" I condemn Christianity," it begins. " I bring against
it the most terrible of accusations that ever an accuser
put into words. It is to me the greatest of all imaginable
corruptions. ... It has left nothing untouched by its .
depravity. It has made a worthlessness out of every
value, a lie out of every truth, a sin out of everything
straightforward, healthy and honest. Let anyone dare
to speak to me of its humanitarian blessings! To do
away with pain and woe is contrary to its principles. It
lives by pain and woe : it has created pain and woe in
126
' 'rfS**'* ^^ckRISTIANITY & $^127 ^ /*
order to perpetuate itself. It invented the idea of original / W**s:
sin. x It invented ' the equality of souls before God '
that cover for all the rancour of the useless and base. . . .
It has bred the art of self-violation repugnance and
contempt for all good and cleanly instincts. . . . Parasit-
ism is its praxis. It combats all good red-blood, all love
and all hope for life, with its anaemic ideal of holiness.
It sets up ' the other world ' as a negation of every reality.
The cross is the rallying post for a conspiracy against yW
health, beauty, well-being, courage, intellect, benevo-
lence against life itself. . . .
" This eternal accusation I shall write upon all walls :
I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrin-
sic depravity, ... for which no expedient is sufficiently
poisonous, secret, subterranean, mean ! I call it the
one immortal shame and blemish upon the human
race I " 2
So much for the philosopher's vociferous hurrah at the
close of his argument. In the argument itself it is apparent
that his indictment of Christianity contains two chief
counts. The first is the allegation that it is essentially
untrue and unreasonable, and the second is the theory
that it is degrading. The first of these counts is not un-
familiar to the students of religious history. It was first
voiced by that high priest who " rent his clothes " and
cried " What need have we of any further witnesses ?
Ye have heard the blasphemy." 3 It was voiced again by
the Romans who threw converts to the lions, and after the
* Vide the chapter on " Crime and Punishment."
2 " Der Antichrist," 62.
3 St. Mark XIV, 63, 64.
128 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
long silence of the middle ages, it was piped forth
again by Voltaire, Hume, the encyclopedists and Paine.
After the philosophers and scientists who culminated in
Darwin had rescued reason f or all tim e from the trans-
cendental nonsense of the cobweb -spinners and meta-
physicians, Huxley came to the front with his terrific heavy
artillery and those who still maintained that Christianity
was historically true Gladstone and the rest of the
forlorn hope were mowed down. David Strauss,
Lessing, Eichhorn, Michaelis, Bauer, Meyer, Ritschl,
PfleicTerer and a host of others joined in the chorus and in
Nietzsche's early manhood the battle was practically won.
By 1880 no reasonable man actually believed that there
were devils in the swine, and it was already possible to
deny the physical resurrection and still maintain a place
in respectable society. Today a literal faith in the gospel
narrative is confined to ecclesiastic al rea ctionaries, pious
old ladies and men about to be hanged.
Therefore, Nietzsche did not spend much time examin-
ing the historical credibility of Christianity. He did not
try to prove, like Huxley, that the witnesses to the resur-
rection were superstitious peasants and hysterical women,
nor did he seek to show, like Huxley again, that Christ
might have been taken down from the cross before he was
1 Albrecht Ritschl (1822-89), who is not to be confused with Niet-
zsche's teacher at Bonn and Leipsic. Ritschl founded what is called the
Ritschlian movement in theology. This has for its object the abandon-
ment of supernaturalism and the defence of Christianity as a mere scheme
of living. It admits that the miracle stories are fables and even con-
cedes that Christ was not divine, but maintains that his teachings
represent the best wisdom of the human race. See Denny: "Studies
in Theology," New York, 1894.
CHRISTIANITY
129
dead. He was intensely interested in all such inquiries,
but he saw that, in the last analysis, they left a multitude
of problems unsolved. The solution of these unsolved
problems was the task that he took unto himself. Tunnel-
ing down, in his characteristic way, into the very founda-
tions of the faith, he endeavored to prove that it was based
upon contradictions and absurdities; that its dogmas
were illogical and its precepts unworkable; and that its
cardinal principles presupposed the acceptance of propo-
sitions which, to the normal human mind, were essentially
unthinkable. This tunneling occupied much of Nietzsche's
energy in " Menschliches allzu Menschliches" and he
returned to it again and again, in all of the other
books that preceded " Der Antichrist." His method of
working may be best exhibited by a few concrete ex-
amples.
Prayer, for instance, is an exceedingly important feature
of Christian worship and any form of worship in which
it had no place would be necessarily unchristian. 1 But
upon what theory is prayer based ? Examining the matter
from all sides you will have to conclude that it is reasonable
only upon two assumptions: first, that it is possible to
change the infallible will and opinion of the deity, and
secondly, that the petitioner is capable of judging what he
needs. Now, Christianity maintains, as one of its main
dogmas, that the deity is omniscient and all-wise, 2 and,
1 Ph. IV, 6 : "Be careful for nothing ; but in everything by prayer
and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known
to God."
3 Deut. XXXII, 4: "He is the rock, his work is perfect." See
also a hundred similar passages in the Old and New Testaments.
13
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
as another fundamental doctrine, that human beings are
absolutely unable to solve their problems without heav-
enly aid i. e. that the deity necessarily knows what is
best for any given man better than that man can ever
hope to know it himself. Therefore, Christianity, in
ordaining prayer, orders, as a condition of inclusion
in its communion, an act which it holds to be use-
less. This contradiction, argues Nietzsche, cannot be
explained away in terms comprehensible to the human
intelligence.
Again Christianity holds that man is a mere creature ft
of the deity's will, and yet insists that the individual be
judged and punished for his acts. In other words, it tries 4
to carry free will on one shoulder and determinism on the
other, and its doctors and sages have themselves shown
that they recognize the absurdity of this by their constant,
but futile efforts to decide which of the two shall be
abandoned. This contradiction is a legacy from Judaism,
and Mohammedanism suffers from it, too. Those sects
which have sought to remove it by an entire acceptance
of determinism under the name of predestination,
fatalism, or what not have become bogged in hopeless
morasses of unreason and dogmatism. It is a cardinal
doctrine of Presbyterianism, for instance, that " by the
decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some
men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life
and others foreordained to everlasting death . . . without
any foresight of faith or good works, or perseverance in
either of them, or any other thing in the creature, as con-
1 Isaiah XLI V, 8 : " Now, O Lord, thou art our Father ; we are the
clay and thou our potter ; and we all are the work of thy hand."
CHRISTIANITY 131
ditions. . . ." In other words, no matter how faithfully
one man tries to follow in the footsteps of Christ, he may
go to hell, and no matter how impiously another sins, he
may be foreordained for heaven. That such a belief
makes all religion, faith and m orali ty absurd is apparent.
That it is, at bottom,~utterly unthinkable to a reasoning
being is also plain.
Nietzsche devoted a great deal of time during his first
period of activity to similar examinations of Christian
ideas and he did a great deal to supplement the historical
investigations of those English and German savants
whose ruthless exposure of fictions and frauds gave birth
to what we now call th e higher criticis m. But his chief
service was neither in the field of historical criticism nor in
that of the criticism of dogmas. Toward the end of his
life he left the business of examining biblical sources to the
archeologists and historians, whose equipment for the
task was necessarily greater than his own, and the business
of reducing Christian logic to contradiction and absurdity
to the logicians. Thereafter, his own work took him
a step further down and in the end he got to the very
bottom of the subject. The answer of the theologians had
been that, even if you denied the miracles, the gospels,
the divinity of Christ and his very existence as an actual
man, you would have to admit that Christianity itself
was sufficient excuse for its own existence ; that it had made
the world better and that it provided a workable scheme
of life by which men could live and die and rise to higher
things. This answer, for awhile, staggered the agnostics
x "The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in the United
States," pp. 16 to 20 : Philadelphia, 1841.
M
132
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
and Huxley himself evidently came near being convinced
that it was beyond rebuttal. 1 But it only made Nietzsche
spring into the arena more confident than ever. " Very
well," he said, " we will argue it out. You say that
Christianity has made the world better ? I say that it has
made it worse ! You say that it is comforting and up-
lifting? I say that it is cruel and degrading! You say
that it is the best religion mankind has ever invented?
I say it is the most dangerous ! "
Having thus thrown down the gage of battle, Nietzsche
proceeded to fight like a Tartar, and it is but common
fairness to say that, for a good while, he bore the weight
of his opponents' onslaught almost unaided. The world
was willing enough to abandon its belief in Christian
supernaturalism and as far back as the early 8o's the
dignitaries of the Church of England to employ a blunt
but expressive metaphor had begun to get in out of
the wet. But the pietists still argued that Christianity
remained the fairest flower of civilization and that it met
a real and ever-present human want and made mankind
better. To deny this took courage of a decidedly unusual
sort courage that was willing to face, not only ecclesi-
astical anathema and denunciation, but also the almost
automatic opposition of every so-called respectable man.
1 To the end of his days Huxley believed that, to the average human
being, even of the highest class, some sort of faith would always be
necessary. " My work in the London hospitals," he said, " taught me
that the preacher often does as much good as the doctor." It would be
interesting to show how this notion has been abandoned in recent years.
The trained nurse, who was unknown in Huxley's hospital days, now
takes the place of the confessor, and as Dr. Osier has shown us in
"Science and Immortality," men die just as comfortably as before.
CHRISTIANITY
*33
But Nietzsche, whatever his deficiencies otherwise, cer-
tainly was not lacking in assurance, and so, when he came
to write " Der Antichrist " he made his denial thunderous
and uncompromising beyond expression. No medieval
bishop ever pronounced more appalling curses. No back-
woods evangelist ever laid down the law with more violent
eloquence. The book is the shortest he ever wrote, but it
is by long odds the most compelling. Beginning allegro,
it proceeds from forte, by an uninterrupted crescendo to m ^ f^t
allegro con moltissimo molto fortissimo. The sentences run ^L -ti
into mazes of italics, dashes and asterisks. It is German n-.
that one cannot read aloud without roaring and waving
one's arm.
Christianity, says Nietzsche, is the most dangerous j
system of slave-morality the world has ever known. " It I
has waged a deadly war against the highest type of man. **?-*,
It has put a ban on all his fundamental instincts. It has /** Ji\
distilled evil out of these instincts. It makes the strong f * " *^j
and efficient mari^its typical outcast man. It has taken
the part of the weak and the low ; it has made an ideal out
of its antagonism to the very instincts which tend to pre-
serve life and well-being. ... It has taught men to regard \
their highest impulses as sinful as temptations." * In a \
word, it tends to rob mankind of all those qualities which
fit any living organism to survive in the struggle for
existence.
As we shall see later on, civilization obscures and even
opposes this struggle for existence, but it is in progress all
the same, at all times and under all conditions. Every
one knows, for instance, that one-third of the human
z ">er Antichrist? 5.
Jt tJ\ \/ol* f*W*t **</ /A&f !tUy~m
i 3 4 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
beings born into the world every year die before they are
five years old. The reason for this lies in the fact that they
are, in some way or other, less fitted to meet the conditions
of life on earth than the other two-thirds. The germ of
cholera infantum is an enemy to the human race, and so
long as it continues to exist upon earth it will devote all
of its activity to attacking human infants and seeking to
destroy them. It happens that some babies recover from
cholera infantum, while others die of it. This is merely
another way of saying that the former, having been born
with a capacity for resisting the attack of the germ, or
having been given the capacity artificially, are better fitted
to survive, and that the latter, being incapable of making
this resistance, are unfit.
All life upon earth is nothing more than a battle with the
enemies of life. A germ is such an enemy, cold is such an
enemy, lack of food is such an enemy, and others that may
be mentioned are lack of water, ignorance of natural laws,
armed foes and deficient physical strength. The man
who is able to get all of the food he wants, and so can
nourish his body until it becomes strong enough to com-
bat the germs of disease; who gets enough to drink,
who has shelter from the elements, who has devised means
for protecting himself against the desires of other men
who yearn, perhaps, who take for themselves some of the
things that he has acquired such a man, it is obvious,
is far better fitted to live than a man who has none of these
things. He is far better fitted to survive, in a purely
physical sense, because his body is nourished and pro-
tected, and he is far better fitted to attain happiness, be-
cause most of his powerful wants are satisfied.
CHRISTIANITY 135
Nietzsche maintains that Christianity urges a man to J
make no such efforts to insure his personal survival in/
the struggle for existence. The beatitudes require, he!
says, that, instead of trying to do so, the Christian shall
devote his energies to helping others and shall give no
thought to himself. Instead of exalting himself as much
as possible above the common herd and thus raising his
chances of surviving, and those of his children, above
those of the average man, he is required to lift up this
average man. Now, it is plain that every time he lifts up
some one else, he must, at the same time, decrease his
own store, because his own store is the only stock from
which he can draw. Therefore, the tendency of the
Christian philosophy of humility is to make men volun-
tarily throw away their own chances of surviving, which
means their own sense of efficiency, which means their own
" feeling of increasing power," which means their own hap-
piness. As a substitute for this natural happiness, Chris-
tianity offers the happiness derived from the belief
that the deity will help those who make the sacrifice and
so restore them to their old superiority.' !,, This belief,
as Nietzsche shows, is no more borne out by known
facts than the old belief in witches. It is, in fact, proved
to be an utter absurdity by all human experience.
" I call an animal, a species, an individual, depraved," /
he says, " when it loses its instincts, when it selects, when jJ
it prefers what is injurious to it. . . . Life itself is an|
instinct for growth, for continuance, for accumulation
of forces, for power: where the will to power is wanting
there is decline." * Christianity, he says, squarely opposes
1 " Der Antichrist," 6.
fL*~
t*n
136 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
this will to power in the Golden Rule, the cornerstone of \
the faith. The man who confines his efforts to attain
superiority over his fellow men to those acts which he
would be willing to have them do toward him, obviously
abandons all such efforts entirely. To put it in another
form, a man can't make himself superior to the race in
general without making every other man in the world, to
that extent, his inferior. Now, if he follows the Golden
Rule, he must necessarily abandon all efforts to make
himself superior, because if he didn't he would be suffering
all the time from the pain of seeing other men whose
standpoint the Rule requires him to assume grow in-
ferior. Thus his activity is restricted to one of two things : | \lr
standing perfectly still or deliberately making himself j I
inferior. The first is impossible, but Nietzsche shows
that the latter is not, and that, in point of fact, it is but
another way of describing the act of sympathy one of /
the things ordered by the fundamental dogma of Chris- /
tianity. /
Sympathy, says Nietzsche, consists merely of a strong /
man giving up some of his strength to a weak man. The
strong man, it is evident, is debilitated thereby, while the
weak man, very often, is strengthened but little. If you
go to a hanging and sympathize with the condemned, it
is plain that your mental distress, without helping that
gentleman, weakens, to a perceptible degree, your own
mind and body, just as all other powerful emotions weaken
them, by consuming energy, and so you are handicapped
in the struggle for life to the extent of this weakness. You
may get a practical proof of it an hour later by being
overcome and killed by a foot- pad whom you might have
CHRISTIANITY 137
been able to conquer, had you been feeling perfectly well,
or by losing money to some financial rival for whom,
under normal conditions, you would have been a match;
and then again you may get no immediate or tangible proof
of it at all. But your organism will have been weakened
to some measurable extent, all the same, and at some
time perhaps on your death bed this minute drain
will make itself evident, though, of course, you may never
know it.
" Sympathy," says Nietzsche, " stands in direct antithe-|
sis to the tonic passions which elevate the energy of human
beings and increase their feeling of efficiency and power. '
It is a depressant. One loses force by sympathizing and
any loss of force which has been caused by other means
personal suffering, for example is increased and multi-
plied by sympathy. Suffering itself becomes contagious
through sympathy and under certain circumstances it may
lead to a total loss of life. If a proof of that is desired,
consider the case of the Nazarene, whose sympathy for his ' '
fellow men brought him, in the end, to the cross.
" Again, sympathy thwarts the law of development, of V jJy
I / evolution, of the survival of the fittest. It preserves what is \6 /sr *
ripe for extinction, it works in favor of life's condemned J\z^
,)/ c*i ones, it gives to life itself a gloomy aspect by the number Apf
of the ill-constituted it maintains in life. ... It is both \r~ ^*
a multiplier of misery and a conservator of misery. It ii ys% ,
the principal tool for the advancement of decadence, ii
leads to nothingness, to the negation of all those instincts
ftfe*. which are at the basis of life. . . . But one does not say'
1**.*? 'nothingness;' one says instead 'the other world' or
</*~ 'the better life.' . . . This innocent rhetoric, out of the
lit A .:
tj/L jLit f *f~~*> s/+~+4fJ e "'
138 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
domain of religio-moral fantasy, becomes far from inno-
cent when one realizes what tendency it conceals: the
tendency hostile to lije." *
The foregoing makes it patent that Nietzsche was a
thorough-going and uncompromising biological monist.
That is to say, he believed that man, while superior to all
other animals because of his greater development, was,
after all, merely an animal, like the rest of them ; that the
struggle for existence went on among human beings ex-
actly as it went on among the lions in the jungle and the
protozoa in the sea ooze, and that the law of natural selec-
tion ruled all of animated nature mind and matter
alike. Indeed, it is but just to credit him with being the
pioneer among modern monists of this school, for he
stated and defended the doctrine of morphological uni-
versality at a time when practically all the evolutionists
doubted it, and had pretty well proved its truth some years
before Haeckel wrote his " Monism " and " The Riddle
V
of the Universe."
To understand all of this, it is necessary to go back to
Darwin and his first statement of the law of natural
selection. Darwin proved, in " The Origin of the Spe-
cies," that a great many more individuals of any given
species of living being are born into the world each year
than can possibly survive. Those that are best fitted to
meet the condition of existence live on; those that are
worst fitted die. The result is that, by the influence of
heredity, the survivors beget a new generation in which
there is a larger percentage of the fit. One might think
that this would cause a greater number to survive, but
1 Der Antichrist? 7.
CHRISTIANITY i 39
inasmuch as the food and room on earth are limited, a
large number must always die. But all the while the half
or third, or whatever the percentage may be, which
actually do survive become more and more fit. In conse-
quence, a species, generation after generation, tends to
become more and more adapted to meet life's vicissitudes,
or, as the biologists say, more and more adapted to its
environment.
Darwin proved that this law was true of all the lower
animals and showed that it was responsible for the evolu-
tion of the lower apes into anthropoid apes, and that it
could account, theoretically, for a possible evolution of
anthropoid apes into man. But in " The Descent of
Man " he argued that the law of natural selection ceased /
when man became an intelligent being. Thereafter, he! Ify/^
said, man^s own efforts worked against those of nature.;
Instead of letting the unfit of his race die, civilization ^ ^
began to protect and preserve them. The result was
that nature's tendency to make all living beings more and
more sturdy was set aside by man's own conviction that
mere_ sturdiness was not the thing most to be desired. 5)t .^
From this Darwin argued that if two tribes of human /V '
beings lived side by side, and if, in one of them, the unfit
were permitted to perish, while in the other there were 8t^ *
many " courageous, sympathetic and faithful members, J*/*i,
who were always ready to warn each other of danger, and ff, ft* %
to aid and defend one another " that in such a case,
the latter tribe would make the most progress, despite
its concerted effort to defy a law of nature.
Darwin's disciples agreed with him in this and some
of them went to the length of asserting that civilization,
r~ ^*
i 4 o FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
in its essence, was nothing more or less than a successful
defiance of this sort. Herbert Spencer was much troubled
by the resultant confusion and as one critic puts it, 2 the
whole drift of his thought " appears to be inspired by the
question : how to evade and veil the logical consequence
of evolutionarism for human existence ? " John Fiske,
another Darwinian, accepted the situation without such
disquieting doubt. " When humanity began to be
evolved," he said, " an entirely new chapter in the history
of the universe was opened. Henceforth the life of the
nascent soul came to be first in importance and the bodily
life became subordinated to it." 3 Even Huxley believed
that man would have to be excepted from the operation
of the law of natural selection. " The ethical progress
of society," he said, " depends, not on imitating the
cosmic process and still less on running away from it, but
- v/ in combating it." He saw that it was audacious thus
.--> to pit man against nature, but he thought that man was
sufficiently important to make such an attempt and hoped
" that the enterprise might meet with a certain measure
of success." 4 And the other Darwinians agreed with
him. 5
1 Alfred Russell Wallace: " Darwinism," London, 1889.
Alexander Tille, introduction to the Eng. tr. of "The Works of
Friedrich Nietzsche," vol. XI; New York, 1896.
* John Fiske : " The Destiny of Man ; " London, 1884.
* Romanes Lecture on " Evolution and Ethics," 1893.
'Asa matter of fact this dualism still lives. Its main apostle today
is the venerable Goldwin Smith. Said he in a letter to the New York
Sun, March 3, 1907: "If there can be such a thing as an essential
difference there surely is one between the animal evolution discovered
by Darwin and the self-culture, progress and spiritual aspiration of
CHRISTIANITY i 4 i
As all the best critics of philosophy have pointed out, 1
any philosophical system which admits such a great con-
tradiction fails utterly to furnish workable standards of
order in the universe, and so falls short of achieving
philosophy's first aim. We must either believe with the
scholastics that intelligen ce rul es, or we must believe,
with Haeckel, that all things happen in obedience to inva-
riable natural laws. We cannot believe both. A great many
men, toward the beginning of the 90's, began to notice
this fatal defect in Darwin's idea of human progress. In
1 89 1 one of them pointed out the conclusion toward
which it inevitably led. 2 If we admitted, he said, that
humanity had set at naught the law of natural selection,
we must admit that civilization was working against
nature's efforts to preserve the race, and that, in the end,
humanity would perish. To put it more succinctly, man
might defy the law of natural selection as much as he
pleased, but he could never hope to set it aside. Soon
or late, he would awaken to the fact that he remained a
mere animal, like the rabbit and the worm,, and that,
if he permitted his body to degenerate into a thing en-
tirely lacking in strength and virility, not all the intelligence
conceivable could save him.
Nietzsche saw all this clearly as early as 1877. 3 He
1 See the article on " Monism" in the New International
Encyclopedia.
2 A. J. Balfour: " Fragment on Progress ;" London, 1891.
3 He was a monist, indeed, as early as 1873, at which time he had ap-
parently not yet noticed Darwin's notion that the human race could
successfully defy the law of natural selection. "The absence of any
cardinal distinction between man and beast," he said, " is a doctrine
which I consider true." (" Unzeitgemasse Betrachtungen? I, 189,) Nev-
i 4 2 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
saw that what passed for civilization, as represented by
Christianity, was making such an effort to defy and
counteract the law of natural selection, and he came to
the conclusion that the result would be disaster. Chris-
tianity, he said, ordered that the strong should give part
of their strength to the weak, and so tended to weaken the
whole race. Self-sacrifice, he said, was an open defiance
of nature, and so were all the other Christian virtues, in
varying degree. He proposed, then, that before it was too
late, humanity should reject Christianity, as the " greatest
of all imaginable corruptions," and admit freely and fully
that the law of natural selection was universal and that
the only way to make real progress was to conform to it.
It may be asked here how Nietzsche accounted for the
fact that humanity had survived so long for the fact
that the majority of men were still physically healthy and
that the race, as a whole, was still fairly vigorous. He
answered this in two ways. First, he denied that the race
was maintaining to the full its old vigor. " The European
of the present," he said, " is far below the European of
the Renaissance." It would be absurd, he pointed out, to
allege that the average German of 1880 was as strong and
as healthy i. e. as well fitted to his environment
ertheless, in a moment of sophistry, late in life, he undertook to
criticize the law of natural selection and even to deny its effects (vide
"Roving Expeditions of an Inopportune Philosopher," 14, in "The
Twilight of the Idols " ). It is sufficient to say, in answer, that the law
itself is inassailable and that all of Nietzsche's work, saving this single
unaccountable paragraph, helps support it. His frequent sneers at
Darwin, in other places, need not be taken too seriously. Everything
English, toward the close of his life, excited his ire, but the fact re-
mains that he was a thorough Darwinian and that, without Darwin's
work, his own philosophy would have been impossible.
CHRISTIANITY 143
as the " blond beast " who roamed the Saxon lowlands ..
in the days of the mammoth. It would be equally absurd
to maintain that the highest product of modern civili- <r~
zation the town-dweller was as vigorous and as /
capable of becoming the father of healthy children as the -^
intelligent farmer, whose life was spent in approximate
accordance with all the more obvious laws of health.
Nietzsche's second answer was that humanity had J fib* It*
escaped utter degeneration and destruction because, ( *** 7^
despite its dominance as a theory of action, few__menj _
actually practiced Christianity. It was next to impossible, I
he said, to find a single man who, literally and absolutely,
obeyed the teachings of Christ. 1 There were plenty of
men who thought they were doing so, but all of them were
yielding in only a partial manner. Absolute Christianity
meant absolute disregard of self. It was obvious that a
man who reached this state of mind would be unable to
follow any gainful occupation, and so would find it im- \
< possible to preserve his own life or the lives of his children.
In brief, said Nietzsche, an actual and utter Christian
would perish today just as Christ perished, and so, in his
own fate, would provide a conclusive argument against
Christianity.
Nietzsche pointed out further that everything which
makes for the preservation of the human race is diamet-
rically opposed to the Christian ideal. Thus Christianity!
becomes the foe of science. The one argues that marl
should sit still and let God reign; the other that man
1 This observation is as old as Montaigne, who said: "After all, the
stoics were actually stoical, but where in all Christendom will you find
a Christian ? "
144 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
should battle against the tortures which fate inflicts upon
him, and try to overcome them and grow strong. Thus
all science is unchristian, because, in the last analysis, the
whole purpose and effort of science is to arm man against
loss of energy and death, and thus make him self-reliant
and unmindful of any duty of propitiating the deity.
- That this antagonism between Christianity and the search
for truth really exists has been shown in a practical way
time and again. Since the beginning of the Christian era
the church has been the bitter and tireless enemy of all
science, and this enmity has been due to the fact that every
member of the priest class has realized that the more a
man learned the more he came to depend upon his own
efforts, and the less he was given to asking help from
above. In the ages of faith men prayed to the saints
when they were ill. Today they send for a docto r. In the
ages of faith battles were begun with supplications, and
_ it was often possible to witness the ridiculous spectacle
t^^x . of both sides praying to the same God. Today every
sane person knows that the victory goes to the wisest
/ 'generals and largest battalions.
Nietzsche thus showed, first, that Christianity (and all
other ethical systems having self-sacrifice as their basis)
tended to oppose the law of natural selection and so made
the race weaker ; and secondly, that the majority of men,
consciously or unconsciously, were aware of this, and
so made no effort to be absolute Christians. If Christianity
were to become universal, he said, and every man in the
world were to follow Christ's precepts to the letter in all
the relations of daily life, the race would die out in a genera-
tion. This being true and it may be observed in
CHRISTIANITY ^ 'jf^- 'YjT
passing that no one has ever successfully controverted it ^'A*~ % ^
there follows the converse: that the human race had
best abandon the idea of self-sacrifice altogether and
submit itself to the law of natural selection. If this is
done, says Nietzsche, the result will be a race of supermen
of jproud, str ong dionysia ns of men who will say.
" yes " to the world and will be ideally capable of meeting \f*v*
the conditions under which life must exist on earth.
In his efforts to account for the origin of Christianity,
Nietzsche was less happy, and indeed came very near the
border-line of the ridiculous. The faith of modern ^\f i
Europe, he said, was the result of a gigantic effort on the
part of the ancient Jews to revenge themselves upon their t&
masters. The Jews were helpless and inefficient and thus * fri*f~*
evolved a slave-morality. Naturally, as slaves, they
hated their masters, while realizing, all the while, the n**
unmanliness of the ideals they themselves had to hold to
tY'"
in order to survive. So they crucified Christ, who voiced r^
these same ideals, and the result was that the outside
world, which despised the Jews, accepted Christ as a
martyr and prophet and thus swallowed the Jewish ideals ff v
without realizing it. In a word, the Jews detested the
slave-morality which circumstances thrust upon them,
and got their revenge by foisting it, in a sugar-coated pill,
upon their masters.
It is obvious that this idea is sheer lunacy. That the \\
Jews ever realized the degenerating effect of their own r , (
slave-morality is unlikely, and that they should takes V^
counsel together and plan such an elaborate and com-
plicated revenge, is impossible. The reader of Nietzsche
must expect to encounter such absurdities now and then. (I V+"
146 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
The mad German was ordinarily a most logical and
orderly thinker, but sometimes the traditional German
tendency to indulge in wild and imbecile flights of specu-
lation cropped up in him.
vn
TRUTH
At the bottom of all philosophy, of all science and of all
thinking, you will find the one all-inclusive question : How
is man to tell truth from error ? The ignorant man solves
this problem in a very simple manner : he holds that what-
ever he believes, he knows; and that whatever he knows
is true. This is the attitude of all amateur and professional
theologians, politicians and other numbskulls of that sort.
The pious old maid, for example, who believes in the
doctrine of the immaculate conception looks upon her
faith as proof, and holds that all who disagree with her
will suffer torments in hell. Opposed to this childish
theory of knowledge is the chronic doubt of the educated
man. He sees daily evidence that many things held to be
true by nine-tenths of all men are, in reality, false, and he
is thereby apt to acquire a doubt of everything, including
his own beliefs.
At different times in the history of man, various methods
of solving or evading the riddle have been proposed. In
the age of faith it was held that, by his own efforts alone,
man was unable, even partly, to distinguish between truth
and error, but that he could always go for enlightenment
to an infallible encyclopedia: the word of god, as set
147
148 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
forth, through the instrumentality of inspired scribes, in
the holy scriptures. If these scriptures said that a certain
proposition was true, it was true, and any man who doubted
it was either a lunatic or a criminal. 1 This doctrine pre-
vailed in Europe for many years and all who ventured
to oppose it were in danger of being killed, but in the
course of time the number of doubters grew so large that
it was inconvenient or impossible to kill all of them, and
so, in the end, they had to be permitted to voice their
doubts unharmed.
The first man of this new era to inflict any real damage
upon the ancient churchly idea of revealed wisdom was
Nicolas of Cusa, a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church,
who lived in the early part of the fifteenth century. 2 Despite
his office and his time, Nicolas was an independent and
intelligent man, and it became apparent to him, after long
reflection, that mere belief in a thing was by no means a
proof of its truth. Man, he decided was prone to err, but
in the worst of his errors, there was always some kernel
of truth, else he would revolt against it as inconceivable.
Therefore, he decided, the best thing for man to do was to
hold all of his beliefs lightly and to reject them whenever
they began to appear as errors. The real danger, he said,
was not in making mistakes, but in clinging to them after
they were known to be mistakes.
It seems well nigh impossible that a man of Nicolas*
I age and training should have reasoned so clearly, but
1 J. W. Draper, " A History of the Conflict Between Religion and
Science; " New York, 1874.
1 Richard Falckenberg : A History of Modern Philosophy," tr. by
A. C. Armstrong, Jr.; New York, 1897; Chap. I.
TRUTH 149
the fact remains that he did, and that all of modern
philosophy is built upon the foundations he laid. Since
his time a great many other theories of knowledge have
been put forward, but all have worked, in a sort of circle,
back to Nicolas. It would be interesting, perhaps, to
trace the course and history of these variations and denials,
but such an enterprise is beyond the scope of the present
inquiry. Nicolas by no means gave the world a com-
plete and wholly credible system of philosophy. Until
the day of his death scholasticism was dominant in the
world that he knew, and it retained its old hold upon
human thought, in fact, for nearly two hundred years
thereafter. Not until Descartes, in 16 19, made his
famous resolution " to take nothing for the truth without
clear knowledge that it is such," did humanity in general
begin to realize, as Huxley says, that there was_^anctity
in doubt. And even Descartes could not shake himself
free of the supernaturalism and other balderdash which
yet colored philosophy. He laid down, for all time, the
emancipating doctrine that " the profession of belief
in propositions, of the truth of which there is no suffi-
cient evidence, is immoral " a doctrine that might
well be called the Magna Charta of human thought ' but
it should not be forgotten that he also laid down other
doctrines and that many of them were visionary and
silly. The philosophers after him rid their minds of the
old ideas but slowly and there were frequent reversions
to the ancient delusion that a man's mind is a function
of his soul whatever that may be and not of his
body. It was common, indeed, for a philosopher to
*T. H. Huxley: "Hume," preface; London, 1879.
150 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
set out with sane, debatable, conceivable ideas and
then to go soaring into the idealistic clouds. 1 Only
in our own time have men come to understand that the
ego, for all its seeming independence, is nothing more
than the sum of inherited race experience that a
man's soul, his conscience and his attitude of mind
are things he has inherited from his ancestors, just as he
has inherited his two eyes, his ten toes and his firm
belief in signs, portents and immortality. Only in our
own time have men ceased seeking a golden key to all
riddles, and sat themselves down to solve one fiddle at
a time.
Those metaphysicians who fared farthest from the
philosopher of Cusa evolved the doctrine that, in them-
selves, things have no existence at all, and that we can
think of them only in terms of our impressions of them.
The color green, for example, may be nothing but a delu-
sion, for all we can possibly know of it is that, under
certain conditions, our optic nerves experience a sensation
of greenness. Whether this sensation of greenness is a
mere figment of our imagination or the reflection of an
actual physical state, is something that we cannot tell.
It is impossible, in a word, to determine whether there
are actual things around us, which produce real impres-
sions upon us, or whether our idea of these things is the
mere result of subjective impressions or conditions. We
know that a blow on the eyes may cause us to see a flash
of light which does not exist and that a nervous person
may feel the touch of hands and hear noises which are
purely imaginary. May it not be possible, also, that all
1 Comte and Kant, for example.
TRUTH 151
other sensations have their rise within us instead of without,
and that in saying that objects give us impressions we have
been confusing cause and effect ?
Such is the argument of those metaphysicians who
doubt, not only the accuracy of human knowledge, but also
the very capacity of human beings to acquire knowledge.
It is apparent, on brief reflection, that this attitude, while
theoretically admissible, is entirely impracticable, and
that, as a matter of fact, it gives us no more substantial
basis for intelligent speculation than the old device of
referring all questions to revelation. To say that nothing
exists save in the imagination of living beings is to say that
this imagination itself does not exist. This, of course, is
an absurdity, because every man is absolutely certain that
he himself is a real thing and that his mind is a real thing,
too, and capable of thought. In place of such cob-web
spinning, modern philosophers driven to it, it may be
said, in parenthesis, by the scientists have gone back
to the doctrine that, inasmuch as we can know nothing
of anything save through the impressions it makes upon
us, these impressions must be accepted provisionally as
accurate, so long as they are evidently normal and har-
monize one with the other.
That is to say, our perceptions, corrected by our experi-
ence and our common sense, must serve as guides for us,
and we must seize every opportunity to widen their range
and increase their accuracy. For millions of years they
have been steadily augmenting our store of knowledge. We
know, for instance, that when fire touches us it causes
an impression which we call pain and that this impression
is invariably the same, and always leads to the same re-
152 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
suits, in all normal human beings. Therefore, we accept it
as an axiom that fire causes pain. There are many other
ideas that may be and have been established in the same
manner: by the fact that they are universal among sane
men. But there is also a multitude of things which pro-
duce different impressions upon different men, and here
we encounter the problem of determining which of these
impressions is right and which is wrong. One man,
observing the rising and setting of the sun, concludes that
it is a ball of fire revolving about the earth. Another
man, in the face of the same phenomena, concludes that
the earth revolves around the sun. How, then, are we to
determine which of these men has drawn the proper
conclusion ?
As a matter of fact, it is impossible in such a case, to
come to any decision which can be accepted as utterly
and absolutely true. But all the same the scientific
empiric method enables us to push the percentage of error
nearer and nearer to the irreducible minimum. We can
observe the phenomenon under examination from a multi-
tude of sides and compare the impression it produces with
the impressions produced by kindred phenomena regarding
which we know more. Again, we can put this examination
into the hands of men specially trained and fitted for such
work men whose conclusions we know, by previous
experience, to be above the average of accuracy. And so,
after a long time, we can formulate some idea of the thing
under inspection which violates few or none of the other
ideas held by us. When we have accomplished this, we
have come as near to the absolute truth as it is possible
for human beings to come.
TRUTH
153
I need not point out that this method does not contem-
plate a mere acceptance of the majority vote. Its actual
effect, indeed, is quite the contrary, for it is only a small
minority of human beings who may be said, with any truth,
to be capable of thought. It is probable, for example,
that nine- tenths of the people in Christendom today be-
lieve that Friday is an unlucky day, while only the re-
maining tenth hold that one day is exactly like another.
But despite this, it is apparent that the idea of the latter
will survive and that, by slow degrees, it will be forced
upon the former. We know that it is true, not because
it is accepted by all men or by the majority of men for,
as a matter of fact, we have seen that it isn't but because
we realize that the few who hold to it are best capable
of distinguishing between actual impressions and mere
delusions.
Again, the scientific method tends to increase our knowl-
edge by the very fact that it discourages unreasoning faith.
The scientist realizes that most of his so-called facts are
probably errors and so he is willing to harbor doubts of
their truth and to seek for something better. Like
Socrates he boldly says " I know that I am ignorant."
He realizes, in fact, that error, when it is constantly under
fire, is bound to be resolved in the long run into something
approximating the truth. As Nicolas pointed out 500
years ago, nothing is utterly and absolutely true and
nothing is utterly and absolutely false. There is always
a germ of truth in the worst error, and there is always a
residuum of error in the soundest truth. Therefore, an
error is fatal only when it is hidden from the white light
of investigation. Herein lies the difference between the
154 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
modern scientist and the moralist. The former holds
nothing sacred, not even his own axioms; the latter lays
things down as law and then makes it a crime to doubt
them.
It is in this way by submitting every idea to a search-
ing, pitiless, unending examination that the world is
increasing its store of what may be called, for the sake of
clearness, absolute knowledge. Error always precedes
truth, and it is extremely probable that the vast majority
of ideas held by men of today even the sanest and
wisest men are delusions, but with the passing of the
years our stock of truth grows larger and larger. " A
conviction," says Nietzsche, " always has its history
its previous forms, its tentative forms, its states of error.
It becomes a conviction, indeed, only after having been
not a conviction, and then hardly a conviction. No doubt
falsehood is one of these embryonic forms of conviction.
Sometimes only a change of persons is needed to trans-
form one into the other. That which, in the son, is a con-
viction, was, in the father, still a falsehood." The
tendency of intelligent men, in a word, is to approach
nearer and nearer the truth, by the processes of rejection,
revision and invention. Many old ideas are rejected by
each new generation, but there always remain a few that
survive. We no longer believe with the cave-men that the
thunder is the voice of an angry god and the lightning
the flash of his sword, but we.still believe, as they did, that
wood floats upon water, that seeds sprout and give forth
plants, that a roof keeps off the rain and that a child, if
it lives long enough, will inevitably grow into a man or a
1 " Der Antichrist," 55.
TRUTH
155
woman. Such ideas may be called truths. If we deny
them we must deny at once that the world exists and that
we exist ourselves.
Nietzsche's discussion of these problems is so abstruse
and so much complicated by changes in view that it would
be impossible to make an understandable summary of it
in the space available here. In his first important book,
" Menschliches allzu Menschliches" he devoted himself,
in the main, to pointing out errors made in the past, with-
out laying down any very definite scheme of thought for
the future. In the early stages of human progress, he said,
men made the mistake of regarding everything that was
momentarily pleasant or beneficial as absolutely and
eternally true. Herein they manifested the very familiar
human weakness for rash and hasty generalization, and
the equally familiar tendency to render the ideas of a given
time and place perpetual and permanent by erecting them
into codes of morality and putting them into the mouths
of gods. This, he pointed out, was harmful, for a thing
might be beneficial to the men of today and fatal to the
men of tomorrow. Therefore, he argued that while a
certain idea's effect was a good criterion, humanly speaking,
of its present or current truth, it was dangerous to assume
that this effect would be always the same, and that, in
consequence, the idea itself would remain true forever.
Not until the days of Socrates, said Nietzsche, did men
begin to notice this difference between imminent truth and
eternal truth. The notion that such a distinction existed
made its way very slowly, even after great teachers began
to teach it, but in the end it was accepted by enough men
to give it genuine weight. Since that day philosophy and
156 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
science, which were once merely different names for the
same thing, have signified two separate things. It is the
object of philosophy to analyze happiness, and by means
of the knowledge thus gained, to devise means for safe-
guarding and increasing it. In consequence, it is necessary
for philosophy to generalize to assume that the thing
which makes men happy today will make them happy
tomorrow. Science^ on the contrary, concerns itself, not
with things of the uncertain future, but with things of the
certain present. Its object is to examine the world as it
exists today, to uncover as many of its secrets as possible,
and to study their effect upon human happiness. In other
words, philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness
and then tries to fit the world to it, while science studies
theworld with no other object in view than the increase
of knowledge, and with full confidence that, in the long
run, this increase of knowledge will increase efficiency
and in consequence happiness.
It is evident, then, that science, for all its contempt
for fixed schemes of happiness, will eventually accomplish
with certainty what philosophy which most commonly
swims into the ken of the average man as morality is
now trying to do in a manner that is not only crude and
unreasonable, but also necessarily unsuccessful. In a
word, just so soon as man's store of knowledge grows so
large that he becomes complete master of the natural
forces which work toward his undoing, he will be perfectly
.happy. Now, Nietzsche believed, as we have seen in past
chapters, that man's instinctive will to power had this
same complete mastery over his environment as its ulti-
mate object, and so he concluded that the will to power
TRUTH
157
might be relied upon to lead man to the truth. That is
to say, he believed that there was, in every man of the
higher type (the only type he thought worth discussing) \
an instinctive tendency to seekjhe true as opposed to the
false, that this instinct, as the race progressed, grew more
and more accurate, and that its growing accuracy explained
the fact that, despite the opposition of codes of morality
and of the iron hand of authority, man constantly in-
creased his store of knowledge. A thought, he said, arose
in a man without his initiative or volition, and was nothing
more or less than an expression of his innate will to obtain
power over his environment by accurately observing and
interpreting it. It was just as reasonable, he said, to say 77
thinks as to say I think, 1 because every intelligent person
knew that a man couldn't control his thoughts. Therefore,
the fact that these thoughts, in the long run and consider-
ing the human race as a whole, tended to uncover more and
more truths proved that the will to power, despite the dan-
ger of generalizing from its manifestations, grew more and
more accurate and so worked in the direction of absolute
truth. Nietzsche believed that mankind was ever the
slave of errors, but he held that the number of errors
tended to decrease. When, at last, truth reigned supreme
and there were no more errors, the superman would walk
the earth.
Now it is impossible for any man to note the workings
of the will to power save as it is manifested in his own
instincts and thoughts, and therefore Nietzsche, in his
later books, urges that every man should be willing, at all
times, to pit his own feelings against the laws laid down
"Jcnseits von Gut und Bb'se" VII.
JeA^
b*** 1
&
158 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
by the majority. A man should steer clear of rash generali-
zation from his own experience, but he should be doubly
careful to steer clear of the generalizations of others. The
greatest of all dangers lies in subscribing to a thesis without
being certain of its truth. " This not-wishing-to-see what
one sees ... is a primary requisite for membership in a
party, in any sense whatsoever. Therefore, the party
man becomes aliar by necessity." The proper attitude
for a human being, indeed, is chronic dissent and skepti-
cism. " Zarathustra is a skeptic. . . . Convictions are
prisons. . . . The freedom from every kind of permanent
conviction, the ability to search freely, belong to strength.
. . . The need of a belief, of something that is uncondi-
tioned ... is a sign of weakness. The man of belief is
necessarily a dependent man. . . . His instinct gives the
highest honor to self-abnegation. He does not belong to
himself, but to the author of the idea he believes." l It
is only by skepticism, argues Nietzsche, that we can hope
to make any progress. If all men accepted without ques-
tion, the dictata of some one supreme sage, it is plain that
there could be no further increase of knowledge. It is
only by constant turmoil and conflict and exchange of
views that the minute granules of truth can be separated
from the vast muck heap of superstition and error. Fixed
truths, in the long run, are probably more dangerous to
intelligence than falsehoods. 2
This argument, I take it, scarcely needs greater elucida-
tion. Every intelligent man knows that if there had been
no brave agnostics to defy the wrath of the church in the
1 " Dcr Antichrist? 54.
" Menschliches allzu Menschlichcs" 483.
TRUTH 159
middle ages, the whole of Christendom would still wallow
in the unspeakably foul morass of ignorance which had its
center, during that black time, in an infallible sovereign
of sovereigns. Authority, at all times and everywhere,
means sloth and degeneration. It is only doubt that
creates. It is only the minority that counts. r
The fact that the great majority of human beings are
utterly incapable of original thought, and so must, per-
force, borrow their ideas or submit tamely to some author-
ity, explains Nietzsche's violent loathing and contempt
for the masses. The average, self-satisfied, conservative,
orthodox, law-abiding citizen appeared to him to be a
being but little raised above the cattle in the barn-yard.
So violent was this feeling that every idea accepted by the
majority excited, for that very reason, his suspicion and
opposition. " What everybody believes," he once said,
" is never true." This may seem like a mere voicing of
brobdingnagian egotism, but as a matter of fact, the same
view is held by every man who has spent any time investi-
gating the history of ideas. " Truth," said Dr. Osier
a while ago, " scarcely ever carries the struggle for accept-
ance at its first appearance." The masses are always a
century or two behind. They have made a virtue of their
obtuseness and call it by various fine names : conservatism,
piety, respectability, faith. The nineteenth century wit-
nessed greater human progress than all the centuries before
it saw or even imagined, but the majority of white men of
today still believe in ghosts, still fear the devil, still hold
that the number 13 is unlucky and still picture the deity
as a patriarch in a white beard, surrounded by a choir of
resplendent amateur musicians. " We think a thing,"
160 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
says Prof. Henry Sedgwick, " because all other people
think so ; or because, after all, we do think so ; or because
we are told so, and think we must think so ; or because
we once thought so, and think we still think so ; or be-
cause, having thought so, we think we will think so."
Naturally enough, Nietzsche was an earnest opponent
of the theological doctrine of free will. He held, as we
have seen, that every human act was merely the effect of
the will t o J>ower reacting against environment, and in
consequence he had to reject absolutely the notion of
volition and responsibility. A man, he argued, was not
an object in vacuo and his acts, thoughts, impulses and
motives could not be imagined without imagining some
cause for them. If this cause came from without, it was
clearly beyond his control, and if it came from within it
was no less so, for his whole attitude of mind, his instinc-
tive habits of thoughts, his very soul, so-called, were
merely attributes that had been handed down to him,
like the shape of his nose and the color of his eyes, from
his ancestors. Nietzsche held that the idea of responsi-
b ility was th e product and not the cause o f the idea of
punishmentTand that the latter was nothing more than a
manifestation of primitive man's will to power to tri-
umph over his fellows by making them suffer the handicap
and humiliation of pain. " Men were called free," he
said, " in order that they might be condemned and pun-
ished. . . . When we immoralists try to cleanse psychol-
ogy, history, nature and sociology of these notions, we
find that our chief enemies are the theologians, who, with
their preposterous idea of ' a moral order of the world,'
go on tainting the innocence of man's struggle upward
TRUTH 161
with talk of punishment and guilt. Christianity is, indeed,
a hangman's metaphysic." x As a necessary corollary
of this, Nietzsche denied the existence of any plan in the
cosmos. Like Haeckel, he believed that but two things
existed energy and matter ; and that all the phenomena
which made us conscious of the universe were nothing
more than symptoms of the constant action of the one
upon the other. Nothing ever happened without a cause,
he said, and no cause was anything other than the effect
of some previous cause. " The destiny of man," he said,
" cannot be disentangled from the destiny of everything
else in existence, past, present and future. . . . We are
a part of the whole, we e xist in the who le. . . . There is
nothing which could judge, measure or condemn our being,
for that would be to judge, measure and condemn the
whole. . . . But there is nothing outside of the whole.
. . . The concept of God has hitherto made our existence
a crime. . . . We deny God, we deny responsibility by
denying God : it is only thereby that we save man." 2
Herein, unluckily, Nietzsche fell into the trap which has
snapped upon Haeckel and every other supporter of
atheistic determinism. He denied that the human will
was free and argued that every human action was inevi- ~ W* ^
table, and yet he spent his whole life trying to convince
his fellow men that they should do otherwise than as th ey **
did in fact. In a word, he held that they had no control K
whatever over their actions, and yet, like Moses, Mo-
hammed and St. Francis, he thundered at them uproari-
ously and urged them to turn from their errors and repent.
1 " Gbtzendammerung," VI. a " Gotzendammerung," VI. Ih**"*^
i ... !
***
^<^\J~ l u*^
VIII
CIVILIZATION
On the surface, at least, the civilization of today
seems to be moving slowly toward two goals. One is the
eternal renunciation of war and the other is universal
brotherhood : one is " peace on earth " and the other is
" good will to men." Five hundred years ago a states-
man's fame rested frankly and solely upon the victories
of his armies; today we profess to measure him by his
skill at keeping these armies i n barr acks. And in the
internal economy of all civilized states we find today some
pretence at unrestricted and eq ual suffr age. In times past
it was the chief concern of all logicians and wiseacres to
maintain the proposition tha t God reign ed. At present,
the dominant platitude of Christendom the corner-
stone of practically every political party and the stock-in-
00 trade of every politician is the proposition that the
yy ' people rule.
Nietzsche opposed squarely both the demand for pea ce
and the demand for equality , and his opposition was
grounded upon two arguments. In the first place, he said,
both demands were r hetorica l and insincer e and all in-
telligent men knew that neither would ever be fully satis-
fied. In the second place, he said, it would be ruinous
163
too *.~ * u. r*v
CIVILIZATION ' 163 &17&
A*t/itt
to the race if they were. That is to say, he believed that ^ * #
war was not only necessary, but also be neficia l, and that
the natural system of castes was not only beneficent, but o/wy**
also inevitable. In the demand for universal peace he
saw only the yearning of the weak and useles s Jor pro-
tection against the righteous exploitation of the useful
and strong. In the demand for equality he saw only the
same thing. Both demands, he argued, controverted
and combated that upwa rd tenden cy which finds expres- ^ m * *
sion in the law of natural selection. %%kfo>
" The order of castes, " said Nietzsche, " is the dominat-
ing law of nature, against which no merely human agency j^f
may prevail. In every healthy society there are three
broad classes, each of which has its own morality, its own
* work, its own notion of p erfectio n and its own sense of
mastery. The first class comprises those who are ob-
viously superior to the mass intellectually; the second
includes those whose eminence is chiefly muscular, and
the third is made up of the mediocre. The third class,
very naturally, is the most numerous, but the first is the
most powerful.
" To this highest caste belongs the privilege of repre-
senting beauty, happiness and goodn ess on earth. . . .
Its members accept the world as they find it and make the
best of it. . . . They find their happiness in those things
which, to lesser men, would spell ruin in the laby-
rinth, in se verity toward themselves and others, in effort.
Their delight is self-governing: with them asceticism
becomes naturalness, necessity, instinct. A difficult task
is regarded by them as a privilege ; to play with burdens
which would crush others to death is their recreation.
164 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
They are the most venerable species of men. They are
the most cheerful, the most amiable. They rule because
they are what they are. They are not at liberty to be
second in rank.
" The second caste includes the guardians and keepers
of order and security the warriors, the nobles, the king
above all, as the highest types of warrior, the judges and
defenders of the law. They execute the mandates of the
first caste, relieving the latter of all that is coarse and
menial in the work of ruling.
" At the bottom are the workers the men of
han dicraf t, trade, ag ricul ture and the greater part of art
and science. It is the law of nature that they should be
public utilities that they should be wheels and functions.
T. e only kind of happiness of which they are capable
makes intelligent machines of them. For the mediocre,
it is happiness to be mediocre . In them the mastery of
one thing i. e. specialism is an instinct.
" It is unworthy of a profound intellect to see in medi-
ocrity itself an objection. It is, indeed, a n ecessit y of
human existence, for only in the presence of a horde of
V^ average men is the exceptional man a possibility. . . .
" Whom do I hate most among the men of today ?
The socialist who undermines the workingman's healthy
instincts, who takes from him his feeling of contentedness
with his existence, who makes him e nvious , who teaches
fhim r eveng e. . . . There is no wrong in unequal rights : it
lies in the vain pretension to equal rights." x
It is obvious from this that Nietzsche was an ardent
believer in a ristocrac y, but it is also obvious that he was
" Der Antichrist^ % 57.
CIVILIZATION 165
not a believer in the thing which passes for ari stocra cy
in the world today. The nobility of Europe belongs,
not to his first class, but to his second class. It is essentially
m ilitary and legal, for in themselves its members are puny
and inefficient, and it is only the force of law that main-
tains them in their inheritance.
The fundamental doctrine of civilized law, as we know
it today, is the proposition that what a man has once
acquired shall belong to him and his heirs forever, without
need on his part or theirs to defend it personally against
predatory rivals. This transfer of the function of defense
from the individual to the state naturally exalts the state's
professional defenders that is, her soldiers and judges
and so it is not unnatural to find the members of this
class, and their parasites, in control of most of the
world's governments and in possession of a large share of
the world's wealth, power and honors. 1 To Nietzsche this
seemed grotesquely illogical and unfair. He saw that
this ruling class expended its entire energy in combating
1 In " The Governance of England," (London : 1904) Sidney Low
points out (chap. X) that, despite the rise of democra cy, the govern- C'IS" i *-
ment of Great Britain is still entirely in the hands of the lan ded g entry 1
and nobility. The members of this class plainly owe their power to the '
military prowess of their ancestors, and their identity with the present
military and judicial class is obvious. The typical M. P., in fact, also
writes "J. P." after his name and "Capt." or "Col." before it. The
examples of Russia, Germany, Japan, Austria, Italy, Spain and the
Latin-American republics scarcely need be mentioned. In China the
military, judicial and legislative-executive functions are always combined,
and in the United States, while the military branch of the second caste
is apparently impotent, it is plain that the balance of legislative power
in every state and in the national legislature is held by lawyers, just as
the final determination of all laws rests with judges.
166 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
experiment and change and that the aristocracy it begot
and protected an aristocracy often identical, very natu-
rally, with itself tended to become more and more unfit
and helpless and more and more a bar to the ready recog-
nition and unrestrained functioning of the only true
aristocracy that , of efficiency.
Nietzsche pointed out that one of the essential absurdi-
ties of a constitutional aristocracy was to be found in the
fact that it hedged itself about with purely artificial
barriers. Next only to its desire to maintain itself without
actual personal effort was its jealous endeavor to prevent
ac cession s to its ranks. Nothing, indeed, disgusts the
traditional belted earl quite so much as the ennobling
of some upstart brewer or iron- master. This exclusive-
ness, from Nietzsche's point of view, seemed ridiculous
and pernicious, for a true aristocracy must be ever willing
and eager to welcome to its ranks and to enroll in fact,
automatically all who display those qualities which
make a man extraordinarily fit and efficient. There should
always be, he said, a free and constant interchange of indi-
viduals between the thre e natural castes of men. It should
be always possible for an abnormally efficient man of the
* slave class to enter the master class, and, by the same
<j**J) token, accidental degeneration or incapacity in the master
class should be followed by swift and merciless reduction
\ to the ranks of slaves. Thus, those aristocracies which
presented the incongruous spectacle of imbeciles being
intrusted with the affairs of government seemed to him
utterly abhorrent, and those schemes of caste which made a
mean birth an offset to high intelligence seemed no less so.
So long as man's mastery of the forces of nature is
CIVILIZATION 167
incomplete, said Nietzsche, it will be necessary for the
vast majority of human beings to spend their lives in
either supplementing those natural forces which are
partly under control or in opposing those which are still
unleashed. The business of tilling the soil, for example,
is still largely a matter of musc ular "exert ion, despite the f
vast improvement in far m imple ments, and it will probably *
remain so for centuries to come. Since such labor is
necessarily mere drudger y, and in consequence unpleasant,
it is plain that it should be given over to men whose
realization of its unpleasantness is least acute. Going
further, it is plain that this work will be done with less
and less revolt and less and less driving, as we evolve a
class whose ambition to engage in more inviting pursuits
grows smaller and smaller. In a word, the ideal plough-
man is one who has no thought of anything higher and
better than ploughing. Therefore, argued Nietzsche,
the proper performance of the manual labor of the world
makes it necessary that we have a laboring class, which
means a class content to obey without fear or~question.
This doctrine brought down upon Nietzsche's head
the pious wrath of all the world's humanitarians, but
empiric experiment has more than once provecTTts truth.
The history of the hopelessly futile and fatuous effort to
improve the negro es of the Southern United States by
education affords one such proof. It is apparent, on brief
reflection, that the negro, no matter how much he is edu- r ls <~>s n
cated, must remain, as a race, in a condition of subservi- /*^'
ence; that he must remain the inferior of the stronger
and more intelligent white man so long as he retains '
racial differentiation. Therefore, the effort to educate
168 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
him has awakened in his mind a mbition s and aspirations
which, in the very nature of things, must go unrealized,
and so, while gaining nothing whatever materially, he has
u Lx 70 lost all his old contentment, peace of mind and happiness.
Indeed, it is a commonplace of observation in the United
States that the educated and refined negro is invariably
a hopeless, melancholy, embittered and despairing man.
Nietzsche, to resume, regarded it as absolutely essential
that there be a class of laborers or slaves his " third
caste " and was of the opinion that such a class would
exist upon earth so long as the human race survived. Its
condition, compared to that of the ruling class, would
vary but slightly, he thought, with the progress of the
years. As man's mastery of nature increased, the laborer
would find his task less and less painful, but he would
always remain a fixed distance behind those who ruled
him. Therefore, Nietzsche, in his philosophy, gave no
thought to the desires and aspirations of the laboring class,
because, as we have just seen, he held that a man could
not properly belong to this class unless his desires and
aspirations were so faint or so well under the control of
the ruling class that they might be neglected. All of the
Nietzschean doctrines and ideas apply only to the ruling
class. It was at th e top, he argued, that mankind grew.
It was only in the ideas of those capable of original thought
*/, ij/. ' tnat progress had its source. William the Conqueror
. , was of far more importance, though he was but a single
/ /*^/> man, than all the other Normans of his generation taken
together.
Nietzsche was well aware that his " first caste " was
necessarily small in numbers and that there was a strong
CIVILIZATION 169
tendency for its members to drop out of it and seek ease
and peace in the castes lower down. " Life," he said, " is
always hardest toward the summit the cold increases,
the responsibility increases." J But to the truly effi-
cient man these hardships are but spurs to effort. His
joy is in combating and in overcoming in pitting his
will to power against the laws and desires of the rest of
humanity. " I do not advise you to labor," says Zara-
thustra, " but to fight. I do not advise you to compromise
and make peace, but to conquer. Let your labor be
fighting and your peace victory. . . . You say that a
good cause will hallo w even war ? I tell you that a good
war hallows every cause. War and courage have done
more great things than charity. Not your pity, but your
bravery lifts up those about you. Let the little girlies
tell you that ' good ' means ' sweet ' and ' touching.' I
tell you that ' good ' means ' brave.' . . . The slave
rebels against hardships and calls his rebellion superi-
ority. Let your superiority be an acceptance of hardships.
Let your commanding be an obeying. . . . Let your
highest thought be: ' Man is something to be surpassed.'
... I do not advise you to love your neighbor the
nearest human being. I advise you rather to flee from
the nearest and love the furthest human being. Higher
than love to your neighbor is love to the higher man that
is to come in the future. . . . Propagate yourself upward.
Thus live your life. What are many years worth ? I do
not spare you. . . . Die at the right time ! " 2
1 " Der Antichrist" 55.
3 The quotations are from various chapters in the first part of "Also
sprach Zarathustra."
170 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
The average man, said Nietzsche, is almost entirely
lacking in this gorgeous, fatali stic cou rage and s ublim e
e gotism . He is ever reluctant to pit his privat e conv ictions
and yearnings against those of the mass of men. He is
either afraid to risk the consequences of originality or
fearful that, since the majority of his fellows disagree with
him, he must be wrong. Therefore, no matter how
strongly an unconventional idea may possess a man, he
commonly seeks to combat it and throttle it, and the
ability to do this with the least possible expenditure of
effort we call self-control. The average man, said Nietzsche,
has the power of self-control well developed, and in conse-
quence he seldom contributes anything positive to the
thought of his age and almost never attempts to oppose it.
We have seen in the preceding chapter that if every
man, without exception, were of this sort, all hum an
p rogress would cease, because the ideas of one generation
would be handed down unchanged to the next and there
would be no effort whatever to improve the conditions of
existence by the only possible method constant experi-
ment with new idea s. Therefore, it follows that the world
must depend for its advancement upon those revolutionists
who, instead of overcoming their impulse to go "counter to
convention, give it free rein. Of such is Nietzsche's " first
caste " composed. It is plain that among the two lower
castes, courage of this sort is regarded, not as an evidence
of strength, but as a proo f of weak ness. The man who
outrages conventions is a man who l acks self-con trol, and
the majority, by a process we have examined in our con-
sideration of slave-morality, has exalted self-co ntrol, which,
at bottom, is the antithesis of courage, into a place of
CIVILIZATION 171
honor higher than that belonging, by right, to courage
itself.
But Nietzsche pointed out that the act of denying or
combating accepted ideas is a thing which always tends
to inspire other acts of the same sort. It is true enough
that a revolutionary idea, so soon as it replaces an old
convention and obtains the sanction of the majority, ceases
to be revolutionary and becomes itself conventional, but
all the same the mere fact that it has succeeded gives
courage to those who harbor other revolutionary ideas
and inspires them to give these ideas voice. Thus, it
happens that courage breeds itself, and that, in times of
great conflict, of no matter what sort, the world produces
more than an average output of originality, or, as we more
commonly denominate it, genius. In this manner Nietzsche
accounted for a fact that had been noticed by many men
before him : that such tremendous struggles as the French
Revolution and the American Civil War are invariably
followed by eras of diligent inquiry, of bold overturning
of existing institutions and of marked progress. People
become accustomed to unrestrained combat and so the
desirability of self-control becomes less insistent. ffflnt*
Nietzsche had a vast contempt for what he called " the
green-grazing happiness of the herd." Its strong morality V>/*n
and its insistence upon the doctrine that whatever is, is
right that " God's in his heaven; all's well with the
world " revolted him. He held that the so-called rights
of the masses had no justifiable existence, since everything
they asserted as a right was an assertion, more or less
disguised, of the doctrine that the unfit should survive.
" There are," he said, " only three ways in which the ji^^sr <
172 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
masses appear to me to deserve a glance : first, as blurred
copies of their betters, printed on bad paper and from
worn out plates; secondly, as a necessary opposition to
stimulate the master class, and thirdly, as instruments
in the hands of the master class. Further than this I hand
them over to statistics and the devil." l Kant's proposal
that the morality of every contemplated action be
tested by the question, " Suppose everyone did as I pro-
pose to do?" seemed utterly ridiculous to Nietzsche
because he saw that " everyone " always opposed the very
things which meant progress; and Kant's corollary that
the sense of duty contemplated in this dictum was " the
obligation to act in reverence for law," proved to Nietzsche
merely that both duty and law were absurdities. " Con-
tumely," he said, " always falls upon those who break
through some custom or convention. Such men, in fact,
are called c rimina ls. Everyone who overthrows an existing
law is, at the start, regarded as a wicked man. Long
afterward, when it is found that this law was bad and so
cannot be re-established, the epithet is changed. All
history treats almost exclusively of wicked men who, in
the course of time, have come to be looked upon as good
men. All progress is the result of succ essful crim es." 2
Dr. Turck, 3 Miss Paget, M. Nordau and other critics
see in all this good evidence that Nietzsche was a criminal
at heart. At the bottom of all philosophies, says Miss
Paget, 4 there is always one supreme idea. Sometimes it
1 " Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil dcr Historic fur das Leben."
3 " Morgenrbte " 20.
3 " Friedrich Nietzsche und seine philosophische Irrwege" Leipsic, 1891.
* North American Review, Dec, 1904.
CIVILIZATION 173
is a conception of nature, sometimes it is a religious faith
and sometimes it is a theory of truth. In Nietzsche's case
it is " my taste." He is always irritated : " / dislike,"
" / hate," " / want to get rid of " appear on every page
of his writings. He delights in ruthlessness, his fellow
men disgust him, his physical senses are acute, he has a
sick ego. For that reason he likes singularity, the lonely
Alps, classic literature and Bizet's " clear yellow " music.
Turck argues that Nietzsche was a criminal because he
got pleasure out of things which outraged the majority of
his fellow men, and Nordau, in supporting this idea, shows
that it is possible for a man to experience and approve
criminal impulses and still never act them : that there are
criminals of the chair as well as of the dark lantern and
sandbag. The answer to all of this, of course, is the fact
that the same method of reasoning would convict every
original thinker the world has ever known of black felony :
that it would make Martin Luther a criminal as well as
Jack Sheppard, John the Baptist as well as the Borgias,
and Galileo as well as Judas Iscariot ; that it would justify
the execution of all the sublime company of heroes who
have been done to death for their opinions, from Jesus
Christ down the long line.
IX
WOMEN AND MARRIAGE
Nietzsche's faithful sister, with almost comical and
essentially feminine disgust, bewails the fact that, as a
very young man, the philosopher became acquainted with
the baleful truths set forth in Schopenhauer's immortal
essay " On Women." That this daring work greatly
influenced him is true, and that he subscribed to its chief
arguments all the rest of his days is also true, but it is far
from true to say that his view of the fair sex was borrowed
bodily from Schopenhauer or that he would have written
otherwise than as he did if Schopenhauer had never lived.
Nietzsche's conclusions regarding women were the inevi-
table result, indeed, of his own philosophical system. It
is impossible to conceive a man who held his opinions of
morality and society laying down any other doctrines of
femininity and matrimony than those he scattered through
his books.
Nietzsche believed that there was a radical difference
between the mind of man and the mind of woman and
that the two sexes reacted in diametrically different ways
to those stimuli which make up what might be called the
clinical picture of human society. It is the function of
man, he said, to wield a sword in humanity's battle with
everything that makes life on earth painful or precarious.
174
WOMEN AND MARRIAGE 175
It is the function of woman, not to fight herself, but to
provide fresh warriors for the fray. Thus the exercise of
the will to exist is divided between the two : the man
seeking the welfare of the race as he actually sees it and
the woman seeking the welfare of generations yet unborn.
Of course, it is obvious that this division is by no means
clearly marked, because the man, in struggling for power
over his environment, necessarily improves the conditions
under which his children live, and the woman, working
for her children, often benefits herself. But all the same
the distinction is a good one and empiric observation bears
it out. As everyone who has given a moment's thought
to the subject 'well knows, a man's first concern in the
world is to provide food and shelter for himself and his
family, while a woman's foremost duty is to bear and
rear children. " Thus," said Nietzsche, " would I have
man and woman : the one fit for warfare, the other fit for
giving birth; and both fit for dancing with head and
legs " T that is to say : both capable of doing their share
of the race's work, mental and physical, with conscious
and superbundant efficiency.
Nietzsche points out that, in the racial economy, the
place of woman may be compared to that of a slave-
nation, while the position of man resembles that of a
master-nation. We have seen how a weak nation, unable,
on account of its weakness, to satisfy its will to survive
and thirst for power by forcing its authority upon other
nations, turns to the task of keeping these other nations,
as much as possible, from enforcing their authority upon
it. Realizing that it cannot rule, but must serve, it en-
" Also sprach Zarathustra" III.
*~4
176 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
"- deavors to make the conditions of its servitude as bearable
as possible. This effort is commonly made in two ways :
first by ostensibly renouncing its desire to rule, and
secondly, by attempts to inoculate its powerful neighbors
with its ideas in subterranean and round-about ways, so
as to avoid arousing their suspicion and opposition. It
becomes, in brief, humble and cunning, and with its
humility as a cloak, it seeks to pit its cunning against the
sheer might of those it fears.
The position of women in the world is much the same.
The business of bearing and rearing children is destructive
to their physical strength", and in consequence makes it
impossible for them to prevail by force when their ideas
and those of men happen to differ. To take away the
sting of this incapacity, they make a virtue of it, and it
becomes modesty , humilit y, self- sacrifice and fidelity; to
win in spite of it they cultivate c unning, which commonly
takes the form of h ypocris y, ca jolery , dis simula tion and
more or less masked appeals to the masculine sexual
instinct. All of this is so often observed in every-day life
that it has become commonpjace. A woman is physically
unable to force a man to do as she desires, but her very
inability to do so becomes a senti mental wea pon against
him, and her blandishments do the rest. The spectacle
of a strong man ruled by a weak woman is no rare one
certainly, and Samson was neither the first nor last giant
to fall before a Delilah. There is scarcely a household in
all the world, in truth, in which the familiar drama is not
being acted and reacted day after day.
Now, it is plain from the foregoing that, though women's
business in the world is of such a character that it inevi-
WOMEN AND MARRIAGE 177
tably leads to physical degener ation, her constant need to
overcome the effects of this degeneration by cunning
produces constant mental activity, which, by the law of
exercise, should produce, in turn, great menta l efficie ncy.
This conclusion, in part, is perfectly correct, for women,
as a sex, are shrewd, res ourcef ul and acute ; but the very
fact that they are always concerned with immin ent p rob-
lems and that, in consequence, they are unaccustomed to
dealing with the lar ger rid dles ofjife, makes their mental
attitude essentially petty. This explains the circumstance
that despite their mental suppleness, they are not genuinely
strong intellectually. Indeed, the very contrary is true.
Women's constant thought is, not to lay down broad
principles of right and wrong; not to place the whole
world in harmony with some great scheme of justice;
not to consider the future of nations ; not to make two
blades of grass grow where one grew before ; but to deceiv e,
influence, sway and ple ase me n. Normally, their weak-
ness makes 'masculine protection necessary to their
existence and to the exercise of their overpowering maternal
instinct, and so their whole effort is to obtain this protection
in the easiest way possible. The net result is that femi-
nine morality is a morality of opportunism and imminent
ex pediency , and that the normal woman has no respect
for, and scarcely any conception of ab stract tru th. Thus
is proved the fact noted by Schopenhauer and many
other observers: that a woman seldom manifests any
true sense of justice or of honor.
It is unnecessary to set forth this idea in greater detail,
because everyone is familiar with it and proofs of its
accuracy are supplied in infinite abundance by common
178 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
observation. Nietzsche accepted it as demonstrated.
When he set out to pursue the subject further, he rejected
entirely the Schopenhauerean corollary that man should
ever regard woman as his enemy , and should seek, by all
means within his power, to escape her insidious influence.
Such a notion naturally outraged the philosopher of the
superman. He was never an advocate of running away :
to all the facts of existence he said " yes." His ideal was
not resignation or flight, but an intelligent defiance and
opposition. Therefore, he argued that man should
accept woman as a natural oppo nent arrayed against him
for the benevolent purpose of stimulating him to constant
efficiency. Opposition, he pointed out, was a necessary
forerunner of function, and in consequence the fact that
woman spent her entire effort in a ceaseless endeavor to
undermine and change the will of man, merely served to
make this will aler t an d stron g, and so increased man's
capacity for meeting and overcoming the enemies of his
existence.
A man conscious of his st reng th, observes Nietzsche,
need have no fear of women. It is only the man who finds
himself utterly helpless in the face of femi nine cajol ery
that must cry, " Get thee behind me, Satan ! " and flee.
" It is only the most sensual men," he says, " who have to
shun women and torture their bodies." The normal,
healthy man, despite the strong appeal which women
make to him by their subtle putting forward of the sexual
idea visually as dress, coquetry and what not still
keeps a l evel hea d. He is strong enough to weather the
sexu al sto rm. But the man who cannot do this, who
experiences no normal reaction in the direction of guarded-
WOMEN AND MARRIAGE 179
ness and caution and reason, must either abandon him-
self utterly as a helpless slave to woman's instinct of race-
preservation, and so become a bestial voluptuary, or
avoid temptation altogether and so beco me a celibat e. 1
There is nothing essentially evil in woman's effort to
combat and control man's will by constantly suggesting
the sexual idea to him, because it is necessary, for the
permanence of the race, that this idea be presented fre-
quently and powerfully. Therefore, the conflict between
masculine and feminine ideals is to be regarded, not as a
lamentable battle, in which one side is right and the other
wrong, but a convenient means of providing that stimula-
tion-by-opposition without which all function, and in
consequence all progress, would cease. " The man who
regards women as an enemy to be avoided," says Nietzsche,
11 betrays an unbridled lust which loathes not only itself,
but also its means." 2
There are, of course, occasions when the feminine
influence, by its very subtlety, works harm to the higher
sort of men. It is dangerous for a man to love too violently
and it is dangerous, too, for him to be loved too much.
" The natural inclination of women to a quiet, uniform
and peaceful existence " that is to say, to a slave- \
i
Nietzsche saw, of course (" The Genealogy of Morals," III), that
temporary celibacy was frequently necessary to men with peculiarly
difficult and vitiating tasks ahead of them. The philosopher who
sought to solve world riddles, he said, had need to steer clear of women,
for reasons which appealed, with equal force, to the athlete who sought
to perform great feats of physical strength. It is obvious, however, \^J.,fJ
that this desire to escape distraction and drain differs vastly from ethical ^ *^
^ ce libac y.
8 " Morgenrote" 346.
*y**
180 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
morality " operates adversely to the heroic impulse of
the masculine free spirit. Without being aware of it,
women act like a person who would remove stones from
the path of a mineralogist, lest his feet should come in
contact with them forgetting entirely that he is faring
forth for the very purpose of coming in contact with them.
. . . The wives of men with lofty aspirations cannot
resign themselves to seeing their husbands sufferin g,
impoverished and slighted, even though it is apparent
that this suffering proves, not only that its victim has
chosen his attitude aright, but also that his aims some
day, at least will be realized. Women always intrigue
^ \ in secret against the higher souls of their husbands. They
fc-* seek to cheat the future for the sake of a painless and
j^. agreeable present." In other words, the feminine vision
is ever limited in range. Your typical woman cannot see
far ahead ; she cannot reason out the ultimate effect of a
complicated series of causes; her eye is always upon the
present or the very near future. Thus Nietzsche reaches,
by a circuitous route, a conclusion supported by the
almost unanimous verdict of the entire masculine sex, at
all times and everywhere.
Nietzsche quite agrees with Schopenhauer (and with
nearly everyone else who has given the matter thought)
that the thing we call love is grounded upon physical
desire, and that all of those arts of dress and manner in
which women excel are mere devices for arousing this
desire in man, but he points out, very justly, that a great
many other considerations also enter into the matter.
Love necessarily presupposes a yearning to mate, and
,M Menschliches allzu Menschliches," 431, 434*
WOMEN AND MARRIAGE 181
mating is its logical consequence, but the human imagi-
nation has made it more than that. The man in love sees
in his charmer, not only an attractive instrument for
satisfying his comparatively rare and necessarily brief
impulses to dalliance, but also a worth y com panion,
guide, counsellor and friend. The essence of love is confi-
dence confidence in the loved one's judgment, honesty
and fidelity and in the persistence of her charm. So large
do these considerations loom among the higher classes of
men that they frequently obscure the fundamental sexual
impulse entirely. It is a commonplace, indeed, that in
the ecstasies of amorous idealization, the notion of the
function itself becomes obnoxious. It may be impossible
to imagine a man loving a woman without having had, at
some time, conscious desire for her, but all the same it is
undoubtedly true that the wish for marriage is very often
a wish for close and constant association with the one
respected, admired and trusted rather than a yearning
for the satisfaction of desire.
All of this admiration, respect and trust, as we have
seen, may be interpreted as confidence , which, in turn, is
faith. Now, faith is essentially unreasonable, and in the
great majority of cases, is the very antithesis of reason.
Therefore, a man in love commonly endows the object of
his affection with merits which, to the eye of a disinterested
person, she obviously lacks. " Love . . . has a secret
craving to discover in the loved one as many beautiful
qualities as possible and to raise her as high as possible."
" Whoever idolizes a person tries to justify himself by
idealizing; and thus becomes an artist (or self- deceiver)
in order to have a clear conscience." Again there is a
? Iw/jmt 182 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
tendency to illogical generalization. " Everything which
pleases me once, or several times, is pleasing of and in
itself." The result of this, of course, is quick and painful
disillusion. The loved one is necessarily merely human
and when the ideal gives way to the real, reaction neces-
sarily follows. " Many a married man awakens one
morning to the consciousness that his wife is far from
attractive." And it is only fair to note that the same
awakening is probably the bitter portion of most married
women, too.
In addition, it is plain that the purely physical desire
which lies at the bottom of all human love, no matter how
much sentimental considerations may obscure it, is merely
a passion and so, in the very nature of things, is intermit-
tent and evanescent. There are moments when it is over-
powering, but there are hours, days, weeks and months
when it is dormant. Therefore, we must conclude with
Nietzsche, that the thing we call love, whether considered
from its physical or psychical aspect, is fragile and short-
lived.
Now, inasmuch as marriage, in the majority of cases, is
a permanent institution (as it is, according to the theory
of our moral code, in all cases), it follows that, in order to
make the relation bearable, something must arise to take
the place of love. This something, as we know, is ordi-
narily tolerance, respect, camaraderie, or a common
interest in the well-being of the matrimonial firm or in
the offspring of the marriage. In other words, the dis-
covery that many of the ideal qualities seen in the life-
companion through the rosy glasses of love do not exist
1 All of these quotations are from " Morgenrote."
WOMEN AND MARRIAGE 183
is succeeded by a common- sense and unsentimental
decision to make the best of those real ones which actually
do exist.
From this it is apparent that a marriage is most apt to
be successful when the qualities imagined in the beloved
are all, or nearly all, real : that is to say, when the possi-
bility of disillusion is at an irreducible minimum. This
occurs sometimes by accident, but Nietzsche points out
that such accidents are comparatively rare. A man in
love, indeed, is the worst possible judge of his inamorata'' s
possession of those traits which will make her a satis-
factory wife, for, as we have noted, he observes her
through an ideal haze and sees in her innumerable merits
which, to the eye of an unprejudiced and accurate observer,
she does not possess. Nietzsche, at different times,
pointed out two remedies for this. His first plan pro-
posed that marriages for love be discouraged, and that we
endeavor to insure the permanence of the relation by
putting the selection of mates into the hands of third
persons likely to be dispassionate and far-seeing : a plan
followed with great success, it may be recalled, by most
ancient peoples and in vogue, in a more or less disguised
form, in many European countries today. " It is impossi-
ble," he said, " to found a permanent institution upon an
idiosyncrasy. Marriage, if it is to stand as the bulwark
of civilization, cannot be founded upon the temporary
and unreasonable thing called love. To fulfil its mission,
it must be founded upon the impulse to reproduction, or
race permanence; the impulse to possess property
(women and children are property) ; and the impulse to
rule, which constantly organizes for itself the smallest
,t
tkSUUt
184 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
unit of sovereignty, the family, and which needs children
and heirs to maintain, by physical force, whatever meas-
ure of power, riches and influence it attains."
Nietzsche's second proposal was nothing more or less
than the institution of trial marriage, which, when it was
.fcf i* proposed years later by an American sociologist, J caused
7 all the uproar which invariably rises in the United States
^*** whenever an attempt is made to seek absol ute t ruth.
" Give us a term," said Zarathustra, " and a small mar-
riage, that we may see whether we are fit for the great
marriage." 2 The idea here, of course, is simply this :
that, when a man and a woman find it utterly impossible
to live in harmony, it is better for them to separate at once
than to live on together, making a mock of the institution
they profess to respect, and begetting children who, in
Nietzsche's phrase, cannot be regarded other than as
mere " scapegoats of matrimony." Nietzsche saw that
this notion was so utterly opposed to all current ideals
and hypocrisies that it would be useless to argue it, and
so he veered toward his first proposal. The latter, despite
its violation of one of the most sacred illusions of the
Anglo-Saxon race, is by no means a mere fantasy of the
chair. Marriages in which love is subordinated to mutual
fitness and material considerations are the rule in many
countries today, and have been so for thousands of years,
and if it be urged that, in France, their fruit has been
adultery, unfruitfulness and degeneration, it may be
1 Elsie Clews Parsons: " The Family," New York, 1906. Mrs. Par-
sons is a doctor of philosophy, a Hartley house fellow and was for six
years a lecturer on sociology at Barnard College.
' " Also sprack Zarathustra? III.
WOMEN AND MARRIAGE 185
answered that, in Turkey,' Japan and India, they have
become the cornerstones of quite res pectab le civilizations. \
Nietzsche believed that the ultimate mission and
function of human marriage was the breeding of a race of
supermen and he saw very clearly that fortuitous pairing
would never bring this about. " Thou shalt not only
propagate thyself," said Zarathustra, " but propagate thy-
self upward. Marriage should be the will of two to create
that which is greater than either. But that which the
many call marriage alas ! what call I that ? Alas !
that soul-poverty of two ! Alas ! that soul-filth of two !
Alas ! that miserable dalliance of two ! Marriage they
call it and they say that marriages are made in heaven.
I like them not : these animals caught in heavenly nets. . .
Laugh not at such marriages ! What child has not reason
to weep over its parents ? " It is the old argument against
haphazard breeding. We select the sires and dams of
our race-horses with most elaborate care, but the strains
that mingle in our children's veins get there by chance.
" Worthy and ripe for begetting the superman this man
appeared to me, but when I saw his wife earth seemed a
madhouse. Yea, I wish the earth would tremble in con-
vulsions when such a saint and such a goose mate ! This
one fought for truth like a hero and then took to heart
a little dressed-up lie. He calls it his marriage. That
one was reserved in intercourse and chose his associates
fastidiously and then spoiled his company forever.
He calls it his marriage. A third sought for a servant
with an angel's virtues. Now he is the servant of a woman. % i^ vf s i
Even the most cunning buys his wife in a sack." " e/**~ *tJ '
1 Also sprach Zarathustra? I.
186 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
As has been noted, Nietzsche was by no means a
declaimer against women. A bachelor himself and consti-
tutionally suspicious of all who walked in skirts, he
nevertheless avoided the error of damning the whole sex
as a dangerous and malignant excrescence upon the face
of humanity. He saw that woman's mind was the natural
complement of man's mind; that womanl y guile was as
useful, in its place, as masculine truth; that man, to
retain those faculties which made him master of the
earth, needed a persistent and resourceful opponent to
stimulate them and so preserve and develop them. So
long as the institution of the family remained a premise
in every sociological syllogism, so long as mere fruitfulness
remained as much a merit among intelligent human beings
as it was among peasants and cattle so long, he saw,
it would be necessary for the stronger ^ex to submit to the
parasitic opportunism of the weaker.
But he was far from exalting mere women into goddesses,
after the sentimental fashion of those virtuosi of illusion
who pass for law-givers in the United States, and particu-
larly in the southern part thereof. Chivalry, with its
ridiculous denial of obvious facts, seemed to him unspeak-
able and the good old sub- Potomac doctrines that a
woman who loses her virtue is, ipso facto, a victim and
not a criminal or particeps criminis, and that a " lady,"
by virtue of being a " lady," is necessarily a reluctant
and helpless quarry in the hunt of love these ancient
and venerable fallacies would have made him laugh. He
admitted the great and noble part that women had to play
in the world-drama, but he saw clearly that her methods
were essentially deceptive, insincere and pernicious, and
WOMEN AND MARRIAGE 187
so he held that she should be confined to her proper role
and that any effort she made to take a hand in other
matters should be regarded with suspicion, and when
necessary, violently opposed. Thus Nietzsche detested
the idea of women' s suffr age almost as much as he detested
the idea of chivalry. The participation of women in
large affairs, he argued, could lead to but one result : the
contamination of the masculine ideals of justice, honor
and truth by the feminine ideals of dissimulation, equivoca-
tion and intrigue. In women, he believed, there was an
entire absence of that instinctive liking for a sq uare d eal
and a fair fight which one finds in all men even the
worst.
Hence, Nietzsche believed that, in his dealings with
women, man should be wary and cautious. " Let men
fear women when she loveth: for she sacrificeth all for
love and nothing else hath value to her. . . . Man is
for woman a means: the end is always the child. . . .
Two things are wanted by the true man: danger and
play. Therefore he seeketh woman as the most dangerous
toy within his reach. . . . Thou goest to women ? DonH
forget th y whi p! " J This last sentence has helped to
make Nietzsche a stench in the nostrils of the orthodox,
but the context makes his argument far more than a
mere effort at sensational epigram. He is pointing out
the utter unsc rupulousn ess which lies at the foundation \
of the maternal instinct: an unscrupulousness familiar
to every observer of humanity. 2 Indeed, it is so potent a
1 " Also sprach Zaratkustra" I.
2 Until quite recently it was considered indecent and indefensible to
mention this fact, despite its obviousness. But it is now discussed
1 88 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
factor in the affairs of the world that we have, by our
ancient device of labelling the inevitable the good, exalted
it to the dignity and estate of a virtue. But all the same,
we are instinctively conscious of its inherent opposition
to truth and justice, and so our law books provide that a
woman who commits a crime in her husband's presence
is presumed to have been led to it by her desire to work
what she regards as his good, which means her desire to
retain his protection and good will. " Man's happiness
is : 'I will.' Woman's happiness is : 'He will.' " *
Maternity, thought Nietzsche, was a thing even more
sublime than paternity, because it produced a more keen
sense of race responsibility. " Is there a state more
blessed," he asked, " than that of a woman with child ?
. . . Even worldly justice does not allow the judge and
hangman to lay hold on her." 3 He saw, too, that woman's
insincere masochism 3 spurred man to heroic efforts and
gave vigor and direction to his work by the very fact that
it bore the outward aspect of helplessness. He saw that
the resultant stimulation of the will to power was responsi-
ble for many of the world's great deeds, and that, if
woman served no other purpose, she would still take an
honorable place as the most splendid reward greater
freely enough and in Henry Arthur Jones' play, " The Hypocrites," it
is presented admirably in the character of the mother whose instinctive
effort to protect her son makes her a scoundrel and the son a cad.
1 " Also sprach Zarathustra" I.
" Morgenrbte," 552
3 Prof. Dr. R. von Kraff t Ebing : " Masochism is ... a peculiar per-
version . . . consisting in this, that the individual seized with it is
dominated by the idea that he is wholly and unconditionally subjected
to the will of a person of the opposite sex, who treats him imperiously
and humiliates and maltreats him." t**^***} '
WOMEN AND MARRIAGE 189
than honors or treasures that humanity could bestow
upon its victors. The winning of a beautiful and much-
sought woman, indeed, will remain as great an incentive
to endeavor as the conquest of a principality so long as
humanity remains substantially as it is today.
It is unfortunate that Nietzsche left us no record of
his notions regarding the probable future of matrimon y
as an institution. We have reason to believe that he
agreed with Schopenhauer's analysis of the " lady," i. e.
the woman elevated to splendid, but complete parasitism.
Schopenhauer showed that this pitiful creature was the
product of the monogamous ideal, just as the prostitute
was the product of the monogamous actuality. In the
United States and England, unfortunately, it is impossible
to discuss such matters with frankness, or to apply to
them the standards of absolute truth, on account of the
absurd axiom that monogamy is ordained of God,
with which maxim there appears the equally absurd
corollary : that the civilization of a people is to be meas-
ured by the degree of dependence of its women. Luckily
for posterity this last revolting doctrine is fast dying,
though its decadence is scarcely noticed and wholly mis-
understood. We see about us that women are becoming
more and more inde pende nt and sel f-suffic ient and that,
as individuals, they have less and less need to seek and
retain the good will and protection of individual men,
but we overlook the fact that this tendency is fast under-
mining the ancient theory that the family is a necessary
and impeccable institution and that without it progress
would be impossible. As a matter of fact, the idea of the
family, as it exists today, is based entirely upon the idea
L(A
igo FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
of feminine helplessness. So soon as women are capable
of making a living for themselves and their children,
without the aid of the fathers of the latter, the old corner-
stone of the family the mascu line defen der and bread-
winner will find his occupation gone, and it will
become ridiculous to force him, by law or custom, to
discharge duties for which there is no longer need. Wipe
out your masculine defender, and your feminine parasite-
haus-jrau and where is your family ?
This tendency is exhibited empirically by the rising
revolt against those fetters which the family idea has
imposed upon humanity: by the growing feeling that
divorce should be a matter of individual expedience; by
the successful war of cos mopolitan ism upon insularity
and clannishness and upon all other costly outgrowths
of the old idea that because men are of the same blood
they must necessarily love one another ; and by the increas-
ing reluctance among civilized human beings to become
parents without some reason more logical than the notion
that parenthood, in itself, is praiseworthy. It seems plain,
in a word, that so soon as any considerable portion of the
women of the world become capable of do ing men's work
and of thus earning a living for themselves and their chil-
dren without the aid of men, there will be in full progress
^ a da ngerou s, if unconscious, war upon the institution of
m arriag e. It may be urged in reply that this will never
happen, because of the fact that women are physically un-
equal to men, and that inconsequence of their duty of child-
bearing, they will ever remain so, but it may be answered
to this that use will probably vastly increase their physical
fitness; that science will rob child-bearing of most of its
WOMEN AND MARRIAGE 191
terrors within a comparatively few years; and that the
woman who seeks to go it alone will have only herself and
her child to maintain, whereas, the man of today has not
only himself and his child, but also the woman. Again,
it is plain that the economic handicap of child-bearing
is greatly overestimated. At most, the business of
maternity makes a woman utterly helpless for no longer
than three months, and in the case of a woman who has
three children, this means nine months in a life time.
It is entirely probable that alcohol alone, not to speak
of other enemies of efficiency, robs the average man of
quite that much productive activity during his three
score years and ten.
All of this, of course, is mere speculation, and it is
presented as such, and not as prophecy. To it a thousand
answers are possible : that woman, growing independent,
will fall a prey to alcohol, promiscuousness and all the
other evils from which man now protects her, only to
be a slave to them himself; that man's lead in the race
toward absolute efficiency is too long to be overcome;
or that, in case woman makes the gains indicated, man
will degenerate, and there will follow a transvaluation
of the sexes, with woman the producer and man the
parasite: a condition of affairs obviously identical, in
all its essentials, with that which obtains today.
GOVERNMENT
Like Spencer before him, Nietzsche believed, as we
have seen, that the best possible system of government
was that which least interfered with the desires and
enterprises of the efficient and intelligent individual.
That is to say, he held that it would be well to establish,
among the members of his first caste of human beings,
a sort of glorified anarchy. Each member of this caste
should be at liberty to work out his own destiny for
himself. There should be no laws regulating and circum-
scribing his relations to other members of his caste,
except the easily-recognizable and often-changing laws
of common interest, and above all, there should be no
laws forcing him to submit to, or even to consider, the
wishes and behests of the two lower castes. The higher
man, in a word, should admit no responsibility whatever
to the lower castes. The lowest of all he should look
upon solely as a race of slaves bred to work his welfare
in the most efficient and uncomplaining manner possible,
and the military caste should seem to him a race designed
only to carry out his orders and so prevent the slave caste
marching against him.
It is plain from this that Nietzsche stood squarely
192
GOVERNMENT ig $
opposed to both of the two schemes of government which,
on the surface, at least, seem to prevail in the western
world to-day. ' For the m onarchia l ideal and for the
de mocratic i deal he had the same words of contempt! v
Under an absolute monarchy, he believed, the military
or law-enforcing caste was unduly exalted, and so its
natural tendency to permanence was increased and its
natural opposition to all experiment and progress was
made well nigh irresistible. 'Under a communistic v
d emocra cy, on the other hand, the mistake was made of
putting power into the hands of the great, inert herd,
which was necessarily and inevitably ignorant, cre dulo us,
sup erstitio us, co rrupt and wrong. The natural tendency
of this herd, said Nietzsche, was to combat chang e and
p rogress as bitterly and as ceaselessly as the military-
judicial caste, and when, by some accident, it rose out of
its rut and attempted experiments, it nearly always made
mistakes, both in its premises and its conclusions and so
got hopelessly bogged in error and imbecility. Its feeling
for truth seemed to him to be almost nil; its mind
could never see beneath misleading exteriors. " In
the market place," said Zarathustra, " one convinces
by gestures, but real reasons make the populace dis-
trustful." * u
That this natural incompetence of the masses is an , i
actual fact was observed by a hundred philosophers \ ,
before Nietzsche, and fresh proofs of it are spread copi-
ously before the world every day. Wherever universal
suffrage, or some close approach to it, is the primary
axiom of government, the thing known in the United
1 " Also sprach Zarathustra" IV.
194 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
States as " freak legislation " is a constant evil. On the
statute books of the great majority of American states
there are laws so plainly opposed to all common-sense
that they bear an air of almost pathetic humor. One
state legislature, 1 in an effort to prevent the corrupt
employment of insurance funds, passes laws so stringent
that, in the face of them, it is utterly impossible for an
insurance company to transact a profitable business.
Another considers an act contravening rights guaranteed
specifically by the state and national constitutions; 2 yet
another 3 passes a law prohibiting divorce under any cir-
cumstances whatever. And the spectacle is by no means
confined to the American states. In the Australian
Commonwealth, mob-rule has burdened the statutes
with regulations which make difficult, if not impossible,
the natural development of the country's resources
and trade. If, in England and Germany, the effect
of universal suffrage has been less apparent, it
is because in these countries the two upper castes
have solved the problem of keeping the proletariat,
despite its theoretical sovereignty, in proper leash and
bounds.
The possibility of exercising this control seemed to
Nietzsche to be the saving grace of all modern forms
of government, just as their essential impossibility appeared
as the saving grace alike of Christianity and of com-
1 That of Wisconsin at the 1907 session.
"This has been done, time and again, by the legislature of every
state in the Union, and the overturning of such legislation occupies
part of the time of all the state courts of final judicature year after
year.
1 That of South Carolina.
GOVERNMENT 195
munistic civilization. In England, as we have seen, 1
the military-judicial caste, despite the Reform Act of
1867, has retained its old dominance, and in Germany,
despite the occasional success of the socialists, it is always
possible for the military aristocracy, by appealing to the
vanity of the bourgeoisie, to win in a stand-up fight. In
America, the proletariat, when it is not engaged in function-
ing in its own extraordinary manner, is commonly the
tool, either of the first of Nietzsche's castes or of the
second. That is to say, the average legislature has its
price, and this price is often paid by those who believe
that old laws, no matter how imperfect they may be, are
better than harum-scarum new ones. Naturally enough,
the most intelligent and efficient of Americans members
of the first caste do not often go to a state capital
with corruption funds and openly buy legislation, but
nevertheless their influence is frequently felt. President
Roosevelt, for one, has more than once forced his views
upon a reluctant proletariat and even enlisted it under
his banner as in his advocacy of ce ntralizatio n, a truly
dionysian idea, for example and in the southern states
the educated white class which there represents,
though in a melancholy fashion, the Nietzschean first
caste has found it easy to take from the black masses
their very right to vote, despite the fact that they are
everywhere in a great majority numerically, and so, by
the theory of democracy, represent whatever power lies
in the state. Thus it is apparent that Nietzsche's argu-
ment against democracy, like his argument against
brotherhood, is based upon the thesis that both are
1 Vide the chapter on " Civilization."
i 9 6 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
rejected instinctively by all those men whose activity
works for the progress of the human race. T
/ It is obvious, of course, that the sort of anarchy preached
by Nietzsche differs vastly from the beery, collarless
anarchy preached by Herr Most and his unwashed
followers. The latter contemplates a suspension of all
laws in order that the unfit may escape the natural and
rightful exploitation of the fit, whereas the former reduces
the unfit to de facto slavery and makes them subject to
the laws of a master class, which, in so far as the relations
of its own members, one to the other, are concerned,
recognizes no law but that of natural selection! To the
average American or Englishman the very name of
a narchy causes a shudder, because it invariably conjures
up a picture of a land terrorized by low-browed assassins
with matted beards, carrying bombs in one hand and
mugs of beer in the other. But as a matter of fact, there
is no reason whatever to believe that, if all laws were
abolished tomorrow, such swine would survive the day.
They are incompetents under our present paternalism
and they would be incompetents under dionysian anarchy.
1 Said the Chicago Tribune, " the best all-round newspaper in the
United States," in a leading article, June 10, 1907: " Jeremy Bentham
speaks of ' an incoherent and undigested mass of law, shot down, as
from a rubbish cart, upon the heads of the people. ' This is a fairly ac-
curate summary of the work of the average American legislature, from
New York to Texas. . . . Bad, crude and unnecessary laws make up
a large part of the output of every session. . . . Roughly speaking, the
governor who vetoes the most bills is the best governor. When a gov-
ernor vetoes none the legitimate presumption is, not that the work of the
legislature was flawless, but that he was timid, not daring to oppose ig-
norant popular sentiment ... or that he had not sense enough to rec-
ognize a bad measure when he saw it."
GOVERNMENT 197
The only difference between the two states is that the
former, by its laws, protects men of this sort, whereas
the latter would work their speedy annihilation. " In a
word, the dionysian state would see the triumph, not of
drunken loafers, but of the very men whose efforts are
making for progress today : those strong, free, self- relia nt,
resourceful men whose capacities are so much greater
than the mobs' that they are often able to force their ideas
upon it, despite its theoretical right to rule them and its
actual endeavor so to do. Nietzschean anarchy would
create an aristocracy o f efficie ncy. The strong man
which means the in tellig ent, inge nious and far- seeing m an
would acknowledge no authority but his own will and
no morality but his own , advanta ge. As we have seen in
previous chapters, this would re-establish the law of
natural selection firmly upon its disputed throne, and so
the strong would grow ever stronger and more efficient,
and the weak would grow ever more obedient and tractile.
It may be well at this place to glance briefly at an
objection that has been urged against Nietzsche's argu-
ment by many critics, and particularly by those in the
socialistic camp. Led to it, no doubt, by their too literal
acceptance of Marx's materialistic conception of history,
they have assumed that Nietzsche's higher man must
necessarily belong to the class denominated, by our
after-dinner speakers and leader writers, " captains of
industry," and to this class alone. That is to say, they
have regarded the higher man as identical with the push-
ing, grasping buccaneer of finance, because this buc-
caneer has seemed to them to be the only man of today
who is truly " strong, free, self-reliant and resourceful "
198 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
and the only one who actually " acknowledges no au-
thority but his own will." As a matter of fact, all of these
assumptions are in error. For one thing, the " captain
of industry " is not uncommonly the reverse of a dionysian,
and without the artificial aid of our permanent laws, he
might often perish in the struggle for existence. For
another thing, it is an obvious fact that the men who go
most violently counter to the view of the herd, and who
battle most strenuously to prevail against it our true
criminals and transvaluers and breakers of the law
are not such men as R ockefe ller, but men such as P asteur ;
not such men as Morgan and Hooley, but sham-smashers
and truth-tellers and mob-fighters after the type of Huxley,
Li ncoln, Bismarck, Darwin, Virchow, Haeckel, Hobbes,
Macchiavelli, Harvey and Jenner7~the father of vaccina-
tion.
Jenner, to choose one from the long list, was a real
dionysian, because he boldly pitted his own opinion
against the practically unanimous opinion of all the rest
of the human race. Among those members of the ruling
class in England who came after him those men,
that is, who made vaccination compulsory the dionysian
spirit was still more apparent. The masses themselves
did not want to be vaccinated, because they were too
ignorant to understand the theory of inoculation and too
stupid to be much impressed by its unvisualized and
for years, at least impalpable benefits. Yet their
rulers forced them, against their will, to bare their arms.
And why was this done ? Was it because the ruling class
was possessed by a boundless love for humanity and so
yearned to lavish upon it a wealth of Christian devotion ?
GOVERNMENT
199
Not at all. The real motive of the law makers was to be
found in two considerations. In the first place, a pro-
letariat which suffered from epidemics of small- pox was
a crippled mob whose capacity for serving its betters, in
the fields and factories of England, was sadly decreased.
In the second place experience proved that when small-
pox raged in the slums, it had an unhappy habit of stretch-
ing out its arms in the direction of mansion and castle,
too. Therefore, the proletariat was vaccinated and
small-pox was stamped out not because the ruling class
loved the workers, but because it wanted to make them
work for it as continuously as possible and to remove or
reduce their constant menace to its life and welfare. In
so far as it took the initiative in these proceedings, the
military ruling-class of England raised itself to the emi-
nence of Nietzsche's first caste. That Jenner himself,
when he put forward his idea and led the military caste
to carry it into execution, was an ideal member of the
first caste, is plain. The goal before him was fame ever-
lasting and he gained it.
I have made this rather long digression because the
opponents of Nietzsche have voiced their error a thousand
times and have well-nigh convinced a great many persons
of its truth. It is apparent enough, of course, that a
great many men whose energy is devoted to the accumu-
lation of money are truly d ionysia n in their methods and
aims, but it is apparent, too, that a great many others are
not. Nietzsche himself was well aware of the dangers
which beset a race enthralled by com mercial ism, and he
sounded his warning against them. Trade, being grounded
upon security, tends to work for permanence in laws and
200 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
customs, even after the actual utility of these laws and
customs is openly questioned. This is shown by the
persistence of free trade in England and of protectionism
in the United States, despite the fact that the conditions
of existence, in both countries, have materially changed
since the two systems were adopted, and there is now
good ground, in each, for demanding reform. So it is
plain that Nietzsche did not cast his higher man in the
mold of a mer e millionai re. It is conceivable that a care-
ful analysis might prove Mr. Morgan to be a dionysian,
but it is certain that his character as such would not be
grounded upon his well-known and oft-repeated plea
that existing institutions be permitted to remain as they
are.
Yet again, a great many critics of Nietzsche mistake
his criticism of existing governmental institutions for an
argument in favor of their immediate and violent aboli-
tion. When he inveighs against monarchy or democracy,
for instance, it is concluded that he wants to assassinate
all the existing rulers of the world, overturn all existing
governments and put chaos, carnage, rapine and anarchy
in their place. Such a conclusion, of course, is a grievous
error. Nietzsche by no means believed that reforms could
be instituted in a moment or that the characters and
habits of thought of human beings could be altered by a
lightning stroke. His whole philosophy, in truth, was
based upon the idea of sl ow evoluti on, through infinitely
laborious and infinitely protracted stages. All he at-
tempted to do was to indicate the errors that were being
made in his own time and to point out the probable
character of the truths that would be accepted in the
GOVERNMENT 201^
>/,
future. He believed that it was only by constant skepti-
cism, criti cism and opp ositio n that progress could be
made, and that the greatest of all dangers was i nanition .
Therefore, when he condemned all existing schemes of
government, it meant no more than that he regarded them
as based upon fundamental errors, and that he hoped
and believed that, in the course of time, these errors
would be observed, admitted and swept away, to make
room for other errors measurably less dangerous, and
in the end for truths. Such was his mission, as he con-
ceived it : to attack error wherever he saw it and to pro-
claim truth whenever he found it. It is only by such
iconoclasm and proselyting that humanity can be helped.
It is only after a mistake is perceived and admitted
that it can be rectified.
Nietzsche's argument for the " free spirit " by no means
denies the efficacy of co-operation in the struggle upward,
but neither does it support that blind fetishism which sees
in co- opera tion the sole instrument of human progress. In
one of his characteristic thumb-nail notes upon evolution
he says : " The most important result of progress in the
past is the fact that we no longer live in constant fear of
wild beasts, barbarians, gods and our own dreams." It
may be argued, in reference to this, that organized gov-
ernment is to be thanked for our deliverance, but a
moment's thought will show the error of the notion.
Humanity's war upon wild beasts was fought and won by
individualists, who had in mind no end but their personal
safety and that of their children, and the subsequent
war upon barbarians would have been impossible, or at
1 " Morgenrote" 5.
A
202 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
least unsuccessful, had it not been for the weapons in-
vented and employed during the older fight against beasts.
Again, it is apparent that our emancipation from the
race's old superstitions regarding gods and omens has been
achieved, not by communal effort, but by individual effort.
Kno wledg e and not government brought us the truth that
made us free. Government, in its very essence, is opposed
to all increase of knowledge. Its tendency is always toward
per manen ce and against change. It is unthinkable without
some accepted scheme of law or morality, and such
schemes, as we have seen, stand in direct antithesis to
every effort to find the absol ute tru th. Therefore, it is
plain that the progress of humanity, far from being the
result of government, has been made entirely without its
aid and in the face of its constant and bitter opposition.
The code of Hammurabi, the laws of the Medes and
Persians, the Code Napoleon and the English common
law have retarded the search for the ultimate verities
almost as much, indeed, as the Ten Commandments.
I Nietzsche denies absolutely that there is inherent in
mankind a yearning to gather into co mmunit ies. There
is, he says, but one primal instinct in human beings (as
there is in all other animals), and that is the desire to
re main aliv e. All those systems of thought which assume
the existence of a " nat ural mor ality " are wrong. Even
the tendency to tell the truth, which seems to be inborn
in every civilized white man, is not " natural," for there
have been and are today races in which it is, to all
intents and purposes, entirely absent. l And so it is with
'"The word ' honesty' is not to be found in the code of either the
So cratic or the Ch risti an virtues. It represents a new virtue, not quite
GOVERNMENT 203^
the so-called social instinct. Man, say the communists,
is a gregario us anim al and can be happy only in company
with his fellows, and in proof of it they cite the fact that
loneliness is everywhere regarded as painful and that,
even among the lower animals, there is an impulse toward
association. The facts set forth in the last sentence are
indisputable, but they by no means prove the existence
of an elemen tal social feelin g sufficiently strong to make
its satisfaction an end in itself. In other words, while it
is plain that men flock together, just as birds flock to-
gether, it is going too far to say that the mere joy of flock-
ing the mere desire to be with others is at the
bottom of the tendency. On the contrary, it is quite
possible to show that men gather in communities for the
same reason that deer gather in herds: because each
individual realizes (unconsciously, perhaps) that such a
combination mater ially aid s him in the business of self-
protection. One deer is no match for a lion, but fifty
deer make him impotent.
Nietzsche shows that, even after communities are
ripened, frequently misunderstood and hardly conscious of itself. It is
yet something in embryo, which we are at liberty either to foster or to
check." " Morgenrote" 456.
* An excellent discussion of this subject, by Prof. Warner Fite, of Indi-
ana University, appeared in The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and
Scientific Methods of July 18, 1907. Prof. Fite's article is called " The
Exaggeration of the Social," and is a keen and sound criticism of " the
now popular tendency to regard the individual as the product of society."
As he points out, " any consciousness of belonging to one group rather
than another must involve some sense of individuality." In other words,
gregariousness is nothing more than an instinctive yearning to profit
personally by the possibility of putting others, to some measurable ex-
tent, in the attitude of slaves.
204 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
formed, the strong desire of every individual to look out
for himself, regardless of the desires of others, persists,
and that, in every herd there are strong members and
weak members. The former, whenever the occasion
arises, sacrifice the latter: by forcing the heavy, killing
drudgery of the community upon them or by putting
them, in time of war, into the forefront of the fray.
The result is that the weakest are being constantly
weeded out and the strongest are always becoming
stronger and stronger. " Hence," says Nietzsche, " the
first state ' made its appearance in the form of a terrible
tyranny, a violent and unpitying machine, which kept
grinding away until the primary raw material, the
man-ape, was kneaded and fashioned into alert, efficient
man."
Now, when a given state becomes appreciably more
efficient than the states about it, it invariably sets about
enslaving them. Thus larger and larger states are formed,
but always there is a ruling master-class and a serving
slave-class. " This," says Nietzsche, " is the origin of the
state on earth, despite the fantastic theory which would
found it upon some general agreement among its members.
He who can command, he who is a master by nature, he
who, in deed and gesture, behaves violently what need
has he for agreements ? Such beings come as fate comes,
without reason or pretext. . . . Their work is the in-
stinctive creation of forms : they are the most unconscious
of all artists ; wherever they appear, something new is at
once created a governmental organism which lives ; in
which the individual parts and functions are differentiated
and brought into correlation, and in which nothing at all
GOVERNMENT 205
is tolerable unless some utility with respect to the whole
is implanted in it. They are innocent of guilt, of responsi-
bility, of charity these born rulers. They are ruled by
that terrible art-egotism which knows itself to be justified
by its work, as the mother knows herself to be justified by
her child." II
Nietzsche points out that, even after nations have
attained some degree of permanence and have introduced
ethical concepts into their relations with one another, they
still give evidence of that same primary will to power
which is responsible, at bottom, for every act of the
individual man. " The masses, in any nation," he says,
" are ready to sacrifice their lives, their goods and chattels,
their consciences and their virtue, to obtain that highest
of pleasures : the feeling that they rule, either in reality or
in imagination, over others. On these occasions they
make virtues of their instinctive yearnings, and so they
enable an ambitious or wisely provident prince to rush
into a war with the good conscience of his people as
his excuse. The great conquerors have always had the
language of virtue on their lips: they have always had
crowds of people around them who felt exalted and
would not listen to any but the most exalted sentiments.
. . . When man feels the sense of power, he feels and
calls himself good, and at the same time those who have
to endure the weight of his power call him evil. Such is
the curious mutability of moral judgments ! . . . Hesiod,
in his fable of the world's ages, twice pictured the
age of the Homeric heroes and made two out of one.
To those whose ancestors were under the iron heel of
the Homeric despots, it appeared evil; while to the
206 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
grandchildren of these despots it appeared good. Hence
the poet had no alternative but to do as he did: his
audience was composed of the descendants of both
classes." x
^ Nietzsche saw naught but decadence and illusion in
humanitarianism and nati onali sm. To profess a love for
the masses seemed to him to be ridiculous and to profess
a love for one race or tribe of men, in preference to all
others, seemed to him no less so. Thus he denied the
validity of two ideals which lie at the base of all civilized
systems of government, and constitute, in fact, the very
conception of the state. He called himself, not a German,
but "a good European."
" We good Europeans," he said, " are not French
enough to ' love mankind.' A man must be afflicted by
an excess of Gallic eroticism to approach mankind with
ardour. Mankind ! Was there ever a more hideous old
woman among all the old women? No, we do not love
mankind ! ... On the other hand, we are not German
enough to advocate nationalism and race-hatred, or to
take delight in that national blood-poisoning which sets
up quarantines between the nations of Europe. We are
too unprejudiced for that too perverse, too fastidious,
too well-informed, too much travelled. We prefer to live
on mountains apart, unseasonable. . . . We are too
diverse and mixed in race to be patriots. We are, in a
word, good Europeans the rich heirs of millenniums of
European thought. . . .
" We rejoice in everything, which like ourselves, loves
danger, war and adventure which does not make
1 " Morgenrote? % 189.
GOVERNMENT 207'
compromises, nor let itself be captured, conciliated or
faced. . . . We ponder over the need of a new order of
things even of a new slavery, for the strengthening and
elevation of the human race always involves the existence
of slaves. . . ." .
" The horizen is unobstructed. . . . Our ships can
start on their voyage once more in the face of danger. . . .
The sea our sea ! lies before us ! " 2
1 " Diefrbhliche Wissenschaft, " 377.
8 " Die frohliche Wissenschaft" 343.
XI
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
Nietzsche says that the thing which best differentiates
man from the other animals is his capacity for making
and keeping a promise. That is to say, man has a trained
and efficient memory and it enables him to project an
impression of today into the future. Of the millions of
impressions which impinge upon his consciousness every
day, he is able to save a chosen number from the oblivion
of forgetfulness. An animal lacks this capacity almost
entirely. The things that it remembers are far from
numerous and it is devoid of any means of reinforcing
its memory. But man has such a means and it is com-
monly called conscience. At bottom it is based upon the
. .^principle that pain is always more enduring than pleas-
ure. Therefore, " in order to make an idea stay it must
be burned into the memory ; only that which never ceases
to hurt remains fixed." l Hence all the world's store
of tortures and sacrifices. At one time they were nothing
more than devices to make man remember his pledges to
his gods. Today they survive in the form of legal punish-
ments, which are nothing more, at bottom, than devices
to make a man remember his pledges to his fellow men.
1 M Zur Geneologie der Moral," II, 3.
208
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
209
From all this Nietzsche argues that our modern law is
the outgrowth of the primitive idea of barter of the
idea that everything has an equivalent and can be paid
for that when a man forgets or fails to discharge an
obligation in one way he may wipe out his sin by dis-
charging it in some other way. " The earliest relationship
that ever existed," he says, "was the relationship be- <\
tween buyer and seller, creditor and debtor. On this
ground man first stood face to face with man. No stage
of civilization, however inferior, is without the institution
of bartering. To fix prices, to adjust values, to invent
equivalents, to exchange things all this has to such an
extent preoccupied the first and earliest thought of man,
that it may be said to constitute thinking itself. Out of
it sagacity arose, and out of it, again, arose man's first
pride his first feeling of superiority over the animal
world. Perhaps, our very word man (manus) expresses
something of this. s Man calls himself the being who
weighs and measures." a
Now besides the contract between man and man,
there is also a contract between man and the community.
The community agrees to give the individual protection
and the individual promises to pay for it in labor and
obedience. Whenever he fails to do so, he violates his
promise, and the community regards the contract as
broken. Then " the anger of the outraged creditor
or community withdraws its protection from the
debtor or law-breaker and he is laid open to all the
1 In the ancient Sanskrit the word from which " man " comes meant
" to think, to weigh, to value, to reckon, to estimate."
2 " Zur Geneologie der Moral," II, 8.
210 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
dangers and disadvantages of life in a state of barbarism.
Punishment, at this stage of civilization, is simply the
image of a man's normal conduct toward a hated, dis-
armed and cast-down enemy, who has forfeited not only
all claims to protection, but also all claims to mercy.
This accounts for the fact that war (including the
sacrificial cult of war) has furnished all the forms in
which punishment appears in history."
It will be observed that this theory grounds all ideas
of justice and punishment upon ideas of exp edien ce.
The primeval creditor forced his debtor to pay because
he knew that if the latter didn't pay he (the creditor)
would suffer. In itself, the debtor's effort to get some-
thing for nothing was not wrong, because, as we have
seen in previous chapters, this is the ceaseless and uncon-
scious endeavor of every living being, and is, in fact, the
most familiar of all manifestations of the primary will to
live, or more understandably, of the will to acquire
power over environment. But when the machinery of
justice was placed in the hands of the state, there came a
transvaluation of values. Things that were manifestly
costly to the state were called wrong, and the old indi-
vidualistic standards of good and bad *. e. beneficial
and harmful became the standards of good and evil
i. e. right and wrong.
In this way, says Nietzsche, the original purpose of
punishment has become obscured and forgotten. Start-
ing out as a mere means of adjusting debts, it has become
a machine for enforcing moral concepts. Moral ideas
came into the world comparatively late, and it was not
1 " Zur Geneologie der Moral," II, 9.
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 211
until man had begun to be a speculative being that he
invented gods, commandments and beatitudes. But the
institution of punishment was in existence from a much
earlier day. Therefore, it is apparent that the moral
idea, the notion that there is such a thing as good and
such a thing as evil, far from being the inspiration
of punishment, was engrafted upon it at a comparatively
late period. Nietzsche says that man, in considering
things as they are today, is very apt to make this mistake
about their origins. He is apt to conclude, because the
human eye is used for seeing, that it was created for that
purpose, whereas it is obvious that it may have been
created for some other purpose and that the function
of seeing may have arisen later on. In the same way,
man believes that punishment was invented for the pur-
pose of enforcing moral ideas, whereas, as a matter of /-//- Ju,^
fact, it was originally an instrument of expediency only, c
and did not become a moral machine until a code of moral
laws was evolved.
To show that the institution of punishment itself is
older than the ideas which now seem to lie at the base of
it, Nietzsche cites the fact that these ideas themselves are
constantly varying. That is to say, the aim and purpose
of punishment are conceived differently by different races
and individuals. One authority calls it a means of
rendering the criminal helpless and harmless and so pre-
venting further mischief in future. Another says that
1 A familiar example of this superimposition of morality is afforded
by the history of costume. It is commonly assumed that garments were
originally designed to hide nakedness as much as to afford warmth
and adorn the person, whereas, as a matter of fact, the idea of modesty
did not appear until man had been clothed for ages.
212 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
it is a means of inspiring others with fear of the law and
its agents. Another says that it is a device for destroying
the unfit. Another holds it to be a fee exacted by society
from the evil-doer for protecting him against the excesses
of private revenge. Still another looks upon it as society's
declaration of war against its enemies. Yet another
says that it is a scheme for making the criminal realize
his guilt and repent. Nietzsche shows that all of these
ideas, while true, perhaps, in some part, are fallacies at
bottom. It is ridiculous, for instance, to believe that
punishment makes the law-breaker acquire a feeling of
guilt and sinfulness. He sees that he was indiscreet in
committing his crime, but he sees, too, that society's
method of punishing his indiscretion consists in commit-
ting a crime of the same sort against him. In other words,
he cannot hold his own crime a sin without also holding
his punishment a sin which leads to an obvious absurd-
ity. As a matter of fact, says Nietzsche, punishment
really docs nothing more than " augment fear, intensify
prudence and subjugate the passions." And in so doing
it tames man, but does not make him better. If he refrains
from crime in future, it is because he has become
more prudent and not because he has become more
moral. If he regrets his crimes of the past, it is because
his punishment, and not his so-called conscience, hurts
him.
But what, then, is conscience? That there is such
a thing every reasonable man knows. But what is its
nature and what is its origin? If it is not the regret
which follows punishment, what is it? Nietzsche an-
swers that it is nothing more than the old will to power,
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
213
turned inward. In the days of the cave men, a man gave
his will to power free exercise. Any act which increased
his power over his environment, no matter how much it
damaged other men, seemed to him good. He knew
nothing of morality. Things appeared to him, not as
good or evil, but as good or bad beneficial or harmful.
But when civilization was born, there arose a necessity
for controlling and regulating this will power. The in-
dividual had to submit to the desire of the majority and
to conform to nascent codes of morality. The result was
that his will to power, which once spent itself in battles
with other individuals, had to be turned upon himself.
Instead of torturing others, he began to torture his own
body and mind. His ancient delight in cruelty and
persecution (a characteristic of all healthy animals)
remained, but he could not longer satisfy it upon his fellow
men and so he turned it upon himself, and straightway
became a prey to the feeling of guilt, of sinfulness, of
wrong-doing with all its attendant horrors.
Now, one of the first forms that this self-torture took
was primitive man's accusation against himself that he
was not properly grateful for the favors of his god. He
saw that many natural phenomena benefited him, and he
thought that these phenomena occurred in direct obedi-
ence to the deity's command. Therefore, he regarded
himself as the debtor of the deity, and constantly accused
himself of neglecting to discharge this debt, because he
felt that, by so accusing, he would be most apt to dis-
charge it in full, and thus escape the righteous conse-
quences of insufficient payment. This led him to make
sacrifices to place food and drink upon his god's altar,
214 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
and in the end, to sacrifice much more valuable things,
such, for instance, as his first born child. The more vivid
the idea of the deity became and the more terrible he
appeared, the more man tried to satisfy and appease him.
In the early days, it was sufficient to sacrifice a square
meal or a baby. But when Christianity with its
elaborate and certain theology arose, it became neces-
sary for a man to sacrifice himself.
Thus arose the Christian idea of sin. Man began to
feel that he was in debt to his creator hopelessly and
irretrievably, and that, like a true bankrupt, he should
offer all he had in partial payment. So he renounced
everything that made life on earth bearable and desira-
ble and built up an ideal of poverty and suffering.
Sometimes he hid himself in a cave and lived like an out-
cast dog and then he was called a saint. Some-
times he tortured himself with whips and poured
vinegar into his wounds and then he was a flagellant
of the middle ages. Sometimes, he killed his sexual
instinct and his inborn desire for property and power
and then he became a penniless celibate in a
cloister.
Nietzsche shows that this idea of sin, which lies at the
bottom of all religions, was and is an absurdity; that
nothing, in itself, is sinful, and that no man is, or can be a
sinner. If we could rid ourselves of the notion that here
is a God in Heaven, to whom we owe a debt, we would
rid ourselves of the idea of sin. Therefore, argues Niet-
zsche, it is evident that skepticism, while it makes no
actual change in man, always makes him feel better.
It makes him lose his fear of hell and his consciousness of
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 215
sin. It rids him of that most horrible instrument of
useless, senseless and costly torture his conscience.
" Atheism," says Nietzsche, " will make a man inno-
cent."
XII
EDUCATION
Education, as everyone knows, has two main
objects: to impart knowledge and to implant culture.
It is the object of a teacher, first of all, to bring before
his pupil as many concrete facts about the universe
the fruit of long ages of inquiry and experience as the
latter may be capable of absorbing in the time available.
After that, it is the teacher's aim to make his pupil's
habits of mind sane, healthy and manly, and his whole
outlook upon life that of a being conscious of his efficiency
and eager and able to solve new problems as they arise.
The educated man, in a word, is one who knows a great
deal more than the average man and is constantly increas-
ing his area of knowledge, in a sensible, orderly logical
fashion; one who is wary of sophistry and leans auto-
matically and almost instinctively toward clear thinking.
Such is the purpose of education, in its ideal aspect.
As we observe the science of teaching in actual practice,
we find that it often fails utterly to attain this end. The
concrete facts that a student learns at the average school
are few and unconnected, and instead of being led into
habits of independent thinking he is trained to accept
authority. When he takes his degree it is usually no
216
EDUCATION
217
more than a sign that he has joined the herd. His opinion
of Napoleon is merely a reflection of the opinion expressed
in the books he has studied ; his philosophy of life is
simply the philosophy of his teacher tinctured a bit,
perhaps, by that of his particular youthful idols. He
knows how to spell a great many long words and he is
familiar with the table of logarithms, but in the readiness
and accuracy of his mental processes he has made com-
paratively little progress. If he was illogical and credu-
lous and a respecter of authority as a freshman he remains
much the same as a graduate. In consequence, his use-
fulness to humanity has been increased but little, if at
all, for, as we have seen in previous chapters, the only
man whose life is appreciably more valuable than that of
a good cow is the man who thinks for himself, clearly and
logically, and lends some sort of hand, during his lifetime,
in the eternal search for the ultimate verities.
The cause for all this lies, no doubt, in the fact that
school teachers, taking them by and large, are probably
the most ignorant and stupid class of men in the whole
group of mental workers. Imitativeness being the domi-
nant impulse in youth, their pupils acquire some measure
of their stupidity, and the result is that the influence of
the whole teaching tribe is against everything included
in genuine education and culture.
That this is true is evident on the surface and a mo-
ment's analysis furnishes a multitude of additional
proofs. For one thing, a teacher, before he may begin
work, must sacrifice whatever independence may survive
within him upon the altar of authority. He becomes a
cog in the school wheel and must teach only the things
218 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
countenanced and approved by the powers above him,
whether those powers be visible in the minister of educa-
tion, as in Germany; in the traditions of the school, as in
England, or in the private convictions of the millionaire
who provides the cash, as in the United States. As
Nietzsche points out, the schoolman's thirst for the truth
is always conditioned by his yearning for food and drink
and a comfortable bed. His archetype is the university
philosopher, who accepts the state's pay 1 and so sur-
renders that liberty to inquire freely which alone makes
philosophy worth while.
" No state," says Nietzsche, " would ever dare to
patronize such men as Plato and Schopenhauer. And
why ? Simply because the state is always afraid of them.
They tell the truth. . . . Consequently, the man who
submits to be a philosopher in the pay of the state must
also submit tc being looked upon by the state as one who
has waived his claim to pursue the truth into all its
fastnesses. So long as he holds his place, he must acknowl-
edge something still higher than the truth and that is
the state. . . .
" The sole criticism of a philosophy which is possible
and the only one which proves anything namely, an
attempt to live according to it is never put forward in
the universities. There the only thing one hears of is a
wordy criticism of words. And so the youthful mind,
without much experience in life, is confronted by fifty
1 Nietzsche is considering, of course, the condition of affairs in Ger-
many, where all teaching is controlled by the state. But his arguments
apply to other countries as well and to teachers of other things besides
philosophy.
EDUCATION
219
verbal^sjstems and fifty criticisms of them, thrown to-
gether and hopelessly jumbled. What demoralization!
What a mockery of education ! It is openly acknowledged,
in fact, that the object of education is not the acquire-
ment of learning, but the successful meeting of examina-
tions. No wonder then, that the examined student says
to himself ' Thank God, I am not a philosopher, but a
Christian and a citizen ! . . .'
" Therefore, I regard it as necessary to progress that
we withdraw from philosophy all governmental and
academic recognition and support. . . . Let philosophers
spring up nat urall y, deny them every prospect of appoint-
ment, tickle them no longer with salaries yea, persecute
them! Then ^you will see marvels! They will then
flee afar and seek a roof anywhere. Here a parsonage
will open its doors; there a schoolhouse. One will
appear upon the staff of a newspaper, another will write
manuals for young ladies' schools. The most rational of
them will put his hand to the plough and the vainest will
seek favor at court. Thus we shall get rid of bad philoso-
phers." l
The argument here is plain enough. The professional
teacher must keep to his rut. The moment he combats
the existing order of things he loses his place. Therefore
he is wary, and his chief effort is to transmit the words of
authority to his pupils unchanged. Whether he be a
philosopher, properly so-called, or something else matters
not. In a medical school wherein Chauveau's theory of
immunity was still maintained it would be hazardous for
a professor of pathology to teach the theory of Ehrlich.
1 " Schopenhauer als Erzieher" 8.
220 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
In a Methodist college in Indiana it would be foolhardy
to dally with the doctrine of apostolic succession. Every-
where the teacher must fashion his teachings according
to the creed and regulations of his school and he must
even submit to authority in such matters as text books
and pedagogic methods. Again, his very work itself
makes him an unconscious partisan of authority, as
against free inquiry. During the majority of his waking
hours he is in close association with his pupils, who are
admittedly his inferiors, and so he rapidly acquires the
familiar, self-satisfied professorial attitude of mind.
Other forces tend to push him in the same direction and
the net result is that all his mental processes are based
upon ideas of authority. He believes and teaches a thing,
not because he is convinced by free reasoning that it is
true, but because it is laid down as an axiom in some
book or was laid down at some past time, by himself.
In all this, of course, I am speaking of the teacher
properly so-called of the teacher, that is, whose sole
aim and function is teaching. The university professor
whose main purpose in life is original research and whose
^ji. pupils are confined to graduate students engaged in much
t^t the same work, is scarcely a professional teacher, in the
customary meaning of the word. The man I have been
discussing is him who spends all or the greater part of
his time in actual instruction. Whether that work be
done in a primary school, a secondary school or in the
undergraduate department of a college or university does
not matter, In all that relates to it, he is essentially
and almost invariably a mere perpetuator of doctrines.
In some cases, naturally enough, these doctrines are
EDUCATION 221
truths, but in a great many other cases they are errors.
An examination of the physiology, history and " English "
books used in the public schools of America will convince
anyone that the latter proposition is amply true.
Nietzsche's familiarity with these facts is demonstrated
by numerous passages in his writings. " Never," he
says, " is either real proficiency or genuine ability the
result of toilsome years at school." The study of the
classics, he says, can never lead to more than a superficial
acquaintance with them, because the very modes of
thought of the ancients, in many cases, are unintelligible
to men of today. But the student who has acquired what
is looked upon in our colleges as a mastery of the humani-
ties is acutely conscious of his knowledge, and so the things
that he cannot understand are ascribed by him to the
dulness, ignorance or imbecility of the ancient authors.
As a result he harbors a sort of subconscious contempt
for the learning they represent and concludes that
learning cannot make real men happy, but is only fit for
the futile enthusiasm of " honest, poor and foolish old
book- worms."
Nietzsche's own notion of an ideal curriculum is sub-
stantially that of S pence r. He holds that before anything
is put forward as a thing worth teaching it should be
tested by two questions : Is it a fact ? and, Is the presenta-
tion of it likely to make the pupil measurably more
capable of discovering other facts? In consequences,
he holds the old so-called " liberal " education in abomi-
nation, and argues in favor of a system of instruction
based upon the inculcation of facts of imminent value
and designed to instill into the pupil orderly and logical
222 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
habits of mind and a clear and accurate view of the
universe. The educated man, as he understands the term,
is one who is above the mass, both in his thirst for knowl-
edge and in his capacity for differentiating between truth
and its reverse. It is obvious that a man who has studied
biology and physics, with their insistent dwelling upon
demonstrable facts, has proceeded further in this direction
than the man who has studied Greek mythology and
metaphysics, with their constant trend toward unsupported
and gratuitous assumption and their essential foundation
upon undebatable authority.
Nietzsche points out, in his early essay upon the study
of history, that humanity is much too prone to consider
itself historically. That is to say, there is too much
tendency to consider man as he has seemed rather than
man as he has been to dwell upon~creeds and mani-
festoes rather than upon individual and racial motives,
characters and instincts. 1 The result is that history piles
up misleading and useless records and draws erroneous
conclusions from them. As a science in itself, it bears
but three useful aspects the mo numen tal, the anti-
quarian and the critical. Its true monuments are not the
constitutions and creeds of the past for these, as we
have seen, are always artificial and unnatural but the
great men of the past those fearless free spirits who
achieved immortality by their courage and success in
pitting their own instincts against the morality of the
majority. Such men, he says, are the only human beings
1 An excellent discussion of this error will be found in Dr. Alex.
Tille's introduction to William Haussmann's translation of " Zur Gene-
ologie der Moral" pp. xi et sea. ; London, 1907.
EDUCATION 223
whose existence is of interest to posterity. " They live
together as timeless contemporaries : " they are the land-
marks along the weary road the human race has traversed.
In its antiquarian aspect, history affords us proof that the
world is progressing, and so gives the men of the present Kt*~n*t
a definite purpose and justifiable enthusiasm. In its { lhi*d& >
critical aspect, history enables us to avoid the delusions 6tS^
of the past, and indicates to us the broad lines of evolution, "f^y
Unless we have in mind some definite program of ad-
vancement, he says, all learning is useless. History,
which merely accumulates records, without " an ideal of
humanistic culture " always in mind, is mere pedantry
and scholasticism.
All education, says Nietzsche, may be regarded as a
continuation of the process of breeding. The two have
the same object: that of producing beings capable of
surviving in the struggle for existence. A great many
critics of Nietzsche have insisted that since the struggle
for existence means a purely physical contest, he is in
error, for education does not visibly increase a man's
chest expansion or his capacity for lifting heavy weights.
But it is obvious none the less that a man who sees things
as they are, and properly estimates the world about him,
is far better fitted to achieve some measure of mastery
over his environment than the man who is a slave to ^
delusions. Of two men, one of whom believes that the -Lts/t
moon is made of green cheese and that it is possible to #***>
cure smallpox by merely denying that it exists, and the
1 other of whom harbors no such superstitions, it is plain *tt &
I that the latter is more apt to live long and acquire power. -
1 Morgenrote," 397.
224 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
A further purpose of education is that of affording
individuals a means of lifting themselves out of the slave
class and into the master class. That this purpose is
accomplished except accidently by the brand of
education ladled out in the colleges of today is far from
true. To transform a slave into a master we must make
him intelligent, self-reliant, resourceful, independent
and courageous. It is evident enough, I take it, that a
college directed by an ecclesiastic and manned by a
faculty of asses a very fair, and even charitable,
picture of the average small college in the United States
is not apt to accomplish this transformation very often.
Indeed, it is a commonplace observation that a truly
intelligent youth is aided but little by the average college
education, and that a truly stupid one is made, not less,
but more stupid. The fact that many graduates of such
institutions exhibit dionysian qualities in later life merely
proves that they are strong enough to weather the blight
they have suffered. Every sane man knows that, after a
youth leaves college, he must devote most of his energies
during three or four years, to ridding himself of the
fallacies, delusions and imbecilities inflicted upon him by
messieurs, his professors.
The intelligent man, in the course of his life, nearly
always acquires a vast store of learning, because his
mind is constantly active and receptive, but intelligence
and mere learning are by no means synonymous, despite
the popular notion that they are. Disregarding the element
of sheer good luck which is necessarily a small factor
it is evident that the man who, in the struggle for wealth
and power, seizes a million dollars for himself, is appre-
EDUCATION
225
ciably more intelligent than the man who starves. That
this achievement, which is admittedly difficult, requires
more intelligence again, than the achievement of master-
ing the Latin language, which presents so few difficulties
that it is possible to any healthy human being with suffi-
cient leisure and patience, is also evident. In a word, the
illiterate contractor, who says, " I seen " and " I done "
and yet manages to build great bridges and to acquire a
great fortune, is immeasurably more vigorous intellectu-
ally, and immeasurably more efficient and respectable, /<1 ~kA {
as a man, than the college professor who laughs at him ....
and presumes to look down upon him. A man's mental a/ fW/S~
powers are to be judged, not by his ability to accomplish u*l+hplc*
things that are possible to every man foolish enough to fit c*~ft+
attempt them, but by his capacity for doing things beyond
the power of other men. Education, as we commonly
observe it today, works toward the former, rather than
toward the latter end.
xin
SUNDRY IDEAS
Death. It is Schopenhauer's argument in his es-
say " On Suicide," that the possibility of easy and pain-
less self-destruction is the only thing that constantly and
considerably ameliorates the horror of human life. Suicide
is a means of escape from the world and its tortures
and therefore it is good. It is an ever-present refuge for
the weak, the weary and the hopeless. It is, in Pliny's
phrase, " the greatest of all blessings which Nature
gives to man," and one which even God himself lacks,
for " he could not compass his own death, if he willed to
die." In all of this exaltation of surrender, of course,
there is nothing whatever in common with the dionysian
philosophy of defiance. Nietzsche's teaching is all in the
other direction. He urges, not surrender, but battle;
not flight, but war to the end. His curse falls upon those
" preachers of death " who counsel " an abandonment
of life " whether this abandonment be partial, as in
asceticism, or actual, as in suicide. And yet Zarathustra
sings the song of " free death " and says that the higher
man must learn " to die at the right time." Herein an
inconsistency appears, but it is on the surface only.
Schopenhauer regards suicide as a means of escape,
226
SUNDRY IDEAS
227
Nietzsche sees in it as a means of good riddance. It is
time to die, says Zarathustra, when the purpose of life
ceases to be attainable when the fighter breaks his
sword arm or falls into his enemy's hands. And it is
time to die, too, when the purpose of life is attained
when the fighter triumphs and sees before him no more
worlds to conquer. " He who hath a goal and an heir
wisheth death to come at the right time for goal and heir."
One who has " waxed too old for victories," one who is
" yellow and wrinkled," one with a " toothless mouth "
for such an one a certain and speedy death. The earth has
no room for cumberers and pensioners. For them the
highest of duties is the payment of nature's debt, that
there may be more room for those still able to wield a
sword and bear a burden in the heat of the day. The
best death is that which comes in battle " at the moment
of victory; " the second best is death in battle in the hour
of defeat. " Would that a storm came," sings Zarathustra,
" to shake from the tree of life all those apples that are
putrid and gnawed by worms. It is cowardice that
maketh them stick to their branches " cowardice which
makes them afraid to die. But there is another cowardice
which makes men afraid to live, and this is the cowardice
of the Schopenhauerean pessimist. Nietzsche has no
patience with it. To him a too early death seems
as abominable as a death postponed too long. " Too
early died that Jew whom the preachers of slow death
revere. Would that he had remained in the desert
and far away from the good and just I Perhaps he
would have learned how to live and how to love the earth
and even how to laugh. He died too early. He him-
228 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
self would have revoked his doctrine, had he reached
mine age ! " x Therefore Nietzsche pleads for an intelligent
regulation of death. One must not die too soon and one
must not die too late. " Natural death," he says, " is
destitute of rationality. It is really irrational death, for
the pitiable substance of the shell determines how long
the kernel shall exist. The pining, sottish prison-warder
decides the hour at which his noble prisoner is to die. . . .
The enlightened regulation and control of death belongs
to the morality of the future. At present religion makes
it seem immoral, for religion presupposes that when the
time for death comes, God gives the command." a
The Attitude at Death. Nietzsche rejects entirely
that pious belief in signs and portents which sees a signifi-
cance in death-bed confessions and " dying words."
The average man, he says, dies pretty much as he has
lived, and in this Dr. Osier 3 and other unusually com-
petent and accurate observers agree with him. When
the dying man exhibits unusual emotions or expresses
ideas out of tune with his known creed, the explanation
is to be found in the fact that, toward the time of death
the mind commonly gives way and the customary proc-
esses of thought are disordered. " The way in which a
man thinks of death, in the full bloom of his life and
strength, is certainly a good index of his general character
and habits of mind, but at the hour of death itself his
attitude is of little importance or significance. The
exhaustion of the last hours especially when an old
1 " Also sprach Zarathustra? I.
" Menschliches allzu Menschliches? Ill, 185.
3 " Science and Immortality," New York, 1904.
SUNDRY IDEAS 229
man is dying the irregular or insufficient nourishment
of the brain, the occasional spasms of severe physical
pain, the horror and novelty of the whole situation, the
atavistic return of early impressions and superstitions,
and the feeling that death is a thing unutterably vast and
important and that bridges of an awful kind are about to
be crossed all of these things make it irrational to
accept a man's attitude at death as an indication of his
character during life. Moreover, it is not true that a
dying man is more honest than a man in full vigor. On
the contrary, almost every dying man is led, by the so-
lemnity of those at his bedside, and by their restrained
or flowing torrents of tears, to conscious or unconscious
conceit and make-believe. He becomes, in brief, an actor
in a comedy. . . . No doubt the seriousness with which
every dying man is treated has given many a poor devil
his only moment of real triumph and enjoyment. He is,
ipso facto, the star of the play, and so he is indemnified
for a life of privation and subservience."
The Origin of Philosophy. Nietzsche believed that
introspection and self- analysis, as they were ordinarily
manifested, were signs of disease, and that the higher
man and superman would waste little time upon them.
The first thinkers, he said, were necessarily sufferers,
for it was only suffering that made a man think and only
disability that gave him leisure to do so. " Under primi-
tive conditions," he said, " the individual, fully conscious
of his power, is ever intent upon transforming it into
action. Sometimes this action takes the form of hunting,
robbery, ambuscade, maltreatment or murder, and at
1 " Menschliches alhu MenschHches," II, 88.
2 3
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
other times it appears as those feebler imitations of these
things which alone are countenanced by the community.
But when the individual's power declines when he
feels fatigued, ill, melancholy or satiated, and in conse-
quence, temporarily lacks the yearning to function
he is a comparatively better and less dangerous man.
That is to say, he contents himself with thinking instead
of doing, and so puts into thought and words " his im-
pressions and feelings regarding his companions, his
wife or his gods." Naturally enough, since his efficiency
is lowered and his mood is gloomy his judgments are evil
ones. He finds fault and ponders revenges. He gloats
over enemies or envies his friends. " In such a state of
mind he turns prophet and so adds to his store of super-
stitions or devises new acts of devotion or prophesies the
downfall of his enemies. Whatever he thinks, his thoughts
reflect his state of mind : his fear and weariness are more
than normal; his tendency to action and enjoyment are
less than normal. Herein we see the genesis of the poetic,
thoughtful, priesdy mood. Evil thoughts must rule
supreme therein. ... In later stages of culture, there
arose a caste of poets, thinkers, priests and medicine men
who all acted the same as, in earlier years, individuals
used to act in their comparatively rare hours of illness
and depression. These persons led sad, inactive lives
and judged maliciously. . . . The masses, perhaps,
yearned to turn them out of the community, because they
were parasites, but in this enterprise there was great risk,
because these men were on terms of familiarity with the
gods and so possessed vast and mysterious power. Thus
the most ancient philosophers were viewed. The masses
SUNDRY IDEAS
231
hearkened unto them in proportion to the amount of
dread they inspired. In such a way contemplation made
its appearance in the world, with an evil heart and a
troubled head. It was both weak and terrible, and both
secretly abhorred and openly worshipped. . . . Pudenda
origo! " l
Priestcraft. So long as man feels capable of taking
care of himself he has no need of priests to intercede for
him with the deity. Efficiency is proverbially identified
with impiety : it is only when the devil is sick that the
devil a monk would be. Therefore " the priest must be
regarded as the saviour, shepherd and advocate of the
sick. ... It is his providence to rule over the sufferers.
. . . " In order that he may understand them and appeal
to them he must be sick himself, and to attain this end
there is the device of asc eticis m. The purpose of asceti-
cism, as we have seen, is to make a man voluntarily destroy
his own efficiency. But the priest must have a certain
strength, nevertheless, for he must inspire both confidence
and dread in his charges, and must be able to defend
them against whom ? " Undoubtedly against the
sound and strong. ... He must be the natural adver-
sary and despiser of all barbarous, impetuous, unbridled,
fierce, violent, beast-of-prey healthiness and power."
Thus he must fashion himself into a new sort of fighter
" a new zoological terror, in which the polar bear, the
nimble and cool tiger and the fox are blended into a
unity as attractive as it is awe-inspiring." He appears
in the midst of the strong as " the herald and mouth-
1 " Morgenrote? 42.
*" Zur Geneologie der Moral" III, 1 1 to 17.
At
232 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
piece of mysterious powers, with the determination to
sow upon the soil, whenever and wherever possible, the
seeds of suffering, dissension and contradiction. . . .
Undoubtedly he brings balms and balsams with him, but
he must first inflict the wound, before he may act as
physician. ... It is only the unpleasantness of disease
that is combated by him not the cause, not the disease
itself I " He dispenses, not specifics, but narcotics. He
brings surcease from sorrow, not by showing men how
to attain the happiness of efficiency, but by teaching them
that their sufferings have been laid upon them by a god
who will one day repay them with bliss illimitable.
God. "A god who is omniscient and omnipotent
and yet neglects to make his wishes and intentions
certainly known to his creatures certainly this is not
a god of goodness. One who for thousands of years has
allowed the countless scruples and doubts of men to
afflict them and yet holds out terrible consequences for
involuntary errors certainly this is not a god of justice.
Is he not a cruel god if he knows the truth and yet looks
down upon millions miserably searching for it ? Perhaps
he is good, but is unable to communicate with his creatures
more intelligibly. Perhaps he is wanting in intelligence
or in eloquence. So much the worse ! For, in that case,
he may be mistaken in what he calls the truth. He may,
indeed, be a brother to the ' poor, duped devils ' below
him. If so, must he not suffer agonies on seeing his crea-
tures, in their struggle for knowledge of him, submit to
tortures for all eternity? Must it not strike him with
grief to realize that he cannot advise them or help them,
except by uncertain and ambiguous signs? ... All
SUNDRY IDEAS
233
religions bear traces of the fact that they arose during the
intellectual immaturity of the human race before it
had learned the obligation to speak the truth. Not one
of them makes it the duty of its god to be truthful and
understandable in his communications with man."
Selj-Control. Self-control, says Nietzsche, consists
merely in combating a given desire with a stronger one.
Thus the yearning to commit a murder may be combated
and overcome by the yearning to escape the gallows and
to retain the name and dignity of a law-abiding citizen.
The second yearning is as much unconscious and in-
stinctive as the first, and in the battle between them the
intellect plays but a small part. In general there are but
six ways in which a given craving may be overcome.
First, we may avoid opportunities for its gratification and
so, by a long disuse, weaken and destroy it. Secondly,
we may regulate its gratification, and by thus encom-
passing its flux and reflux within fixed limits, gain
intervals during which it is faint. Thirdly, we may
intentionally give ourselves over to it and so wear it out
by excess provided we do not act like the rider who
lets a runaway horse gallop itself to death and, in so doing,
breaks his own neck, which unluckily is the rule in
this method. Fourthly, by an intellectual trick, we may
associate gratification with an unpleasant idea, as we
have associated sexual gratification, for example, with
the idea of indecency. Fifthly, we may find a substitute
in some other craving that is measurably less dangerous.
Sixthly, we may find safety in a general war upon all
cravings, good and bad alike, after the manner of the
x " Morgenrdte" 91. _^
0%
2 34
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
ascetic, who, in seeking to destroy his sensuality, at the
same time destroys his physical strength, his reason and,
not infrequently, his life.
The Beautiful. Man's notion of beauty is the fruit
of his delight in his own continued existence. Whatever
makes this existence easy, or is associated, in any
manner, with life or vigor, seems to him to be
beautiful. " Man mirrors himself in things. He
counts everything beautiful which reflects his likeness.
The word ' beautiful ' represents the conceit of his
species. . . . Nothing is truly ugly except the degenera-
ting man. But other things are called ugly, too, when
they happen to weaken or trouble man. They remind
him of impotence, deterioration and danger: in their
presence he actually suffers a loss of power. Therefore
he calls them ugly. Whenever man is at all depressed he
has an intuition of the proximity of something ' ugly.'
His sense of power, his will to power, his feeling of pride
and efficiency all sink with the ugly and rise with the
beautiful. The ugly is instinctively understood to be a
sign and symptom of degeneration. That which reminds
one, in the remotest degree, of degeneracy seems ugly.
Every indication of exhaustion, heaviness, age, or lassi-
tude, every constraint such as cramp or paralysis
and above all, every odor, color or counterfeit of decom-
position though it may be no more than a far-fetched
symbol calls forth the idea of ugliness. Aversion is
thereby excited man's aversion to the decline of his
type." The phrase " art for art's sake " voices a protest
against subordinating art to morality that is, against
" Gbtzendammerung? IX, 19.
SUNDRY IDEAS 235
making it a device for preaching sermons but as a matter
of fact, all art must praise and glorify and so must lay
down values. It is the function of the artist, indeed, to
select, to choose, to bring into prominence. The very
fact that he is able to do this makes us call him an artist.
And when do we approve his choice ? Only when it agrees
with our fundamental instinct only when it exhibits
" the desirableness of life." " Therefore art is the great
stimulus to life. We cannot conceive it as being pur-
poseless or aimless. ' Art for art's sake ' is a phrase with-
out meaning." x
Liberty. The worth of a thing often lies, not in
what one attains by it, but in the difficulty one experiences
v'in getting it. The struggle for political liberty, for ex-
ample, has done more than any other one thing to develop
strength, courage and resourcefulness in the human race,
and yet liberty itself, as we know it today, is nothing
more or less than organized morality, and as such, is
necessarily degrading and degenerating. " It under-
mines the will to power, it levels the racial mountains
and valleys, it makes man small, cowardly and voluptuous.
Under political liberty the herd-animal always triumphs."
But the very fight to attain this burdensome equality
develops the self-reliance and unconformity which stand
opposed to it, and these qualities often persist. Warfare,
in brief, makes men fit for real, as opposed to political
freedom. " And what is freedom ? The will to be
responsible for one's self. The will to keep that distance
which separates man from man. The will to become
indifferent to hardship, severity, privation and even to
1 " Gotzenddmmerung" IX, 24.
r
236 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
life. The will to sacrifice men to one's cause and to
sacrifice one's self, too. . . . The man who is truly free
tramples under foot the contemptible species of well-
being dreamt of by shop-keepers, Christians, cows,
women, Englishmen and other democrats. The free
man is a warrior. . . . How is freedom to be measured ?
By the resistance it has to overcome by the effort
required to maintain it. We must seek the highest type
of freemen where the highest resistance must be constantly
overcome : five paces from tyranny, close to the threshold
of thraldom .... Those peoples who were worth
something, who became worth something, never acquired
their greatness under political liberty. Great danger
made something of them danger of that sort which
first teaches us to know our resources, our virtues, our
shields and swords, our genius which compels us to
be strong." 1 ' 7
Science The object of all science is to keep us from
drawing wrong inferences from jumping to conclu-
sions. Thus it stands utterly opposed to all faith and is
essentially iconoclastic and skeptical. " The wonderful
in science is the reverse of the wonderful in juggling.
The juggler tries to make us see a very simple relation
between things which, in point of fact, have no relation
at all. The scientist, on the contrary, compels us to aban-
don our belief in simple casualities and to see the enormous
complexity of phenomena. The simplest things, indeed,
are extremely complex a fact which will never cease
to make us wonder." The effect of science is to show the
absurdity of attempting to reach perfect happiness and
1 Gotzendammerung," IX, 38.
w*
SUNDRY IDEAS 237^
the impossibility of experiencing utter woe. " The gulf
between the highest pitch of happiness and the lowest
depth of misery has been created by imaginary things."
That is to say, the heights of religious exaltation and the
depths of religious fear and trembling are alike creatures
of our own myth-making. There is no such thing as
perfect and infinite bliss in heaven and there is no such /.
thing as eternal damnation in hell. Hereafter our highest y ltk%
happiness must be less than that of the martyrs who saw / ttK ^.^
the heavenly gates opening for them, and our worst woe
must be less than that of those medieval sinners who died
shrieking and trembling and with the scent of brim-
stone in their noses. " This space is being reduced
further and further by science, just as through science
we have learned to make the earth occupy less and
less space in the universe, until it now seems infinitely
small and our whole solar system appears as a mere
point." 2
The Jews. For the Jewish slave-morality which
prevails in the western world today, under the label of
Christianity, Nietzsche had, as we know, the most violent
aversion and contempt, but he saw very clearly that this
same morality admirably served and fitted the Jews
themselves; that it had preserved them through long
ages and against powerful enemies, and that its very
persistence proved alike its own ingenuity and the vitality
of its inventors as a race. " The Jews," said Nietzsche,
" will either become the masters of Europe or lose Europe,
as they once lost Egypt. And it seems to be improbable
that they will lose again. In Europe, for eighteen centuries,
1 " Morgenrote? 6. 3 " Morgenrote," 7.
238 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
they have passed through a school more terrible than
that known to any other nation, and the experiences of
this time of stress and storm have benefited the individual
even more than the community. In consequence, the
resourcefulness and alertness of the modern Jew are
extraordinary. ... In times of extremity, the people
of Israel less often sought refuge in drink or suicide than
any other race of Europe. Today, every Jew finds in the
history of his forebears a voluminous record of coolness
and perseverance in terrible predicaments of artful
cunning and clever fencing with chance and misfortune.
The Jews have hid their bravery under the cloak of
submissiveness ; their heroism in facing contempt sur-
passes that of the saints. People tried to make them
contemptible for twenty centuries by refusing them all
honors and dignities and by pushing them down into
the mean trades. The process did not make them cleaner,
alas ! but neither did it make them contemptible. They
have never ceased to believe themselves qualified for the
highest of activities. They have never failed to show the
virtues of all suffering peoples. Their manner of honor-
ing their parents and their children and the reasonable-
ness of their marriage customs make them conspicuous
among Europeans. Besides, tKey have learned how to de-
rive a sense of power from the very trades forced upon
them. We cannot help observing, in excuse for their
usury, that without this pleasant means of inflicting
torture upon their oppressors, they might have lost
their self-respect ages ago, for self-respect depends
upon being able to make reprisals. Moreover, their
vengeance has never carried them too far, for they
SUNDRY IDEAS
2 39
have that liberality which comes from frequent changes
of place, climate, customs and neighbors. They have
more experience of men than any other race and
even in their passions there appears a caution born
of this experience. They are so sure of themselves that,
even in their bitterest straits, they never earn their bread
by manual labor as common workmen, porters or peas-
ants. . . . Their manners, it may be admitted, teach us
that they have never been inspired by chivalrous, noble
feelings, nor their bodies girt with beautiful arms: a
certain vulgarity always alternates with their submissive-
ness. But now they are intermarrying with the gentlest
blood of Europe, and in another hundred years they will
have enough good manners to save them from making
themselves ridiculous, as masters, in the sight of those
they have subdued." It was Nietzsche's belief that the
Jews would take the lead before long, in the intellectual
progress of the world. He thought that their training,
as a race, fitted them for this leadership. " Where," he
asked, " shall the accumulated wealth of great impressions
which forms the history of every Jewish family that
great wealth of passions, virtues, resolutions, resignations,
struggles and victories of all sorts where shall it find
an outlet, if not in great intellectual functioning? " The
Jews, he thought, would be safe guides for mankind, once
they were set free from their slave- morality and all need
of it. "Then again," he said, "the old God of
the Jews may rejoice in Himself, in His creation and in
His chosen people and all of us will rejoice with
Him."
1 " Morgenrote" 205.
2 4 o FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
The Gentleman. A million sages and diagnosticians,
in all ages of the world, have sought to define the gentle-
man, and their definitions have been as varied as their
own minds. Nietzsche's definition is based upon the
obvious fact that the gentleman is ever a man of more than
average influence and power, and the further fact that
this superiority is admitted by all. The vulgarian may
boast of his bluff honesty, but at heart he looks up to the
gentleman, who goes through life serene and imperturb-
able. There is in the latter, in truth, an unmistakable
air of fitness and efficiency, and it is this which makes it
possible for him to be gentle and to regard those below
him with tolerance. " The demeanor of high-born
persons," says Nietzsche, " shows plainly that in their
minds the consciousness of power is ever-present. Above
all things, they strive to avoid a show of weakness, whether
it takes the form of inefficiency or of a too-easy yielding
to passion or emotion. They never sink exhausted into
a chair. On the train, when the vulgar try to make them-
selves comfortable, these higher folk avoid reclining.
They do not seem to get tired after hours of standing at
court. They do not furnish their houses in a comfortable,
but in a spacious and dignified manner, as if they were
the abodes of a greater and taller race of beings. To
a provoking speech, they reply with politeness and self-
possession and not as if horrified, crushed, abashed,
enraged or out of breath, after the manner of plebeians.
The aristocrat knows how to preserve the appearance of
ever-present physical strength, and he knows, too, how to
convey the impression that his soul and intellect are a
match to all dangers and surprises, by keeping up an
SUNDRY IDEAS 241
unchanging serenity and civility, even under the most
trying circumstances."
Dreams. Dreams are symptoms of the eternal law
of compensation. In our waking hours we develop a
countless horde of yearnings, cravings and desires, and
by the very nature of things, the majority of them must
go ungratified. The feeling that something is wanting,
thus left within us, is met and satisfied by our imaginary
functionings during sleep. That is to say, dreams repre-
sent the reaction of our yearnings upon the phenomena
actually encountered during sleep the motions of our
blood and intestines, the pressure of the bedclothes,
the sounds of church-bells, domestic animals, etc., and
the state of the atmosphere. These phenomena are
fairly constant, but our dreams vary widely on successive
nights. Therefore, the variable factor is represented by
the yearnings we harbor as we go to bed. Thus, the
man who loves music and must go without it all day,
hears celestial harmonies in his sleep. Thus the slave
dreams of soaring like an eagle. Thus the prisoner
dreams that he is free and the sailor that he is safely at
home. Inasmuch as the number of our conscious and un-
conscious desires, each day, is infinite, there is an infinite
variety in dreams. But always the relation set forth
may be predicated.
* " Morgenr'ote" 201.
XIV
NIETZSCHE VS. WAGNER
Nietzsche believed in heroes and, in his youth, was
a hero worshipper. First Arthur Schopenhauer's be-
spectacled visage stared from his shrine and after that
the place of sacredness and honor was held by Richard
Wagner. When the Wagner of the philosopher's dreams
turned into a Wagner of very prosaic flesh and blood,
there came a time of doubt and stress and suffering for
poor Nietzsche. But he had courage as well as loyalty,
and in the end he dashed his idol to pieces and crunched
the bits underfoot. Faith, doubt, anguish, disillusion
it is not a rare sequence in this pitiless and weary old
world.
Those sapient critics who hold that Nietzsche discredited
his own philosophy by constantly writing against him-
self, find their chief ammunition in his attitude toward
the composer of " Tristan und Isolde." In the decade
from 1869 to 1878 the philosopher was the king of Ger-
man Wagnerians. In the decade from 1879 to 1889, he
was the most bitter, the most violent, the most resourceful
and the most effective of Wagner's enemies. On their face
these things seem to indicate a complete change of front
and a careful examination bears out the thought. But
242
NIETZSCHE VS. WAGNER
243
the same careful examination reveals another fact: that
the change of front was made, not by Nietzsche, but by
Wagner.
As we have seen, the philosopher was an ardent musician
from boyhood and so it was not unnatural that he should
be among the first to recognize Wagner's genius. The
sheer musicianship of the man overwhelmed him and he
tells us that from the moment the piano transcription of
" Tristan und Isolde " was printed he was a Wagnerian.
The music was bold and daring: it struck out into
regions that the siisslich sentimentality of Donizetti and
Bellini and the pallid classicism of Beethoven and Bach
had never even approached. In Wagner Nietzsche saw
a man of colossal originality and sublime courage, who
thought for himself and had skill at making his ideas
comprehensible to others. The opera of the past had
been a mere potpourri of songs, strung together upon a
filament of banal recitative. The opera of Wagner was
a symmetrical and homogeneous whole, in which the
music was unthinkable without the poetry and the poetry
impossible without the music.
Nietzsche, at the time, was saturated with Schopen-
hauer's brand of individualism, and intensely eager to
apply it to realities. In Wagner he saw a living, breathing
individualist a man who scorned the laws and customs
of his craft and dared to work out his own salvation in
his own way. And when fate made it possible for him
to meet Wagner, he found the composer preaching as
well as practising individualism. In a word, Wagner
was well nigh as enthusiastic a Schopenhauerean as
Nietzsche himself. His individualism almost touched.
244 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
the boundary of anarchy. He had invented a new art
of music and he was engaged in the exciting task of
smashing the old one to make room for it.
Nietzsche met Wagner in Leipsic and was invited to
visit the composer at his home near Tribschen, a suburb
of Lucerne. He accepted, and on May 15, 1869, got his
first glimpse of that queer household in which the erratic
Richard, the ingenious Cosima and little Siegfried lived
and had their being. When he moved to Basel, he was
not far from Tribschen and so he fell into the habit of
going there often and staying long. He came, indeed, to
occupy the position of an adopted son, and spent the
Christmas of 1869 and that of 1870 under the Wagner
rooftree. This last fact alone is sufficient to show the
intimate footing upon which he stood. Christmas,
among the Germans, is essentially a family festival and
mere friends are seldom asked to share its joys.
Nietzsche and Wagner had long and riotous disputa-
tions at Tribschen, but in all things fundamental they
agreed. Together they accepted Schopenhauer's data
and together they began to diverge from his conclusions.
Nietzsche saw in Wagner that old dionysian spirit which
had saved Greek art. The music of the day was colorless
and coldblooded. A too rigid formalism stood in the
way of all expression of actual life. Wagner proposed to
batter this formalism to pieces and Nietzsche was his
prophet and claque.
It was this enthusiasm, indeed, which determined the
plan of " Die Geburt der Tragodie" Nietzsche had
conceived it as a mere treatise upon the philosophy of
the Greek drama. His ardor as an apostle, his yearning
NIETZSCHE VS. WAGNER 245
to convert the stolid Germans, his wild desire to do
something practical and effective for Wagner, made him
turn it into a gospel of the new art. To him Wagner was
Dionysus, and the whole of his argument against
Apollo was nothing more than an argument against
classicism and for the Wagnerian romanticism. It was
a bomb-shell and its explosion made Germany stare, but
another perhaps many more w r ere needed to shake
the foundations of philistinism. Nietzsche loaded the
next one carefully and hurled it at him who stood at the
very head of that self-satisfied conservatism which lay
upon all Germany. This man was David Strauss. Strauss
was the prophet of the good-enough. He taught that
German art was sound, that German culture was perfect.
Nietzsche saw in him the foe of Dionysus and made an
example of him. In every word of that scintillating
philippic there was a plea for the independence and
individualism and outlawry that the philosopher saw in
Wagner. *
Unluckily the disciple here ran ahead of the master
and before long Nietzsche began to realize that he and
Wagner were drifting apart. So long as they met upon
1 That Wagner gave Nietzsche good reason to credit him with these
qualities is amply proved. ** I have never read anything better than
your book," wrote the composer i in 1872. "It is masterly." And
Frau Cosima and Liszt, who were certainly familiar with Wagner's
ideas, supported Nietzsche's assumption, too. " Oh, how fine is your
book," wrote the former, " how fine and how deep how deep and how
keen ! " Liszt sent from Prague (Feb. 29, 1872) a pompous, patron-
izing letter. " I have read your book twice," he said. In all of this corre-
spondence there is no hint that Nietzsche had misunderstood Wagner's
position or had laid down any propositions from which the composer
dissented-
246 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
the safe ground of Schopenhauer's data, the two agreed,
but after Nietzsche began to work out his inevitable
conclusions, Wagner abandoned him. To put it plainly,
Wagner was the artist before he was the philosopher, and
when philosophy began to grow ugly he turned from it
without regret or qualm of conscience. Theoretically,
he saw things as Nietzsche saw them, but as an artist he
could not afford to be too literal. It was true enough,
perhaps, that self-sacrifice was a medieval superstition,
but all the same it made effective heroes on the stage.
Nietzsche was utterly unable, throughout his life, to
acknowledge anything but hypocrisy or ignorance in
those who descended to such compromises. When he
wrote " Richard Wagner in Bayreuth " he was already
the prey of doubts, but it is probable that he still saw the
" ifs " and " buts " in Wagner's individualism but
dimly. He could not realize, in brief, that a composer
who fought beneath the banner of truth, against custom
and convention, could ever turn aside from the battle.
Wagner agreed with Nietzsche, perhaps, that European
civilization and its child, the European art of the day,
were founded upon lies, but he was artist enough to see
that, without these lies, it would be impossible to make
art understandable to the public. So in his librettos he
employed all of the old fallacies that love has the
supernatural power of making a bad man good, that one
man may save the soul of another, that humility is a
virtue. l
It is obvious from this, that the apostate was not Niet-
1 There is an interesting discussion of this in James Huneker's book,
"Mezzotints in Modern Music," page 285 tt. seq., New York, 1899.
NIETZSCHE VS. WAGNER 247
zsche, but Wagner. Nietzsche started out in life as a
seeker after truth, and he sought the truth his whole life
long, without regarding for an instant the risks and
dangers and consequences of the quest. Wagner, so long
as it remained a mere matter of philosophical disputa-
tion, was equally radical and courageous, but he saw very
clearly that it was necessary to compromise with tradition
in his operas. He was an atheist and a mocker of the
gods, but the mystery and beauty of the Roman Catholic
ritual appealed to his artistic sense, and so, instead of
penning an opera in which the hero spouted aphorisms
by Huxley, he wrote " Parsijal." And in the same way,
in his other music dramas, he made artistic use of all the
ancient fallacies and devices in the lumber room of
chivalry. He was, indeed, a philosopher in his hours of
leisure only. When he was at work over his music paper,
he saw that St. Ignatius was a far more effective and
appealing figure than Herbert Spencer and that the con-
ventional notion that marriage was a union of two immortal
souls was far more picturesque than the Schopenhauer-
Nietzschean idea that it was a mere symptom of the
primary will to live.
In 1876 Nietzsche began to realize that he had left
Wagner far behind and that thereafter he could expect no
support from the composer. They had not met since
1874, but Nietzsche went to Bayreuth for the first opera
season. A single conversation convinced him that his
doubts were well-founded that Wagner was a mere
dionysian of the chair and had no intention of pushing
the ideas they had discussed to their bitter and revolution-
ary conclusion. Most other men would have seen in this
248 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
nothing more than an evidence of a common-sense decision
to sacrifice the whole truth for half the truth, but Nietzsche
was a rabid hater of compromise. To make terms with the
philistines seemed to him to be even worse than joining
their ranks. He saw in Wagner only a traitor who knew
the truth and yet denied it.
Nietzsche was so much disgusted that he left Bayreuth
and set out upon a walking tour, but before the end of the
season he returned and heard some of the operas. But
he was no longer a Wagnerian and the music of the
" Ring " did not delight him. It was impossible, indeed,
for him to separate the music from the philosophy set
forth in the librettos. He believed, with Wagner, that
the two were indissolubly welded, and so, after awhile,
he came to condemn the whole fabric harmonies and
melodies as well as heroes and dramatic situations.
When Wagner passed out of his life Nietzsche sought
to cure his loneliness by hard work and " Menschliches
allzu Menschliches " was the result. He sent a copy of
the first volume to Wagner and on the way it crossed a
copy of " Parsijal." In this circumstance is well exhibited
the width of the breach between the two men. To Wagner
11 Menschliches allzu Menschliches " seemed impossibly
and insanely radical ; to Nietzsche " Parsijal" with all
its exaltation of ritualism, was unspeakable. Neither
deigned to write to the other, but we have it from reliable
testimony that Wagner was disgusted and Nietzsche's
sister tells us how much the music-drama of the grail
enraged him.
A German, when indignation seizes him, rises straight-
way to make a loud and vociferous protest. And so,
NIETZSCHE VS. WAGNER 249
although Nietzsche retained, to the end of his life, a
pleasant memory of the happy days he spent at Tribschen
and almost his last words voiced his loyal love for Wagner
the man, he conceived it to be his sacred duty to combat
what he regarded as the treason of Wagner the philosop her.
This notion was doubtlessly strengthened by his belief
that he himself had done much to launch Wagner's bark.
He had praised, and now it was his duty to blame. He
had been enthusiastic at the first task, and he determined
to be pitiless at the second.
But he hesitated for 'ten years, because, as has been
said, he could not kill his affection for Wagner, the man.
It takes courage to wound one's nearest and dearest, and
Nietzsche, for all his lack of sentiment, was still no more
than human. In the end, however, he brought himself
to the heroic surgery that confronted him, and the re-
sult was " Der Fall Wagner." In this book all friend-
ship and pleasant memories were put aside. Wagner
was his friend of old? Very well: that was a reason
for him to be all the more exact and all the more
unpitying.
" What does a philosopher firstly and lastly require of
himself?" he asks. "To overcome his age in himself;
to become timeless ! With what, then, has he to fight his
hardest fight? With those characteristics and ideas
which most plainly stamp him as the child of his age."
Herein we perceive Nietzsche's fundamental error.
Deceived by Wagner's enthusiasm for Schopenhauer and
his early, amateurish dabbling in philosophy, he regarded
the composer as a philosopher. But Wagner, of course,
was first of all an artist, and it is the function of an artist,
250 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
not to reform humanity, but to depict it as he sees it, or
as his age sees it fallacies, delusions and all. George
Bernard Shaw, in his famous criticism of Shakespeare,
shows us how the Bard of Avon made just such a com-
promise with the prevailing opinion of his time. Shake-
speare, he says, was too intelligent a man to regard
Rosalind as a plausible woman, but the theatre-goers of
his day so regarded her and he drew her to their taste. 1
An artist who failed to make such a concession to con-
vention would be an artist without an audience. Wagner
was no Christian, but he knew that the quest of the holy
grail was an idea which made a powerful appeal to nine-
tenths of civilized humanity, and so he turned it into a
drama. This was not conscious lack of sincerity, but
merely a manifestation of the sub-conscious artistic feeling
for effectiveness. 2
Therefore, it is plain that Nietzsche's whole case
against Wagner is based upon a fallacy and that, in con-
sequence, it is not to be taken too seriously. It is true
enough that his book contains some remarkably acute
and searching observations upon art, and that, granting
his premises, his general conclusions would be correct,
but we are by no means granting his premises. Wagner
may have been a traitor to his philosophy, but if he had
remained loyal to it, his art would have been impossible.
And in view of the sublime beauty of that art we may well
pardon him for not keeping the faith.
* See " George Bernard Shaw : His Plays ; " page 102 et seq., Boston,
I905-
' Wagner's creative instinct gave the lie to his theoretical system : "
R. A. Streatfield, "Modern Music and Musicians," p. 272; New York,
1906.
NIETZSCHE VS. WAGNER 251
" Der Fall Wagner " caused a horde of stupid critics
to maintain that Nietzsche, and not Wagner, was the
apostate, and that the mad philosopher had begun to
argue against himself. As an answer to this ridiculous
charge, Nietzsche published a little book called " Nietzsche
contra Wagner." It was made up entirely of passages
from his earlier books and these proved conclusively that,
ever since his initial divergence from Schopenhauer's
conclusions, he had hoed a straight row. He was a
dionysian in " Die Geburt der Tragodie " and he was
a dionysian still in " Also Sprach Zarathustra"
NIETZSCHE THE PROPHET
NIETZSCHE'S ORIGINS
An individual is never an isolated phenomenon and
it is impossible to conceive any idea as existing without
some cause. As Haeckel tells us, " the cell never acts;
it always reacts. " Therefore, it is no denial of Nietzsche
to say that his philosophy could not have taken form if
certain other men had not labored before him. The same
thing might be said, with equal truth, of every philosophy
and idea the world has ever known. As Pfleiderer has
shown us, even Jesus Christ was the inevitable product
of his time, just as Shakespeare, Bonaparte and Voltaire
were of theirs. Without Moses there could have been no
dispute in the temple and no entry into Jerusalem and no
tragic journey up Calvary. Without Bacon, Comte,
Schopenhauer and Darwin there could have been no
Nietzsche.
It would be interesting, perhaps, to trace back to their
primal sources in nascent consciousness the notions
which have culminated in the monistic materialism of
today, but that would require a review of the entire history
of the human struggle for truth : an enterprise whose very
immensity is appalling. In place of this, we must content
ourselves with a rapid glance at the development of ideas
255
256 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
since the Renaissance. The ancients evolved systems of
philosophy that attained speculative heights scarcely
surpassed today, but it was not until the dawn of organized
disbelief in Europe that human intelligence began to
arm itself with weapons capable of effectually reaching
the vitals of that colossal and terrible monster, super-
naturalism .
In the middle ages all experimental inquiry into natural
phenomena was regarded as both futile and blasphemous
futile because God could never reveal his secrets
without ceasing to be God, and blasphemous because
any effort to unveil them was thus necessarily a blow at
divinity. 1 The learned men of those days contented
themselves, in consequence, with interminable arguments
about fanciful problems which, on their very face, were
insoluble. For four hundred years, for instance, the monks
of Germany debated the question whether an angel, in
passing from one spot to another, had to traverse the
intervening space. Any man who presumed to look into
the cause of actual things was pronounced anathema.
An anatomist who essayed to learn something about the
human stomach by dissecting a cadaver instead of by
searching for cabalistic knowledge in the scriptures, was
commonly burned at the stake. A man who pointed out
that the popes, despite their divine afflatus, frequently
indulged in quite human offenses against decency, was
regarded as a lunatic or a devil, and in either case some
Isaiah, XL, 28: "There is no searching of his understanding."
Rom. XI, 33 : " How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past
finding out." Ps. XXXIX, 9 : " I was dumb, I opened not my mouth,
because thou didst it." See also a multitude of other passages in the
Old Testament.
NIETZSCHE'S ORIGINS 257
effort was made to kill him. The whole thought of
the human race was concentrated upon the hereafter
and it was considered an insult to the deity to harbor
any desire to improve the conditions of existence on
earth. 1
But in the -course of time, humanity's strong inborn
curiosity the most familiar manifestation of its basic
instinct to preserve life by constant adaptation to its en-
vironment became overpowering, and brave men with
the lust for knowledge raging within them defied the
church and its inquisitors. Most of them were put to
death, but a few managed to survive, and these taught
disciples. In the end, the number of such men became so
large that they were able to disregard the church openly,
and the Renaissance was in full flower. The result was
a wide-spread and organized inquiry into everything that
promised increased knowledge. Men began to seek
for facts, not in the scriptures, but in actual things. Instead
of trying to puzzle out what the ancient Jewish sages
thought about the heart and brain, anatomists turned to
the human body and tried to learn for themselves. Instead
of consulting the old law books for rules of conduct, men
1 This idea persisted among the pious into our own time, and is the
thesis of that most abominable encyclopedia of superstition, Baxter's
" Saint's Rest." See American Tract Society's shorter version (1824),
p. 251 : "I am persuaded that our discontents and murmurings are not
so provoking to God ... as our too sweet enjoying, and resting in, a
pleased state." In other words, a happy man is doomed to hell. Rev.
Richard Baxter (1615-1691) wrote many books, but "The Saint's
Everlasting Rest " was his most important. Down to i860 it was to
be found in every Christian household and according to one statistician,
more than 2,000,000 copies were sold.
/14a
258 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
began to consider the actual needs and desires of then-
contemporaries. In Machiavelli's phrase they began to
" follow the real truth of things, rather than an imaginary
view of them."
This period of diligent but groping inquiry kept on for a
couple of centuries and before the beginning of the French
revolution a vast mass of facts had been accumulated.
Bacon, Nicolas of Cusa and Machiavelli had put common-
sense into ethics; the physicians had begun to know not
a little about the human machine; through the efforts
of Althusius, Mariana and others the old superstitions
about the divine rights of kings and princes were dying
out; Adam Smith was preparing to unearth the forces
which made for national welfare, and a host of impious
doubters were examining the current schemes of religion
and showing their absurdity. The French revolution then
made its blinding flash and after that the air was clear.
Since the latter part of the 18th century, indeed, our whole
outlook upon the universe has been changed. We have
learned to judge things, not by their respectability and
holiness, but by their essential truth. It is now possible,
not only to approach facts with an unbiased mind, but
also to make critical examinations of ideas: i. e., to
consider the human mind itself as a living organism and
to examine, not only its functions, but also its growth.
Comte, a Frenchman, was the first to perform this last
feat with any success. He looked back over the history
of the human race and found that it had progressed
through three intellectual stages. 1 During the first
1 Auguste Comte: " Cours de philosophie positive" Eng. tr. by Helen
Martineau; London, 1853.
NIETZSCHE'S ORIGINS 259
stage, men ascribed every act in the universe to the direct
interposition of thejleity.. During the second, they tried
to analyze this deity's motives, and so endeavored to
learn why things happened: why the sun rose every
morning, why one man was white and another black, one
tall and another short ; why everyone had to die. During
the last stage, they began to realize that this inquiry was
futile and that the answer would be out of their reach for
all eternity. Then they turned from asking why and
began to ask how. In a word, they began to accept
the universe as it was and to content themselves with
learning all they could about its workings and about the
invariable laws which controlled these workings.
Comte called this last attitude p ositivism and showed
that the world of his day had reached it. Out of it grew
the notion that, inasmuch as man could never hope to
learn anything, certainly and beyond question, about
the hereafter, it behooved him to devote all of his
energies to improving the conditions of life on earth. This
subsidiary notion was given the name of utilitarianism
and it is the impelling force in everything -that we look
upon as progress at present. The object of every science
and industry and of every civilized scheme of government
is to make life easier and humanity happier. The anarch-
ists and the socialists are both seeking the same end,
though their plans for attaining it are diametrically
opposed. The biologists whose life-work is the destruc-
tion of malignant organisms, the politicians whose idea
is a rich and prosperous state, the theologians whose goal
is perfect peace of mind, the merchants whose life-work
is the economical exchange of products, and the philoso-
2 6o FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
phers who are trying to determine accurately the laws
which govern the universe all are trying, as best they
may, to make mankind safer and happier.
It is plain, of course, that before we may make any
conscious effort to increase happiness, we must first know
what happiness is. That is, we must first be sure that
a certain thing will make men happier before we set about
obtaining it. It is the business of metaphysicians to
settle this problem. Unluckily they seldom agree about it,
and so the efforts of those men, who, in a practical manner,
desire to aid us is complicated by the fact that our wise
men cannot come to an unanimous decision as to what
we want.
This is no place to rehearse all of the ideals of happiness
advanced, at different times, by the philosophers of dif-
ferent schools. We have time only to recall what has
been set forth, in previous chapters, about the ideal
evolved by Arthur Schopenhauer. His theory, as we
have seen, was that the will to live was at the bottom of
all human actions and that it worked by giving rise to
what we call wants or desires. His final conclusion was
that these wants would ever remained unsatisfied, and that,
in consequence, it was best to avoid unhappiness by
killing them and also the will to live at back of them.
Nietzsche accepted the first part of Schopenhauer's theory,
but rejected the last part. That is to say, he agreed that
the will to live was the mainspring of all human action,
but he denied that it was wise to seek happiness by killing
it. The thing to do, he said, was to give itjree rein, and
to remove as far as possible, the obstacles which stood
in the way of its exercise and satisfaction.
NIETZSCHE'S ORIGINS 261
Thus Nietzsche got the groundwork of his philosophy
from Schopenhauer. In much the same way, he borrowed
from Comte. The latter, as we have seen, argued that
the chief concern of humanity was to make life as bearable
as possible here on earth, and this idea Nietzsche adopted.
But Comte, going further, maintained that earthly happi-
ness depended upon mutual help and mutual dependence,
and here Nietzsche disagreed with him squarely. Thus
the philosopher of the superman was a disciple of Scho-
penhauer and Comte and at the same time their opponent.
Without their data his philosophy would have been
impossible, but with their conclusions it had nothing in
common. In a word, they served him merely as the
farmer serves the miller: by providing grain for his
mill.
Again, Nietzsche got the law of natural selection from
Darwin, and with characteristic daring, gave it a univer-
sality from which Darwin shrank. 1 In his later years he
was fond of berating the English biologist, but the fact
that he was a Darwinian cannot be disputed. The
superman, indeed, is the crowning stone of the pyramid
rising from the ultimate protoplasm, and truncated today
at man. Again, from Hume, Swift, Butler, Voltaire,
Montaigne, Sanchez, Kepler, Descartes and all the
daring company of seekers after truth whose ranks in-
cluded Lamarck, Tyndall, Humboldt, Franklin, Watt
and Goethe from these materialists he got his fine
frenzy for getting at the bottom of concrete problems,
without regard for the opinions, superstitions or preju-
dices of others. Nietzsche despised the metaphysicians,
1 Vide the chapter on " Christianity."
262 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
properly so-called, and heaped upon them the vials of
his wrath. For Kant, whose investigation into the limi-
tations of intelligence led him into altruistic ethical
doctrines, he had boundless and unutterable contempt,
and for Liebnitz and Hegel, who argued that the universe
was rul ed by intelligen ce, he had loathing. Yet he got
something from all three of these men particularly
from Kant and that something was a chronic doubt
of all that passed for truth among people in general.
Nietzsche came, in the end, indeed, to question at once,
and as a matter of course, everything that seemed true to
the average, unthinking, conventional, conservative man.
" What everybody believes," he said, " is never true.'*
Of his immediate predecessors in the domain of philoso-
phy, Nietzsche probably owed much to Max Stirner and
not a little to Karl Marx. It may seem incongruous to
seek a common idea in the prophet of the superman and
the high priest of human brotherhood ; yet it is neverthe-
less a fact that Marx's materialistic conception of his-
tory made its mark upon Nietzsche. As an American
commentator tells us, this conception is nothing more
than the notion " that the bread and butter question
is the most important question in life." That is to say,
a man's whole existence is colored by the conditions
which he must meet and overcome in order to survive.
His method of making a living, in the broad sense, is
the determining factor in the evolution of his morality
and his religion. We find Nietzsche accepting this theory
as something almost self-evident. It is ever his postu-
1 R. R. La Monte, " Socialism : Positive and Negative ; " Chicago,
1907.
NIETZSCHE'S ORIGINS 263
late in his argument that the superman's absolute fitness
to meet the conditions of existence upon earth will make
him careless of moral codes and independent of gods.
From Stirner he got many things, and not the least of
them was the example of uncompromising and defiant
courage. Stirner was the most fiery and radical of all the
vast army of sham- smashers and idol- killers who fought
orthodoxy during the first half of the nineteenth century.
He held that the world would not be fit to live in until it
had accepted complete and absolute individualism.
Religion custom, morality, tradition, popular opinion
all of these things he held to be obstacles in the path of
progress. Every sane man, he argued, should be per-
mitted to do whatever he pleased, no matter what others
thought of it. But though Nietzsche accepted this argu-
ment, his application of it differed vastly from Stirner's.
The latter made it a justification for the most revolting
sort of self-indulgence and sensuality. Nietzsche, for all
his contempt for religion and law, knew very well that
swinishjicense, instead of making the race stronger,
would quickly bring it up to the dead wall of disease,
weakness and sterility.
It was this very familiarity with natural laws that
separated Nietzsche from all the wild mob of anarchists
who raged and roared through Europe in the 4o's and
5o's. He was an advocate of utter freedom, but he saw
very clearly that freedom and license, instinct and emotion,
were not the same. He knew, indeed, that the laws of
nature stood unalterably opposed to dissoluteness. There-
fore, his ideal, the superman, for all his freedom and
egoism, was by no means a helpless slave to wild passions.
264 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
On the contrary, he argued that the superman would be
a creature in whom all those manifestations that we call
huma n passion s, by being satisfied as quickly as they
arose, would cease to trouble. In the matter of the
sexual instinct, for instance, the superman would be the
antithesis of a celibate, but he would be equally far from
a roue. His desire, like that of a savage or an animal,
would be exactly strong enough to insure the perpetuation
of his race and no stronger.
Several commentators have tried to show that Niet-
zsche borrowed many of his ideas from Paul Ree, some
saying that he stole bodily and others that he evolved his
own notions by the simple process of denying those of
Ree. He himself says, in the foreword to " The Geneal-
ogy of Morals " that Ree's book, " The Origin of Moral
Sensations," excited his violent antagonism and disgust.
" Never," he says, " have I read a book to which, proposi-
tion by proposition and conclusion to conclusion, I said
such an emphatic No." But it is evident that, in order to
object so vigorously to an argument, a man must have
already formed contrary opinions, and such, in fact, was
the case with Nietzsche. His own philosophy began to
take form in his mind just as soon as his mind began to
function. "As a boy of 13," he says, " the problem of
the origin of evil_ haunted me, and to it I dedicated my
first literary child-play." Throughout his youth his views
were being formulated, and by 1868 when he was 22
they had already crystallized into the idea th at ins tinct
was the only reliable guide of intelligence. It was not
until 1877 that Ree's book was printed. That Re*e was
his friend, at least for a few years, is admitted, and that
NIETZSCHE'S ORIGINS 265
this friendship increased Nietzsche's acquaintance with
the work of other investigators particularly with that
of the Englis h mat erialists and greatly amplified his
store of positive knowledge, is certain, but the mad
philosopher had already thought for himself and the main
current of his ideas was by no means diverted from its
former path. Between his work and Ree's there is no
more in common than one may find in the work of any
two men who seek solutions of similar problems and write
in the same language and in the same age.
It is a favorite pastime of the opponents of Nietzsche
to attack his claim to fame by showing that many of his
ideas were voiced years ago by other men. They point
out, for example, that his in dividualis m was not unknown
to the ancient Greeks, that his ethical ideas, in general,
are those of Callicl es, as set forth by Plato in the
" Gorgias; " that his materialism comes from Lucretius
and Democritus, that his chronic skepticism recalls Xeno-
phanes, Parmenides, Arcesilaus, Anaxagoras, Empedocles,
Pyrrho and the Eleatic Zeno; that his pessimism, going
beyond Schopenhauer, has its source in Hegesippus ; that
his distinction between master-morality and slave-morality
was known to the Sophists and Epi curea ns and laid down
by Francis Bacon, 1 that his notions about Apollo and
Dionysus and his deification of energy were prompted
by William Blake, 2 that his discovery that all morality
1 Consider, for instance, this from Bacon's Essays (1597) : " Mean men
must adhere, but great men, that have strength in themselves, were bet-
ter to maintain themselves indifferent and neutral." See " The Essays
of Francis Bacon," with an int. by Henry Morley ; London, 1887.
* William Blake (1757-1827), "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell;"
reprint, Boston, 1906. Blake was a mystic poet who embraced spiritual-
266 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
is irksome to men of genuine force was made before him
by Machiavelli, 1 that the Pythagoreans speculated about
the doctrine of eternal recurrence thousands of years
before he was born, and that his idea of sublime indif-
ference formed the cardinal doctrine of stoicism and
was voiced, besides, by certain of his contemporaries. 2
It may be submitted, in answer to all of this, that the
same thing might be alleged against any p hilosoph er.
As we have seen, a human being is never_ an isolated
phenomenon. His mental processes come down to him
from his ancestors just as much as the shape of his nose
or the number of his toes. What we understand by a
philosopher is merely a man who views the ideas of his
predecessors and contemporaries, points out their truth
or falsity,' shows how they are related, one to the other,
and evolves from the mass some definite scheme of life
and thought. This task Nietzsche accomplished. His
scheme of things may be wrong, but the very fact that it
has strongly impressed the thinking men of today, shows
that it is reasonable and thinkable and workable, and
that, in its essentials, it is just as much in harmony with
the known facts of existence as any other effort to trans-
mute the particular into the general as the atomic
theory, for instance, or Ehrlich's hypothesis of immunity.
Toward the end of his life Nietzsche undertook to
analyze his own ideas and to show their sources in the
ism and died crazy. He was also an engraver and is best known today
for his weird drawings h la Beardsley.
1 Niccalo di Bernardo del Machiavelli (1469-1527), "De Principati-
bus" Rome, 1532. Tr. and pub. in many editions as " The Prince."
"Blanqui: " V Eternite" par les Astres," Paris, 187 1 ; Gustave Le Bon,
41 Z' Homme et les Sociitis; " Paris, 1882.
NIETZSCHE'S ORIGINS 267
ideas of other men, 1 but it must be confessed that his
revelations scarcely revealed. He explained, in an indefi-
nite sort of a way, why he despised Rouss eau, Seneca,
Plato, Schiller, Dante, Kant, Hugo, George Sand, Car-
lyle, Mill, Renan, Saint-Beuve, a Kempis and Spinoza,
and he voiced his admiration for Goethe, Thucydides,
Sallust and Horace, and his queer half-admiration, half-
contempt for Schopenhauer, Comte, Darwin and others,
but his discourse was confined, in the main, to phrase-
making. Reading his chapters calmly it is evident that
he failed utterly to perceive his debt to many men whose
work supplied him with valuable data, if not with ready-
made conclusions. As he grew older, indeed, Nietzsche
fell into the habit of damning utterly all who happened
to disagree with his contempt for schemes of morality,
of whatever sort, despite the fact that many of these men
agreed with him perfectly in other things.
Nietzsche wrote with sulphuric acid upon tablets of
phosphorus and at times his criticisms descended to
mere invective. He called Dante, " an hyena poetizing
in a graveyard;" George Sand, "a milch cow with a
grand manner;" Carlyle, "a pessimist whose thoughts
arise from a bad stomach ; " the Goncourts, " a pair of
Ajaxes fighting Homer, with music by Offenbach ; "
Zola, " the delight to stink; " Seneca, " the toreador of
virtue;" Saint-Beuve, " an anti-man with a woman's
vengefulness and a woman's sensuousness ; " Schopen-
hauer, " a king counterfeiter ; " and Plato, " a coward in
the presence of reality " and a " tiresome " master of
" superior cheatery." There is wit upon some of these
l " Gotzendammerung," 1889.
268 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
tags and a few have wisdom, too, but it is obvious that
such studied striving after mere verbal brilliance, while
it may produce prettiness, scarcely serves the cause of the
critical art. Nietzsche learned a great deal from the
masters of epigram he so much admired and they gave
him his extraordinarily vivid and striking style, but he also
got from them a tendency to seek the irreducible minimum
just a bit too assiduously. He made phrases that sparkled
like jewels, but now and again, in reading them, one longs
for the slow, painstaking march of a Spencer or the
illuminating prodigality of a Zola.
In his more contemplative moments Nietzsche saw very
clearly that his own work was merely the natural develop-
ment of the work of other men. In " Mor gemote "
(V| 547), and elsewhere he argued that the greatest
obstacle in the path of increasing knowledge was the old
notion that there was some one all-embracing secret of
existence, which, on being uncovered, would answer all
of humanity's questions and make all things plain.
Progress, he said, was not a matter of untying a Gordian
knot or of discovering a philosopher's stone : it could be
thought of only as a slow, but constant accumulation of
facts. It was impossible, he pointed out, for a single man,
in the brief span of life allotted to human beings, to explore
the whole field of knowledge. Therefore, it was necessary
for every man to begin by acquiring the knowledge result-
ing from the explorations of those before him. Nietzsche
denounced Schopenhauer and other philosophers for their
insistence upon the fallacy that their schemes of thought
made all things clear, and then ended by making practi-
cally the same claim for his own. The student of the mad
NIETZSCHE'S ORIGINS 269
German will find this inconsistency throughout his work.
So long as he dealt with ideas his mental processes were
as exact as the movements of a machine, but when he
considered human beings in the concrete and particu-
larly when he discussed himself his incredible intoler-
ance, jealousy, spitefulness and egomania, and his savage
lust for bitter, useless and unmerciful strife, combined to
make his conclusions unreliable, and even nonsensical.
II
NIETZSCHE AS A TEACHER
If we would seek conclusive proof that Nietzsche has
left his mark upon his time we need go no further than
the ubiquitous Mr. Roosevelt and the frank and sportive
Mr. George Bernard Shaw. Mr. Roosevelt is, by im-
mense odds, the most influential man in the United States
today. He is the accepted spokesman and rabbi of at
least 50,000,000 human beings, and he has a quite uncanny
faculty for impressing them, driving them and convincing
them against their will. And among other things, he has
made embryo Nietzscheans of them, for in all things
fundamental the Rooseveltian philosophy and the Niet-
zschean philosophy are identical.
It is inconceivable that Mr. Roosevelt should have
formulated his present confession of faith independently
of Nietzsche. As everyone knows, he is an ardent student
of German literature, and has dipped, with peculiar
assiduity, into the Pierian spring of the German poets
and philosophers. The motto at the head of his essay on
" The Strenuous Life " the best summary of his creed
that he has yet published is a quotation from Goethe,
and in the essay itself are a multitude of thoughts borrowed
boldly and bodily, though perhaps unconsciously, from
370
NIETZSCHE AS A TEACHER 271
none other than Friedrich Nietzsche. " The Strenuous
Life," indeed, is the most eloquent and powerful statement
of the dionysian philosophy ever made by anyone. " I
wish to preach," it begins, " not the doctrine of ignoble
ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil
and effort, of labor and strife: to preach the highest
form of success which comes, not to the man who desires
mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink
from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who,
out of these, wins the splendid ultimate triumph."
How insistent sounds the voice of Zarathustra in all of
this! How vividly it recalls the ancient sage's very
phrases ! ... " I do not advise you to conclude peace,
but to conquer ! . . . What is good ? ye ask. To be
brave is good. . . . Thus live your life of obedience
and war ! . . . Man is something to be surpassed ! "
" When men . . . fear righteous war, when women
fear motherhood . . . well it is that they should vanish
from the earth." So speaks the prophet of the strenuous
life. " Thus would I have man and woman : fit for war-
fare the one, fit for giving birth the other." So speaks
Zarathustra. There is no denial of the law of natural
selection in this thunderous sermon of the American
dionysian there is no meek acceptance of the Christian
doctrine that self-effacement is noble. " The nation
that has trained itself to a career of unwarlike and iso-
lated ease is bound, in the end, to go down before other
nations which have not lost the manly and adventurous
qualities." There is no acceptance of the doctrine that
all men are equal " before the Lord." On the contrary,
1 " The Strenuous Life : Essays and Addresses : " New York, 1900.
272 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
" many of our people are utterly unfit for self-govern-
ment." There is no glorifying of asceticism, sickness,
death and degeneration "the hangman's metaphysics
" Weakness is the greatest of crimes ! " There is no
worship of the fetish of peace and brotherly love. " The
over-civilized man, who has lost the great fighting,
masterful virtues " in him there is abomination.
" Thank God for the iron in the blood of our fathers ! "
Could there be a more direct and earnest statement of
the dionysian creed? Could there be a more obvious
paraphrasing of " Der Antichrist " and "Also sprach
Zarathustra ? " Mr. Roosevelt has a pew in a Christian
church, but his whole attitude of mind is essentially
and violently unchristian. If you don't believe it, com-
pare " The Strenuous Life " and the Sermon on the
Mount. Is it possible to imagine two documents which
say " Nay 1 " to each other more riotously, vehemently
and unmistakably?
And when we come to Shaw, we find the Nietzschean
creed set forth with even greater earnestness and even
greater fidelity to detail. Shaw, I take it, is obviously
the most influential English playwright of the day. It is
easy enough to profess a superior sort of contempt for him,
or to dismiss him as a mere buffoon, but all the same
his audience includes practically every civilized person
of English speech in the world. And it is unwise, too,
to call him a mere passing fashion, doomed to evanes-
cence and nonentity. His ribald questions may still
give anguish to the orthodox, but all who ponder
upon the destiny of the human race ask practically
the same questions and are not far from him in their
NIETZSCHE AS A TEACHER 273
answers. He is, indeed, the spokesman of that rebellion
against old ideas which rages wherever English is the
language of thought. The old horror of him is dying
out; he has become almost decent. He is no longer a
hobgoblin, but a ph ilosophe r. People now accept his
ingenious propositions, not as sweetly devilish obscenities,
to be whispered about and gloated over in secret, but
as quite sane and even respectable ideas, to be debated
openly and without shame, as one might debate some
new fancy in politics, evening parties or cravats. And
what is this new crusade that he preaches? Is it really
new ? Is it his own creation and devising ? Not at all !
Strip it of its braying and its hullabaloo, its hibernianism
and comicalities, and you will find at bottom a most
strange and amazing potpourri of borrowed dogmas, in
which the notions of Schopenhauer and KarKMarx, of
Bunyan and Kropotkin, of Tolstoi and Proudhon are
intermingled with those of Nietzsche.
Shaw himself points out, in a dozen places, that there
is more in him of the interpreter than of the pioneer.
His labor, as he sees it and defines it, is not so much to
think new thoughts as to seize upon and develop the
thoughts of other men and translate them into symbols
comprehensible to folks who dine well and feel a bit
foundered afterward, and so demand that the maximum
of divertisement be injected into the world problems set
before them. This frank prologue to the Shaw plays
has been regarded with suspicion, as if it were some sort
of unusually subtle and subterranean joke, but as a
matter of fact it should be accepted as a true saying.
Personally, Shaw is merely " ag'in the government,"
274 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
which means that the existing order pains him and that
he yearns to attack and overthrow it with whatever
weapon or weapons seem nearest at hand. He has
scarcely any preference; all he wants to do is to hit a
head. And so it happens that he achieves the astounding
feat of seeming to stand as sponsor, in one play and
sometimes on one page, for such irreconcilable enemies
as the philosopher of renunciation and the prophet of
eternal defiance. It remained for Ireland, in the days of
her bondage, to produce a human being who could at
once subscribe to the most unpromising altruism and the
most bitter and unpitying egotism. In the whole history
of civilization no other man has so successfully served
both the angels and the devil.
Shaw first swam into our ken as a spouter of socialistic
nonsense from cart-tails, and he still poses, in a half-
hearted and apologetic sort of fashion, as a Christian
socialist, whatever that may be, but his true impor-
tance and significance lie, not in his weak variations upon
stale themes by Marx, but in his thunderous bellowings
of Nietzsche. Socialism was an old story before he was
born and Schopenhauer's supine asceticism had long ago
gone the way of all unworkable, unlivable creeds. Even
Tolstoi had lost his tang and novelty and was beginning
his spectacular descent from the seminaries of serious
philosophers to the " home " pages of the yellow journals.
But when Shaw began to absorb his emanations
unconsciously, perhaps, at the start Nietzsche was new.
Germany was beginning to grow aware of him and there
is reason to believe that Ibsen and Strindberg, the Scandi-
navians, took home some notion of him, but in general
NIETZSCHE AS A TEACHER 275
the great world beyond Metz and Kiel knew him not.
It was by Shaw's hand that the ideas for which he stands
were done into the English vulgate. It was Shaw that
changed his x into 1, 2 and 3. And in this benevolent
enterprise the Irish dramatist borrowed many of the
Prussian iconoclast's meditations bodily, and put them,
with scarcely any change, into the mouths of his Jack
Tanners, his Capt. Bluntschlis and his Andrew Under-
shafts, and into his prologues, epilogues, intermezzos
and appendices. By their aid in part, at least he
was lifted up to his present eminence as the premier
scoffer and dominan t, here tic of the day.
Shaw devotes a page or two in his preface to " Major
Barbara " to a denial of all this. 1 His fine rage against
humility, priestcraft and the slave- morality is the result,
he says, of certain long-gone encounters with one Capt.
Wilson, an obscure British reviler of respectability whom
he met and sat under before Nietzsche's name was known
beyond Basel town. There are many answers to this,
but the only one necessary here lies in the fact that Shaw
did not begin to write plays until Nietzsche's day had fairly
dawned, and that, in practically all of the curious dramas
he has sent forth since, the Nietzschean creed, in all its
details and even, in many a place, in its very phraseol-
ogy is well to the fore. Shaw, being a true dramatist,
is more the artist than the preacher, and it is his object,
not so much to spread new doctrines as to show, by
dramatic action, the conflict between the old and the
new. Against Jack Tanner, the Nietzschean, he sets
Roderick Ramsden, the godly; against the Dionysian
1 " John Bull's Other Island and Major Barbara ; " London, 1907.
276 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Undershaf t he sets the Salvation Army ; against Bluntschli
he sets romance; against the Clandons he sets Bohun.
He is the father of churchmen as well as of dissenters:
in his puppet show there must be all parties. But it is
evident that his Nietzscheans speak his own mind. Jack
Tanner, Bluntschli and Valentine go down to ignominious
defeat, but it is as martyrs to the new faith. The things
they think and say are said again by Shaw himself in his
preludes and afterthoughts.
Consider, for instance, the leaven of Nietzsche in that
most notorious and excellent of all the Shaw plays, " Mrs.
Warren's Profession," a drama in which Shaw is more
the serious philosopher and less the comique than in any
other. This profession, as we know, is the oldest in the
world and Mrs. Warren enters it knowingly and delib-
erately, because she sees in it her only chance to obtain
decent food and lodging and her modicum of happiness.
" Do you think I was such a fool," she says in after years,
"as to let other people trade in my good looks, by em-
ploying me as a shop-girl, a barmaid or a waitress, when
I could trade in them myself and get all the profits, instead
of starvation wages?" She prospers and grows rich
and there comes to her the ease and comfort for which
every normal human being yearns. Also, there comes to
her a daughter, who goes to Cambridge, well taught and
well fed, and takes high honors. At first Mrs. Warren
is proud that her outlawed trade has enabled her to do
so much for her offspring proud that, in defiance of
her outlawry, she is the mother of such an uncommon
child. But by and by there comes over her a fear that
when the daughter discovers her means of livelihood,
NIETZSCHE AS A TEACHER 277
she will recoil in horror. The fear grows and hypocrisy
comes out of it. Mrs. Warren equivocates and dissim-
ulates. The daughter must never know.
But in the end the daughter does know, and the manner
of her revolt is passing strange. She sees her mother's
motive and temptation and approves her sin. " My
dear mother," she says, " you are a wonderful woman
you are stronger than all England." So far mother and
daughter are as one. But, in the last analysis, Mrs.
Warren has failed. She has hurled her defiance at the
moral code and then sought its shelter. She has
grownj^hajned ! And her daughter, seeing this, holds
her in loathing. " If I had been you, mother," she says,
" I might have done as you did ; but I should not have
lived one life and believed in another. You are a con-
ventional woman at heart. That is why I am leaving
you now."
Now, what are the ideas at the bottom of this play?
What are the propositions its protagonist lays down?
First, that every woman (like every man) has an unalien-
able right to seek comfort and happiness in life in the
manner best calculated to procure them, and regardless
of the customs and opinions of other persons. Secondly,
that her methods are right and without sin so long as she
accepts . their consequences uncomplainingly. Third,
that when she fails in this defiance and, repentant, makes
complaint when she pretends falsely to subscribe to
a moral code she has cast aside and cries out when she is
discovered and denounced then she loses, at one stroke,
all she has sought to gain. Such is the more obvious
meaning of the drama, and thus we find the Nietzschean
278 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
superman in skirts the ya-sager in a brothel. But, as
Shaw himself points out in the preface, there is beneath
the action a thesis more widely applicable to the facts
of existence and it is this: that any system of ethics or
condition of human society which makes it necessary for
a woman, in order to procure that share of happiness
which instinct demands, to put to herself in dire peril
of losing happiness altogether, is outrageously unfair,
illogical and pernicious. " It can't be right ! " wails
Mrs. Warren. " I stick to that : it's wrong." Thus Shaw
penned his play and pointed its moral in 1893. Nietzsche,
as we have seen, put the same argument into vitriolic
German a full decade before.
In greater or less measure the Nietzschean flavor will
be found in all of Shaw's other dramas, mixed with and
sometimes obscured or neutralized by the effluvia of
other and more orthodox sages. In " Major Barbara "
we have a hero who calls himself a dionysian and offers
Nietzscheism as a substitute for Christianity. In " Man
and Superman " we have a hero who calls himself a nascent
superman and preaches the Nietzschean doctrine of
womankind. In each case there is borrowing, not only
of the spirit, but also of the letter. " Dionysus," " super-
man," " other- worldliness," and Undershaft's motto :
" Unashamed " in the very phrases we hear the voice
of Zarathustra. " Never resist temptation," says Jack
Tanner. " Prove all things: hold fast to that which is
good." " What does not kill me," says Nietzsche, more
epigrammatically, " strengthens me." " Vice," says
Tanner, " is waste of life. Poverty, obedience and
celibacy are the canonical vices." " Self-control," says
<
/ /
NIETZSCHE AS A TEACHER 279
Nietzsche, " destroys the nervous system as certainly
and thoroughly as debauchery." " Those who minister
to poverty and disease," says Tanner, " are accomplices
in the two worst of all crimes." In Nietzsche appears
the idea more broadly : " Sympathy is both the multiplier
of misery and the conservator of misery." There is no
need to pile up examples. Shaw may regard himself as
a socialist, but his socialism is so overcast by the philos-
ophy of Dionysus that its outlines are lost.
It is probable that a thousand other men, in a dozen
countries, had asked themselves the questions which
grew into Nietzsche's philosophy. Some of them had
been debated years and years before he was born. But
the world, as a world, thinks dimly and muddily, and
emotion always goes before reason. It remains for some
clear brain to transmute the groping half-conscious feeling
of the race into a visible, understandable idea. The mind
of Nietzsche had this retort-like quality. It was fed by
the thought of his time, but it changed this thought from
rough, gray ore into clear-running metal. Nietzsche, in
brief, put into words and syllogisms the things that his
contemporaries felt stirring gropingly within them, and
when he spoke, there were not a few who understood.
One of these, unless I greatly err, was Henrik Ibsen,
the Norwegian. He had written plays and audiences
had applauded them, but as he looked back upon them
they seemed to him to leave something unsaid. There
were greater things in the world, he felt, than the battles
of vikings. There were more imminent and important
problems than those which engaged Peer Gynt. Nor-
way, with its smug formalism, oppressed him, and he
Alt-:
280 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
became a wanderer upon the face of the earth. He went
to Germany and at Munich felt the surges of the high
sea raised by Darwin. It was a time of bitter conflict
in the German universities. The old order was changing
and giving place to the new. Over at Basel, in Switzer-
land, a young professor of philology named Nietzsche
was pondering the same mighty problems. He and Ibsen
had much the same viewpoint and much the same habits
of thought. They were outlanders and their minds were
essentially cosmopolitan. The petty considerations of
insularity were miles below them: on the peaks where
they dwelt the air was clear and it was possible to see
accurately and without distortion. By and by both came
to the same general conclusion. Many of the things
that men regarded as wrong, they decided, were, in
reality, right ; * and many of the things looked upon as
holy were infamous. Here we have that " translation of
all values " which forms the text of the new gospel. In
1879 Ibsen put it into " A Doll's House," his first comedy
of conscience, and made himself the foremost dramatist
of the age. The same year Nietzsche published " Mensch-
liches allzu Menschliches."
That Ibsen remained long unacquainted with Niet-
zsche's writings is as unthinkable as that a Huxley could
remain unaware of a Darwin. The Norwegian had
brought forth his answer to the problem for himself,
from the depths of his own loathing for morality as he
found it, but as, one by one, the German's books came
from the press, they must have heartened and influenced
him profoundly. Ibsen's letters show us that he was
ever more the poet than the philosopher, and that even
NIETZSCHE AS A TEACHER 281
after the world gave him ear, he still manifested a queer
distrust of his own philosophy a distrust compounded
in part of modesty, and in part of that uncertainty which
always marks the true agnostic. The rise of Nietzsche
must have made him feel more sure of himself, for here
there was a professional metaphysician whose dictata
augmented and reinforced his own. His later plays
demonstrated it. The onslaught upon " A Doll's House "
drove him behind trenches in " Ghosts," but later on,
when he came to write " Hedda Gabbler," " The Master
Builder " and " When We Dead Awaken," he was sure
of himself and so pounded out his ideas unheedingly and
defiantly. The difference between his first audience and
his last was the difference between a race not yet cured
of Thomas a Kempis and a race inoculated with Nietzsche.
In the drama of today, Ibsen and Nietzsc he are the
dominant voices. In Germany and England, in France
and America, the playmakers have gone to Ibsen for
their artistry and technique and to Nietzsche for their
philosophy. Ibsen taught them naturalness and truth
he showed them the absurdity of the soliloquy and the
hero and the essential impossibility of Marguerite Gautier
and Nietzsche made them critics, not of kings and
intrigues, but of human institutions and divine mandates.
The difference between the Henry Arthur Jones of " The
Silver King " and the Jones of " The Hypocrites " marks
the measure of this revolution. Its leaders today are
Hermann Sudermann, the German, and August Strind-
berg, the Swede. We who speak English know Sudermann
for his " Heiniat," which has been rendered into our
tongue as " Magda." Magda Schwartze is a Mrs. Warren
282 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
with strength to face it out to the bitter end. As Nietzsche
would say, she is a ya-sager a yes-sayer who asks
nothing of the world but a chance to seek happiness in
her own way. Convention authority respectability
stretch out their arms and would make her their own.
But she has chosen for herself. " If you give us the
right to hunger," she cries, " and I have hungered !
why do you deny us the right ... to happiness, as we
can understand it? ... I must live out my own life!
That I owe to myself to myself and mine ! "
It is Dionysus speaking that same Dionysus we find
in " Der Antichrist" and in "Also sprach Zarathustra "
that same Dionysus whose loud " Yes ! " peals forth in
Strindberg's " Mit dpunJuer Spielen " and in his war
n upon feminism. Strindberg^ indeed, is a Nietzschean
\ whose enthusiasm has made him a thing almost apart
from humankind. In his thunderous battle against
convention and delusion, he has attacked ideas which
the race could not abandon today, perhaps, without risk
of utter chaos. He has brought forth skeletons that
had better remain in the closet ; he has bored into skulls
that cry aloud for burial. " He is the most remarkable
creative talent," says Edmund Gosse, " started by the
philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche." But the world must
learn more of Nietzsche himself before it is ready to heed
his disciple. In the Teutonic countries, Strindberg finds
an audience, but where the Angle cools and convention-
alizes the Saxon he is still a mere shouter of ribaldry.
Of lesser Nietzscheans, however, there is a host Fulda,
Hervieu, and other continentals and the wavering disciples
who write in English. It is in the dramas of these men
NIETZSCHE AS A TEACHER 283
that the thought of today is being expressed. Oratory
is dead, the newspapers rattle upon the surface, and
the novel has fallen from its old estate. Once more the
drjyna gives expression to all those who have something
to say. Who, since Zola, has written a novel that looms
big? We have had a multitude of romances for the
hammock and essays in style, but what document in
covers has dealt, grandly and satisfyingly, with the eternal
conflict between things as they are and things as they
might be? What novel is comparable, as an event, to
" The Great Divide " or " Magda " or " Lodgings for the
Night?"
In all of these earnest and significant dramas you will
find some trace of the Nietzschean thesis. The problem
they illuminate is never, Will the brave Rudolph win
the fair Angeline? but, Is this virtue really good? or,
Is that sin really bad ? Such things were discussed years
and years ago, but until the human mind was finally freed
from the bonds of theology and authority, in the latter
half of the nineteenth century, these discussions were
always half-hearted and vain. Let him weigh and specu-
late as much as he would, the philosopher and poet always
came, at last, to a dead wall. He might beat upon it as
much as he pleased, but he could not hope to be ranked
much higher, in the human scale, than a successful hurler
of muck at temple gates. Even today such is the
force of collective opinion we think of Voltaire and
Machiavelli and others of their ilk as criminals rather
than as truth- tellers. The dead wall towered high. Such-
and-such a rule was laid down by the laws of some king,
or the commandments of some god or the dogmas of
284 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
some holy man and it was immaculate, incontrovertible
and final. One might go so far and no further. Beyond
the wall lay blasphemy, lunacy and all sorts of unutterable
horrors.
But the wall today is dust. We give heed, not so
much to those who pretend to interpret the law as to
those who presume to deny it. The typical English-
speaking literary critic of the day is Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1
a prophet of truly Nietzschean disillusion. The typical
English cart- tail philosopher is Dr. Emil Reich, 3 a bearer
of the Nietzschean philosophy of defiance. Instead of
accepting a given notion as right because the majority of
other critics, since the dawn of civilization, have regarded
it as right, Chesterton devotes his energies to examining
it for himself and judging it with an open mind. For
these reasons the numskulls who write reviews of his
books say that he delights in what they call paradox
and patronize him as a bright young man whose respect
for law might be a bit stronger. Reich a man much
below Chesterton in ability has attained the ha'penny
celebrity he seems to crave in much the same manner.
He is the philosophical shocker of the hour and every few
days the newspapers of London print his views upon some
Gilbert K. Chesterton (1874- ), critic and essayist. His books
include "Robert Browning," "G. F. Watts," The Club of Queer
Trades " and " Heretics." He has written for most of the English peri-
odicals and is now a regular contributor to the London Illustrated News.
*Dr. Emil Reich (1854- ), historian and philosopher. He was born
in Hungary, but now lives in London. His books include " Imperial-
ism," "The Foreigner in History," "Success Among Nations" and
" The Fundamental Principles of Evidence." He is a very popular lec-
turer, but of late has descended to the Orison Swett Marden class of
bores by printing a book called " Success in Life."
NIETZSCHE AS A TEACHER 285
topic of interest, just as the newspapers of New York
used to print the opinions of Dr. Parkhurst and other
such vaporous platitudinizers on every fresh murder,
war, railroad wreck and international divorce. Reich
has borrowed Nietzsche's method of " tunneling " and
employs it with vast effect. Some time ago, for instance,
he issued a pronunciamento upon the subject of duellin g,
in which he pointed out the quite obvious fact that the
code duello, despite its outraging of the law, offers the
sole practicable means of permitting civilized men to do
what every healthy human being instinctively yearns to
do that is, slay his enemies. This quite elemental logic
appalled the Londoners and as a result Reich added to
his reputation as a daring heretic and profound thinker.
As a matter of fact, he is a man of little more than average
capacity and very frequently he entangles himself, in a
most amazing manner, in banalities and fallacies. But
for the nonce, he is the favorite practitioner of Nietzsche's
method of teaching which consists, as we have seen,
in tracking down virtues to their primal source in expedi-
ence and in tracking down Christian sins to their primal
source in the effort of thejweak Jews to protect themselves
against the strong Romans and so he will serve a useful
purpose until England is prepared for Nietzscheism in
stronger doses, and more admirable doctors arise.
It might be interesting to attempt a roll of other con-
scious or unconscious retailers of the Nietzschean philos-
ophy: George Brandes in Denmark, W. H. Hudson,
Thomas Hardy, R. B. Cunninghame Graham, H. G.
Wells and H. G. Carpenter in England; Maxim Gorki
and the "young Russia" school, in Russia; Hugo
CJ>
286 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Kaatz, Max Zerbst, Robert Schellwien, Gerhart Haupt-
mann and the vast " young Germany " school in Ger-
many ; Olga" Hansson in Sweden ; de Wysewa, Lavedan
and a horde of lesser lights in France; Gabrielle D'An-
nunzio in Italy ; Benjamin R. Tilman (who probably
never heard of Nietzsche) and innumerable disciples
fourth removed in America; Benjamin de Casseres 2 in
Mexico, and stray iconoclasts here and there in Norway,
Austria and even Spain. The tremendous influence of
Nietzsche, in truth, is admitted by even his most violent
opponents. " It remains a disgrace to the German
intellectual life of the present age," says Max Nordau,
" that in Germany a pronounced maniac should have
been regarded as a philosopher and have founded a
school." 3 " Nietzsche," says the staid old Athenaeum,
" for good or evil, has spoken to his age with a formidable
voice. He may be fought, but he cannot be disregarded.
To disregard him is like disregarding a motor-car because
you prefer your carriage and pair. He is a new force, like
electricity." 4 " Nietzsche," says A. R. Orage, " is the
greatest European event since Goethe. . . . Nobody is
more representative of the spirit of the age." " No
modern German writer of the more earnest class," says
1 Consider this truly dionysian outburst in his famous Chicago speech,
in Dec, 1906: " I want to be just to the negroes, but I believe God
Almighty made me on a better plane than he made them, and so help
me God, I propose to maintain that position."
8 The brilliant editor of El Diario, the leading journal of the City of
Mexico. See the St. Louis Globe-Democrat of April 7, 1907.
3 " Degeneration," Am. ed. New York, 1895: page 472.
4 March 7, 1903.
'"Friedrich Nietzsche," London, 1906, pp. 11 and 12.
NIETZSCHE AS A TEACHER 287
Alois Riehl, " is so widely read." " In some ways," says
Grace Neal Dolson, " Nietzsche appeals to the thought
of the time. ... He has had imitators and admirers in
abundance." 2 " Before long," says George Bernard
Shaw, " you must be prepared to talk about Nietzsche or
retire from society." 3
But it is vain, perhaps, to attempt to measure a phi-
losopher's true influence by counting the noses of the
disciples who copy his writings upon fresh scrolls. Such
disciples bear the same relation to him that Paderewski
does to Chopin or Mantell to Shakespeare or Hearst
to Karl Marx. Executants are necessary because the
world is large, and when the fates are propitious, they
sometimes reach the estate and dignity of interpreters,
but at bottom they are mere echoes. To change the
figure, they are lumber sawed from a tree and not new
shoots springing from its roots. But even at that, as
has been said, they cut a respectable figure in the world.
The best actor conceivable is of much less importance
than the worst dramatist, and the most dexterous pianist
seems paltry beside even the composer of the " Florodora "
sextette, but we must have parrots as well as nightingales
and printing presses as well as divine fire. Thus it is
not well to hold in contempt those humble ones who
stand below and are ready, when the great officers of the
barque of life shout down an order, to repeat it respect-
fully, with the addition of " Aye, aye : sir ! "
, (i Friedrich Nietzsche; der Kunstler und der Denker? Stuttgart,
1898.
2 " The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche," preface ; New York, 1901.
3 " Dramatic Opinions and Essays ; " New York, 1906.
288 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
The ideas of Nietzsche are dominant in the German
universities, and have colored the whole stream of German
thought. From L eipsic and Heidelberg they journey to
j^us London and New York and bob up in the weeklies and
reviews. And out of the Spectator and the Saturday,
the Independent and the North American, they are trans-
lated into the vulgar tongue with reservations and
emendations and so become leading articles in the
more anarchistic and discontented section of the daily
press. Thus after a long voyage and many hardships,
they impinge upon the intellects of those meditative
Anglo-Saxons who brave the elemental furies and the
laws of political economy from their benches in City
Hall Park or their inns along the Mile End Road. And
that is one way in which Nietzsche reaches the great
plain people of America and England. The porridge
runs distressingly thin by the time it gets to them, but
the flavor, though faint, is still there.
Beside this method of what may be called direct inocu-
lation, it is evident that there is also in progress a more
general and subtle infection. A philosophy, when it
offers a practical solution of pressing problems or a com-
prehensible interpretation of contemporary phenomena,
begins to saturate Jhe air, and so influences everyone,
including even those who have never heard of it directly.
Human beings, in the mass, are ever the willing slaves
of some prevalent suggestion. The great majority of
Americans, for instance, always think much alike. One
year they are unanimously outraged by Spain's crimes in
Cuba; the next year they are unanimously enraged by
the eccentricities of predatory wealth; another year they
NIETZSCHE AS A TEACHER 289
think deeply and indignantly about the tariff, expansion,
executive usurpation, Mormonism, divorce or the negro
question. As it is with concrete presentations, so it is
with general ideas. At one time, in the middle ages, it
was the firm opinion of practically every human being
in all Europe that the most profitable way to employ time
and energy was to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land
and kill as many Saracens as possible on the way. At
another time, the thirst for money was uppermost and
everything else was subordinated to considerations of
trade. At still another time, there was an almost unani-
mous revolt against old ideas of government, and the
French revolution was one of its symptoms. In our
own time we have seen Christendom reduce Christianity
to the lowly estate of a mere scheme of morality and have
witnessed an unprecedented attempt to uncover the secrets
of nature. Always there is some dominant trend of
thought, some fashionable frame of mind, some universal
idea.
Whatever the groove in which the intellect of the world
happens to be working, it feels a need for some leader to
give voice to its inarticulate and half-conscious longings
and to serve, in some sense, as its guide. This leader is
nearly always the product, rather than the cause of the
movement for which he stands. Thus, at the time of the
crusades, Richard Cceur de Lion neither invented the
idea of slaying the Saracens nor was he particularly
successful in his individual attempts at massacre, yet he
visualized, in his own mind and deeds, the notion of
rescuing the holy sepulchre, and so, when we think of
the crusades today, we always think of Richard, too.
290 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
In the same way half a dozen men are identified with
the French revolution, and Roosevelt and his rough
riders stand for the war with Cuba, and Bryan is accepted
as the prophet of the war upon lawless millions. Again,
we find ourselves unconsciously associating such purely
symptomatic phenomena as Payne, Huxley and Ingersoll
with the revolt against Christian supernaturalism, and
Darwin with the search for knowledge and Tolstoi with
the rebellion against modern systems of government.
Keeping all of this in mind, we may well call Nietzsche
the prophet and embodiment of those habits of thought
which are dominant among the thinking men of the
world today. Humanity is questioning and making
ready to reject its ancient moral ideas. l The masses
on the surface are still law-abiding and religious, but
even amongst the lowest of the slave cast there is a
mute, uncertain sort of willingness to follow any iconoclast
whose crusade contains aught of romance. It will be
many years before the great plain people come to regard
marriage other than as a holy sacrament just as it
will be many years before they cease to regard smoking,
by women, as a crime, and red plush as the acme
of beauty but already they have begun to differ-
entiate between empty platitude and actuality. For a
hundred years, for example, it had been a fundamental
principle of American statesmanship that it was immoral
and wrong for any state to covet the possessions of other
1 Prof. A. Seth-Pringle-Patterson : Contemporary Review for May,
1898 : " The rehabilitation of the flesh in Heine's phrase, the unchain-
ing of the slumbering beast in man the denial of responsibility, the
repudiation of every idea of moral discipline these are the forces
that, in many quarters, have come once more to the front."
NIETZSCHE AS A TEACHER 291
states, no matter how much the acquirement of these
possessions might benefit it. But when Schley took Cuba
and Roosevelt achieved his Machiavellian coup d'ttat at
Panama was there a cry of outraged decency then,
and a demand for restitution and repentance? Not at
all. Instead, the American people suddenly awoke to
conscious perception of a notion that had been growing
in them for years: that the aforesaid old rule of states-
manship, despite its smug holiness, was a bit of outworn
trumpery. And so the vast majority of Americans viewed
the Cuban incident and the Panama ambuscade as means
fully justified by their ends, and it remained for a few
peevish advocates of the discarded and outgrown morality
to voice a ludicrous and ineffective protest.
In brief, the age is dionysian and the moral ideas that
have come down to us in the decalogue and the beatitudes
are under fire. In New York, not long ago, an old woman,
incurably ill of cancer, died of poison, and it was charged
that her daughter, who loved her and had nothing to gain
personally by her death, had given it to her to put her out
of her frightful and useless agony. It so happened that
the daughter disproved this charge, but the essential
thing is not this, but the fact that the great majority of
New Yorkers apparently regarded it as sensible, not to
say heroic, that she should do the thing she was accused
of doing. A few days afterward a reputable paper in
London printed a long defense of murder, as a necessary
means of avenging injuries for which the law could offer
no remedy, and at the same time there were in progress
in the United States a dozen trials of persons accused of
putting the same idea into practice, all of which resulted
292 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
in practical acquittals. Since the Civil War the negro
problem in the south has been hotly debated and a thou-
sand schemes for carrying out the biblical injunction to
love one another have been proposed. Recently, a clear-
headed and vigorous, if slightly theatrical southerner,
has courageously voiced the instinctive conviction that
this injunction must be disregarded, and that the white
race, to preserve itself, must pronounce upon the black
race and set out to execute as gently as possible, but
still with unalterable firmness a sentence of exter-
mination.
It is useless to multiply examples, for every observer,
I believe, has noted the tendency I have tried to describe.
The civilized world has disposed of supernaturalism and
is engaged in a destructive criticism of the old faith's
residuum morality. 1 As Nietzsche himself shows us,
such a campaign of criticism and revision has been in
progress since the world began, but it is obvious that it
was never before waged so hotly as now. A hundred years
ago a man who publicly argued that the Christian ideal
of sympathy and humility was degrading and outrageous
would have incurred penalties almost as terrible as those
that would have been meted out to an agnostic who, in
the middle ages, questioned the divinity of Christ. But
today a man may do both and still remain respectable. 2
* The so-called " new " theology of the Rev. R. J. Campbell, which
excited London almost as much as the Thaw trial in the early part of
1907, contains this revolutionary dictum : " The doctrine of sin, which
holds us to be blameworthy for deeds that we cannot help, we believe
to be a false view." London Illustrated Mail, Jan., 1907.
a Consider this, from the Manchester (Eng.) Guardian, a most re-
spectable middle-class organ, of Feb. 3, 1907. " A man told me the
NIETZSCHE AS A TEACHER 293
Whatever is laid down as a law, now arouses, by that very
fact, criticism and examination. Whatever is called good
because the patriarchs thought it good is now under
fire.
Whether or not the result of this unrestrained search
for ultimate truths will be a " transvaluation of all
values " in the Nietzschean sense, remains to be seen.
I^ietzsche apparently believed that, in the course of time,
the human race would substitute " thou shalt " for
" thou shalt not " throughout the decalogue and that
the beatitudes would eventually become a sort of roster
anathema. That such a transvaluation will come during
the time that human beings remain substantially as they
are is beyond all possibility; that it will ever come is
beyond all prophecy. But even setting this problem
aside as insoluble, the fact remains that the grand assault-
at-arms now in progress will result in inc alculable benefit.
If the race decides, in the end, that the commandments, ^"TTt
after all, are sound and so resolves to abide by them, it y^ t fa
will have made an infinite advance, nevertheless, beyond ^r*+t
the time when it accepted them unquestionably, because ;$ 7L k
they were regarded as perfect by the ancient Jews. In
a word, a race which looks its own problems squarely
in the face and seeks solutions for them in the storehouse
other day, in so many words, that he felt something was wrong with him
because he wasn't as upset as he ought to be over the victims of the
Jamaica earthquake. He said he felt ashamed of himself because he
hadn't lost his appetite for breakfast over it. He couldn't do anything
for the victims, mark you 1 He couldn't do a blessed single little thing ;
but he wanted to feel more. He thought he would have been a better
man if he had gone about his business that day on an empty stomach.
Now, if you are born sympathetic you can't help it. It's your misfor-
tune. But to go about trying to be sympathetic good Lord! "
2Q4 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
of its own experience, and with an eye solely to his own
welfare, is a race vastly superior to one which puts an
infantile trust in the wisdom of a people long lost in the
struggle for existence, to whom its peculiar requirements
were unknown and to whom the very world itself bore a
different aspect.
Dionysus may fall short of triumph to the end of the
chapter, but so long as he wages his war upon Apollo
fiercely and intelligently there need be no fear of the
perils of sloth, of vegetation, of bigotry, of authority,
of standing still. Five hundred years ago all reasoning
had its basis in authority and was necessarily ex parte,
Us-c/t- Today, the preacher who thunders from the pulpit and
the statesman who howls from the rostrum must take
thought of and give heed to the doubter who arises in
his place and demands to know wherefore and why.
ti>
y>\t**i
m
NIETZSCHE AND HIS CRITICS
The arguments against Nietzsche, voiced in America
and Europe, by a host of ingenious and industrious
critics, may be reduced to five fundamental propositions,
viz:
a. He was a lunatic, and in consequence, his philos-
ophy is not worth attention.
b. His conclusions were contradictory and it is im-
possible to find in his writings any connected philo-
sophical system.
c. He was ignorant of certain important facts of human
existence, or purposely misstated them, and in conse-
quence argued from erroneous data.
d. His assumption that the idea of self-sacrifice tends
to make humanity less and less able to cope with the
vicissitudes of existence on earth, is based upon a
direct contradiction of known facts.
e. The scheme of things proposed by him is opposed
by ideas inherent in all men and so is unthinkable and
unworkable and if put into practice would make life
impossible.
It is scarcely worth while to linger long over the first
*95
296 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
and second propositions. The first has been laid down
most noisily by Max Nordau, 1 in " Degeneration," a
book based upon certain ideas borrowed, quite frankly,
from Lombroso, 2 an Italian quasi- scientist whose chief
mission in life seems to be to furnish sensational copy
for the American yellow journals. Nordau's book remains
a masterpiece of erudition and rhetoric, in the highest and
most honorable sense of both words ; fr t despite its vogue
a dozen years ago, it is now well nigh as archaic as a play
by Bronson Howard. His definition of degeneracy is " a
morbid deviation from an original type " and he lays
stress upon the fact that by " morbid " he means " infirm "
or " incapable of fulfilling normal functions," but straight-
way he begins to regard any deviation as degenerate,
despite the obvious fact that it may be quite the reverse.
He says, for instance, that a man with web toes is a de-
generate and entirely overlooks the fact that web toes,
under easily imaginable circumstances, might be an
advantage instead of a handicap, and that, under ordinary
conditions of life, we are unable to determine, with any
* Max Simon Nordau (1849- ). A former physician and the author
of many medical and quasi-medical works, novels, plays, etc. His
extraordinary capacity for weaving the verbiage of science into start-
ling theories of life and civilization has given him a huge popular
following, but he is not to be taken too seriously.
Cesare Lombroso (1836- ), professor of psychiatry at the Univer-
sity of Turin, Italy. The founder of what may be denominated crimi-
nal pathology. Some of his investigations are of considerable
scientific interest, but, like Nordau, he is prone to say things for the
mere joy of startling the public. His best known books are " The
Man of Genius " and " The Female Offender." His work on prosti-
tution was the first attempt to lift the study of this phenomenon
above the level of silly moralizing.
NIETZSCHE AND HIS CRITICS
297
accuracy, whether they are one or the other. Dubois x
and other latter-day pathologists have set at rest forever
this notion that every variation spells degeneracy, and
today Nordau, Lombroso and the rest of that crowd,
when they rise above their proper business of dispas-
sionately recording actual phenomena, become merely
ridiculous. Lombroso, for one, has unearthed a vast mass
of interesting facts about criminality, but the theories which
he has sought to evolve from these facts are scarcely
accepted by psychiatrists. He is a skilful reporter, but
a silly and extravagant philosopher.
Nordau, having started out with the knowledge that
Nietzsche eventually became insane, tried to exhibit
every act of his life and every idea in his philosophy as
a symptom of that insanity. As a matter of fact, he
failed miserably, for while he found it easy to prove
that Nietzsche was a blatant egoist, that he had a fondness
for repeating certain favorite arguments ad nauseam, that
he hated most things that other people held sacred, and
that he was intolerant, irritable, and occasionally self-
contradictory, it is plain that these allegations find their
effective answer in the fact that they might be urged just
as truthfully against any other original thinker Savona-
rola, Jenner, Mai thus, Rousseau, Nordau himself, or any
undoubtedly sane reformer that he might select. In a
word, his symptoms of degeneracy fit everyone except
the satisfied, orthodox, conventional, unoriginal, auto-
1 Dr. Paul Dubois, professor of neuropathology at the University
of Berne. In " The Psychic Treatment of Nervous Disorders " (New
York, 1906) he has reduced the Nordau-Lombroso theory of degen'
eracy to an absurdity (page 200 et seq.~).
298 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
matic bourgeois that purely vegetable being whom
Nordau seems to regard as the supreme masterpiece of the
creator.
As we have seen in a previous chapter, the fact of
Nietzsche's progress from mere neurasthenia, a disease
which afflicts nearly all of us, to undoubted insanity,
has no bearing whatever upon the essential truths of
his philosophical scheme. We must judge his philosophy
as we judge any other idea: by its inherent probability
and its correspondence with the known facts of existence.
If Nietzsche had tried to prove that cows had wings
it would have been proper enough to dismiss him as a
raving maniac. But when he essayed to show us that
Christianity impeded human progress, he laid down
a proposition which, whatever its extravagance, was not,
in itself, insane. This is demonstrated, beyond a doubt,
by the fact that it is possible for sane men to debate it,
and to be stimulated to thought, in their consideration of
it, by Nietzsche's reasoning. It is perfectly possible for
a man to think clearly and yet die insane, just as it is
perfectly possible for a man to attain international renown
as a consumer of hot mince pies and then, in the end, to
die of indigestion.
Nordau also voices the second of the objections noted
at the beginning of this chapter. Nietzsche, he says,
tore down without building up, and died without having
formulated any definite substitute for the morality he
abhorred. It is obvious, from all that has gone before,
that this is nonsense. No other man, indeed, ever left
a more complete system of philosophy, and if it be true
that he occasionally modified details radically, it is equally
NIETZSCHE AND HIS CRITICS 299
true that his fundamental ideas remained unchanged
from first to last. But even supposing that he had died
before he had arranged his observations in any connected
form, and that it had remained for his disciples to deduce
and group his conclusions even then it would have -been
possible to weigh his ideas and accept them for what they
were worth. Nordau lays it down as an axiom that a man
cannot be a reformer unless he proposes some ready-made
scheme of things to take the place of the notions he seeks
to overturn, and that if he does not do this he is a mere
hurler of bricks and shouter of blasphemies. That this
rule is an arrant absurdity is shown by the fact that every
considerable reform the world has ever known has been
accomplished, not by one man, but by many generations
of men, working in series, and that, as a matter of actual
experience, the man who first points out the need for
change seldom lives long enough to evolve a complete
substitute for the thing he proposes to abolish. Nordau
himself furnishes a case in point, and every critic of the
arts and letters is a shining example. The man who
first noticed the inefficiency of sails was just as necessary
to the birth of the steamboat as the man who built the
pioneer steam engine.
So much for the first two arguments against Nietzsche.
Both raise immaterial objections and the second makes
an allegation that is not true. The other propositions
are based upon better logic, and, as we shall see, afford
reasonable grounds for objecting to Nietzsche's system,
either wholly or in part. It would be interesting, perhaps,
to give in detail the arguments supporting them, but this
would necessitate a complete review of the vast mass of
300 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
criticism which Nietzsche's works have brought forth in
Europe and America. Instead, we must content ourselves
with glancing at a few of them.
Some of these arguments, it must be admitted, are
extraordinarily ingenious, but some, again, are extraor-
dinarily absurd. One man argues, for example, 1 that
Nietzsche's criticism of the beatitudes is fallacious because,
if it were not for Christianity, there would be no asylums
and refuges for the suffering, and in consequence, no
concerted and effective effort to make man more efficient
physically. Hence, he says, it must be admitted
that Christianity's influence has been beneficial to the
race. Setting aside the fact that the advantages of pre-
serving the unfit are dubious, it is apparent that this fine
syllogism is ridiculous, for, in the first place, everyone
knows that the healing of the sick has been practised for
ages in numerous non- Christian countries, and in the
second place, a rudimentary acquaintance with history
is enough to convince any sane man that the influence of
Christianity has been ever hurled against that exact
knowledge which alone makes our hospitals appreciably
superior to those of Tibet and Bokhara.
Another sapient critic 2 argues that Nietzsche is wrong
in regarding an aversion to organization as a characteristic
of the strong. A struggle, says this critic, is always a
waste of strength, and power, when exerted, is weakened
by the power it arouses and provokes. Darwin is sum-
moned from his tomb to substantiate this argument,
but its exponent seems to be unfamiliar with the Dar-
* Bennett Hume, in the London Quarterly for October, 1900.
Alfred Fouillee, in the International Monthly, III, 2, pp. 1 34-165.
NIETZSCHE AND HIS CRITICS 301
winian doctrine that strength is an effect of use, and the
further Darwinian doctrine that disuse, whether pro-
duced by organized protection or in some other way,
leads inevitably to degeneration. In other words, the
ideal strong man of this subtle serpent of wisdom is one
who seeks, with great enthusiasm, the readiest possible
way of ridding himself of his strength.
Still another critic J argues that Nietzsche's doctrine
" of the paralyzing effect of infallibility and sanctity has
been completely overthrown by the unparalleled success
of the Japanese, resting upon these qualities in their
Emperor." This incredibly fatuous sophist overlooks
the fact that the wily Japs, whatever their ostensible
belief in their Emperor's infallibility, have pushed to the
front solely as the result of their quite extraordinary
thirst for experiment and innovation. No other race in
history has been more eager to embrace new ideas or
more willing to abandon old ones. They are almost
ideal dionysians, and since accepting the learning of the
western world they have explored its possibilities with a
daring which has made most western nations stand
aghast. 2 In a word, their national policy is utterly skeptical
and excessively individualistic, and for all their poetic
pretense of accepting their sovereign's utterances as law,
they are, in reality, most bitter enemies of all rigidity,
1 Douglas Sladen, in The Qtieen, Jan. 5, 1907.
3 Consider, for example, their successful use of typhoid and dys-
entery vaccines during the Manchurian war. The only Western nation
daring enough to experiment with these vaccines at that time was Great
Britain, and the result there was a most vociferous howl of protest from
professional humanitarians. The Japs made the test boldly and saved
10,000 lives.
302 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
ritualism and formalism in human thought. In this
very contempt for authority and thirst for experiment,
indeed, lies the secret of their remarkable advancement.
No other race is so free from hampering conventions and
doctrines; no other race is so determined to weigh an
idea, not by its respectability or authority, but by its
inherent truth.
. Yet another critic argues that Nietzsche's plea for
obedience to a willkur-gesetze (self-imposed law), and to
it only, overlooks the fact that, since a man is not a com-
panionless being in vacuo, his tastes and opinions are
merely reflections of the tastes and opinions of other men,
and it is therefore impossible for him to have any idea
utterly and entirely his own. This seems true enough
until it is recalled that, besides his ideas, which must
necessarily come from without, a man also has his natural
attitude of mind, which is born in him. In other words,
every human being comes into the world cast in a definite
mold and this mold varies so much in different individuals
that it is impossible to find two men exactly alike. One
man is sunny and his brother is gloomy, one is honest and
another a liar, one shrewd and another a fool. One
man's instincts are reliable and efficient and we see him
prosper in whatever effort he makes to rise above his
fellows ; another is a born blunderer and we see him fail
in everything. To put it more understandingly, every
human being's ego is the sum of his native personality's
reaction against the ideas that reach him through his
consciousness. The same ideas, impinging upon two
men, often produce diametrically different reactions.
This is a commonplace of observation, and no Schopen-
NIETZSCHE AND HIS CRITICS
303
hauer was needed to crystallize it into the doctrine set forth
in " The World as Will and Idea." If it be admitted,
as it must be, it must be admitted, too, that a man's native
instincts, and not his acquired ideas, constitute the
determining factor in his ego. Therefore, he is most
himself and according to Nietzsche, safest and most
efficient when he most depends upon these instincts -*-
expressed as inclinations, predispositions, predilections *
for guidance. The existence of the personal equation is
obvious. Nietzsche merely sought to give it a free rein.
Practically all the critics of Nietzsche agree in denying
that his fundamental assumption that self-sacrifice
tends to make humanity decay is true. Max Nordau
maintains, for instance, that a race whose members have
learned to help one another has really made a distinct
step forward. Gregariousness, charity and co-operation
are to be met with, he says, in most of the higher verte-
brates, and the man-apes nurse their sick and feed their
helpless just as men do. This argument, on its face,
appears to be a sound one, but a bit of reflection will
show that while it exhibits an undoubted fact, it is possible
to draw two opposing conclusions from that fact. Admit-
ting that the man-apes do these things, we may argue
therefrom, either that they have made a step forward or
that they have made a step backward. If it is true that
the preservation of the unfit means progress, then the
apes are advancing. But if it is true that the preservation
of the unfit handicaps and retards the fit, then they are
decaying. And so we get back to our original dilemma.
Setting aside those who argue in favor of self-sacrifice
because they believe it to be ordained of God, its defenders
304 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
may be divided into two classes : first, those who believe
that, if it were not practiced, the race would become a
mere herd of wild beasts, who would soon consume one
another; and secondly, those who hold that despite its
admitted tendency to preserve the unfit, it also tends to
protect and stimulate the fit. To the first class belongs
" Vernon Lee " (Miss Violet Paget). 1 Her argument is
that humility is a sort of governor placed upon human
egotism to keep it from running amuck. A human being
is so constituted, she says, that he necessarily looms in
his own view as large as all the rest of the world put
together. Now, this distortion of values is met with in
the consciousness of every individual, and if there were
nothing to oppose it, it would soon lead to a hopeless
and deadly conflict between exaggerated egos. Humility,
says Miss Paget, tempers this conflict, without wholly
ending it. A man's unconscious tendency to magnify
his own importance and to invite death by trying to force
this unnatural view upon others, is held in check by the
constant presentation of the idea that he must think, also,
of the welfare of these others. In a word, humility is a
corrective of the human weakness for worshipping self.
Miss Paget is a subtle metaphysician, and on the
surface, this theory appears to be impeccable, but it is
easy to show, all the same, that humility, as she con-
ceives it, is nothing more than a selfish desire to avoid
1 Violet Paget (1856- ) is an English romancer and critic whose wri-
tings appear over the nom de plume of " Vernon Lee." She has written
many brilliant essays on art and literature, but her logic, being femi-
nine, is usually curious, not to say weird. The article quoted here
and in subsequent paragraphs appeared in the North American Re-
view for December, 1904.
NIETZSCHE AND HIS CRITICS 305
antagonizing others, and that, in consequence, it is a
manifestation of true egotism i. e., the instinct of the
individual to preserve his life. Under present conditions
the man who gave his ego free rein would soon perish at
the hands of his indignant fellow men, because these
fellow men would combine against him. But in Nietzsche's
ideal world, there would be no such combination. Every
member of the " first caste " would look after his own
affairs unaided, and in consequence, his battles would be
fought without allies and his opponents, too, would fight
without allies. The result of this would be that the
strongest would survive the very aim and object of
Nietzsche's scheme. That there is an abysmal difference
between the dionysian forethought born of prudence and
the Christian humility born of charity needs no demon-
stration. Miss Paget's picture of humility, indeed, is a
very accurate picture of policy, cunning and craft.
The second argument for self-sacrifice that it benefits
the fit as much as, or more than, it benefits the unfit
is scarcely debatable in the face of the present lack of
accurate data. We may maintain, for instance, that our
hospitals make useful and capable citizens, every year,
of thousands who would otherwise become burdens
upon the fit, or perish utterly, but we cannot prove that
this is entirely true. A man who has had tuberculosis,
for example, and has been cured, may live to a green
old age and do his full share of the world's work, but it
is questionable whether the children he begets will be
fully as well fitted to survive as the children of men who
have never been ill at all. That is to say, we can arrest
the progress of a specific case of disease, but we cannot
306 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
stamp out an individual's tendency to contract that
disease nor can we keep him from transmitting this tend-
ency to his children. We may cure a man and a woman
of tuberculosis in this generation, and by the same token,
burden the next generation with ten potential or actual
consumptives their descendants.
It was the fashion a few years ago to pooh-pooh this
idea that tendencies to disease i. e., dispositions to
perish in the struggle for existence are inheritable,
but the investigations of Sir Almroth Wright in the field
of immunity have proved beyond a doubt that it is sound.
The child of a consumptive, even if that consumptive be
cured, is more liable to contract tuberculosis than the
child of a perfectly normal person, and this liability, by
Dr. Wright's opsonic method, may now be accurately
gauged and even expressed in figures. 1 Now, if we can
prove this of definite physical disease, we may reasonably
assume it, too, of every other evidence of a subnormal
capacity for surviving in the struggle for existence. In
point of fact, the sociologists and criminologists have
demonstrated it, in their own fields, empirically. We
may induce a thief to lead a better life, we may devise
corrective shoes for a club-footed man, we may cure a
dipsomaniac of his craving for drink, and we may provide
policemen, judges and hangmen to protect the weak
from the strong, but we cannot help these unfit beings
from transmitting their unfitness to their descendants.
As Malthus showed more than a century ago, every
1 Vide a host of authorities in recent files of The Journal of the
American Medical Association, The British Medical Journal, The Lan-
cet, etc.
NIETZSCHE AND HIS CRITICS 307
pauper kept alive at the public expense becomes the
ancestor of a hundred other paupers. Inasmuch as the
time will come, soon or late, when some of these descend-
ants will have to starve, would it not be wiser to let
their solitary progenitor himself starve, and so confine
the attendant suffering to one individual instead of
spreading it among many?
As Nietzsche points out, this notion that the unfit
should be preserved artificially leads to another danger:
it makes syjnpatby a virtue, and thus gives us a sneaking
liking a sort of unconscious gratitude for those
who inspire it in us. That this is true is demonstrated
by the alacrity and zest with which the charitably- inclined
pounce upon any new object of charity. Modern Christian-
ity, indeed, has translated " Blessed are the poor in I
spirit " into " Blessed are the poor." But it is obvious, on
a moment's reflection, that there is nothing honorable
in poverty, considered in itself, and that, on the contrary,
it is invariably a symptom of actual dishonor of neglect,
license, ignorance and inefficiency if not in the individ-
ual, at least in his family. " Whenever you see a woman
struggling for a livelihood in the world," said a recent
philosopher, 1 " you see proof that some man has neg-
lected his duty." In the same way, whenever you see
a poor man or a sick man, you see a proof that some one
perhaps the man himself and perhaps his grandfather
has swallowed too much whiskey, basked too much in the
sun, breathed bad air, shirked work and got too little
nourishing food, or dreamed futile dreams.
1 The fair and ingenious Miss Ada Patterson in a discourse in the
New York Evening Journal, Feb. 19, 1907.
308 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
It would be easy to pile up examples showing that
a reverence for the unfit causes nations as well as individ-
uals to perish. The Southern Confederacy furnishes a
case in point. The ideals of the South, before the war,
were essentially Christian. Women were protected en-
tirely from the struggle for existence and so lost efficiency
in mind and body. 1 The courtesy of the period cru-
cified self. Even the dionysian institution of slavery
was transformed in theory, at least into a scheme
for protecting and maintaining a weaker race. The net
result was that the culture of the South came to be based
upon an admiration of inefficiency, and the shock of the
civil war left the whole country below the Potomac in
chaos. It was not that the southerners were craven
warriors, but that they were unfitted to meet the vicissi-
tudes of a harsh existence in times of peace. Not until
an infusion of northern blood gave them back their old
Anglo-Saxon efficiency which commonly expresses itself
in a desire to obtain power by accumulating wealth, i. e. t
in a " business-like " outlook upon life and a liking for
sharp trading did they rise out of their slough of
despond. Those ancient southerners who have clung to
their antebellum ideals remain useless, miserable and
poverty-stricken today. It is only those who have aban-
doned the old Southern culture for the ideals of the Yankee
that have shown a fitness to survive.
1 It is obvious, I believe, that all those physical characteristics which
Americans regard as marks of beauty in women small hands and feet,
small waists, soft palms, pink nails ; round, soft arms and legs ; sloping
shoulders, small ears, small pearly teeth ; and soft and tender skin are evi-
dences of inefficiency. It is the same with most of the psychic attributes
innocence, trustfulness, credulousness, unworldliness and humility.
NIETZSCHE AND HIS CRITICS 309
Nietzsche points out that, in considering the part
co-operation has played in the advancement of the human
race, the historian is apt to make two grievous errors.
In the first place, he is easily led into assuming that it is
invariably efficacious, which is not true, and in the second
place he is prone to assume that it is always based upon an
altruistic impulse to self-sacrifice, which is untrue also.
As a matter of fact progress is nearly always the work of
individuals rather than of associations, and, in the only
forms of co-operation which really work for advancement
self-interest, rather than self-sacrifice, is the ruling motive.
Men commonly combine because each man in the com-
bination sees in it a possible advantage to himself
i. e. a possible means of widening the gap which separates
him from the hewers of wood and drawers of waters
and not because he harbors a yearning to sacrifice himself
for his fellow men. When Isabella of Spain pawned her
jewels and so enabled Columbus to cross the western
ocean, her motive was not a saintly desire to make the
poor man happy or an impulse to save the Indians' souls,
but a quite lowly yearning to invest her money in a venture
which promised a large profit in glory and cash. Such
co-operation is entitled to no little respect, because it
raises all the parties to it, to some measurable extent, above
the herd, and so makes them, to that extent, pioneers of
progress. But that form of co-operation by which the
strong give of their strength to the weak, without hope
of profit, is of dubious value, because it depletes the
vanguard of progress to swell the horde of camp-fol-
lowers. Had Isabella, for example, used her money to
support a colony of lepers and so enabled them to live
310 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
at ease and beget their kind, it is plain that her invest-
ment, without tending to her personal benefit in the
slightest degree, would have outrageously burdened and
handicapped posterity.
Whenever co-operation is thus tainted with the notion
of self-sacrifice, the weak are benefited at the expense
of the race as a whole. All those forms of universal
co-operation which men accept as inherently righteous
and beneficial because they seem necessary to the main-
tenance of the church or state are costly to the strong
and vigorous man the only man who is capable, in
any sense, of increasing the knowledge and relative
importance of the human race. As one very keen observer
puts it, " the weakest have fared best by our legislation." l
That is to say, any co-operative scheme which forces
all the members of a race, a nation or a community to
become parties to it, with the idea of elevating all en
masse, is grounded upon a fallacy, and this fallacy is the
notion that one man may gain without making some other
man lose. When two men combine against the herd
as in business, for example the herd, having less intelli-
gence, usually loses, and so the distance between these
men and the common level is increased and their potential
value, as heralds of progress, is increased, too. But when
the whole body politic enters into a scheme of co-operation
when the strong permit the assumption that the weak
are their equals, " before God " or "in the eyes of the
law " then this assumed equality tends to become an
actual equality, and the strong lose as the weak gain.
1 Prof. Mashall of Cambridge, before the Royal Economical Society,
in London, Jan. 9, 1907.
NIETZSCHE AND HIS CRITICS 311
This means progress, true enough, at the bottom, but
it also means retrogression at the top and it is evident
that the only progress worth while is that which takes
place at the top. It would be pleasant, perhaps, if the
masses could be made to understand that it is dangerous
to introduce the tetanus bacillus into wounds, but it was
of infinitely more importance to the race when certain
learned pathologists discovered it, and so invented the
art of aseptic surgery and made it possible to save the
lives of many very important and valuable men, who
might have died, otherwise, of wound infections. The
death of a hundred ploughmen is regrettable, but not
costly, because there are always plenty of ploughmen,
but the death of one Pasteur was a calamity, because
there was only one of him.
Civilization expends its main energy in combating the
law of natural selection, by artificially preserving the weak
and so increasing"tne quantity of men at the expense of
their quality, but in the long run this great law gets its
revenge. We may battle against it, conceal it and deny it,
but we cannot suspend its operation. We may preserve
the lives of sickly babies and permit them to grow up
into men and women, but the death rate among these men
and women will be greater than the death rate among
those who were born healthy. We may send grain ships
to the starving Russians today, but ten years hence their
sterile fields, their dry skies and their racial incompetence
will combine to weed out their weakest once more and
the number of possible victims will grow larger every year.
" We may compare civilized man," says Prof. Lankester,
" to a successful rebel against nature, who by every step
3 i2 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
forward, renders himself liable to greater and greater
penalties." x The self-sacrifice of today, indeed, is but
the forerunner of a race-sacrifice tomorrow.
Let us now look into the allegation that Nietzsche's
scheme of things, as a whole, is opposed to ideas and
impulses inherent in the nature of man, and that, in
consequence, it is unworkable and impossible. Taking
the latter part of this allegation first, let us consider the
claim that, if our present conception of morality were
abandoned and each individual of the Nietzschean first
caste were permitted to seek his own welfare in obedience
to his own impulses and without considering the desires
and " rights " of his fellows that if we were to cease
living in accordance with the will of the majority and to
cease trying to glorify this majority by raising its weakest
members up and so putting all mankind, as far as possible,
upon a common level that if we were to put these
enterprises behind us forever, the race would slip back
to the state it exhibited in the days of the cave-men and
all progress would be turned to decay.
It is big with soothing and eloquent phrases this
argument for brotherhood, for humility and for a love
unlimited and unspeakable but isn't it true, never-
theless, that despite our poetry and our platitudes, our
rhetorical psalming of ideal Christianity and our efforts,
now and then, to gain halo and harp by immolation
and flagellation isn't it true, all the while, that we
really put self above the Golden Rule in our working
scheme of daily life? Isn't it true, in a word, that we
are utterly unchristian at bottom, that we are well aware
* Prof. Sir E. Ray Lankester: " The Kingdom of Man," London : 1907.
NIETZSCHE AND HIS CRITICS
313
of it, and that this spirit of unchristianity is to be credited
with all our advancement and " success " that it is,
indeed, the moving spirit of our progress? Miss Paget
attempts to prove, in the essay I have quoted, that self-
sacrifice is of benefit to those who practice it by asserting
that, in the struggle for existence, many genera of plants
and animals save themselves by dwindling, which action
relieves them of hopeless competition with stronger species.
But isn't it obvious that dwindling, no matter what its
temporary efficacy, is essentially degeneration, and that,
if it is persisted in, it will inevitably lead to death ? Isn't
it plain, indeed, that this very argument constitutes a
powerful indictment of the slave-morality which Nietzsche
denounced? A species which dwindles thereby con-
fesses its unfitness to survive. It accepts death as its
goal. It acquiesces in its own decay. Not even the most
ardent advocate of humility will admit, I take it, that
it is mankind's end and aim thus to degenerate and perish.
If we accept death as a goal we must regard life as an
infliction. And despite the effort of slave-morality to
make us so regard it, our primary life instinct roars a
deafening " Nay ! " Every thinkable scheme of human
living every deed worth doing and every thought worth
thinking tends, first of all, to perpetuate the race. To
love and hate, to hope and dream we must first live.
Unless we hold that it is pleasant to be alive and that death
is something to be dreaded and put afar unless we take
this as our fundamental axiom, all existence becomes
a mockery and all thought a torture.
We try hard to live up to our code of slave-morality,
but, for the life of us, we cannot. We say that humility
3 14 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
means bliss eternal, and try thereby to forget that it
also means decay on earth, but the hard facts of exist-
ence make the truth ever imminent and ever plain.
Isn't it obvious to all sane men that when European
civilization put its weapons into the hands of the Jap-
anese, instead of destroying or enslaving them with those
weapons before they were capable of making effective
resistance isn't it evident that this action resulted in the
creation of a new enemy, whose power has been demon-
strated already ? Isn't it plain that when we set a burglar
free and give him " another chance," instead of en-
slaving him forever or killing him at once, we merely
increase our risk of being robbed ? Isn't it plain that, in the
long run, it is wiser to shoot savages or poison them
with whiskey than to educate them and thus make for-
midable rivals of them ? Isn't it plain that if the unfit
survivors of the American civil war had been permitted
to perish in the struggle for existence instead of being
preserved artificially at the expense of the whole popu-
lation isn't it plain that, in such an event, this whole
population would have been fated to live under condi-
tions more favorable than those which confront it to-
day? In England, it is said, one fiftieth of all the in-
habitants are in receipt of daily assistance from the
rest. This means that every normal man has to give
up one-fiftieth of his earnings, roughly speaking, to the
unfit. Isn't it plain that this scheme of things handicaps
the fit and so tends to increase the number of unfit, and
that, if the whole body of unfit were permitted to perish
tomorrow, the surviving fit would have their fitness
increased by one-fiftieth?
NIETZSCHE AND HIS CRITICS 315
Isn't it patent, therefore, that self-sacrifice is costly
to all security, health, power and eniciency? We deny
it, and try to make ourselves believe that it is not so,
and even enter upon disastrous experiments to prove
its error, and yet, at the same time, a multitude of famil-
iar facts show that we feel instinctively that it is true.
We preach the doctrine of brotherly love in our syna-
gogues, and send out missionaries to convey it to the
heathen, and yet all the while, we maintain vast navies
and huge armies, whose sole purpose it is to force our
will upon other peoples, including these same heathen.
This spectacle of Christian evangelists backed by machine
guns is the most grotesque comedy, I take it, that was
ever unfolded before the gods. I can conceive of no
more gorgeous and bitter irony, of no more gigantic
foolery, of no more ribald and obscene joke.
We preach humility and self-effacement the car-
dinal virtues of ideal Christianity and applaud and
practise the very reverse. Consider, for example, the
matter of marriage. It is the law of our largest and most
consistent sect and the theory of all of the others, that
marriages are made in heaven and that what God hath
joined together no man shall put asunder. But isn't
it a fact that our native common- sense teaches us that
this is nonsense ? There was no need for "A Doll's
House " and " Ghosts" to show us that the actual and un-
1 In " A Doll's House " Ibsen exhibits a married woman who dis-
covers that her marriage will inevitably destroy her individual ego and
so renounces it, abandoning her husband and children. The protests
provoked by this play brought forth M Ghosts," in which the dramatist
exhibits a woman, who, despite great suffering, remains a faithful wife.
Then he shows the horrible consequence of this in the next generation.
316 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
mistakable needs of the individual are more reliable guides
than the theoretical or purely imaginary needs of others.
Therefore, while we still talk of indissoluble marriages
in our churches, we know very well that, in real, every-
day life, we must take account of the individual's power-
ful instinct to live under the most favorable conditions
possible, and that unions which make life intolerable
must and should be dissolved.
Again, we hold to the theoretical proposition that
vengeance is the Lord's and that the casting of the first
stone should be left to him who is without sin and
yet, all the while, we build penitentiaries for the con-
finement of those who combat our instinctive desire to
live long and happily, and kill those whose opposition is
violently strong. Again, we hold in theoretical abhor-
rence the man who commits the sin of Dives, and yet,
when his offense grows so aggravated that it brings him
an unusually rich profit, we envy him, honor him and
show by our every action that we see in him dionysian
qualities which we would like to possess ourselves. I
am not going to multiply examples. In a previous chap-
ter I have cited many more racial as well as individual.
Taken together, they prove, I think, that, despite the
naked ugliness of the proposition, Nietzsche was not
far wrong when he maintained that we subscribe to the
doctrine of humility and self-sacrifice by the mouth only,
and that our primary life instinct warns us against putting
it into actual and unqualified practice. We write the law
upon our scrolls, but we are dionysians at heart, and we
are becoming more and more aware of it and more and
more disposed to admit it.
NIETZSCHE AND HIS CRITICS 317
Now for the final argument : that the impulse to self-
sacrifice, for all its costliness, is native to the soul of
man, and that, no matter how much we strive to destroy
it, we must ever harbor it in our bosoms. Herein we
perceive a thesis that has provided ammunition for theo-
logians and metaphysicians since the dawn of civilization,
and is accepted today, as an irrefutable axiom, by all
who pound pulpits and wave their arms and call upon
their fellow men to repent. It has clogged all philosophy
for ten thousand years ; it has been a premise in a mil-
lion moral syllogisms; it has survived the assaults of
all the iconoclasts that ever lived. It is taught in our
schools and lies at the bottom of all our laws, prophecies
and revelations. And what is this king of all axioms and
emperor of all fallacies? Simply the idea that there are
rules of " natural morality " engraven upon the heart of
man that all men, at' all times and everywhere, have
agreed, do now agree, and will agree forever, unanimously
and without reservation, that certain things are right
and certain other things are wrong.
In every treatise upon ethics and " moral philosophy "
these rules of " natural morality " are given in the first
chapter. 1 One of them is the rule that murder is a crime.
Another is the rule that the liar is an abomination. An-
other is the rule that thejhief is an outcast. To them
the moralists of Christendom have added another. It
is the rule that every normal man loves his brother
1 Aristotle formulated them and they made tint Jus gentian, or per-
haps more accurately, the jus naturate of the Romans. Thomas
Aquinas called them " the eternal law." Hobbes was the first English
philosopher to show their essential absurdity.
318 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
that the soul of the Samaritan is in all of us. Ages ago
some primeval soothsayer made the rough draft of this
catalogue, and ever since then each successive moralist
has adopted it and expanded it. It is now the Cabala
and Magna Charta of all who discourse upon evil and
describe the face and qualities of sin. And yet, despite
this vast sound and glitter of authority, the fallacy of
assuming that these are " natural " laws is demonstrated
by all history and human experience. Nothing is right to
all men and nothing is wrong. There has never existed
an idea that someone did not combat. There has never
been a virtue that someone did not denounce as a sin.
There has never been a sin that someone did not exalt
as a virtue. There is today, and ever has been, but one
universal impulse in all healthy human beings
and that one, as everyone knows, is the impulse to remain
alive the life instinct the will to power.
Nietzsche himself spent his best years proving this,
and we have seen how he set about the task how he
showed that the " good " of one race and of one age
was the " bad " of some other race and some other age.
All history bears him out. Mankind is ever revising
and abandoning its " inherent " ideas. We say that
the human mind " instinctively revolts " against cruel
and excessive punishments, and yet a moment's reflec-
tion recalls the fact that the world is, and always has
been, peopled with millions to whom cruelty seems and
seemed natural and agreeable. We say that man has
an " inherent " impulse to be fair and just, and yet it
is a commonplace of observation that multitudes of
men, in the midst of our most civilized societies, are the
NIETZSCHE AND HIS CRITICS 319
very reverse. Therefore we may set aside the argument
that a " natural " instinct for humility and self-sacrifice
stands as an impassable barrier in the path of Nietzsche's
dionysian philosophy. There is no such barrier. There
is no such instinct. It is an idea merely an idea power-
ful and persistent, but still mutable and mortal. Some day,
perhaps, we shall abandon it.
It is not pleasant thus to use the knife upon our souls.
It is not pleasant to smash the axioms of ages and cast
them out forever. What pain is greater than that of dis-
illusion? But it is only by facing pain unafraid that
men move on to higher things. " Every step toward
the truth has had to be fought for at the expense of
all that human hearts and human love hold dear." *
Herein we find the cornerstone of Nietzsche's philos-
ophy, and herein, perhaps, we discern the germ of that fu-
ture philosophy which will rise beyond it. Today we cling
to our illusions and guard them from sacrilegious hands,
because we know that their death brings us exquisite
anguish. But some day who knows? there may
arise a race of men to whom disillusion will mean, not sor-
row, but joy a race in whom the yearning for the truth
will transcend the yearning for a rock and a refuge. And
when that time comes will there remain any color
of extravagance in the dream of a superman ?
Perhaps, after all, the time has come already. Per-
haps, if we studied history aright, we would not find that
the world has always had its sect of disillusionists. In
the ages of faith these men faced, not only the stake,
but also doubts and damnation. A human being is
1 Der " Antichrist? 50.
- k '-.--,*
320 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
the child alike of his forebears and of his environment.
If the men about him and the men who have gone before
him believe and believed in hell, purgatory, grace, sal-
vation and divine intercession, he must believe in these
things, too, to some slight extent in the face of all
his intelligence and hi s reaso n. And so he will suffer.
But, in the end, these doubts will turn upon themselves
and give him renewed confidence. The more he is opposed
and tortured, the more he will stand by his guns. And
in this fact lies the value of all organized opposition to free
and clean thinking. Looking back over the history of
Christianity we are prone to see only the blood and the
flames the great and good men of the race tortured and
butchered; Newton on his knees, Bruno in his flames;
pyres of books ; the ruin of nations one long, sickening
orgy of murder, robbery, persecution, brutality, dishon-
esty, tyranny, corruption and ignorance. But we forget
that the higher man yearns for a life that is hard that,
had he been made a bishop, Newton's retraction might
have been sincere that, had the church been clean and
Christianity beneficent, men might still believe, with St.
Augustine, that "it is impossible that there should be
inhabitants on the opposite side of the earth . . . for,
on the day of judgment, these men could not see the
Lord descending through the air." All of this Nietzsche
seems to have overlooked. Forgetting his own words, he
took no account, toward the end, of the fact that stimu-
lation comes only by opposition that, without enemies,
there can be noheroes that without abuses, there can
be no reforms. He forgot, in a word, that morality has
served the race by giving the strong man something to
?
NIETZSCHE AND HIS CRITICS 321
wield his sword upon to fight, to wound, to hate. He
forgot that every effect must have a cause. He forgot his
own maxims and so thundered against himself. And
this, then, is the one ineradicable fault in his philosophy :
he showed the strong man's need for an enemy and yet
argued that all enemies should be enchained. There is \
no way to rid the Nietzschean system of this paradox.
/W
*
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