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NIETZSCHE THE THINKER A STUDY BY WILLIAM MACKINTIRE SALTER

Author of First Steps in Philosophy and Anarchy or Government? As Inquiry in Fundamental Politics

NEW YORK

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

1917

COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

THE QUINN & BODEN CO. PRESS

RAHWAY, N. J.

PREFACE CRITICISM of Nietzsche is rife, understanding rare; this book is a contribution to the understanding of him. At the same time I have tried not merely to restate his thoughts, but to re-think them, using more or less my own language. To enable those interested to judge of the correctness of the interpretation, the original passages are referred to almost constantly. I limit myself to his fundamental points of view--noting only in passing or not at all his thoughts on education, his later views of art and music, his conception of woman, his interpretation of Christianity and attitude to religion.

If I differ from some who have written in English upon him, it is partly in a sense of the difficulty and delicacy of the undertaking. Few appear to have thought it worth while to study Nietzsche--the treatment he commonly receives is (to use an expressive German word, for which I know no good short equivalent) "plump." If I should be myself found-by those who know--to have simplified him at times too much and not done justice to all his nuances, I should not protest and only hope that some day some one will do better.

The book was in substance written before the present European War, and without a thought of such a monstrous possibility. It has become the fashion to connect Nietzsche closely with it. One American professor has even called it--the German side of it--"Nietzsche in Action" and an early book by a group of Oxford scholars, Why We Are at War, was advertised under the heading "The Euro-Nietzschean (or Anglo-Nietzschean) War." But as matter of fact, the war would probably have arisen about as it did and been conducted about as it has been, had he never existed; and so far as I can find him touching it in any special way, it is as a diagnostician of the general conditions which appear to have given birth to it--i.e., what he calls "Europe's system of small states and small politics" (in contrast to a united Europe and a great politics, on which he set his heart), this névrose nationale with which Europe is sick," "this sickness and unreason which is the strongest force against culture that exists, nationalism," for perpetuating which he holds Germans largely [perhaps too much] responsible, and "which with the founding of the German Empire passed into a critical state" ( Ecce Homo, XII, x, § 2; Twilight of the Idols, ix, § 39). These last words may perhaps be said to suggest some such catastrophe as has now taken place, and I know of no other passage that foreshadows it more particularly. I have dealt with the subject in a special article elsewhere ( "Nietzsche and the War," International Journal of Ethics, April, 1917). That our own country has now been drawn--forced--into the maelstrom does not alter its essential character.

As to the final disposition of Nietzsche, I offer no counsels now, and really, as intimated, counsels--criticism, such as it is--abound. Even one's newspaper will usually put him in his place! Or, if one wishes a book, Mr. Paul Elmer More Nietzsche, "compact as David's pebble," will serve, the Harvard Graduates' Magazine tells us, "to slay the Nietzschean giant," and if we desire heavier blows,--I will not say they are more skilful--we may take up Dr. Paul Carus Nietzsche and Other Exponents of Individualism. What, however, does not seem to abound is knowledge of the object slain, or to be slain, i.e., some elementary and measurably clear idea of who, or rather what, Nietzsche was, particularly in his underlying points of view. And even the present fresh attempt in this direction--for others have preceded me, notably Dr. Dolson, Mr. Ludovici, Miss Hamblen, Dr. Chatterton-Hill, Dr. A. Wolf, author of the best extant monograph on Nietzsche, and Professor H. L. Stewart, whose eye, however, is rather too much on present controversial issues for scientific purposes--would be a work of supererogation, had Nietzsche ever given us an epitome of his thinking himself, or were Professor Raoul Richter masterly Friedrich Nietzsche, sein Leben and sein Werk translated into English, or were Professor Henri Lichtenberger admirable La Philosophie de Nietzsche, which has been translated, a little more extended and thoroughgoing--at least, my book could then only beg consideration from Americans as a piece of "home industry."

As for criticism--unquestionably the thing of final moment in relation to every thinker--if I can only help to make it in this case a little more intelligent in the future, I shall for the present be satisfied.

I owe thanks to Mr. Thomas Common of Corstorphine, Scotland--perhaps the first English--speaking Nietzsche scholar of our day, "first" in both senses of the word--for help in locating passages from the Works, which I omitted to note the source of in first coming upon them and could not afterward find, or which I came upon in other writers on Nietzsche. Unfortunately a few remain unlocated--also some from the Briefe. Acknowledgments are due to the editors of The Hibbert Journal, The International Journal of Ethics, The Journal of Philosophy, and Mind for permission to use material which originally appeared as articles in those periodicals.

Though gratefully recognizing the enterprise of Dr. Oscar Levy in making possible an English translation of the greater part of Nietzsche Werke, I have used the original German editions, making my own translations or versions--save of poetical passages, where I have been glad to follow, with his permission, Mr. Common. I cite, however, as far as possible, by paragraph or section, the same in the Werke (both octavo and pocket editions) and the English, French, and other translations; the posthumous material, except Will to Power and Ecce Homo, I am obliged to cite by volume and page of the German octavo edition (vols. IX-XIV inclusive--the second eds. of IX to XII), where alone it appears in full. I have also drawn on Nietzsche Briefe ( 6 vols.). The recently published Philologica ( 3 vols.), principally records of his University teaching, I have practically left unutilized. The numerals (1, 2, 3, etc.) in the text refer to the bottom of the page, the letters (a, b, c, etc.) to notes at the end of the book. "Werke" means the octavo edition, unless otherwise stated.

W. M. S.

SILVER LAKE, NEW HAMPSHIRE, June, 1917.

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER I NIETZSCHE'S RELATION TO HIS TIME; HIS LIFE AND PERSONAL TRAITS I ONCE when about to give a " Nietzsche" course before a university audience, those in charge suggested to me--a novice in such situations--that I should begin by considering some of the notable aspects or tendencies of our present civilization which Nietzsche expresses, so as to give a raison d'être for the course. It seemed to be taken for granted that he reflected the age and was chiefly important as illustration--perhaps as warning. I confess that I was somewhat embarrassed. For what had struck me as I had been reading him was that he went more or less counter to most of the distinctive tendencies of our time. My personal experience had been of shock after shock. Long before, and when he was little more than a name to me, I had spoken of the idea of getting "beyond good and evil" as naturally landing one in a madhouse; and when I first read him and ventured to lecture on him before an Ethical Society ( 1907), I could only consider him as an enemy who stood "strikingly and brilliantly for what we do not believe."

As afterward I came to know him more thoroughly, I was less willing to pass sweeping judgment upon him, and yet the impression only deepened that here was a force antagonistic to the dominant forces about us. At many points he seemed more mediæval than modern. He failed to share the early nineteenth century enthusiasm for liberty, and he opposed the later socialistic tendency. He regretted the intensification of the nationalist spirit which set in among the various European countries after the defeat of Napoleon, deeming it reactionary--his ideas were super-national, European. He found retrogression in Germany, and belabored the Empire and the new Deutschthum. He shared, indeed, the modern scientific spirit, but he could not long content himself with a purely scientific philosophy and deplored the lapse of German philosophy into "criticism" and scientific specialism. Of Darwinism I might say that he accepted it and did not accept it, whether as natural history or as morals, regarding the struggle for existence, unhindered by ideal considerations, as favoring, through overemphasis of the social virtues, the survival of the weak rather than the strong. In the religious field, the tendency today is, amid uncertainties about Christian dogma, to emphasize Christian morality-Nietzsche questioned Christian morality itself. In business relations the time is marked by commercialism and a certain ruthless egoism (on all sides), but Nietzsche, though with an occasional qualification, had something of the feeling of an old-time aristocrat for the commercial spirit; he lamented the effect of our "American gold-hunger" upon Europe; he thought that one trouble with Germany was that there were too many traders there, paying producers the lowest and charging consumers the highest price; he wished a political order that would control egoisms, whether high or low. War, at least till the present monstrous one, has not characterized our age more than others, but there have been wars enough--and Nietzsche found most of them ignoble: trade, combined with narrow nationalistic aims, inspires them--the peoples having become like traders who lie in wait to take advantage of one another(Thus spake Zarathustra, III, xii, § 21.); the present war he would probably have found not unlike the rest. All this, though he held that the warlike instinct, in some form or other, belonged essentially to human nature as to all advancing life, and that in all probability war in the literal sense would have worthy occasion in the future.

The fact is that Nietzsche was a markedly individual thinker and lived to an extraordinary extent from within. While it would be venturesome to say that there is anything new in him and a subtle chemistry might perhaps trace every thought or impulse of his to some external source, the sources lay to a relatively slight extent in his immediate environment(Letters here and elsewhere refer to notes to be found at end of book.). Unquestionably he was influenced by Schopenhauer and by Wagner; but it was not long before he was critical toward them both. Late in life he remarked that to be a philosopher one must be capable of great admirations, but must also have a force of opposition--and he thought that he had stood the tests, as he had allowed himself to be alienated from his principal concern, neither by the great political movement of Germany, nor by the artistic movement of Wagner, nor by the philosophy of Schopenhauer, though his experiences had been hard and at times he was ill(Werke, XIV, 347-8, § 202.). In another retrospection he says that while like Wagner he was a child of his time, hence a decadent, he had known how to defend himself against the fatality(Preface to "The Case of Wagner."). So slight did he feel his contact with the time to be, so imperceptible was his influence, so profound his isolation, particularly in his later years, that he spoke of himself as an "accident" among Germans, c and said with a touch of humor, "My time is not yet, some are posthumously born.(Nietzsche contra Wagner, § 7, Ecce Homo, III, § 1.)". I cannot make out that his influence is appreciable now--at least in English-speaking countries; even in Germany, where for a time he had a certain vogue, his counsels and ideas have been far more disregarded than followed--and though in the present war some university-bred soldiers may be inspired by his praise of the warrior-spirit and the manly virtues, men from Oxford might be similarly inspired, if they but knew him. d He has, indeed, given a phrase and perhaps an idea or two to Mr. Bernard Shaw, a few scattering scholars have got track of him e (I know of but two or three in America), the great newspaperand magazine-writing and reading world has picked up a few of his phrases, which it does not understand, like "superman," "blond beast," "will to power," "beyond good and evil," "transvaluation of values"--but influence is another matter. He has changed nothing, whether in thought or public policy, has neither lifted men up nor lowered them, though mistaken images of him may have had occasionally the latter effect, the truth being simply that he is out of most men's ken.

But because a man, however much talked about, has had slight real influence, having gone mostly counter to the currents of his time, it does not follow that he is not important, even vastly so, and that the future will not take large account of him. I do not wish to prophesy, but I have a suspicion that sometime--perhaps at no very distant date--writers on serious themes will be more or less classified according as they know him or not; that we shall be speaking of a pre-Nietzschean and a post-Nietzschean period in philosophical, and particularly in ethical and social, analysis and speculation--and that those who have not made their reckoning with him will be as hopelessly out of date as those who have failed similarly with Kant. Already I am conscious for my own part of a certain antiquated air in much of our contemporary discussion--it is unaware of the new and deep problems which Nietzsche raises; and the references made to him (for almost every writer seems to feel that he must refer to him) only show how superficial the acquaintance with him ordinarily is. Far am I from asserting that we shall follow him; I simply mean that we shall know him, ponder over him, perchance grapple with him--and whether he masters us or we him, the strength of the struggle and the illumination born of it will become part of our better intellectual selves.

II Although this book is no biography of Nietzsche (save in the spiritual sense), it may be well at the outset to state the main facts of his life, and also to mention some of the striking points in his personal character.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born on October 15, 1844, in Röcken, a small Prussian village, where his father was a Protestant pastor. His mother was a pastor's daughter--and back of his father on both sides there was a current of theological blood. From his fourteenth to his twentieth year he was at Schulpforta, one of the strictest and best of German preparatory schools. At twenty he went to the University at Bonn, matriculating as a student of theology and philosophy. A year later he followed his "great" teacher, Ritschl, to Leipzig, having meanwhile concentrated upon philosophical and philological study, and producing during his two years there learned treatises which were published in the Rheinisches Museum ( "Zur Geschichte der Theognidischen Spruchsammlung," Vol. XXII; "De Laertii Diogenis fontibus," Vols. XXIII, XXIV). While in Leipzig he read Schopenhauer, and met Wagner. His university work was broken only by a period of military service. Before taking the doctor's degree, he was called to the chair of classical philology in the University at Basel, his philological work having attracted attention and Ritschl saying that he could do what he would. He was now twenty-four ( 1868). The Leipzig faculty forthwith gave him the doctor's degree without examination. After two years he became Professor ordinarius. He also undertook work in the Basel Pädagogium (a kind of higher gymnasium). His acquaintance with Wagner now ripened into an intimate friendship--Wagner living not far away on Lake Lucerne. In 1870, when the Franco-Prussian war broke out, he could not serve his country as soldier, since he had become naturalized in Switzerland, but he entered the ambulance-service. Dysentery and diphtheria, however, attacked him--and the after-effects lingered long, if not throughout his life. In 1876, the year also of the Bayreuth opening, and when differences which had been developing with Wagner culminated, he was obliged on account of ill-health to relinquish his work at the Pädagogium and in the spring of 1879 he resigned his professorship in the University as well. He was at this time thirty-five, but to his sister who saw him not long after, he seemed old and broken, "ein gebrochener, müder, gealteterMann." His outer movements were thereafter largely determined by considerations of health. He spent the summers usually in the Upper Engadine, and winters on the French or Italian Riviera. He lasted nearly ten years, when he was overtaken by a stroke of paralysis which affected the brain (late December, 1888, or early January, 1889, in Turin). His naturally vigorous bodily frame withstood actual death till August 25, 1900.

Owing to current misapprehension a special word should be said as to his insanity. The popular impression among us is perhaps largely traceable to a widely read book by a semiscientific writer, Dr. Max Nordau, entitled (in the English translation, which appeared twenty or more years ago) Degeneration; in a chapter devoted to Nietzsche it was stated that his works had been written between periods of residence in a madhouse. The legend dies hard and lingers on faintly in the latest writers who have not made any real study of the case. The fact is, that the insanity came, as just indicated, suddenly, almost without warning, for his latest writings are some of his most lucid--and that nothing was produced by him afterward, save a few incoherent notes and letters, written or scrawled in the first days of his dementia. That there are any anticipations of the catastrophe (i.e., signs of incipient dementia) in his books is at best a subjective opinion--indeed it is a view which tends to be abandoned more and more. f Highly wrought Nietzsche often was, particularly in his latest writings; he said extravagant things and uttered violent judgments. So did Carlyle; so have many earnest, lonely men, struggling unequally with their time; but insanity is another matter.

The causes of his collapse were probably manifold. A few circumstances may be mentioned which may have co-operated to produce the result. Nietzsche himself mentions a decadent inheritance which he had from his father, though he thought it counterbalanced by a robust one from his mother(Ecce Homo, I, §§ 1, 2. ). While serving his time in the Prussian artillery, he suffered a grave rupture of muscles of the chest in mounting a restive horse, and for a time his life was in danger. During the Franco-Prussian war, the illnesses already mentioned were aggravated by strong medicines that seem to have permanently deranged his digestion; in any case, sick-headaches of an intense and often prolonged character became frequent. He had serious eye-troubles (he was always nearsighted), and became almost blind late in life. Strain of this and every kind produced insomnia--and this in turn led to the use of drugs, and of stronger and stronger ones. All the time he was leading the intensest intellectual life. Whether such a combination of causes was sufficient to produce the result, medical experts must judge. Nietzsche himself once remarked, "We all die too young from a thousand mistakes and ignorances as to how to act.(Werke, XII, 117, § 229. )".

III By nature he was of vigorous constitution. He had been fond as a boy of swimming and skating, and at the University, until his disablement, was an active horseback rider. At Bonn he appeared a "picture of health and strength, broad-shouldered, brown, with rather thick fair hair, and of exactly the same height as Goethe." g He had strong musical tastes and some musical ability. A tender conscience seems to have belonged to him from his earliest years. When a mere child, a missionary visited his father's parish and at a meeting plead movingly for his cause; the little Fritz responded with an offering of his tin soldiers--and afterwards, walking home with his sister, he murmured, "Perhaps I ought to have given my cavalry!" He was clean both in person and in thought. At school the boys called him "the little parson," instinctively repressing coarse language in his presence. He had a taste of dissipation at the University, but soon sickened of it. The delights of drinking and duelling palled on him, and openly expressed dissatisfaction with the "beer-materialism" of his fellow-students, and strained relations ensuing, appear to have had something to do with his leaving Bonn for Leipzig. Once he allowed himself to be taken to a house of questionable character, but became speechless before what he saw there. For a moment he turned to the piano--and then left." h ProfessorDeussen, who knew him from Schulpforta days on, says of him, "mulierem nunquam attigit"; and though this may be too absolute a claim, i it shows the impression he left on one of his most intimate friends. He was never married. j He had, however, intimate relations with gifted women, like Frau Cosima Wagner and Malwida von Meysenbug, and his family affections were strong and tender; so unwilling was he to give his mother needless pain that he strove to keep his later writings from her. He had at bottom a sympathetic nature. If he warned against pity, it was not from any instinctive lack of it. In personal intercourse he showed marked politeness and, some say, an almost feminine mildness. All his life he was practically a poor man, his yearly income never exceeding a thousand dollars. He called it his happiness that he owned no house, saying, "Who possesses is possessed;" liked to wait on himself; despised the dinners of the rich; loved solitude, aside from a few friends--and the common people. Some of the latter class, in the later days of his illness and comparative emaciation in Genoa, spoke endearingly of him as "il santo" or "il piccolo santo." He had remarkable strength of will. Once, when the story of Mutius Scaevola was being discussed among his schoolmates, he lighted a number of matches on his hand and held out his arm without wincing, to prove that one could be superior to pain. After reading Schopenhauer, he practised bodily penance for a short time. Later on he asserted himself against the illnesses that befell him in extraordinary fashion, and when he became mentally and spiritually disillusioned, he was able to wrest strength from his very deprivations. In general, there was an unusual firmness in his moral texture. He despised meanness, untruthfulness, cowardice; he liked straight speaking and straight thinking. He did not have one philosophy for the closet and another for life, as Schopenhauer more or less had, but his thoughts were motives, rules of conduct. In his thinking itself we seem to catch the pulse-beats of his virile will. Professor Riehl calls him "perhaps the most masculine character among our philosophers." 7 He was not without a certain nobleness, too. He once said, "a sufferer has no right to pessimism," i.e., to build a general view on a personal experience. Nor was he dogmatic, overbearing--in spirit at least; I shall speak of this point later. He owned that he contradicted himself more or less. "This thinker [he evidently alludes to himself] needs no one to confute him; he suffices to that end himself." 8 Nor did he wish to be kept from following his own path by friendly defense or adulation. "The man of knowledge," he said, "must be able not only to love his enemies, but to hate his friends." 9 In short, there was a kind of unworldliness about him, not in the ordinary, but in a lofty sense. I discover few traces of vanity in him (at least before the last year or two of his life), though not a little pride; he cared little for reputation, save among a few; and he was not ungenerous, saying toward the close of his life that he had difficulty in citing one case of literary ill-will, though he had been overwhelmed by ignorance. 10 I do not mean that his language is not severe at times, unwarrantably so; but he tells us almost pathetically in one place that we must not underscore these passages and that the severity and presumption come partly from his isolation. A lonely thinker, who finds no sympathy or echo for his ideas, involuntarily, he says, raises his pitch, and falls easily into irritated speech. k

Perhaps I should add that the aphoristic form of much of his later writing has partly a physical explanation. 1 He was able to write only at intervals, and would put down his thoughts at auspicious moments, oftenest when he was out walking or climbing; one year he had, he tells us, two hundred sick days. m Such ill fortune was extreme--afterward he fared better--but he was more or less incapacitated every year. He undoubtedly made a virtue of necessity and brought his aphoristic style of writing to a high degree of perfection--sometimes he almost seems to make it his ideal; it is noticeable, however, that in Genealogy of Morals, in The Antichristian, and in Ecce Homo he writes almost as connectedly as in his first treatises, and he appears to have projected Will to Power as a systematic work. The aphorisms are often extremely pregnant, Professor Richter remarking that Nietzsche can in this way give more to the reader in minutes than systematic writers in hours.

CHAPTER II SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS THINKING I NIETZSCHE'S life was practically one of thought. Of outer events, "experiences" in the ordinary sense, there were few: "we have not our heart there," he confesses, "and not even our ear." 1 But to the great problems of life he stood in a very personal relation. He philosophized not primarily for others' sake, but for his own, from a sense of intimate need. Body and mind co-operated. "I have written all my books with my whole body and life; I do not know what purely spiritual problems are.""May I say it? all truths are for me bloody truths--let one look at my previous writings." "These things you know as thoughts, but your thoughts are not your experiences, but the echo of the experiences of others: as when your room shakes from a wagon passing by. But I sit in the wagon, and often I am the wagon itself." 2 These were private memoranda that have been published since his death, but an attentive reader of books he published often has the sense of their truth borne in upon him. As he puts it objectively in Joyful Science, it makes all the difference in the world whether a thinker is personally related to his problems, so that his fate is bound up in them, or is "impersonal," touching them only with the feelers of cool, curious thought. 3 So earnest is he, so much does this make a sort of medium through which he sees the world, that he once set down Don Quixote as a harmful book, thinking that the parodying of the novels of chivalry which one finds there becomes in effect irony against higher strivings in general--Cervantes, he says, who might have fought the Inquisition, chose rather to make its victims, heretics and idealists of all sorts, laughable, and belongs so far to the decadence of Spanish culture. 4 Some have even been led to question whether Nietzsche was capable of humor. a But there is no need to go to this length. Not only does he give a high place to laughter in his books, not only are there special instances of humorous description to be found there, but colleagues of his at Basel, like Burckhardt and Overbeck, testify to his infectious laughter at their frequent meeting place ( "Baumannshöhle"), Nietzsche himself owning that he had much to make up for, since he had laughed so little as child and boy. 5 For all this the undercurrent of his life was unquestionable serious, and he cannot be placed among writers who give us much surface cheer. Occasionally he indulges in pleasantries to the very end of relief from graver work--such, for instance, as those which make a part of "The Case of Wagner" (see the preface to this pamphlet, where it is also said that the subject itself is not one to make light about), and those in Twilight of the Idols. In the preface to the latter he remarks that when one has a great task like that of a "turning round ( Unwerthung) of all values," one must shake off at times the all too heavy weight of seriousness it brings.

As his motives in philosophizing were personal, so were the results he attained--some of them at least: they were for him, helped him to live, whether they were valuable for others or nor. Referring to certain of his writings, he calls them his "recipe and self-prepared medicine against life-weariness." 6 In a posthumous fragment (perhaps from a preface for a possible book), he says, "Here a philosophy--one of my philosophies--comes to expression, which has no wish to be called 'love of wisdom,' but begs, perhaps from pride, for a more modest name: a repulsive name indeed, which may for its part contribute to making it remain what it wishes to be: a philosophy for myself--with the motto: satis sunt mihi pauci, satis est unus, satis est nullus." 7 Sometimes he distrusts writing for the general, saying that the thinker may make himself clearer in this way, but is liable to become flatter also, not expressing his most intimate and best self--he confesses that he is shocked now and then to see how little of his own inmost self is more than hinted at in his writings. 8 He admires Schopenhauer for having written for himself; for no one, he says, wishes to be deceived, least of all a philosopher who takes as his law, Deceive no one, not even thyself. He comes to say at last, "I take readers into account no longer: how could I write for readers? . . . But I note myself down, for myself." 9 "Mihi ipsi scripsi--so it is; and in this way shall each one do his best for himself according to his kind." 10 At least this became an ideal, for he owns that sometimes he has hardly the courage for his own thoughts ("I have only rarely the courage for what I really know"). 11

If I may give in a sentence what seems to me the inmost psychology and driving force of his thinking, it was like this:-Being by nature and by force of early training reverent, finding, however, his religious faith undermined by science and critical reflection, his problem came to be how, consistently with science and the stern facts of life and the world, the old instincts of reverence might still have measurable satisfaction, and life again be lit up with a sense of transcendent things. He was at bottom a religious philosopher--this, though the outcome of his thinking is not what would ordinarily be called religious. There is much irony in him, much contempt, but it is because he has an ideal; and his final problem is how some kind of a practical approximation to the ideal may be made. He himself says that one who despises is ever one who has not forgotten how to revere. 12

II

The question is sometimes raised whether Nietzsche was a philosopher at all. Some deny it, urging that he left no systematic treatises behind him; they admit that he may have been a poet, or a master of style ("stylist," to use a barbarous word imported from the German), or a prophet--but he was not a thinker. 13 b But because a man does not write systematically, or even does not care to, it does not follow that he has not deep. going, more or less reasoned thoughts, and that these thoughts do not hang together. Nietzsche reflected on first principles in almost every department of human interest (except perhaps mathematics). Though his prime interest is man and morals, he knows that these subjects cannot be separated from broader and more ultimate ones, and we have his ideas on metaphysics and the general constitution of the world. Poets, "stylists," prophets do not commonly lead others to write about their theory of knowledge, c do not frequently deal, even in aphorisms, with morality as a problem, with cause and effect, with first and last things. Undoubtedly Nietzsche appears inconsistent at times, perhaps is really so. Not only does he express strongly what he thinks at a given time and leaves it to us to reconcile it with what he says at other times, not only does he need for interpreter some one with a literary as well as scientific sense, but his views actually differ more or less from time to time, and even at the same time--and Professor Höffding is not quite without justification in suggesting that they might more properly have been put in the form of a drama or dialogue. 14 Nietzsche himself, in speaking of his "philosophy," qualifies and says "philosophies," as we have just seen. And yet there is coherence to a certain extent in each period of his life, and at last there is so much that we might almost speak of a system. There is even a certain method in his changes--one might say, using Hegelian language, that there is first an affirmation, then a negation, and finally an affirmation which takes up the negation into itself. Indeed, the more closely I have attended to his mental history, the more I have become aware of continuing and constant points of view throughout--so much so that I fear I may be found to repeat myself unduly, taking him up period by period as I do. 15 The testimony of others may be interesting in this connection. Professor René Berthelot remarks in the Grande Encyclopédie, though with particular to the works of the last period, "They are the expression of a perfectly coherent doctrine, although Nietzsche has never made a systematic exposition of it." 16 Dr. Richard Beyer says, "His doctrine does not lack system but systematic presentation, which however also Socrates, a Leibnitz did not leave behind them." 17 Professor Vaihinger, who writes professedly not as a disciple, much less apostle of Nietzsche, but simply as an historian of philosophy, describes his book by saying, "I have brought the seemingly disorderly scattered fragments, the disjecia membra, into a strictly consistent system." 18 d Nietzsche himself, though ordinarily too much in his struggles to grasp them as a whole and see their final import, occasionally had a clear moment and looked as from a height upon the sum-total of his work. Writing from Turin to Brandes, 4th May, 1888, to the effect that his weeks there had turned out "better than any for years, above all more philosophic," he adds, "Almost every day for one or two hours I have reached such a point of energy that I could see as from an eminence my total conception--the immense variety of problems lying spread out before me in relief and clear outline. For this a maximum of force is needed, which I had hardly hoped for. Everything hangs together, for years everything has been going in the right direction; one builds his philosophy like a beaver--is necessary and does not know it." 19 He once expressed a'wish that some one should make a kind of résumé of the results of his thinking, 20 evidently with the notion that there were results which might be put in orderly fashion. Professor Richter describes his own book--the most valuable one on the philosophical side which has been written on Nietzsche-as a modest attempt to fulfil that wish. 21 But why argue or quote? Any one who cares to read on in these pages will be able to judge for himself whether and how far Nietzsche was a philosopher--no one imagines that he was one in the sense that Kant and Aristotle were.

III

I have spoken of Nietzsche's changes. He is strongly contrasted in this respect with his master Schopenhauer, whose views crystallized when he was still young and varied thereafter in no material point. Only one who changes, he tells us, is kindred to him. "One must be willing to pass away, in order to be able to rise again." 22 It is easy to misunderstand the spirit of the changes. Professor Saintsbury can see little in them but the desire to be different. 23 Nietzsche himself admits that he likes short-lived habits, hence not an official position, or continual intercourse with the same person, or a fixed abode, or one kind of health. 24 And yet the movements of his thought impress me as on the whole more necessitated than chosen. His break with the religious faith of his youth was scarcely from a whim. If one doubts, let one read the mournful paragraph beginning, "Thou wilt never more pray," and judge for himself 25 --or note the tone of "All that we have loved when we were young has deceived us," or of "What suffering for a child always to judge good and evil differently from his mother, and to be scorned and despised where he reveres!" 26 So no one who reads with any care the records of his intercourse with Wagner, can think that he welcomed the final break. Rather was he made ill by it, in body and soul--it was the great tragedy of his mature life. 27 Giving up the ideas of free-will and responsibility was not from choice; even the idea of "eternal recurrence" was first forced upon him. Almost the only region in which he felt free to follow his will was in projecting a moral ideal, and in the moral field itself he recognized strict limits. In general, he not so much chose his path as chose to follow it. He felt a "task," and the "burden" of his "truths." 28 "Has ever a man searched on the path of truth in the way I have-namely, striving and arguing against all that was grateful to my immediate feeling?" 29 He opposed the artist love of pleasure, the artist lack of conscience, which would persuade us to worship where we no longer believe. 30 Nowhere perhaps more than in the religious field does feeling run riot today, nowhere does epicureanism, soft hedonism, more flourish--Nietzsche put it from him. He had the will to be clean with himself, hard with himself--he despised feeling's "soft luxurious flow," if I may borrow Newman's phrase, when the issue was one of truth. He regarded "libertinism of the intellect" as, along with vice, crime, celibacy, pessimism, anarchism, a consequence of decadence. 31 e Sometimes his dread of being taken in seems almost morbid. For instance, in referring to the feelings connected with doing for others, not for ourselves, he says that there is "far too much charm and sweetness in these feelings not to make it necessary to be doubly mistrustful and to ask, 'are they not perhaps seductions?' That they please--please him who has them and him who enjoys their fruits, also the mere onlooker--this still is no argument for them, but just a reason for being circumspect." 32 Pleasure, comfort, the wishes of the heart no test of truth--such is his ever-recurring point of view. Indeed, instead of there being any pre-established harmony between the true and the agreeable, he thinks that the experience of stricter, deeper minds is rather to the contrary. 33 Sometimes his impulse to the true and real is a torment to him, he is böse towards it and declares that not truth, but appearance, falsehood, is divine; 34 and yet the impulse masters him. Posterity, he says, speaks of a man rising higher and higher, but it knows nothing of the martyrdom of the ascent; "a great man is pushed, pressed, crowded, martyred up into his height." 35 He views the philosopher's task as something hard, unwilled, unrefusable; and so far as he is alone, it is not because he wills it, but because he is something that does not find its like. 36 "A philosophy that does not promise to make one happier and more virtuous, that rather lets it be understood that one taking service under it will probably go to ruin--that is, will be solitary in his time, will be burned and scalded, will have to know many kinds of mistrust and hate, will need to practise much hardness against himself and alas! also against others--such a philosophy offers easy flattery to no one: one must be born for it." 37 Not all are so born, he freely admits, and he speaks of himself as a law for his own, not for all. He even says that a deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood, for "in the latter case his vanity perhaps suffers, but in the former his heart, his sympathy, which always says, 'Ah, why will you have things as hard as I?'" 38 So independence is to his mind something for few, and one should not attempt it, unless "compelled." 39 So much did he feel that necessity hedges us about and that we must come to terms with it, that amor fati became one of his mottoes. 40

IV And yet loneliness, and, above all, change in loneliness are not agreeable things, and it is impossible to avoid a sense of insecurity in the midst of them. With all his assurance Nietzsche knew that his way was a dangerous one, and he had his moments of misgiving. He craved companionship and the support that companionship gives. Once the confession drops from him that after an hour of sympathetic intercourse with men of opposite views his whole philosophy wavers, so foolish does it seem to wish to be in the right at the cost of love, and so hard not to be able to communicate what is dearest for fear of losing sympathy--"hinc meae lacrimae." 41 He had accordingly no wish to impose himself on others. He asks youthful readers not to take his doctrines forthwith as a guide of life, but rather as theses to be weighed; he throws the responsibility on them, urging them to be true to themselves even against him, and saying that so they will be really true to him. 42 In the same spirit he says,

"It lureth thee, my mode and speech? Thou followest me, to hear me teach? Nay! Guide thyself--honest and fair-- And follow me, with care! with care!" 43

He regards it as part of the humanity of a teacher to caution his pupils against himself, and even says that a pupil rewards his teacher ill who always remains his pupil. 44 Knowing from his own experience how difficult it is to find the truth, having become mistrustful of those who are sure they have it, deeming such confidence indeed an obstacle to truth--knowing that one may actually have to turn against oneself in the higher loyalty, he holds those alone to be genuine pupils, i.e., genuine continuers of a teacher's thought, who, if need be, oppose it. 45 He wished his own philosophy to advance slowly among men, to be tried, criticised, or even overcome. He felt that it was above all problems which he presented, and his most pressing preliminary need was of help in formulating them--"as soon as you feel against me, you do not understand my state of mind, and hence not my arguments either." 46 What a sense he had of the uncertainty of his way is shown in a memorandum like this: "This way is so dangerous! I dare not speak to myself, being like a sleep-walker, who wanders over house-roofs and has a sacred right not to be called by name. 'What do I matter!' is the only consoling voice I wish to hear." 47 He came to have a sense of the problematical in morality itself-just that about which most of us have no doubts at all (whether because we think, or do not think, I leave undetermined). "Science [positive knowledge] reveals the flow of things, but not the goal." 48 It has been proved impossible to build a culture on scientific knowledge alone. 49 Hence he says frankly to us, "This is my way, where is yours? The way--there is not." 50

And yet it would be leaving something out of account if I did not add that in following his uncertain, venturesome way, Nietzsche experienced a certain elevation of spirit. It was the mood of the explorer--the risk gives added zest. He sometimes uses a word that sounds strange on the lips of a thinker: "dance." It connotes for him joy, but joy that goes with the meeting of danger and risk. The dancer is a fine balancer, as when one treads a tight rope or goes on smooth ice. He ventures, goes ahead on a basis of probabilities and possibilities. Nietzsche speaks of bidding farewell to assured conviction or the wish for certainty, of balancing oneself on delicate ropes and possibilities, of dancing even on the edge of abysses. 51 Some think that by dancing he meant playing with words and arbitrary thinking, f but it is something, he tells us, that just the philosopher has got to do well--a quick, fine, glad dealing with uncertainties and dangers is the philosopher's ideal and art. 52 In a sense, all movement involves risk, even walking does, and dancing is only a heightened instance. It may be not quite irrelevant to remark that one of Nietzsche's tests of books or men or music was, whether there was movement in them or no, whether they could walk and still more dance; also that he himself liked to think, walking, leaping, climbing, dancing-above all on lonely mountains or by the sea where the paths were hazardous. 53 g He had a kind of distrust of ideas that came to one seated over a book, and thought he had, so to speak, caught Flaubert in the act, when he found him observing, "on ne peut penser et écrire qu'assis." 54 The venturesome element in life, above all in the life of thought, only lent it a new charm. Though at first the large amount of accident and chaos in the world oppressed him, he came to say "dear accident," "beautiful chaos." For once he would have agreed with George Eliot,

Nay, never falter: no great deed is done By falterers who ask for certainty."

The mind, he felt, reaches the acme of its power in dealing with uncertainties; it is the weaker sort who want the way assured beyond doubt. 55

Because of his variations of mood, it is not easy definitely to characterize it. Professor Ziegler speaks of him as a "metaphysically dissatisfied" man, and Dr. Möbius has a similar view. 56 Nietzsche once spoke of himself as "profondément triste." 57 It does not appear, however, that he was temperamentally melancholy; Möbius describes him rather as "sanguine-choleric," 58 and his sister says (despite what I have already quoted) that he was given to playfulness and jokes as a boy--it was his thoughts, his disillusionment about men and things, that saddened him. With the shadow lurking "only around the corner for most of us--a skepticism as to life's value" (to quote Miss Jane Addams) 59 he was only too familiar. Let one read not only the passages I have already cited, but one in Thus spake Zarathustra beginning "The sun is already long down," 60 or a description of the proud sufferer, 61 or an almost bitter paragraph on the last sacrifice of religion, namely the sacrifice of God himself. 62 And yet he met his depression and triumphed over it. He suffered much, renounced much-we feel it particularly in the works of the middle period 63 --and yet he gained far more than he lost, and will probably go down in history as one of the great affirmers of life and the world. But his joy is ever a warrior's joy--it is never the easy serenity, the unruffled optimism of Emerson.

CHAPTER III HIS "MEGALOMANIA," PERIODS, CONSTANT POINTS OF VIEW, SPIRITUAL ANCESTRY 1 NIETZSCHE is sometimes charged with "megalomania." It must be admitted that he had, at least in sanguine moments, a high opinion of his place in the world of thought, and we should undoubtedly find it more becoming if he had left the expression of such an opinion--supposing there was ground for it--to others. The language is most offensive in private memoranda, in confidential letters to friends, and in the autobiographical notes, entitled Ecce Homo, which at first were not meant for publication and have only been given to the light since his death; still it occurs also in offensive form in a pamphlet and a small book which he published in the last year of his life, "The Case of Wagner," and Twilight of the Idols. Doubtless it would be fairer to Nietzsche to cite the various utterances in the connection in which they respectively belong, or at least at the end of the book after a general survey of his thought had been given, but it is convenient to take the matter up now.

I begin with the utterances (I take only the more extreme ones) which he himself gave to the public--only noting that he called "The Case of Wagner" and Twilight of the Idols his "recreations," and that in general they contain, as M. Taine remarked in a letter to him, "audaces et finesses," 1 which we need not take quite literally. In one of the passages, after confessing that he is worse read in Germany than anywhere else and is somewhat indifferent to present fame anyway, he says that what he is concerned for is to "get a little immortality" and that the aphorism and the sentence, in which he is "the first master among Germans," are forms of "eternity"; his "ambition is to say in ten propositions what every one else says in a book--what every one else does not say in a book.

In the same paragraph he speaks of his having given mankind "the deepest book it possesses, namely Zarathustra," and he adds that he is about to give it "the most independent" (probably referring to The Antichristian). 2 In another passage he says generally that he has given the Germans their "deepest books"--and adds mockingly, "reason enough for the Germans not understanding a word of them." 3 In still another place he urges that German philologists and even Goethe had not comprehended the wonderful Greek phenomenon, covered by the name of Dionysus--that he was the first to penetrate to its interior significance. 4 a

Turning now to the material published since his death, we find him for one thing daring to put Aristotle himself in the wrong as to the essential meaning of tragedy--"I have first discovered the tragic." 5 Even as early as 1881, he confided to his sister his belief that he was the topmost point of moral reflection and labor in Europe. 6 He reiterates the belief to Brandes in 1888, saying that he fancies himself a capital event in the crisis of valuations; 7 to Strindberg he even says, "I am powerful enough to break the history of humanity into two parts. " b In Ecce Homo he becomes almost lyric in his confidence: "No one before me knew the right way, the way upwards; first from me on are there again hopes, tasks, ways of culture to be prescribed--I am their happy messenger." 8 He notes of a certain day ( 30 September, 1888): "Great victory; a seventh day; leisurely walk of a god along the Po." 9 He feels that he has had, and has been, an extraordinary fortune, and writes with an extraordinary abandon and an almost childish irresponsibility--explaining who he is, how he has come to be what he is, why he has written such good books, and so on. It is as if he were somebody else and he were telling us about him. Let one note the account of the extraordinary mental conditions out of which the first part of Zarathustra arose. 10 They were like what prophets and revealers of divine mysteries may be imagined to have experienced in the past; most persons with such experiences would probably be turned into "believers" forthwith. Nietzsche, however, is cool, objective, analytical in describing what he has undergone; it appears simply as a happy, supreme moment in his psychological history--the account may well become a kind of classic for the scientific student of religious phenomena. Indeed, Nietzsche now makes special claims for himself as a psychologist--he is one "who has not his like." 11 In speaking of the seductive, poisonous influence of Christian morality on thinkers, inasmuch as they were kept by it from penetrating into the sources whence it sprung, he says, "Who in general among philosophers before me was psychologist and not rather the antithesis of one, a 'higher kind of swindler,' an 'idealist'?" 12 He indicates similar feeling about himself as a thinker in general--ranging himself with Voltaire, whom he calls, in contrast with his successors, a "grand-seigneur of the mind." 13 German philosophers in particular he finds not clean and straight in their thinking--they never went through a seventeenth century of hard self-criticism as the French had; they are all Schleiermachers--and "the first straight mind in the history of mind, one in whom truth comes to judgment on the counterfeits of four millenniums," should not be reckoned among them (I need not say that he means himself). 14 He is convinced of his future influence. He is "the most formidable man that ever was," though this does not exclude his becoming "the most beneficent." 15 He speaks of his sufferings, and adds with a touch of humor, "one pays dear for being immortal; one dies several times while one lives." 16 He looks forward to institutions where there will be living and teaching as he understands living and teaching--"perhaps there will even be chairs for the interpretation of Zarathustra." 17 His thankfulness to SilsMaria (where Zarathustra was first conceived) would fain give it "an immortal name." 18 Little signs of vanity escape him.

Women, he says, like him--all but the unwomanly kind; 19 people who never heard his name or the word philosophy are fond of him--the old fruit-vendors in Turin, for example, who pick out their sweetest grapes for him. He is pleased with the idea of his being of Polish descent (Poles are to him "the French among the Slavs"). 20 He is flattered at the thought of devoted readers; "people have said that it was impossible to lay down a book of mine--I even disturbed the night's rest." 21 His anticipations of the future border on the grotesque. His Transvaluation [of all Values] will be like a "crashing thunderbolt." 22 "In two years," he wrote Brandes in 1888, "we shall have the whole earth in convulsions," 23

Such is what Professor Pringle-Pattison calls Nietzsche's "colossal egotism"--I know no worse instances; he thinks it attained proportions not to be distinguished from mania. 24 It may be so, but one or two things should be borne in mind. The first is Nietzsche's addiction to strong language in general-particularly toward the close of his life. For instance, "Where has God gone? I will tell you. We have killed him--you and I; we are all murderers, etc." 25 --it is his strong picturesque way of stating what he conceived to be the essential fact as to the course of modern philosophical thought, beginning with Kant. He amplifies the picture of coming "convulsions" by speaking of "earthquakes," "displacement of mountains and valleys." 26 He feels so foreign to everything German, that "the nearness of a German hinders his digestion." 27 He has a "horrible fear" that he may some day be taken for a saint, but he would rather be a Hanswurst--"perhaps I am a Hanswurst." 28 Again, "I am no man, I am dynamite." 29 He even says to his friend and helper, Peter Gast, "I consider you better and more talented than I am." 30 Plainly we have to make some allowance for one who speaks in ways like these. Secondly, he also had moods quite different from those of "colossal egotism." In the letter to Brandes, in which he spoke of himself as a capital event in the crisis of valuations, he immediately added, "but that may be an error--more than that, a stupidity--I wish to be obliged to believe nothing about myself." He had doubts about Zarathustra; when the first recognition of it came to his knowledge, he wrote to Gast, "So my life is not a failure after all--and just now least of all when I most believed it." 31 At another time he confessed to Gast that there trailed about in his heart an opposition to the whole Zarathustra-creation. 32 As we shall see later, he puts forth almost all his distinctive views tentatively, and is rarely without skeptical reserves.

The fact is that Nietzsche was not naturally a conceited being, and how he developed such a seemingly overweening self-regard, and what was its exact nature, is an interesting psychological problem. He wrote an old student friend, Freiherr von Seydlitz, who was on the point of visiting him in Sorrento in 1877, "Heaven knows you will find a very simple man who has no great opinion of himself;" yet to the same person ten years later he used language about as strong as that already quoted--though adding "between ourselves." c How is the development to be explained? So far as I can make out, the order of psychological fact was something like the following:

Increasingly with the years Nietzsche became a lonely man-physically, and above all spiritually. d His old masters-Schopenhauer and Wagner-had failed him, and no one came to take their place. It is a mistake to think that he wished no master. His early feeling is shown in "Schopenhauer as Educator," 33 and as late as 1885 he wrote his sister, "I confront alone an immense problem: it is as if I were lost in a forest, a primeval one. I need help. I need disciples, I need a master. It would be so sweet to obey! If I were lost on a mountain, I should obey a man who knew the mountain; sick, I should obey a physician; and if I encountered a man who could enlighten me on the worth of our moral ideas, I should listen to him, I should follow him; but I do not find any one--no disciples, and masters still less . . . I am alone." 34 He says elsewhere, "Why do I not find among the living men who see higher than I and have to look down on me? Is it only that I have made a poor search? And I have so great a longing for such!" 35 Even his thought of a disciple is peculiar. He writes to Peter Gast (sending him a manuscript), "Read me with more distrust than you ordinarily do, say to me simply, this will go, that that will not go, this pleases me, why that does not, etc., etc." 36 Once he makes a disillusioned thinker say, "I listened for an echo [i.e., some real reproduction of his thought] and heard only praise;" 37 but even praise was rare for Nietzsche. So far as his later books were noticed at all, they were put down as "eccentric, pathological, psychiatric," and as a rule they were ignored. Even rare men like Burckhardt and Taine could not really follow them--they had not, he felt, the same inner need with him, the same will. 38 Those who had been friends from youth up became, for one reason and another, and not always without his fault, estranged. He writes his sister, "A deep man has need of friends, at least, unless he has a God: and I have neither God nor friends. Ah, my sister, those whom you call such, they were so in other times--but now?" 39 He notes down privately: "No longer does any one live who loves me; how should I still love life!" This was after the publication of Zarathustra, when he also says, "After such a call from the deepest soul, to hear no word of answer-that is a fearful experience, from which the toughest might go to pieces: it has taken me out of all ties with living men." 40 So (probably in the last year of his life), "It is now ten years-- no sound any longer reaches me--a land without rain." 41 He feels shut up, cut off. "How can I communicate myself? . . . When shall I come out of the cave into the open? I am the most hidden of all hidden things." No longer can he be "eloquent," he is like a cave-bear or hermit and talks only with himself, his ideas are acquiring a sort of twilight-color and an odor of buried things and of mold. 42 When he comes to Leipzig in 1886, he strikes his old friend, Erwin Rohde, as something almost uncanny: "it would seem as if he came from a country where no man lived."

And yet he does not wish to take his experiences too tragically, does not mean to complain; his way, he is aware, is not a way for most, it is too dangerous; e and, as men and things are in Germany at the time, not even the few he hoped for have ears for him, their interests being elsewhere. He tries manfully to accept the situation, though not without some contempt for the general milieu that makes it necessary to do so. 43 Although he has longed and waited for a strong heart and neck on which he could for an hour at least unload his burden, he is now ready for the last (or first) lesson of life-wisdom: to cease expecting; and for the second: to be courteous, to be modest, thenceforth to endure everybody, endure everything-in short, to endure yet a little more than he had endured before. 44 He even thinks that solitude may be useful for him-suspecting that, if a man can endure it, it tests him even more than sickness, i.e., hardens him, makes him great, if he has any capacities in that direction. 45 He had said in Zarathustra, "Away from the market-place and fame, all that is great betakes itself; away from the market-place and fame, the creators of new values have always dwelt." 46 Even the kindness of those who pity the solitary thinker and wish to make him more comfortable, to "save" him from himself, may be mistaken. 47 Just to be himself and apart from the world, may be his highest duty to the world. Not to lead his time, or take a part in its conflicts, but to turn away from it and develop the idea of a new time, may be the greatest thing. Nietzsche had once put the idea in poetic form:

"Destined, O star, for radiant path No claim on thee the darkness hath! Roll on in bliss through this our age! Its trouble ne'er shall thee engage! In furthest world thy beams shall glow: Pity, as sin, thou must not know! Be pure: that duty's all you owe." 48

At moments he could almost exult--at least he could quote the beautiful words of Isaiah, "exultabit solitudo et florebit quasi lilium"; 49 and he even said (though, I fear, with something of bravado), "One has no right to have nerves . . . to suffer from solitude. For my part, I have never suffered save from the multitude." 50

And yet this "solitary" was bound by the most intimate ties to his kind, and one might almost say that love for his kind was final motive of all his thinking. What was the path of greatness for mankind?--that was his supreme question. How he worked out an answer, and what the answer was, it will be the effort of this book to explain. But with an answer he could not keep silent about it. He had to speak f --the burden was on him. Yes, it was his burden,--no one else felt it, no one else gave the answer credence. Hence an acutely personal note in speaking of it. Sometimes a message sums up the aspirations of an age: then the individual communicating it is unimportant. Sometimes, however, a message goes counter to an age, or at least speaks to deaf ears; then the individual becomes of capital importance. Nietzsche never separates himself from his word; but in the circumstances the word lent gravity to him. It was well, then, that men should know authoritatively of him, should understand how his wonderful fortune had befallen him, should be let into his inner thought and impulses. As if aware of this, he speaks freely to one or two friends, and he writes the extraordinary autobiographical notes, Ecce Homo. This last was immediately only for his sister's eyes, who was at the time in South America. In a letter to her he says, "I write in this golden autumn [ 1888], the most beautiful I have ever known, a retrospect of my life, for myself alone. No one shall read it with the exception of a certain good lama, when she comes across the sea to visit her brother. There is nothing in it for Germans. . . . I mean to bury the manuscript and hide it; let it turn to mold, and when we are all mold, it may have its resurrection. Perhaps then Germans will be worthier of the great present, which I mean to make them." 51 Afterward he changed his mind, and decided to print the book. Without doubt, it is a self-glorification, but the glorifying is because of the glory of his message and in view of the peculiar and tragic situation in which he found himself. To how slight an extent he cared for himself otherwise is shown in a memorandum: "For my son Zarathustra I demand reverence, and it shall be permitted only to the fewest to listen to him. About me however, 'his father,' you may laugh, as I myself do. Or, to make use of a rhyme that stands over my house-door, and put it all in a word:

I live in my own house, have nowise imitated anybody else's and laughed at every master, who has not laughed at himself." 52

It is as if he said, "Think of me as you will, but revere my work." Indeed, after finishing Ecce Homo, he tells a friend that now that he has got the record down, people had better not concern themselves any further about him, but about the things for which he lives (derentwegen ich da bin). 53 The fact is, the obtrusion of self was against his instincts. For long years, he testifies, he had not obtruded even his problems on the men whom he met, 54 and now he confesses that his habits and still more the pride of his instincts revolt against writing about himself as he does in Ecce Homo 55 --this though he says elsewhere that a great man may be proud enough to be unashamed even of his vanity. 56 g

Hence, though vanity and personal resentment may have had their part in inducing him to write this strange book, 57 the main motives were deeper. He wanted to make clear who one with his extraordinary fortune was. "People confuse me," he says elsewhere, adding that it would be a great service if some one would defend and define him against these confusions; but, as things were, he had to come to his own help. 58 "Hear me!" he says in the preface, "I am so and so. Above all things do not confuse me with some one else! I will only add that though he magnifies himself, it is not as a superman, h or as a messiah, or as the founder of a religion, but simply as a bearer of ideas and messenger of a new culture. Indeed, he sharply marks himself off from prophets and founders of religions. 59 His underlying view is different. Men with great thoughts and inspirations in the past have usually attributed these to a Not-themselves, and masked their pride, or lost it, in humility. The divine in man they put outside him. "Not unto us, not unto us, but unto God be the glory," they said in substance. They may have been right, but Nietzsche thought otherwise. To him the ideas that came to him were his very self, the projection of his inmost will, and he, his self or will, was the outcome of a long course of purely natural evolution. This does not mean that he was without piety and reverence, but it was a natural and human piety, the reverence was selfreverence. At the same time the ideas might be detached from him individually and live after his self was gone. Indeed, to make them live on, to have them become seeds of a new human culture, was the practical meaning of his aim. Whether he overestimated his ideas and himself is another question. Perhaps he did. But the charge of megalomania or "colossal egotism" does not dispose of him. Others--particularly founders of religions--have spoken of themselves in far more swelling language than Nietzsche ever used; but we do not object to it, if we find it well-based--indeed, we do not call it "colossal egotism" at all.

II Nietzsche's intellectual history falls, roughly speaking, into three periods. In the first, he is under the influence of Schopenhauer and Wagner--the influence of the latter might be almost called a spell. It is the time of his discipleship--lasting approximately to 1876. In the second, he more or less frees himself from these influences. It is the period of his emancipation--and of his coolest and most objective criticism of men and things (including himself)--continuing to 1881 or 1882. In the third, his positive constructive doctrine more and more appears. The early idealistic instinct reasserts itself, but purified by critical fire. It is the period of independent creation. This division into periods is more or less arbitrary (particularly so are the dates assigned); something of each period is in every other; but change, movement, to a greater or less extent, existed in his life, and the "three periods" serve roughly to characterize it.

III

Beneath all changes, however, there were, as already hinted, certain constant points of view, and it may be of service to the reader to mention some of them briefly in advance. There was, for example, an underlying pessimism--so it would be ordinarily called--and yet with it increasingly a practical optimism. Nietzsche felt keenly man's imperfection--more than once he even speaks of mankind as a "field of ruins." 60 One thinks of John Henry Newman's readiness to credit the "fall of man" on general principles, so little did man's state agree with the notion of something Perfect from which he came. Nietzsche's sense of the perfect, however, simply shows itself in projecting a possible semi-Divine outcome of humanity. This, indeed, becomes a supreme and governing idea with him. From its standpoint the callings of men and men themselves are judged. Learning and science are not ends in themselves, nor do the rank and file of human beings exist on their own account. The scholar or man of science is a tool in the hands of one with a sense of the supreme values, the philosopher, and slavery for the mass in some form or other is a condition and basis of higher culture. Culture, as something beyond a state of nature, is ever the ideal; and rule, not laisser faire, is the way to it. It is time to attempt an organization of mankind with the higher end in view. Present national or racial aims must be transcended--a human aim must overtop them; j and a united Europe is the first step. Yet progress, all real social change, must be slow. "Everything illegitimate is against my nature," Nietzsche once said; he even characterized the "revolutionary" as a form of the "unreal." A new philosophy is the first requirement, and war, if it comes, must be for ideas. The general standpoint of Nietzsche might be described as aristocratic--Georg Brandes called it "aristocratic radicalism," and Nietzsche said that it was the most intelligent word about him which he had yet heard, 61 k though I cannot help thinking that Professor Höffding's phrase, "radical aristocraticism, (Op. cit., p. 160)" more nearly hits the mark.

I may add that Nietzsche's mood at the end as at the beginning was one of hope. He criticised Goethe rarely, but he did so once in this way. The aged man had summed up his experience of life by saying, "As children, we are sensualists; as lovers, we are idealists, who attach to the loved object qualities which are not really there; then love wavers, and before we are aware of it, we are skeptics; the remainder of life is indifferent, we let it go as it will, and end as quietists, as the Hindu philosophers did also." Nietzsche quotes the passage and adds, "So speaks Goethe: was he right? If so, how little reason would there be in becoming as old, as reasonable as Goethe! Rather were it well to learn from the Greeks their judgment on old age--for they hated growing old more than death, and wished to die, when they felt that they were commencing to be reasonable in that fashion." He had been referring to his early attempts to win disciples, and his "impatient hopes"; and "now--after an hundred years according to my reckoning of time!--I am still not yet old enough to have lost all hope"--what was gone was his impatience. 63 It was a noble mood--for his hope was ultimately a hope for the world; so far he too obeyed "the voice at eve obeyed at prime."

IV Nietzsche felt that he belonged to a spiritual line. He was grateful to those of his own time or century who had influenced him, and to the great spirits of the past whose blood was kindred to his own--indeed he was so conscious of being well-born in this respect, that he did not feel the need of fame. 64 <http://www.questia.com/>His ancestry he designates differently at different times. Once he speaks of four pairs of names: Epicurus and Montaigne, Goethe and Spinoza, Plato and Rousseau, Pascal and Schopenhauer. 65 <http://www.questia.com/>At another time he mentions Zarathustra, Moses, Mohammed, Jesus, Plato, Brutus, Spinoza, Mirabeau. 66 <http://www.questia.com/>At still another, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Spinoza, Goethe. 67 <http://www.questia.com/>It is interesting to note that the most constant names are Spinoza and Goethe, the next most constant Plato. Kant is not mentioned. This cannot mean that Kant had not influenced him, though more negatively than otherwise, and perhaps principally through Schopenhauer and Friedrich Albert Lange; with Kant's theoretic standpoint he was far more in harmony than with Plato's, but Plato's aristocratic practical philosophy appealed to him as Kant's democratic, Rousseau-born ethics did not. Nietzsche confessed that he almost loved Pascal, who had instructed him unendingly; but he thought that Christianity had corrupted his noble intellect, though if he had lived thirty years longer, he might have turned on Christianity as he had earlier on the Jesuits. l <http://www.questia.com/6338562> FIRST PERIOD CHAPTER IV GENERAL VIEW OF THE WORLD; THE FUNCTION OF ART I IN passing to the detailed study of Nietzsche's intellectual history, we begin with him in Basel, where he is professor of classical philology at the University. He is happy in his relations with his colleagues, and as a teacher he is uncommonly beloved. Professor Rudolph Eucken, for a time his colleague, recalls his "kind and pleasant manner" in examining students for the doctor's degree, "without in any way impairing the strict demands of the subject-matter." a <http://www.questia.com/6338563>Jacob Burckhardt, another colleague and well-known for his writings on the Renaissance and Greek culture, remarked at the time that Basel had never before had a teacher like him. b <http://www.questia.com/6338563>Nietzsche is particularly happy in his intercourse with Burckhardt, who was much his senior. He is also happy in a friendship with Richard Wagner, with whom and Frau Cosima he often spends delightful week-ends at their villa above Lake Lucerne. His lectures are strictly professional, and only the few devoted to philological study attend them. At the same time his interests are wide, and he finds himself wishing to do more than train efficient philologists. 1 <http://www.questia.com/>The root-problems of life and the world engage him. He has at bottom the philosophical instinct, and philological study becomes more or less a means to its satisfaction. Greek philology opens for him the door to Greek thought and speculation-enables him, he thinks, to reconstruct more accurately than would otherwise be possible the Greek view of life. The broader outlook appears in a preliminary way in his inaugural address, "Homer and Classical Philology," and it bore rich fruit in his first published book, The Birth of Tragedy. It shows itself also in fragmentary minor studies--meant apparently for use in a work on Hellenism in general--on the Greek state, the Greek woman, competitive strife in Homer, philosophy in the tragic period of the Greeks (i.e., the pre-Socratic philosophers), all of which now appear in his published Remains. In addition, he writes two brief but pregnant studies of a more general character--one in æsthetics, "On the Relation between Music and Words," another in the theory of knowledge, "On Truth and Falsehood in the Extra-moral Sense." Aside from all this, he brings his ideas to bear on questions or tendencies of the day, and sometimes makes a decided stir in the intellectual world. It was so with a pamphlet attack on David Friedrich Strauss--and, though not so markedly, with pamphlets on "The Use and Harm of History for Life," "Schopenhauer as Educator," and "Richard Wagner in Bayreuth." He calls them Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen, recognizing that the views he expresses are not in harmony with the spirit of the time. The new Germany after the Franco-Prussian war did not please kim--it was too self-satisfied, materialistic, Philistine: the spirit was spreading to the educated classes, and even infected the veteran theologian Strauss. Philosophy was losing its old distinctive character--giving way to history, criticism, scientific specialism. The cause of Wagner, which to his mind held such rich promise for the future, was having to struggle. Education was being perverted. He gave several public lectures on the latter topic and outlined more. Notes of this course and memoranda for still another Unzeitgemässe Betrachtung, "We Philologists," make, along with the books and pamphlets already mentioned and some private notes, the literary output of his first period. c <http://www.questia.com/6338563> I shall now endeavor to state the general background of thought and feeling in these writings, and I shall follow the same method in dealing with the later epochs of his life. I am aware that in restricting myself in this way, I do more or less violence to Nietzsche. He was above all a creature of flesh and blood, and from my skeleton manner of treatment the reader will get little idea of the richness and varied charm of his concrete thinking. But my purpose is a limited one, and perhaps all philosophy, or study of philosophy, is bound to be "grau" compared with "Lebens Farbe." II First, I may note that Nietzsche gives a distinct place to philosophy. It is not for him merely a vague general term, but has a special meaning. The philosopher is distinct from the scholar or man of science, as well as from the average unthinking run of men; he is also distinct from the reformer. His impulse is that of theoretic curiosity, but the curiosity is not as to anything and everything, a mere blind undiscriminating appetite for knowledge turned loose on the universe; it is curiosity as to things most important, the things worthiest of knowledge. d <http://www.questia.com/6338563>In other words, in philosophy is already implicit the notion of value, and the philosopher is ipso facto a judge. e <http://www.questia.com/6338563>He is differentiated from the scholar as well as the ordinary practical man in that he seeks the great knowledge--the knowledge of the essence and core of things, of the total meaning and tune of the world; his effort is to give an echo to this tune and state it in conceptual form. f <http://www.questia.com/6338563>"Great" here is determined by the situation of man, the general character and circumstances of his life. As to this, Nietzsche felt much as Pascal had. Round about man, the heir of a few hours, there are frightful precipices and every step brings up the questions, Wherefore? Whither?Whence? 2 <http://www.questia.com/>Philosophy is an answer--an attempt at an answer--to these questions; hence its rank. It is above the special sciences--is indeed their ultimate raison d'être and the judge of their importance. Nietzsche is keenly conscious from the start of the subordinate rank of scientific specialism--as against the tendency to exalt it current in Germany at the time. Nor at first does he seem to doubt that philosophical truth can be got. g <http://www.questia.com/6338563>At the same time, the philosopher is thinker, judge, legislator, not practical reformer. 3 <http://www.questia.com/> The general conception of the world which Nietzsche first reached, however, is different from what most of us are accustomed to, and repels rather than attracts. We think--at least most of us try to think--of reason and intelligence as governing the world, of justice as its law, and of love as its driving force. But Nietzsche is unable to make out either a rational or a moral government of things. Change and undoing overtake all things, even the best and rarest: what is excellent is no more permanent than anything else. The world seems to him chiefly a blind striving of will, or rather of wills--wills, too, which strive with one another (save within certain limits) and more or less live off one another. He finds little that is worshipful or adorable in such a world (whether as it appears or as it inwardly is). Aside from awe before its vastness, it rather awakens pity. In reaching this result Kant's negative arguments against theology had affected him, but it was the concrete make-up of the world that was the decisive thing--especially what Darwin has brought home to us English-speaking people, and what Schopenhauer had noted decades before. The "horrible struggle for existence" is often referred to. <http://www.questia.com/6338563>The world was undivine. Nietzsche even speaks of this later as if it had been a first-hand independent conviction with him--of atheism as conducting him to Schopenhauer. 4 <http://www.questia.com/>If so, Schopenhauer simply did him the service of formulating and grounding his conviction--i.e., of tracing back to their ultimate metaphysical origin the pain and wrong of the world, the general contradictoriness and impermanence of things. III How did Nietzsche react to such a view practically? Careful attention to his various early writings seems to reveal two attitudes--taken either at successive times, or, according to his mood, more or less at the same time. The reaction that came first (if there was a first) was like Schopenhauer's own. He wished to renounce life, felt pity to be the supreme law, even inclined to practical asceticism 5 <http://www.questia.com/>--and with it all had the dim sense of another order of things than this we know, one to which the negation of life somehow conducts. There are several passages of this tenor. i <http://www.questia.com/6338563>The other reaction was strongly contrasted--it was a disposition to accept life and the world, even if they were undivinely constituted. Why this one came to predominate, it might be hard to say. One consideration and another may have influenced him; but probably at bottom it was for a reason below or beyond reason--because the lifeinstinct (will to live) imperiously asserted itself in him. This affirmation of life in face of an irrational and unmoral world comes to be one of the most distinctive things in Nietzsche and should be noticed with some care. It is, of course, totally different from the cheerful acceptance of life which the Christian or the pious theist makes--different also from the temperamental optimism which simply looks on the bright side of things, different even from the meliorism which looks for better and better things. Nietzsche, now at least, looks for no radical improvement, whether in the world at large or in the fundamental conditions of human life. j <http://www.questia.com/6338563>The poignant thing is, that our life, like all other life, exists and maintains itself by violence and wrong. We rob other things of existence that we ourselves may live, as truly as animals do--the best of us are parties to this violence, the very saint could not live off the inorganic elements; if for a single day the race should really hold all life sacred, touching or despoiling nothing, it would straightway come to an end. That is, Leben und Morden ist eins--living and killing are one. 6 <http://www.questia.com/>Yes, the higher ranges of human life exist by more or less despoiling the lower ranges. Culture "rests on a horrible foundation." 7 <http://www.questia.com/>k <http://www.questia.com/6338563>It is only possible with leisure, and leisure for some means that others must work more than their share--and those who work for others' benefit rather than their own and have to, are really slaves. The culture of ancient Greece--the fairest the world has known--rested on literal slavery; essentially it is always so, is so today, though we may veil the fact from our eyes by speaking of "free contract." And yet to accept life on these terms is not easy and involves inner suffering. Some may feel that culture and the higher ranges of life are not worth the price that has to be paid for them--that if all cannot rise, it is better that none should. Indeed, the feeling may go deeper still, it may extend to the foundations of life itself--if life is necessarily of the general predatory nature described, we may think it better to be done with it altogether. So felt Schopenhauer, and so, at moments at least, Nietzsche. But a deeper impulse--something wild and unmoral, if you will--urged him finally the other way. He took, chose life, even at this cost. IV The problem of the easement of existence, however, under conditions like these becomes a pressing one. And here Nietzsche discovers a vital significance in art. Art is a kind of playing with the world; it consists in seeing it--in part or in toto--as in a play, making a picture or spectacle of it. So far as we follow this impulse, we disembarrass ourselves of ourselves and the world as immediate experience, and view everything as outside us, detached from us--we contemplate rather than experience, even the terrible we can look upon undisturbed. 8 <http://www.questia.com/>That is, the burden of actual life is momentarily lifted, and we may even enjoy rather than suffer. We may enjoy, though what we see would undo us, were it part of actual experience. It is Schopenhauer's doctrine over again. Still earlier Goethe had stated the essential principle of it: "Wasim Leben uns verdriesst Manim Bilde gern geniesst." Nietzsche clings to it now. Art is not a fanciful thing to him, a luxury--it meets a vital need: by it we are helped to go on living. l <http://www.questia.com/6338564>Not only the thinker, the highly organized nature has this need,--all who suffer experience it, and particularly the great laborious mass, too easily tempted to insurrection or to suicide. V Nietzsche preoccupations are now with old Greek life, and he borrows illustrations for his view of art largely from this field. Particularly does he attend to the religious festivals and the tragic drama. His view of the undertone of life among the Greeks, it should at once be said, is novel--at least to those of us who have our ideas chiefly from Winckelmann and Goethe, and think of "the light gracefulness of the old Greek paganism" ( Carlyle), or of their moral and religious life sitting "easily upon them like their own graceful garments" ( John Fiske). A recent writer even says, "The ancient Greeks seem to have been incapable of taking life seriously." m <http://www.questia.com/6338564>But how do views of this sort agree with the spirit of the answer which the legendary Silenus gave to King Midas's question as to what is best for man? "Pitiful race of a day, children of accident and sorrow, why do you force me to say what were best left unheard? The best of all is unobtainable--not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. The second best is early to die." Yet the answer long lived in Greek tradition, and the substance of thought underlying it is repeated by Simonides and by Sophocles. Indeed, how do the common views harmonize with Pindar's somber tone in speaking of the soul as being here in a mortal body because of ancient guilt--or with the ascetic tendencies which we discover in the Orphic cults and in Pythagoreanism? From considerations of this nature, Nietzsche was led to conclude that there was an undertone of profound seriousness and even of pessimism among the ancient, particularly most ancient, Greeks (those before Socrates), and Burckhardt substantially agreed with this view when he characterized the Greek spirit as pessimism in world-view, optimism in temperament. n <http://www.questia.com/6338564>It was then against a somber background that the art of the Greeks had arisen; indeed, Nietzsche held that it was in part just because they suffered as they did, because they felt with such particular keenness the anomalous and problematical in existence, that their art grew to its extraordinary and unique proportions. o <http://www.questia.com/6338564> His view of Greek art, and particularly of the tragic drama, is of such interest, and hangs together so closely with his general philosophical view, that I shall give some details. 9 <http://www.questia.com/> The art-impulse which has been described he designates as the Apollinic impulse. Apollo, we remember, was a God of dreams, and under this impulse we see things as in a dream, i.e., detached from real experience. According to Lucretius the Gods first appeared to men in dreams, 10 <http://www.questia.com/>and Nietzsche regarded the Olympian family of deities as a kind of detached glorified vision of the commanding, powerful, and splendid elements in Greek life. They were hardly divine, in our sense of that term, that is, embodiments of justice, holiness, purity--any one who approaches the Homeric pantheon with Christian feelings, he remarks, is bound to be disappointed. The Greek rather saw in that immortal company himself over again and what was great, both good and evil, in his own life and experience, including the contradictions and tragic elements. 11 <http://www.questia.com/>Religion itself was to this extent like art--and it had the emancipating, relieving, reassuring influence of art. The Gods, Nietzsche says sententiously, justified human life by living it themselves--the "only satisfying theodicy." There were besides epic narrative and sculpture and painting, all coming from the same picturemaking impulse. The things narrated or represented might have elements of terror in them, but when thus projected and separated from actual experience, the main feelings in witnessing them were of wonder and admiration. This would be the case, even if they corresponded in every single form and lineament to the realities they reproduced. Indeed, this kind of art observed the metes and bounds, the definite outlines and forms, of the actual world most scrupulously. But there was another art-impulse, to which Nietzsche gives the name Dionysiac--it is so much "another," that we may hardly see the propriety of calling it an art-impulse at all. Nietzsche's description of it is colored by Schopenhauerian metaphysics, and is not easy to follow for those who are not versed in the latter; but I shall try to make his meaning clear. Dionysus, as is well known, was outside the Olympian circle of divinities. His worship (the rites in his honor) was of an altogether peculiar character. It was not sober, orderly, and decorous, observing metes and bounds, like the worship of Apollo and Zeus, but a more or less riotous thing. There was dancing, and the music of the flute which accompanied it was very different from the music of Apollo's lyre. Exaltation came to the worshipers, a sense of oneness with the God, who was imitated in extraordinary acts; the lines which divide human beings from one another p <http://www.questia.com/6338564>and from the animal world were for the moment obliterated, the feeling of separate individuality vanished, and a sense of universal kinship took its place. It was a state of semi-intoxication, often literal intoxication--Dionysus was secondarily, if not primarily, a God of the vine, and ancient peoples, it must be remembered, often regarded drunkenness as a divinely inspired condition. q <http://www.questia.com/6338564>This was the joyous side of the Dionysian festival. But the joy was of a peculiar sort. It was over against a background that of itself would have bred melancholy and dejection. Dionysus was a God of change, a God of the destruction involved in change as well as of production and fertility, a hunter ( Zagreus) bent on slaying, a devourer, a flesh-eater (sarcophagus or ?μοστη?ς); yes, he was himself a suffering God and the dithyramb, or hymn in his honor, sang his mystical woes. r <http://www.questia.com/6338564>The joy of the festival was a joy following gloom--and this is the explanation of the excesses that marked it, its orgiastic traits. The winter revealed the God destroying, the spring came as a revelation of his creative power--and the spring was the time of his festival. The worshipers shared both in his pain and his pleasure, identified themselves with the whole round of his life--on the one hand, fasting, hunting, devouring the flesh of wild animals; on the other, dancing, reveling, and re-enacting his creative fertility. It is evident that Dionysus, so taken, was a sort of epitome of life itself, a symbol of the world of change in general, and Nietzsche thinks that his worship had hence the highest significance, since it amounted to a reaffirmation of life in all its range, and a mystical identification of the worshiper with the very spirit of it. In a striking passage he sums up the Dionysiac experience, substantially as follows: We know that everything that arises must await a painful end, we face the terrors of individual existence and yet are not benumbed, for a metaphysical consolation lifts us above the wheel of change; for a brief moment we become the Primal Being (Urwesen) himself and feel his uncontrollable desire for and joy in existence; the struggle, the pain, the destruction attending all phenomena, seem even necessary in view of the innumerable forms ever pressing and pushing into life, the boundless fertility of the World-Will; at the very moment in which we are stung by the pain, we share also in the immeasurable creative pleasure; and so, despite fear and pity, we are happy and kept to life. The Dionysiac experience is evidently very different from that of the Apollinic dreamer and seer, and the question is, what has it to do with art at all? Nietzsche says that the Dionysiac man is an art-work, not an artist. For he is not so much looking at life as in a picture and finding relief in detaching it from himself, as entering it afresh, re-experiencing its joy and its pain, saying yes even to what is tragic in it. In short, the Apollinic type man looks on life, the Dionysiac relives it. The truth is, the Dionysiac experience is material for art, it is a subject that may be artistically treated--and this is what Nietzsche really (or logically) means, u <http://www.questia.com/6338565>the justification for his speaking of a second art-impulse being simply that the material has been so used. For out of the Dionysian festival grew that supreme form of Greek art, the tragic drama; this may be briefly characterized as an Apollinic treatment of the Dionysiac experience--a marriage of the two. If we fancy to ourselves a worshiper, who has wandered off from the rest in his intoxication and mystic self-oblivion, sinking to the ground for a moment, and, as he lies there, seeing himself and his rapt state and union with the God as in a dream, we have the Dionysiac experience and the rudiments of an Apollinic vision united in the same person. v <http://www.questia.com/6338565>It is just such a blending of diverse elements that lies, Nietzsche thinks, at the basis of Greek tragedy. w <http://www.questia.com/6338565>The chorus, as is commonly recognized, was the essential feature of the drama, and the chorus is really a transformed band of Dionysus worshipers. They are satyrs, even as the original worshipers dressed themselves in wild costumes to imitate the God. 12 <http://www.questia.com/>The action on their part is entirely song and dance--the dialogue is an addition, and it is something in which they have no part. x <http://www.questia.com/6338565>The song is really a transformation of the original dithyramb, "the beautiful song of Dionysus," as Archilochus called it. According to what Nietzsche deems incontestable tradition, the sole subject of Greek tragedy in its very earliest form was the sufferings of Dionysus. He thinks that even when Prometheus and Œdipus appear on the stage, they are only a kind of mask for the original divine hero. I will not go further into details. The essential point in Nietzsche's interpretation is that the suffering and triumphing God (or world, or man--at bottom all are the same) is seen in vision and becomes a subject of art. The art, however, quite differs from the epos or any form of Apollinic art. The rhapsodist, equally with the painter and sculptor, sees his images outside himself. But in Dionysiac art, the artist and even the spectators of the drama imaginatively identify themselves with, and become a part of, that which they see. All are for the moment participants in the divine drama spread out before their eyes. In these ways, then, according to Nietzsche, the Greeks were helped to live, in face of the tragic facts of the world. One kind of art projected existence in a picture--and there came not only relief, but happiness in contemplating it. Another more daring kind led men, as it were, to live existence over again, to reaffirm even the tragedy in it--change, suffering, death--as a part of the eternal round. This was the most powerful and moving kind of art--in it the Greek found his supreme redemption from practical pessimism. Under the shadow of the Olympian deities, in the presence of great works of plastic art, but above all under the influence of the Dionysian festival and the tragic drama, the pain of existence was transcended, and life ennobled. CHAPTER V ULTIMATE ANALYSIS OF THE WORLD IN trying to reach the last elements of the world, Nietzsche manifests two tendencies in the writings of the first period. One is in the direction of metaphysics proper, the other in the direction of positivism or phenomenalism. Probably the metaphysical tendency came first, and he appears to have only gradually worked himself out of it. 1 <http://www.questia.com/>I shall begin by considering it. I Nietzsche was never a materialist. He followed Kant and Schopenhauer in holding that what we call the material world is sensational in nature and subjective. a <http://www.questia.com/6338565>He criticises Strauss for his superficial treatment of Kant, and for his use of the language of crude realism. 2 <http://www.questia.com/>b <http://www.questia.com/6338565>On the other hand, as against the total obscurity in which Kant had left the nature of ultimate reality, Nietzsche thought that he found light in Schopenhauer. Kant had said, summing up the results of his criticism, that the things we perceive are not what we take them to be, that if we make abstraction of ourselves as knowing subjects, or even only of our senses, all the qualities and relations of objects in space and time, yes, space and time themselves, disappear, that as phenomena they can only exist in us--hence what things are independently of us remains wholly unknown. Such an outcome, when it is really taken to heart and not left as an incident in an abstract logical process, is extremely depressing. If one cannot accept Kant's counterbalancing ethical reasonings, one is left in total gloom--unless, indeed, one becomes a complete idealist and gives up the idea of extra-mental reality altogether. The depressing influence of Kant's criticism was felt to the full by Heinrich von Kleist--Nietzsche quotes a moving passage from him. 3 <http://www.questia.com/>He himself, however, escaped it by the help of Schopenhauer. Ultimate reality proved, indeed, to be very different from what he had been brought up to believe, but he could at least make out its outline, could see his own place in the general framework and find a meaning for his life. To quote the substance of his language, Schopenhauer was a guide to lead him from skeptical depression and criticising renunciation up to the heights of the tragic view, with the heavens and unnumbered stars overhead; once more he obtained the sense of life as a whole and learned where consolation was to be found for one's individual limitations and pain, namely, in sacrificing egoism and surrendering oneself to noble aims, above all those of justice and pity. 4 <http://www.questia.com/> I need not here repeat the fundamental propositions of Schopenhauer's metaphysics which Nietzsche adopted. c <http://www.questia.com/6338565>The reality lying back of the world of sensations, and also of ourselves (to the extent we are distinguishable from sensations), is will--one will, indeed, since space and time, the conditions of multiplicity, are regarded as subjective forms. d <http://www.questia.com/6338565>The will simply appears in many objects, simply appears in the form of many wills--change, alternate life and death, the general evanescence of things are all but appearance. The view had so far a consoling and elevating effect on Nietzsche: as against the whole realm of the transitory and fugitive, he was able to assert an abiding, eternal energy that was real. e <http://www.questia.com/6338566>But how, it may be asked, under ultimate conditions such as these do appearances ever arise? How does it come to pass that the Primal Unity (das Ur-Eine) gives birth to them? At this point Nietzsche is speculative and venturesome even beyond his master, who had only spoken vaguely of a fall (Abfall), and developes a view which stands in marked contrast to theistic, or at least Christian, metaphysics. He premises that the Primal Will, like its human counterpart, of which it is indeed only the inmost essence, is a striving will, that is, something unsatisfied, something that suffers. The dissatisfaction and suffering are that which urge it on. 5 Schopenhauer once tells of the way in which as a youth he had sought now and then to look at himself and his doings as things apart from him, to make a picture of them--he supposes with the idea of finding them more enjoyable; 6 perhaps the experience has not been his alone. Well, Nietzsche dares suggest that the World-Will is in an essentially similar situation, that it too is led to make a picture, an object of itself, to thus project itself in the form of a vision or dream--and that it is this vision or dream which we and the world are. We and the world are the Eternal One, only not as he exists in himself, but as spread out in space and time for his contemplation--for all objectification requires these forms, at least the form of space, as a condition. "In the dream of the God, we are figures who divine what he dreams." And yet because the vision is a result, is ever being projected and never is, a certain inconstancy and change belong to the world's essential nature--it and all its parts are ever arising, ever passing away, ever freshly arising; there is birth, death, rebirth in it without end. f

A fanciful metaphysics, we say, and Nietzsche himself thought so later--and yet, perhaps, not much more fanciful than some other species of the genus. It has points of contact with Fichte's--the World-Will might be called an Absolute Ego who creates all things out of himself; and yet it is essentially different from Fichte's, or any moral metaphysics, and for something at all like it we may have to go back as far as Heraclitus. It might be described as an æsthetic metaphysics ( Nietzsche spoke of it afterward as an Artisten-Metaphysik). 7 The world is there because of an æsthetic need of its creator; and the way in which we in turn must justify it (if we justify it at all) is by conceiving of it æsthetically, converting it into a picture ourselves, repeating thus in principle the act of its creator, experiencing anew his pain and his creative joy. g For we cannot give a rational justification to the world--it did not originate in reason and shows no rational order in its ceaseless play of change and destruction. As little can we give it a moral justification--life lives off life, immorality is an essential part of its constitution. But take it as an æsthetic phenomenon, look at it as a picture, and you may see some sense in it. Regard its creator not as a Supreme Reason or a Moral Governor, but as a supreme Artist, and you get some real insight into its make-up. For the world is a kind of play, a ceaseless producing and destroying like that of a child making and unmaking his piles of sand for the pleasure of the game, or that of an artist who creates and has ever to create anew. In some such way Heraclitus seems to have viewed the world. The Æon, the eternal child Zeus, was there at play, πα?ς παων. If, says Nietzsche, Heraclitus had been asked, why the fire did not remain fire, why it was now fire, now water, now earth, he could only have answered, "It is a play--don't take it too pathetically, and above all not morally!" 8 h

II Such was one current of Nietzsche's thinking. But there was another, perhaps at the start simply running alongside of it, but later becoming the main stream. This was in the direction of a renunciation of metaphysics altogether. The turning-point for Nietzsche was as to whether there was actually first-hand knowledge of the will. Schopenhauer had said that while in general we know things only as they appear, we know the will as it is (or at least as mediated through the mere forms of space and time) --know it immediately, by direct selffeeling. But Nietzsche becomes more and more dubious on this point. He asks whether it is not mere ideas, pictures ( Vorstellungen), which we have here as everywhere else. He thinks that when we look closely within us, we realize that the life of our impulses, the play of our feelings, affects, acts of will, is known to us only through pictures which we form of them, not in their own nature. 9 He hesitates when he comes to pain, but he concludes that here too we have only an image. 10 i Hence we have direct knowledge of reality nowhere. Schopenhauer's "will," while it may be more elementary than other phenomena, is still phenomenal, "the most general phenomenal form of something that is otherwise entirely undecipherable." 11

Thus the basis for a metaphysical construction fails altogether, and Nietzsche really falls back into the purely negative attitude that is the outcome of Kant's criticism, from which Schopenhauer had temporarily delivered him. It is likely that some time was required for this anti-metaphysical attitude to establish itself definitively. He had read as a student at Leipzig Lange History of Materialism--read it twice over, and thoroughly absorbed its leading ideas. One of the characteristic points of view of this remarkable book is that, granting that man cannot know ultimate reality, he may lawfully exercise his imagination upon it in order to satisfy the needs of his heart (Gemόth) -may poetize about it. We find Nietzsche sometimes speaking of philosophy, accordingly, as art rather than knowledge, as kindred to poetry and religion. The essentially Schopenhauerian metaphysics, which has just been described, may have been held by him as poetry in this way, after he had ceased to believe in it literally--as philosophers sometimes do now with the religious beliefs of their youth. There is a fragment belonging to this time, entitled "Critique of the Schopenhauerian philosophy," in which, after asserting that Schopenhauer as little as his predecessors had reached the final reality of things, he says that his system has the value of a poetic intuition rather than of a logical argumentation. j Indeed, it is possible to hold that Nietzsche never took the Schopenhauerian metaphysics literally, and that his special variety of it, Artisten-Metaphysik, was but a poetic play. The question is one of literary interpretation. The probability seems to me to be that he cherished the belief originally and then felt obliged to modify it, and at last to give it up altogether. k In the succeeding period of his life we do not hear of it even as poetry.

III

In turning away from metaphysics proper, Nietzsche developes interesting, if not absolutely novel, views of the sensible world itself. 12 They look in the direction of an extreme phenomenalism--one might almost call them, in contrast with our common-sense realistic views, illusionism.

What is the relation of a sensation, say a color sensation, to the object that calls it forth? Nietzsche occupies himself much with the question. He does not doubt that there is an object, i.e., something or other which exists independently of ourselves --his question is simply, does the sensation reveal it, present it as it is? His reasoning is somewhat as follows: Mediately, we have a certain stimulation of the nerve-centers; 13 when this has taken place, somehow the sensation, color, arises. No one supposes that the color has any special resemblance to the braintremors that occasion it--what reason, then, is there for supposing that it resembles the still more remote inciting cause? l We give the sensation a name, i.e., we describe it to ourselves or to one another by a certain sound, but what resemblance has a sound to an actual color? The two things belong to disparate spheres--all we can say is that the sound is a sign, symbol, or metaphor for the color. But if this is so, why may not the color itself be a sign, symbol, or metaphor for the ultimate object rather than anything else--these two things also belonging to disparate sphere? m Sometimes we imagine that we come nearer objective truth, when instead of mere sensations of things we form concepts of them--we think that we thus leave aside their secondary and accidental features and reach their real essence. But what is a concept? It is something we form when, taking a number of comparatively like experiences-sensible or sensational experiences in this case--we fasten our attention on their points of resemblance, leave out of account their differences, and make the resemblances stand out as a quasi-whole by themselves; this then we say they all share in alike, this is their essential idea and the essential being of each particular one. But is this being or idea anything that goes back of the experiences and explains them? Is it not itself something sensational in nature, though the sensations are now pictured, thought, rather than immediately felt?-is it more than an attenuated schema of them? Yet if this is so, how do concepts bring us in the slightest degree nearer the objective reality of which we are in search? So far as they are related to it, is it not a poorer, more beggarly relation than the individual sensible experience itself, since they are constituted just by leaving all that made the experience individual and distinct out of account?

What then does our so-called knowing amount to? To speak Of literal correctness, as of a picture to its original, is out of The question "First a nervous stimulus turned into an image [e.g., a color]. Metaphor number one. Then the image transformed into a sound. Metaphor number two. And each time, a complete leaping from one sphere into an entirely different one." "We think that we know something about things, when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers, and in truth we have nothing but metaphors which have no correspondence whatever to the original realities." As for a concept, it is little better than a "residium" of a metaphor-it is more a skeleton or a ghost, than a real thing; once Nietzsche describes it as the "burial place" of the living experience. Of course, the various concepts in which the varied experiences of men are summed up, may be put in order, and they may make an imposing array, but it is the array of a "Roman Columbarium." [One thinks involuntarily, or, shall I say? Maliciously, of a Logic like Hegel's. n ] In other words, and speaking perhaps with offensive plainNess, our "knowledge" is illusion, falsehood. We stand in an Essentially ζsthetic relation rather than any other to realityWe are primarily poets, builders, creators. Nietzsche sometimes Uses the word "falsehood" (Lόge), sometime "play" (Spiel) --the thought in both experiences is the same. 14 Our "truth" is a mobile throng of metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphisms, in short a lot of human relations whish have been poetically and rhetorically heightened, translated, adorned and after long use seem to a people fixed, canonical, and binding: truths are illusions, the origin and nature of which have been forgotten, metaphors that have no longer the moving effect of metaphors, coins that have lost their image and superscription and now are looked upon as metal, no more as coin." Concepts have, if not their mother, then their grandmother, in these illusory images. Even "being," which Nietzsche thinks originally meant "breathing," comes from a metaphor. 15 We do not even know the real nature of our own bodies, nature "has thrown the key away"--we only play or fumble on the surface of things here as everywhere else.

IV What then is the human intellect for, if truth is beyond its power? Nietzsche's answer in brief is that it is to give us practical guidance in life. It is a useful tool to this end; it did not arise to serve theoretic purposes. It observes how things affect us, noting particularly whether they harm or help us, and draws up from this very personal angle of vision a picture or scheme of things, by the help of which we can thread our way through life's mazes a little more assuredly--conceptualizing and logicizing the material, so that we may handle it more easily. There would be nothing to say against this pictured, logicized world, did we not proceed to take it for what it is not. We think that it is something independent of us, something that would be here in all its particulars just the same whether we were here or not. Color, sound, sweet and sour, hard and soft, heavy and light, we think that we simply find,--that we have no hand in constituting them. I have known people to grow angry when it was suggested that a sound they hear is not something altogether apart from them--so instinctive has the view become. That is, we believe what is not true, we are deceived. It is not deception that is practised upon us--we deceive ourselves; ultimately it is the intellect that is the deceiving party. It does its work so thoroughly that we are not aware, unless we critically examine ourselves, that there is any deception in the matter.

What conclusion is to be drawn? Is the deception therefore to be rejected? By no means. The intellect has worked in the interests of life. It is easier for men to live, when they project their experience outside themselves; they feel that they have thereby something to steady themselves by and to lean upon. Indeed, a tendency to deception exists more or less in life in general. We have all heard of the various protective devices of the lower forms of life; sometimes they are the finest forms of defense, and quite take the place of weapons like horns or poisonous fangs. But the most perfect kind of deception would be that practised by a being on itself,--the real nature of the process being either unrealized, or if realized, soon obscured to the mind. This is the deception which man practises on himself in relation to the sensible and conceptual world. It is all in the interests of life--most men could hardly live without it; and it has as much right to be as truth--indeed more right to be, in the particular circumstances envisaged. Illusion, deception, as part of the life-process and legitimate--such is Nietzsche's point of view at the present time: argument to this effect makes the substance of the pregnant fragment, "On Truth and Falsehood in the Extra-moral [i.e., theoretic] Sense." o

Indeed he has now such a sense of the function of illusion in the world, that he defends it in connections where many of us would feel the sole imperative of truth. For example, in discussing the use and harm of history for life, he questions the benefit for men in general of pushing historical study to its last extremes. If reality is made to stand out in all its nakedness, if illusions are totally banished, reverence and the power of joyful activity suffer. He has in mind particularly the study of religious origins. He speaks of the dissolving influence of the new historical theology--here is perhaps a subsidiary reason for the attack on Strauss. A religion that is turned into a piece of historical knowledge simply is, he thinks, at the end of its way. A loving constructive spirit should go along with all destruction. He is even critical toward modern science in the same spirit. The doctrines of change as a sovereign law, of the fluidity of all types and species, of the absence of all cardinal distinction between man and animal, he calls "true, but deadly"; and he thinks that life ruled by science may possibly be far less life and far less assured of the future, than life controlled by instincts and powerful illusions. If it came to the worst, if a choice had to be made between knowledge at the expense of life and life at the expense of knowledge, he would not hesitate to give life the higher place-a knowledge that worked destructively on life would indeed in the end destroy itself. 16

The foregoing considerations relate to truth in the theoretic sense. Truth in the moral sense is a different matter. Its origin is utility. Men live in society--have to, to live at all. They must then understand one another; to this extent at least they must put an end to the bellum omnium contra omnes. That is, they must use words in the same senses. When one person says "green" or "loud" or "cow" or "horse," he must mean what others mean by the same words. To speak "truly" is to agree with others, to conform to the general conventions. Language gave the first laws of truth; here the contrast between truth and falsehood first arose. But the conventions of speech have little or nothing to do with truth in the sense first mentioned--they had their origin in other than theoretic considerations. Speaking "truly" to one's fellow-man involves nothing as to giving a true, i.e., faithfully objective, report of things. German speech attributes a male gender to the tree and a female gender to the plant--how unwarrantable to draw theoretic conclusions therefrom! In fact truth in the moral (social) sense is entirely compatible with falsehood in the other sense; it means nothing more than that one faithfully uses the customary metaphors, i.e. (speaking now in more ultimate terms), that one falsifies as the flock does in a way recognized as binding upon all.

Yes, the needs of the flock not only cover up theoretic falsehood of the sort described, but they breed, or have bred, illusions on their own account. I have just used the phrase "binding upon all." But anything "binding" naturally brings along with it the idea that those who are bound can heed the obligation, that it is in their power to comply with it, whether they actually do or not--and this idea, when further developed and connected with obedience to the standards of the flock in general, becomes the notion of free-will and responsibility, which plays so large a part in the spiritual economy of early communities. Free-will is an illusory notion to Nietzsche, and indeed to most thinkers of the first rank in recent times ( William James being a rare and brilliant exception), yet society for its successful working had to proceed as if it were true. On the basis of it praise and blame, reward and punishment were distributed and men's characters shaped (to the extent they were shaped at all), men's own efforts for the better going on the assumption of its truth also. When Nietzsche speaks of morality as necessary falsehood (Nothlόge), and says that without the errors connected with it man would have remained on the animal level, he has this error particularly in mind. 17

The field of illusion is thus wide, and the question may be raised, What matters it? If men have ideas to live by, and perhaps grow better by, is that not enough? Well, perhaps it is enough for most of us--we have no impulses urging us to go further, and if we had them, should perhaps only perplex ourselves needlessly in yielding to them, since we have scarcely the leisure or the ability to push our inquiries to a finish. p But there are others who have imperious needs in this direction-they must ask questions, and irrespective of any assurance that they can live by the truth they find: in short, they have the philosophical impulse. Now, whether for his weal or woe, Nietzsche belonged to the latter class--and the only wonder is how he could have the impulse, consistently with his theory of the origin and purpose of the intellect which has just been referred to. There is the same difficulty for us in studying Schopenhauer, whose view here Nietzsche repeats (on which I have commented elsewhere). 18 In almost every direction we find him seeking the true, irrespective of any advantage to be gained, save the satisfaction of the knowing impulse itself. Particularly does he wrestle--twist and turn--in trying to make out the truth as to the external world. We find him, for instance, considering the fact that a certain sensation or image always follows a certain stimulus, that this may hold of one generation after another, that it may be true of all mankind--it may seem conclusive proof that the image faithfully represents the object it stands for; and yet he is forced to ask whether a metaphor ceases to be a metaphor because it is indefinitely repeated, and whether, for all that men agree so widely in using it, it is the only possible metaphor in the circumstances. He considers also the argument from the omnipresence and unvarying character of the laws of nature, namely, that since everything in the world, no matter how great or how small, is fixed, certain, law-abiding, fantasy can have nothing to do with it, since if it had, the marks of its arbitrary hand would be somewhere discernible. He admits the plausibility of the argument, and yet suppose, he says, that we could experience variously, each of us having our own type of sensation, or suppose that we could perceive now as a bird does and now as a worm and now as a plant, or that where one responded to a stimulus with "red," another did with "blue" and still another with a sound, how then--where then would the uniformity and law-abidingness of nature be? q Would there not be a variety of worlds--and where would be the world? Is it a wonder that beings of one physiological type have one type of world, and does the present uniform common world prove more than that we human beings are of one type? Does it in the least prove that our responses to stimuli are the right responses, i.e., rightly represent the object? Indeed, what is the meaning of "right" (richtig) in such a connection?--since we have no originals with which to compare them. In going from object to subject, we pass, for all we know, from one sphere of being to another, and there is as little propriety in speaking of a right sensation or image, as of a right sound for a color--we cannot go beyond symbols, metaphors under such conditions. All sensations and images, no matter how varying or even contradictory they might be, may be right for the type that makes them, i.e., may serve its special life-needs, and none be right in any final sense. Moreover, the fixity and order of things in our world are a fixity and order in space and time, and Nietzsche holds now (after Kant and Schopenhauer) that these are not independent realities, but forms of our own minds--no wonder then that things appear more or less definitely here and there, now and then; how otherwise could they appear at all? Unquestionably there is a spatial and temporal order, but we ourselves bring the ideas to things that make the order possible. 19

V The outcome of all this criticism is, so far as the question of ultimate truth goes, purely negative. At least, after becoming skeptical in regard to Schopenhauer's view that we have a real, first-hand knowledge of ourselves as will, Nietzsche is unable to advance any positive idea of reality at all. All that we are accustomed to call by this name is appearance, illusion. And yet a tentative speculation he does venture upon. It is a kind of panpsychism. We know indeed only our own sensations and thoughts and feelings--but what if the whole world is of this nature? May not the things outside us [ Nietzsche never doubts that there are such things--he is never solipsist or thoroughgoing idealist] be themselves in some sense "centers of sensation"? Even so they might affect one another (each being conceived as a spring of energy). They might get habits by acting and reacting (ultimately from motives of pleasure and pain). They might even be called will. Causality is perhaps an idea formed from the action of the will, particularly as it reacts to stimuli. Space and time in turn hang on causality. And so might arise in general the sort of world we know. 20 It is entirely a speculation--and confused and fragmentary at that; but perhaps it. should be mentioned in qualification of the sweeping negative language which I have just used. In some ways it is similar to a view which we shall find developed at length in the latter part of his life.

CHAPTER VI ETHICAL VIEWS I LIKE Nietzsche's first metaphysics, his first ethical views reveal the influence of Schopenhauer. In general, the order of the world, including that of human life, cannot be changed. It is not founded on reason, and is but slightly accessible to rational influence. The old rationalism effectually came to an end with Kant and Schopenhauer, who demonstrated the unsurpassable limits of theoretic curiosity, and begot anew the sense of the fundamental mysteriousness of things. A certain deep resignation is the practical consequence, a certain frank facing and acceptance of reality in all its forms, including those which are terrible. Instead of science, thinking that it can find the cause of all ills and so can remedy them, wisdom becomes the goal--wisdom, which refusing to be seduced by the specious promises of the sciences, looks unmoved on the world as a whole, and by sympathy and love seeks to make the eternal suffering it finds there its own. This is the atmosphere favorable to the rise of a new and tragic type of culture, similar to that which existed among the Greeks before Socrates and Euripides exercised their rationalizing influence. 1

But because the broad features of the human lot cannot be changed, it does not follow that things may not be better than they are, that there is not something which man may strive for. At bottom Nietzsche was of idealistic temperament, and though this did not distort his vision of reality, it kept him from relapsing into quietism. He felt indeed that the weightiest question of philosophy was just how far the realm of the unchangeable extended, so that knowing this we might set out to improve the changeable side of things with all the courage at our command. 2 We may not be able to do much, and may easily be depressed, but neither becoming rich nor honored nor learned will lift us out of our depression, and the only sense in striving in these directions is to win power, whereby we may come to the help of nature and correct a little her foolish and clumsy ways. 3 a

What then can we do? What shall be our aim? Nietzsche's idealistic temper is plentifully in evidence in the way he gives his answer. We do not get our aim, he says, by studying history, science, or circumstances now existing. In this way we acquaint ourselves with facts: but ethics is a question of our attitude to facts, of the way in which we shall confront them. He does not like his historical generation, which wishes only to be "objective," which does not know how to love or hate, and perhaps, as in Hegel's case, turns the historical process itself into a semi-divine affair. He thinks that Hegel's influence was so far harmful on German youth. One who bends and bows to the "power of history" gives in the end an obsequious "yes," Chinese fashion, to every "power," whether it be a government or a public opinion or a majority of heads, and moves to the time which the "power" sets. Not so morality: it is not merely conceiver or interpreter, but judge--if history says what is or was, it says what should be or should have been. Raphael had to die at the age of thirty--six: was there anything right or rational in such a necessity? Some one was arguing in Germany at the time, that Goethe at eighty-two was worn out, but Nietzsche says that for a couple of years of the "wornout" Goethe and of such conversations as he had with Eckermann, he would give whole wagon-loads of men still running their careers and highly modern at that. That the many go on living, while a few, such as these, come to an end, is nothing but brutal fact, stupidity that cannot be altered--a "so it is," over against the moral demand, "so it should not be." Yes, over against morality! he reiterates; for whatever the virtue we have in mind, whether it be justice, generosity, courage, wisdom, or pity, it is virtuous in so far as it rises against this blind might of facts, this tyranny of the actual, and subjects itself to laws which are not the laws of these historical fluctuations. 4 He reflects in a similar spirit on statistics. "How, statistics prove that there are laws in history? Laws? Yes, they prove how common and pitifully uniform the mass are: are we to call the operation of gravity, of stupidity, of blind imitation, of love, and of hunger, laws? Well, suppose we do; but if so, it also holds good that so far as there are laws in history, the laws are worth nothing and the history is worth nothing." 5 Effect, permanence, success are no real argument. Christianity became "an historical power," but it was because earthly passions, errors, ambitions, survivals of the imperium Romanum, mingled with it, not because of its finer elements, and the purest and truest disciples it has had lived without appreciable results and remain for the most part unknown and unnamed. "Demosthenes had greatness, though he had no success." To speak in Christian language, the Devil is the ruler of this world and the master of results here--he is the prime factor in all the so-called "historical powers," however unpleasantly the remark may strike the ear of those who deify success and baptize the Devil with a new name. 6 No, "let us not expect of the noblest things the toughness of leather." Indeed, not continuance at all, not life and victory, but tragic death may be the highest thing, as we feel on occasion in listening to a Greek tragic drama. 7

All this may be far from a complete statement of the relation of ethics to reality and the temporal order, but it touches certain aspects of the subject, and brings home to us the impetuous earnestness of the young thinker.

II

But if our aim is not given to us from without, it must be born from within. The fact is, we human beings judge what we see or learn--we face it with certain requirements. The gist of our requirements we call our ideal, and the ideal, so far as we make it an end to strive for, becomes our aim. Nietzsche is conscious at the present time of no essential divergence from customary morality, and the ideal he has does not differ from that large vague ideal of good which most of us have, and which, when we hypostatize it, as we commonly do, and strip it of limitations, is much the same as the Divine or God. It includes a justice, a love, a wisdom, a power, a beauty--in short, a total perfection--which are only suggested in anything we see or are. A distinction must be drawn between the ideal and the question of its actual embodiment anywhere (e.g., in a Divine Being or Beings) --also, between it and the question whether human life and conduct can actually be shaped in complete accordance with its demands. To both these questions Nietzsche felt obliged to reply negatively. We have already noted that he was atheist; and such in his eyes was the constitution of things that human life and action had to fall short of the ideal, and even to go counter to it to a certain extent. So little, however, does this mean that he failed to revere the ideal, that it was in its name that be, with Schopenhauer, pronounced the world undivine, and it was because of the sense of a contradiction between what ought to be and what is that pain and distress became so deep a part of his lot as a thinker. There only remained to make the ideal interpenetrate reality to the extent the conditions of existence would allow--and this was what his aim practically came to. It was as if he said, If God does not exist, let us see how near we can come to him. How truly this was the substance of his aim, and how strongly his feelings were enlisted, is manifest in an ejaculation which he imagines a disciple of culture making, and which, I take it, is a self-confession: "I see something higher and more human above me than I myself am; help me all to attain it, as I will help every one who feels and suffers as I do: in order that at last the man may arise who is full and measureless in knowledge and love and vision and power, and with his whole being cleaves to nature and takes his place in it as judge and valuer of things." 8 In another connection he says, "For what purpose the world exists, why humanity exists, need not for the time concern us. . . . But why thou thyself art here, that thou mayest ask, and if no one else can tell it thee, seek to give a meaning to thy existence as it were a posteriori, by giving to thyself an aim, a goal, a wherefore, a high and noble wherefore." 9 To state the aim more concretely: since the characteristic impulses of human nature are, as he held with Schopenhauer, the theoretic, the creative or artistic, and the moral--impulses which yield, when they come to any sort of fruition, the philosopher, the artist, and the saint,--the aim is the production in humanity of the philosopher, the artist, and the saint, and not merely as we sometimes find them, but in the fullness and perfection of their idea. We all have in us that which is kindred to these types, and this is why we long for them, and, as it were, see ourselves in them, when any approximation to them passes before our eyes. Yes, they are what nature in a blind way is groping after; they are the final goal of the creative process, the delivering, redeeming agencies not only for us, but for the World-Will itself--if we intelligently strive for them, we to this extent co-operate with nature and help to make up for her shortcomings and mistakes. 10

Such is the perspective in which life is seen by Nietzsche. As most of us live it, it is not its own end; men, as we ordinarily find them, have no great value on their own account. Striving simply for comfort, happiness, success is a sorry mistake. Our lives have significance only as they reach out after something beyond them. To speak of man's dignity per se, of his rights as man, is to deceive ourselves; he acquires these only as he serves something higher than himself, as he helps in the production of the "genius"--this being a common term for the philosopher, the artist, and the saint. 11 Life as ordinarily lived is on little more than an animal level. Nietzsche draws a striking picture of what our histories and sociologies reveal to us--the vast wanderings back and forth on the earth, the building of cities and states, the restless accumulating and spending, the competing with one another, the imitating of one another, the outwitting of one another and trampling on one another, the cries in straits, and the shouts of joy in victory: it is all to him a continuation of our animality, a senseless and oppressive thing. 12 And yet the whole picture changes when he thinks of men as animated by an aim like that which he projects. Then the most ordinary and imperfect would gain significance and worth. Though still aware of their imperfection and owning that nature had succeeded poorly in their own case, they would none the less remember the great end for which she was striving, and, placing themselves at her service, help her to succeed better in the future. 13 Nietzsche conceives that society might actually be pervaded by an aim of this character, that all might unitedly project it; indeed he recognizes that only in this way can the aim be accomplished--the task being too great for individuals.

III When society, or a given society, is inspired in this way, there will come what he calls a culture--this being a general term for a unity of style in the activities, the life-expressions, of a people. 14 Existing societies have no culture in this sense (though the French have had one)--the aims of men today are too haphazard, criss-cross; particularly does Nietzsche make light of the pretense of a German culture. 15 It is not outward forms, laws, or institutions that he has in mind, so much as a spirit, a thought, a vital governing aim. At the same time the aim he proposes is not without definite characters. Not only is it contrasted with the aim of making everybody, or as many as possible, happy, but it is also contrasted with the ambition widely prevalent now of founding or furthering great communities (states or empires), which the individual is to find his supreme function in serving. The community is not an end of itself. There is as much dignity in serving an individual, if he be one of the higher type, as in serving the state: it is not size, numbers, that determine value, but the quality and grade of being. 16 The end of social organization itself is to facilitate the emergence of the higher type or types of man. The ideal community is not one in which the members are on a par, all in turn ends and means, but one in which the higher types are ends and the rest are means to them. The old idea of service--one-sided service, if you will--is thus introduced. The philosopher, the artist, the saint being the culmination of existence, social arrangements and activity having normally the production or facilitation of them as their ultimate object, to whatever extent they appear at any given time, they are to be supremely considered, the rest of us finding our highest function in serving them, rather than in serving ourselves or one another. It must be admitted that Nietzsche parts company thus at the start with the humanitarian, equalitarian, democratic ideals which rule among us today. Once he refers to the processes by which (according to the Darwinian view) progress, the evolution of higher species, has taken place in the animal and plant world. The matter of critical moment, the starting-point for a further development in a given species, has been some unusual specimen--some variation from the average type, to use Darwin's term--which now and then under favorable conditions arose. Not the average members of the species and their welfare, not those either which came last in point of time and their welfare, were of maximum importance or the goal of the species' development, but just these scattering and apparently accidental specimens and their welfare, by means of which the transition to a new species became possible. In the lower realms the progress was unintended and unconscious, but the method by which it was secured may be pursued in higher realms, and just because we human beings are conscious and may have a conscious aim, we may search out and establish the conditions favorable to the rise of our higher specimens and not leave them to come by chance, and so develope along the human line of progress in an unprecedented manner. Schopenhauer had said, "Humanity should labor continually to produce individual great men--and this and nothing else is its task," and Nietzsche now repeats it after him. Still more definitely, "How does thy individual life receive its highest value, its deepest significance! Surely only in that thou livest to the advantage of the rarest and most valuable specimens of thy kind, not to that of the most numerous, i.e., taken singly, least valuable specimens." 17

The classifying of men as ends and means is not, however, a part of Nietzsche's ideal itself, but a result of the way in which men actually present themselves in the world. Some are or tend to become higher individuals, others do not-though it would seem as if all might. Nietzsche himself is involved in more or less contradiction in dealing with the matter. Now he speaks of every one as having the higher possibilities, as being essentially individual and unique, 18 now he says that the mass are always "common and pitifully uniform" and that the "modern man" in particular "suffers from a weak personality" 19 --one thinks of Emerson's plaint with regard to the clergy that they were "as alike as peas," he could not "tell them apart." 20 Perhaps Nietzsche could only have reconciled these discordant utterances by saying that when an aim takes practical shape, it has to adapt itself to matter-of-fact conditions, and make the best of material that is at hand. Sometimes he states his aim as consisting in the furthering of the production of the philosopher, the artist and the saint, "within us and without us," 21 and doubtless he would fain have seen every man a higher man, and none used for ends outside them; 22 but, as things are, only a few show effectively the higher possibilities, and the rest come nearest to a high value by serving them. I shall recur to the subject in treating his closing period. 23

Nietzsche gathered encouragement for his hope of a new culture from the old Greek world. The contemplation of that great past made him believe that what he wished for was no empty dream. 24 He says, "The Greeks are interesting and tremendously important (ganz toll wichtig), because they had such a number of great individuals. How was this possible? It is this that we must study.""What alone interests me is the relation of a people to the education of the individual." And yet it must be confessed that in the fragmentary notes 25 from which these remarks are taken, Nietzsche gives us scant light on the subject. He does little more than point out that the "great individuals" did not come from any particular friendliness on the part of the people, arising rather amid conflicts in which evil impulses had their part, and states a general conviction that when man's inventive spirit gets to work, there may be other and better results than those which have hitherto come from chance. It is the training (Zόchtung) of the higher types, i.e., a conscious purpose in that direction, on which the hope of the future rests. 26

IV His derivation of special duties presents little that is unusual. "Duties" are born of ideals. Ultimately we impose them on ourselves; yet they may be strict obligations. 27 He speaks of the "pressure" of the chain of duties which the Schopenhauer type of man fastens on himself. 28 "Favored" is synonymous to him with "fearfully obligated." Freedom is a privilege, an obligation, a heavy one, "and it can only be paid off by great deeds"; those who fail to realize this, do nothing good with their freedom and easily go to pieces. 29 He even speaks of those who enter the lists for a culture such as has been described, as coming to "the feeling of a duty to live" 30 --a different thing, I need not say, from the animal craving to live.

"Justice," "sympathy," "pity," "love" sometimes receive shades of meaning which are determined by his particular views, but substantially they mean the same to him as to the rest of us. He is not laudatory of power, and asks his generation, "Where are those among you who will follow the divine example of Wotan and become greater the more they withdraw --who will renounce power, knowing and feeling that it is evil?" 31 He speaks of Wagner as early tempted to seek for "power and glory," but notes that he had risen to purer air. 32 The man inspired by justice he deems the most reverend specimen of our kind, and he finds it an impulse for the scholar as truly as for others; a spark from this fire falling into the scholar's soul purifies and ennobles him--lifts him out of the lukewarm or frigid mood in which he is apt to do his daily task. 33 Nietzsche interprets justice (momentarily at least) after Schopenhauer, as a metaphysical impulse 34 ---that is, one that breaks down the wall of individuality belonging to our phenomenal being and makes each say "I am thou." Egoism, in the ordinary sense of the term, receives little countenance from him; whether unintelligent or intelligent, whether on the part of the people or of the possessing classes, it wins no admiration. 35

Sympathy and pity rank with justice. I may cite here an incident in his personal history. His attack on Strauss has been already mentioned. It sounds malicious at times, certainly it was often ironical, but it was really an attack on the specious German culture which Strauss represented (particularly in the widely read Old and New Faith 36 ), not on Strauss himself; and when the learned man died, Nietzsche was halfrueful (for his book had made considerable impression), and wrote a friend, "I hope that I did not make his last years harder to bear, and that he died without knowing anything of me. It disturbs me a bit." 37 His sister tells us that so long as a type he combated was impersonal, he could fight joyfully; but when he was suddenly made to realize that a man of sensitive heart, surrounded by revering friends, stood behind it, pity arose instead, and he suffered more from the blows of his sword than the enemy did--and that then he would sigh, "I am not really made for hating and enmity." 38 b He had also sympathy for the "people," the unfortunate. In discussing the reform of the theater, he appears to have above all the popular aspects of the case in mind, speaking of the hollowness and thoughtlessness of a society, which only concerns itself for the mass so far as they are useful or dangerous, and goes to the theater and concerts without ever a thought of duties. 39 He even says, "One cannot be happy, so long as everything suffers and creates suffering about us; one cannot be moral, so long as the course of human things is determined by violence, deceit, and injustice; one cannot even be wise, so long as all mankind has not striven for wisdom and does not lead the individual in the wisest way to life and knowledge" 40 --it is almost a socialistic sentiment. He tells us how Wagner "out of pity for the people" became a revolutionist 41 (something many of us may not know, unless perchance we have read Mr. Shaw The Perfect Wagnerite), and gives an admiring description of Wagner's art, which no longer uses the language of a caste, knows no distinction between the educated and the uneducated, and is contrasted to this extent with the culture of the Renaissance, including that of Leopardi and of Goethe, its last great followers. 42 Indeed under Wagner's spell, he hails a future in which there will be no highest goods and enjoyments which are not common to all. 43 He desires an art--a true art, a true music--which shall be just for those who least deserve it, but most need it. 44 We have already noted his glowing picture of the effect of the ancient Dionysian festivals and dramas in uniting different classes, breaking down the barriers between free men and slaves, making men feel, indeed, their oneness with all that lives--no one without deep human sympathies could have written in this way; and it was a new Dionysiac art, a new Dionysiac age, for which he at this time thought that Wagner was helping to prepare the way.

Sympathy and pity are only forms which love takes in given situations, and love as a principle, as the culmination of justice, and reaching its perfect expression in the saint, is the supreme thing to Nietzsche. The distinctive noble marks of youth are "fire, defiance, self-forgetfulness, and love." 45 Light-bearers seek out men, reluctant to lend their ears, "compelled by love." 46 "The Ring of the Nibelungen" is "the most moral music" that he knows--he refers above all to the transfiguration of love there portrayed, clouds, storms, and even the sublime in nature being beneath it. 47 He compares Wagner (whose cause he is pleading in the uncertain days before Bayreuth) to Sieglinde who lives "for love's sake." 48 It is love which purifies us after despair, love by which we make the eternal suffering of the world our own, love in which the artist and we all create, or do anything that is truly great; through love alone we learn not only to see truly and scorn ourselves, but to look out beyond ourselves and seek with all our power for a higher self which is still somewhere hidden. 49

Morality reaches its culmination in the saint. Nietzsche praises Schopenhauer for making the saint the final judge of existence. 50 The thought is the same when he describes in turn the Rousseau ideal of man, the Goethe ideal, and the Schopenhauer ideal, and calls the last superior. The Schopenhauer type negates whatever can be negated to the end of reaching the truly real. He may in the process put an end to his earthly happiness, may have to be hostile even to men he loves and to institutions that gave him birth, he dare spare neither men nor things, although he suffers from the injury he inflicts; he may be misunderstood and long pass as an ally of powers he despises, may have to be counted unjust, though all his striving is for justice--but he will say to himself, and find consolation in saying (they are Schopenhauer's words), "A happy life is impossible; the highest thing which man can reach, is an heroic course of life. Such he leads who, in any manner and situation, fights against enormous odds for what is in some way of universal benefit and in the end conquers, though he is ill or not at all rewarded." 51 This may not be the ordinary idea of the saint, but it is what Nietzsche means when he uses the term: it is really the hero-saint whom he has in mind. Such an one dies to self, he scarcely lives any longer as a separate person, his suffering is but part of the universal suffering--Nietzsche remarks that there are moments in our experience when we hardly understand the word "I." 52 It is a part of the higher purpose of tragedy to awaken this sense of a superpersonal being. It is a sense which the contemplation of death and change (things inwrought with individual existence) does not disturb; and Nietzsche is bold enough to imagine that as an individual touched by the tragic spirit unlearns the fearful anxiety about death and change which besets most of us, so the ideal height for mankind, when it comes to die, as die it must, will be to have so grown together into unity that it can as a whole face its dissolution with equal elevation and composure. 53 It is a thought hard to grasp.

I have said that to Nietzsche the ideal was born from within, a free projection of the soul. So vital is this element of freedom to him that he at one time makes a remark which may offend us. It is in connection with an interpretation of Wagner and is really a statement of Wagner's view, but from the way he makes it, we may be sure that it represents his own. After saying that it is no final arrangements for the future, no utopia, which Wagner contemplates, that even the superhuman goodness and justice which are to operate there will be after no unchangeable pattern, and that possibly the future race will in some ways seem more evil than the present one, he adds (in substance) : for whatever else the life may be, it will be open and free, passion will be counted better than stoicism [stoic apathy] and hypocrisy, honor even in evil courses better than losing oneself in the morality of tradition--for, though the free man may be good as well as evil, the unfree man is a dishonor to nature and without part either in heavenly or in earthly consolation, and whoever will be free must make himself so, freedom falling into no man's lap as a gift. 54 He may also offend us in what he says of Siegfried, for he speaks admiringly of the Selbstigkeit of this hero. Now Siegfried is, as Mr. Shaw has pointed out, something of a revolutionist; he disregards traditionally laws and the ancient Gods-he is for man, for the living. In all this he is free, fearless, follows his impulse absolutely-and Nietzche calls it his "Selbstigkeit," "unschuldige Selbstigkeit." 55 The word is an anusual one and English writers ordinarily render it "selfishness"-so that Nietzche appears to sanction selfishness and pronounce it innocent from the start. The Germans have, however, a special word for selfishness, which is not noticeable that Nietzche does not use, Selbstsucht, and the connection plainly shows that it is simply an unconditional following of inner impulse against outward pressure, a strong selfhood, which he has in mind: we might say "self-will," if we could rid the word of associations of pretty arbitrariness and obstinacy. c An analogue to Siegfried may be found in Prometheus, to whom Nietzche elsewhere refer-and with something to the same thought. The glory of Prometheus in his eyes is that he is ready to save the needy race of man even though he goes against the laws and pre- senting an interesting contrast to the corresponding Semitic one, according to which mere feminine curiosity and weakness brought down Heaven's wrath. 56 But the strong selfhood, which is an indispensable part of Nietzche's conception of virtue, involves hardness on occasion -one must not be too sensitive to pain, whether one's own or Nietzche's admiration for Schopenhauer lay in the fact that he was a good and brave fighter; he had had by inheritance and also from his father's example that first essential of the philoso- pher, firm and rugged masculinity (unbeugsame und rauhe Mannlichkeith). 57 also appreciates unconventionalityand this too because a strong selfhood is thereby indicated. Our artists, he says,and notably Wagner live more bravely and honorably than our scholars and professors-even Kant con- formed too much. 58

CHAPTER VII SOCIAL AND POLITICAL IDEAS NIETZSCHE'S moral aim became practically, as we have seen, a striving for a new culture. Some consequences in the social and political field are now to be noted.

I One is the sanction he feels obliged to give to slavery. Wherever there has been anything like culture or civilization in the world, something like slavery has been at its basis. It is so now. The current phrase "factory slave" is not a mere metaphor. When an individual works for others' good rather than his own, and has to, whether the compelling force is that of a personal master or of circumstances over which he has no control, slavery exists in principle.1 It is not a thing in which, as one might imagine from current representations of Nietzsche, he takes pleasure, but rather one of those forbidding facts which give a problematical character to existence in general. The only apology for slavery is that the possibility of attaining the higher ends of human existence is bound up with it. Culture-meaning now broadly any social state in which man rises above his natural life as an animal and pursues ends like philosophy and art--does not come at will, but is strictly conditioned. As before stated, it is the fruit of leisure; and that there may be leisure for some, others must work more than their share. a Such a necessity goes against our instincts of humanity and justice, and many have been led to rebel against it. We read of Emerson making a modest attempt in this direction. It was in the days of the Anti-Slavery agitation and he had been urging, with a somewhat larger view than the abolitionists ordinarily took, "Does he not do more to abolish slavery who works all day steadily in his own garden, than he who goes to the abolition meeting and makes a speech? He who does his own work frees a slave." And now, as if at least to set his own life right, he goes to work digging in his Concord garden--if not all day, a part of it. He continues for a time, but he finds alas! that his writing and power of intellectual work are suffering, that, as he quaintly puts it, if his "terrestrial corn, beets, onions, and tomatoes flourish, the celestial archetypes do not"--and so comes at last to the reluctant conclusion, "The writer shall not dig." b The logic of the experience is old. Of course, when he ceased doing "his own work," some one else had to work the more (supposing that his writing and thinking were to continue), and "slavery" went on much as before. Nietzsche puts it broadly, "Slavery belongs to the nature of a culture" (zum Wesen einer Cultur gehört das Sklaventhum). "That there may be a broad, deep, and fruitful soil for a development of art, the immense majority must be in service to a minority"; at the former's expense, by their surplus labor ( Nietzsche does not shun the Marxian word, Mehrarbeit), a privileged few are lifted above the struggle for existence.2 It is a hard view, but the truth, he thinks, is hard at times,3 and it seems a virtue to him not to deceive oneself. We in our day speak of the "dignity of man," the "dignity of labor," the "equal rights" of all--to him these are phantom conceptions by which we hide the real state of the case from our eyes, above all by which the great slave mass among us hide their real estate from their eyes.4

II

But Nietzsche must not be misunderstood. In recognizing the slavery of the manual workers, he does not mean to place them in contrast with the employing and commercial classes who have rights to do as they please. One of the best and most intelligent of our American newspapers speaks of him as "par excellence the philosopher of the unscrupulous business man."5 This is the half-knowledge, or rather, to speak frankly, the ignorance of our cultivated circles with respect to Nietzsche today. In a normal social organization, the employing and commercial classes would in his view be subject to control as well as the workers. The unhappy thing in the modern world is that they have more or less emancipated themselves from control. This is the meaning of laisser faire--a doctrine of liberty in the interests of the employing and commercial classes. Nietzsche finds it working injuriously on the morality of modern peoples.6 The unrestrained egoism of individuals as of peoples is pushing them into mutually destructive struggles, and it is the most covetous who have the supreme place.7 Once a restraining influence was exercised by the Church, but the Reformation was obliged, in order to get a foothold, to declare many things adiaphora (i.e., not subject to the control of religious considerations), and economical activity was one of them, with the result that "the coarsest and most evil forces" have come to be the practically determining things almost everywhere.8 Educated classes and states alike are carried away by pecuniary ambitions, at once grandiose and contemptible. He speaks repeatedly of "the selfishness of the business class,""the brutal money-greed of the entrepreneurs."9 It is "a period of atoms, of atomistic chaos," into which we have passed.10

Particularly after the Franco-Prussian war did Nietzsche notice the unchaining of this vulgar egoism in Germany. Rapacious striving, insatiable accumulating, selfish and shameless enjoying were characteristic marks of the time.11 "When the war was over, the luxury, the contempt of the French, the nationalism (das Nationale) displeased me. How far back had we gone compared with Goethe! Disgusting sensualism!"12 The new spirit perverted the aims of culture. Now forsooth education was to be for practical purposes; the kind that looked beyond money and gain, that consumed much time and separated one from society, was questioned--or stigmatized as "refined egoism,""Epicureanism." People said, "We have been too poor and modest hitherto, let us become rich and selfconscious, and then we also [i.e., as well as the French] shall have a culture!"--to which Nietzsche could only reply that this kind of a culture would be the opposite of what he believed in.13 Art was misconceived, though this tendency he admitted to be general in modern society: "modern art is luxury," the appanage of the wealthy class, their relief from fatigue or ennui. He comments on the unscrupulousness of those who take art and artists into their pay; for just as they "by the shrewdest and most hard-hearted use of their power have known how to make the weaker, the people, even more subservient, lower, less like the people of old (unvolksthümlicher), and to create the modern type of "worker," so they have laid hands on the greatest and purest things which the people have created out of their deepest need and in which they have tenderly expressed their soul in true and unique artist fashion, namely, their myths, their songs, their dances, their idioms of speech, in order to distil out of it all a sensuous remedy for the exhaustion and tedium of their existence."14 Indeed few socialists, and, I might add, few old-time aristocrats, could speak more disrespectfully than he of the industrial and commercial powers that now rule the world--the money powers included, who use the state itself for selfish purposes, and on occasion oppose war and even favor the masses against monarchs, since the masses incline to peace, and peace is better for them to ply their trade in!15 This does not mean that he fails to recognize the legitimate place of industry and trade and finance in the world, however large the scale on which they may be conducted; he has no notion of returning to an archaic simplicity of life after the manner of Tolstoy. "Every society must have its bowels," he remarks in homely fashion;16 and he would doubtless have agreed that the larger the society, the wider its range of need, the ampler the bowels might well be. The inversion of the true order of things which he finds today is simply that the bowels have become the end for which the body exists. Servants in control, instead of being controlled-this is the gist of the situation, the business as truly as the working classes coming normally under the serving or slave category. Freemen are a different class altogether--they are the higher types already described, whose manner of life the slaves make possible, those for whom the ordered life of society ultimately exists and from whom it normally receives its final direction.

III In the light of the foregoing, the personal "non-political" attitude of Nietzsche is not so strange. It has little to do with theoretic anarchism. He recognizes the place and function of the state. While originating in force, violence, usurpation, and so of shameful birth, the result of it in time is an ordered social life on a large scale (for families or tribes or village communities are hardly as yet states), and the possibility of a class set free from labor, who can devote themselves to the higher ends of life. This is its justification--the justification even of the conquest and wrong that lie at its basis. "Proudly and calmly the Greek state advances before the judgment seat, and leads by the hand a blooming and glorious figure, Greek society. For this Helen it makes its wars--what gray-bearded judge will dare pass an adverse verdict?"17 Hence if Nietzsche does not take part in the political life of his time and even intentionally holds aloof from it, it was not for anarchistic reasons. In the first place it should be borne in mind that for all his criticism he was essentially loyal to his fatherland--even to Prussia. He admitted that one who is possessed by the furor philosophicus has no time for the furor politicus, but he added that if one's country is in actual need, one will not hesitate for a moment to take one's post;18 and he had himself, as we have seen, taken service under Prussia, so far as he could, in the war of 1870. Secondly, he held that the political art is essentially a special art, i.e., one not for everybody, but for those who are specially trained. All are properly subject to the state, but not all should have a hand in steering it. He thought that states are poorly arranged, in which other than statesmen have to interfere in public business, and that they merit their fate if they go to pieces from "these many statesmen."19 And, thirdly, he felt that politics is actually in a bad way at the present time--commercial aims are ruling it and socialism is threatening; wealth, comfort, "freedom" are the main things aimed at--it is a practically uncontrollable tendency that must have its day. He saw the new tendency, as just explained, taking possession of Germany. Hence he was not at home in the world about him. The Socrates of Plato compared the wise man under the political conditions of the then-existing world to one who takes shelter behind a wall, when the wind is making a hurricane of dust and rain.20 Something like this was Nietzsche's attitude to the politics of his day. He felt that a valid order did not exist--that a kind of madness was taking possession of men's minds. Or, if I am not again connecting him with too great a name, he was like Plato himself when the latter turned the energy of his thought and imagination to the construction of an ideal res publica--and indeed Nietzsche's conception in detail was not unlike Plato's, save as he gave (particularly at this time) a vital place to the artist, a class whom Plato wished to banish. Nietzsche himself notes that the fire and exaltation of Plato's political passion went in this ideal (rather than practical) direction.21 He comments on Niebuhr's reproach against Plato that he was a poor citizen, and says, Let one who feels in this way be a good citizen, and let Plato be what he was.22 In other words, political activity has a quite secondary place in his estimation--though this does not mean that he gave it no place. A state-favored philosophy he counted especially undesirable, states being what they are. The state wants only what is useful to itself. Better let philosophers grow wild or even be persecuted, he once ventures to say, and then perhaps the real ones will be sifted out.23 A happy contrast, in his judgment, of the Greek state with the prevailing type of state today is, that it did not assume to be a regulator or overseer of culture, but simply a good muscular helper, a hardy escort for it among rough realities.24

CHAPTER VIII RELATIONS WITH WAGNER THE intellectual preparation for the new culture which Nietzsche hoped for had been made, he thought, by Kant and Schopenhauer--the former in demonstrating the limits of scientific knowledge, the latter in facing fearlessly the tragic facts of existence and in proposing the production of the philosopher, the artist, and the saint, as the true aim of human life. But the practical attaining of the result was another matter--and art, he believed, might render great assistance to this end. Yes, a certain kind of art would stand almost in a relation of cause and effect to it--namely, art of the Dionysiae type such as had existed among the Greeks. Nietzsche thought he discovered the beginnings of such an art in the work of a contemporary-Richard Wagner. Wagner was, in a sense, a disciple of Schopenhauer; he possessed an ardent moral nature and was dissatisfied with the existing forms of social and political life; he too looked, however vaguely, for a new culture, and was not without the thought that art--and his art in particular--might serve to this end.

I

It is necessary to explain at the outset Nietzsche's view of the peculiar nature of musical art--something I passed over in treating his view of art in general. In it he follows closely in the footsteps of Schopenhauer. Music is radically different from the other arts. A picture, a statue, or a poem of the epic order portrays things without us, or as we might imagine their existing without us--it gives us objects. Music, on the other hand, expresses feeling and has nothing to do directly with objects. It reflects moods, desires, longings, resolves--the whole spontaneous and voluntary side of our nature, which Schopenhauer summed up as will. No doubt most of us are conscious at times of a peculiar intimacy in music--it touches us, takes hold of us, seems to reveal hidden depths within us, as nothing else does. Schopenhauer called it the most metaphysical of the arts, meaning that it comes nearest to expressing the inmost reality of things, which to his mind was will. The other arts are at two removes from this reality; not only is it objects which they give us, but these objects are themselves representative of objects. Music, on the contrary, stands directly related to it--when we listen to music, only this lightest, most insubstantial, most transparent of all objects, sound, stands between us and the reality.

Now there are feelings of the moment, and there is what we may call the ground-tone of our life--our feeling about life, our attitude to it, whether of affirmation or negation, in short, the set of our will as a whole. It is music of the deeper, more significant sort that interested Nietzsche, and it was this kind of music which he thought lay at the basis of the Greek tragic drama. It was of religious inspiration, reflected general moods about life, was a part of the worship of Dionysus. The full title of Nietzsche book on Greek Tragedy was The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music. In it he points out that the earliest form of tragedy was simply song and gesture (dance), that the dialogue came later and was a secondary matter. Even down to Sophocles the chorus was the central thing. Hence in that revival of a tragic culture, toward which Nietzsche's thoughts were turning, it was natural that music should have a central place,--it was natural too to think that music would render vital service in preparing the way for that culture, by stirring the feelings, the mood, on which it would ultimately rest. a

II The capital point in this theory is that the musical strains are expressive of feeling directly, neither copying external objects nor produced for objective effect--the purity of music lies in its lyric quality. Just in proportion to its genuineness would, Nietzsche held, the new music avail.1 The Dionysian mænade had no thought whether others were observing them or not--they sang and danced from inner impulse; Raphael's Cecilia, we feel, is not singing to others, but to herself and heaven.2 True music is a kind of soliloquy, and Wagner reaches this, Nietzsche feels, in his great works, "Tristan and Isolde," the "Meistersinger," and the "Ring."3 Wagner too has the right view of the relation of words to music (i.e., Nietzsche thinks so at the start): the music, through which the groundemotion of the persons in the drama is communicated to the hearer, is for him the primary thing; then comes the action or gestures of the persons, and last of all the words, as a still paler reflection of the original emotional state.4 The music is not an accompaniment to the words (as is the case in ordinary opera--something which Nietzsche detests), rather are the words a kind of halting accompaniment to the music. b Yes, in such words as Wagner knows how to use, he gets back, Nietzsche feels, to the primitive significance of language--which was itself half poetry and feeling; the words are often tones more than anything else--and to Wagner's sympathetic imagination, all nature, alive and striving, seeks to express itself in tones. In this connection Nietzsche refers to Schiller's confession that in poetical composition his mind had no definite and clear object before it at the start, the first impulse being a 'certain musical mood, and that the poetical idea came afterwards and as a consequence.' Nietzsche interprets the folk-song in a similar way--the air or melody is primary, and the accompanying poetry is born out of it, and may even be of different sorts: the music is the standard, with which the words strive to harmonize.6 He goes so far as to say of music in general, that it tolerates the image, word, or concept rather than needs it, language never touching its inner depths.7 c Feeling is equally, he holds, the original element in myths such as Wagner uses or fashions--in them he poetizes. In the "Ring," for instance, we have a series of myths, which Wagner partly adopted, partly created, as an objectivation of his feeling about the world and society--they are utterly unintelligible as scientific statements, and can only be comprehended as we pass into the mood out of which they were projected; a corresponding scientific statement might be made, but it would be totally different. 8

III With these deeper views of music, with his poetic, mythmaking gift (a far greater, more helpful thing to the mass of mankind than the analytic scientific faculty), with his broad human sympathies and his sense of the tragic nature of the world, Wagner was the man, Nietzsche thought, to prepare the general mind emotionally, as Kant and Schopenhauer had intellectually, for the culture to be; if Schopenhauer was par émisence its philosopher, Wagner was to be its artist. Broad impersonal ties of this kind lay at the basis of the enthusiastic attachment which he formed for Wagner--the great musician met a profound need of the time, filled out his ideal. But personal relations were also formed--and the friendship between the two men, while it lasted, was something rare and beautiful. As before stated, he often spent week-ends with Wagner in his villa at the foot of Mt. Pilatus, overlooking Lake Lucerne-with Wagner and his wife Cosima, for whom he had an almost equally reverent affection. At this time the master was working on "Siegfried," and plans were also making for the event which loomed so large in their common expectations--Bayreuth. Nietzsche afterwards said that he was perhaps the first to love Wagner and Schopenhauer with a single enthusiasm 9 --and in writing to a friend at the time he described these days (between 1869-72) as his "practical course in the Schopenhauerian philosophy." 10 He felt that he was in the presence of a genius such as Schopenhauer had portrayed. "No one knows him," he writes, "or can judge of him, because all the world stands on a different basis and is not at home in his atmosphere. There is such an absolute ideality about him, such a deep and affecting humanity, such sublime seriousness that I feel in his presence as if I were near something divine." 11 Again, "I have my Italy as well as you. . . . It is called Tribschen (the name of Wagner's villa]: and I am already at home in it. Dearest friend, what I there learn and see, hear and understand, is indescribable. Believe me, Schopenhauer and Goethe, Æschylus and Pindar still live." 12 The happiness of these years was never forgotten by Nietzsche; after he broke with Wagner, and when he was criticising and dissecting him in perhaps unmerciful fashion, the memory of them haunted him. "How often," he writes to Peter Gast in 1880, "I dream of him and ever in the manner of our old confidential relations. Never was an evil word spoken between us, not even in my dreams, but very many cheering and glad ones, and with no one perhaps have I so often laughed. It is past now--and what matters it that in many points I am in the right against him! As if that lost sympathy could be wiped out of my memory!" 13 And, though Nietzsche was the reverential admirer and disciple, he gave as well as received. The music in the third act of "Siegfried" is said to be partly owing to his influence--his sister telling us that Wagner often assured her that his coming to know Nietzsche had inspired him to this music, for he [ Nietzsche) had given him back his faith in the German youth and in the future. 14 Moreover, Wagner took over from him the conceptions of "Dionysiac" and "Apollinic" as principles of art. His appreciation of Nietzsche was strong and warm. "After my wife," he wrote him at this time, "you are the one prize which life has brought me"; and again, "Before God I declare that I believe you to be the one person who knows what I want to do." 15

The relationship with Wagner and the issues involved were so great in Nietzsche's eyes, d that he more or less reshaped his scholar's life accordingly. He had been lecturing on Greek life and philosophy, and was preparing an extensive work on the subject, e and now he took some of the material and made a little book of it by itself, which he dedicated to Wagner. His ultimate aim in the book was to show that, as the tragic view and tragic art had marked the great epoch of the Greeks, a similar view and art were needed for another great culture today, and that Wagner was pointing the way. It was The Birth of Tragedy. It offended purely philological circles, but it served its purpose none the less; f and the light it threw on old Greek life is perhaps more important than was commonly thought at the time. g Wagner circles, and above all Wagner himself, were profoundly stirred. He went freshly to work on the last act of "Götterdämmerung," and said he knew not how he could have been so fortunate. Nietzsche was even ready to go about Germany giving lectures in behalf of the Bayreuth idea, and composed an "Appeal to the German nation." h In May, 1872, he was one of the reverent company that attended the laying of the corner-stone of the Bayreuth theater, and listened to the strains of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony rendered under the master's direction. "There was something in the air," he said in commenting on the occasion, "that I have nowhere else experienced, something quite indescribable and of richest promise." 16

About this time Wagner left Tribschen for his permanent home in Bayreuth, and Nietzsche did not see him so frequently thereafter. The idyllic period in their mutual relations proved to be over. The physical separation may have given Nietzsche an opportunity for critical reflection such as he had hardly had before; in any case, questionings, doubts began to arise, and somewhat clouded his simple faith. Yet his main feeling continued to be that of loyalty, and he not only wrote pamphlets or little books to serve the general cause of a new culture (the first three Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen), but a special one on Wagner ("Richard Wagner in Bayreuth"). This last was at once an elaborate critical study and a splendid tribute. In it Bayreuth appears as a "morning consecration for the day of battle" 17 --the book published on the eve of the opening in 1876. It was really an appeal and a challenge to the Germanspeaking peoples on Wagner's and Bayreuth's behalf. i Wagner, quite overcome, wrote to him, "Friend, your book is immense. . . . Where did you get the knowledge of me!" and he urged him to come to the rehearsals soon to be given. Nietzsche came, at least to the opening performances--and with what effect I must now proceed to relate.

IV To understand what happened, it is necessary to bear in mind all Nietzsche's idealism about Bayreuth. As the special scene of the master's activity, and as the center of redeeming influences that were to go out to the German people, it was almost holy in his eyes. In the book just referred to, he pictured gathered there the more serious, nobler spirits of his generation--men and women who had their home elsewhere than in the present and were to be explained and justified otherwise than by the present, or, to use another metaphor, were like a warm current in a lake which a swimmer encounters showing that a hot spring is near by. 18 You shall find--he said in substance--prepared and consecrated spectators at the summit of their happiness and collecting energy for still higher achievement; you shall find the most devoted sacrifice of artists, and the victorious creator of a work which is itself the result of victories all along the seathetic line--will it not be almost like magic to witness such a phenomenon in the present time! Must not those who participate be transformed and renewed, and be ready themselves to transform and renew in other fields of life? 19 Whatever misgivings lurked in his mind, he was still loyal.

Yet what did he find when the Bayreuth performances began? I give the bare, brutal facts, as they are reported by his sister and other credible witnesses. The main distinction of a large number of those present seemed to be that they were able to pay the necessary nine hundred marks for the twelve performances. Some of the auditors bore great names--the German Emperor was present, and he drew a whole court in his train. Splendid toilets were observable--Marienbad in particular seemed to have sent over a goodly number of its stoutish habitués (bankers and men of leisure, with their wives): on round paunches dangled heavy gold chains, on high-swelling bosoms shone luxurious jewels, costly diamonds. In fact the audiences were not unlike those of a first night at the opera generally. There was, it is true, a sprinkling of notable painters and musicians; and then there were fanatical Wagnerians, with pale faces and waving manes, who were almost ready to threaten violence, if criticism of the master or his work was made. Intrigues between artists were to be overheard (or heard of)--exclamations of wounded vanity. In general there was a kind of artificiality in the enthusiasm. The performances themselves were halting. Wagner was too preoccupied and hurried to have any real intercourse with Nietzsche, and contented himself with loud and extravagant praise of his book-and this jarred on Nietzsche and untuned him the more. Moreover, the master appeared in an unpleasantly realistic light-the air of repose was lacking, he had become stage-manager and even journalist; he was flattering national passions, too, showing himself anti-French and anti-Semitic. It was hard for Nietzsche to endure; and after the first performances, he went off into the Bohemian Forest, burying himself at Klingenbrunn for ten days, and noting down a few thoughts in a new vein. Then he came back to Bayreuth and tried again--but to no avail, and, before the cycle of representations had finished, he left the town never to return. It was the beginning of the end.

If we let this episode stand for more than it did at the moment, for the whole break with Wagner, we may say that the causes of the break were threefold: he was disappointed with the man, with his art, and with his way of thinking. Wagner had already proved at times to be a somewhat imperious and exacting nature. At the start Nietzsche responded to whatever was asked, and was even tender of the master's peculiarities. He yielded slightly, for instance, to Wagner's anti-Semitism, though going contrary to his own instincts in doing so. 20 Once, whether for this or other reasons--in any case, to avoid giving offense to Wagner--he gave up a projected journey with a son of Mendelssohn's to Greece; 21 and at other times he joined with friends in considering how best to spare one who was so easily touched. 22 But the time came when he felt that Wagner was too insistent--suspicious, too, where there was no need to be; if he made any assertion of independence, Wagner seemed to resent it. The difficulties were smoothed over while Wagner was near at hand in Tribschen, but when he removed to Bayreuth ( 1872), misunderstandings sometimes lingered. Invitations involving so long a journey he could not always accept, and sometimes he was not exactly in the mood for accepting them. We find him touched, for instance, on hearing that Wagner had spoken coolly, and as if disappointed, about "The Use and Harm of History for Life," because there had been no mention of his [ Wagner's] special cause in it; and once, when a friend told him that Wagner was taking it ill that he had not accepted an invitation, he replied that while he could not conceive how any one could be more loyal to Wagner than he was (if he could be, he would be), yet he must keep his freedom in minor points and abstain from too frequent personal intercourse to the very end of preserving his loyalty in the higher sense. 23 Two or three other circumstances may be mentioned. During one of his visits to Bayreuth, Nietzsche played the "Triumphlied" of Brahms, which he particularly liked. Wagner was not pleased, and fell into a passion at Nietzsche's praise--showed himself "not great," as Nietzsche remarked at the time to his sister. Then Wagner's stories and jokes in broad Saxon sometimes offended him--and when Wagner saw this, he seemed to ply them the more. In truth Wagner was a little of a Bohemian in manners and conversation, and his occasional rudeness and coarseness wounded Nietzsche's ideal sentiment about him. 24 Further, though, as stated, Nietzsche was slightly influenced, he could not really follow Wagner in his aversion for the Jews. Nothing perhaps shows better his natural nobility than his practically lifelong superiority to anti-Semitism--for though many excuses can be given for this sentiment, no noble nature can share it.

But doubts were also insinuating themselves as to Wagner's art. Was there not acting in it at times, striving for effect? The ecstatic seemed often violent, was not sufficiently naïve. 25

Moreover, was Wagner really true to the theory of the relation between music and words? "Danger lest the motives for the movement of the music should lie in the movements and actions of the drama, lest the music should be led instead of leading." Were there even possible contradictions in the idea of "music drama"? 26 The relation between music and words might be organic in a song, but how about a drama? 27 The idea hovered in Nietzsche's mind of a symphony covering itself with a drama, as a melody does with the words of a song--there were suggestions of such a thing in the old Dionysian chorus; 28 but Wagner, he felt, was inclining to make the music a means of illustrating the drama--and this was to forget the lyric, Dionysiae quality of music altogether, and to bring "music-drama" down to the level of old-time opera (only linking the music a little closer to the words and situations, and dispensing with trills and arias that had no sense). In time Nietzsche came to the clear, positive conclusion that either the music must dominate, or the drama must dominate, that parallelism was out of the question; 29 and now he has feelings that way, and thinks that with Wagner the organic unity is in the drama and often fails to reach the music. 30 Wagner himself once said, "The nature of the subject could not induce me, in sketching my scenes, to consider in advance their adaptability to any particular musical form, the kind of musical treatment being, in every case, suggested by the scenes themselves." 31 So far as this was really Wagner's practice, the conclusion is inevitable: he starts with scenes, i.e., dramatic material, and then finds musical tones appropriate to them, which is just to reverse the method and theory of music in which Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer before him, believed--and, as Nietzsche at first supposed, Wagner also.

Besides all this, Nietzsche came to have doubts as to Wagner's general attitude and way of thinking. Was he maintaining his old heroic attitude to existing German life? Was he not compromising, making too much of the Emperor's favor, making too much of Bismarck, becoming too patriotic? 32 And did they really think alike, he and Wagner, as to the culture to be? Was Wagner aiming at a renovated humanity, or was his art rather a way of escaping from reality, an end in itself? He puts down propositions like these as if to look at, consider them: Wagner's art is something like a flight from this worldit denies, does not transfigure the world. Directly it does not work morally, and indirectly it has a quietistic effect. Wagner only wants to get a place for his art in the world. The kind of culture that would be introduced would resemble that of a monastery--its disciples would be a sect, without part in the world around them. There would come a sort of Christianity over again--was not this art a sort of pale dying Christianity, with plenty of magical gleams and enchantments, but little clear sunlight? Can a man actually be made better by this art and by Schopenhauer's philosophy? 33 Perhaps Nietzsche was hardly aware in all this how far he was changing--moving away from the view that reality was essentially unalterable and simply to be made endurable by art. A couple of years after the Bayreuth opening, he said, "Wagnerians do not wish to change anything in themselves, live in disgust with what is stale, conventional, brutal. Art is to lift them as by magic above it all for the time being. Weakness of will" 34 --but he has a presentiment to this effect now. He is also uneasy about Wagner's religious tendencies. He had thought him atheist, like himself and Schopenhauer, 35 had said, " Wagner is a modern man and is not able to encourage himself by believing in God. He does not cherish the idea that he is in the hands of a good Being, but he believes in himself." 36 But now he has to own that Wagner's art is in principle the old religion over again, "idealized Christianity of the Catholic sort." 37 He had been trying to put a favorable interpretation on the reactionary elements in him--the place given to the marvelous, to mediæval Christianity, to Buddhism, as well as to princes 38 --but at last they proved too much. We today can see that "Parsifal" was a further, more pronounced expression of the same tendencies; but "Parsifal" came later.

A variety of dissatisfactions and doubts were thus at work in Nietzsche's mind, and the revulsion at Bayreuth in 1876 was only a culminating episode. j

I have said that Nietzsche left Bayreuth never to return. This does not mean, however, that there was an open break with Wagner. The two met in Sorrento the following autumn, and their relations were outwardly much as of old. But the old warm sympathy no longer existed between them--and one incident estranged Nietzsche the more. Wagner was now at work on "Parsifal," and, as if aware that the composition of a play of just this character was hardly in keeping with the views he had so often expressed, he sought to explain to Nietzsche certain religious sensations he had been having, certain inclinations to Christian dogmas--as, for instance, how he had been edified by the celebration of the Lord's Supper. Nietzsche could only listen in silence--it seemed to him impossible that one who had been so outspoken and so thorough in his unbelief could go back; he thought that Wagner was practising on himself. It was another disillusionment. He noted down: "I am not able to recognize any kind of greatness which does not include honesty with oneself; playing a part inspires me with disgust; if I discover anything of this order in a man, all his performances count for nothing; I know that they have everywhere down at bottom this theatrical character." 39 k Despite even this there was no open break. This came two years later still--and in connection with a singular coincidence. Nietzsche had finished a new book, Human, All-too-Human (the first product of what we may call his second period), and was sending copies of it to Wagner and Frau Cosima in Bayreuth, along with some humorous verses of dedication. But exactly at the same time there came to him from Wagner a beautiful copy of the text of "Parsifal," with the inscription, "Cordial greetings and wishes to his dear friend Friedrich Nietzsche," and signed "Richard Wagner, Oberkirchenrath [member of the high ecclesiastical consistory]." The ecclesiastical reference was too much for Nietzsche, and it seemed almost like a challenge. Referring to the incident ten years afterwards, he said, "This crossing of two books--it seemed as if I heard with it an ominous sound. Was it not as if swords crossed? . . . At any rate we both took it so; for we both kept silent." 40 . So far as I know, there was no direct interchange between the two men thereafter. Wagner was undoubtedly displeased by the new manner and tone of Nietzsche's book, its almost exclusively critical character, and Nietzsche on his side could only say to himself, "Incredible! Wagner has become pious." Parsifal, now in its final form, was in truth not only Christian, it was Buddhistic, 41 --it was a glorification of celibacy, and implied an aversion to the fundamental premises of life; it was pessimist, Schopenhauerian, in the worse senses of those words. For by this time--and really, except for a brief space, always-life was a supreme end to Nietzsche, and he revolted against those who would unnerve and weaken it. He thought they exercised a corrupting influence, and he felt the odor of corruption in "Parsifal." Once he exclaims, "The preaching of chastity [i.e., celibacy] is an incitement to the unnatural: I despise every one who does not feel "'Parsifal'" as an attack on morality" 42 (he is thinking, of course, of those who have some understanding of "Parsifal," not of the common run of our opera-goers]. Wagner's influence, he feared, would ultimately coalesce with the stream which arises "the other side of the mountains and knows also how to flow over mountains." Parsifal was not, to him, a genuine German product, it was " Rome --Rome's faith without words." 43 l

The whole experience shook Nietzsche profoundly. In fact it became a turning-point--perhaps the great turning-point in his life. His faith in the future, in art as a redeeming agency and preparation for the future, his faith, I had almost said, in himself, hung on Wagner. "As I went further on by myself," he wrote later, "I trembled; before long I was ill, more than ill, namely weary--weary from the irresistible disillusionment about everything that remains as inspiration to us modern men, about the everywhere wasted force, labor, hope, youth, love, weary from disgust with the whole idealistic falsification and effeminacy of conscience, which had again won the victory over one of our bravest; weary finally and not least from the grief of a pitiless suspicion--that I was henceforth condemned to mistrust more deeply, to despise more deeply, to be more deeply alone, than ever before. For I had no one but Richard Wagner." 44 He confessed to a friend, "I have experienced so much in relation to this man and his art: it was a whole long passion---I find no other word for it. The renunciation required, the finding myself again which at last became necessary, belongs to the hardest and most melancholy things that fate has brought me." 45 His mistake had been, he bitterly said, that he came to Bayreuth with an ideal. 46 He had painted an "ideal monstrosity"; "I have had the fate of idealists, whose object is spoiled for them by the very fact that they have made so much of it." 47

Yes, Nietzsche was ill--ill spiritually and ill physically; indeed he had more or less suffered physically ever since his period of service in the Franco-Prussian war, as noted in the opening chapter. In the summer of 1875 he had been obliged to go to cure in the Black Forest--and now ( 1876) he has to ask for a year's leave from University. m This is granted him with marked signs of favor from the authorities, and he goes to Italy.

SECOND PERIOD CHAPTER IX GENERAL MARKS OF THE SECOND PERIOD I NIETZSCHE (now at the age of thirty-two) was not only ill, but self-distrustful--he scarcely knew whether he had a task any more or the right to one. 1 And as a physician on occasion sends his patients into new surroundings, so he, physician and patient in one, now sends himself to a new climate, in both the spiritual and physical senses of that word. 2 He had been living, he felt, in an atmosphere overcharged with idealism and emotion; a cold water-cure was necessary. 3 . He found himself with an uncommon desire to see men and their motives as they actually were. 4 lie also wanted to see himself more objectively--was ready to take sides against himself, if need be, and to be hard with himself; he had had his fill of illusions. Even the emotional attitude to objects in nature went against him. 5 He understood the mental evolution of Sophocles--the aversion he in time acquired to pomp and show. 6 In other words, the craving for knowledge, for a cool, clear view of things, became uppermost in him; ideals, ideal aims, great expectations took a subordinate place. "Unmercifully I strode over wished-for and dreamed-of things which up to that time my youth had loved, unmercifully I went on my way, the way of knowledge at any cost." 7 "I took sides against myself, and for all that gave me pain and was hard."

All this, however, implies that though shaken and depressed he was not disheartened. The strong will for life was still in him. He afterward realized that he had simply passed from one stage of his life to another, and that the new was as natural, and, in a way, as healthful as the old. As early as 1878 he could write: "I feel as if I had recovered from an illness; I think with unspeakable sweet emotion of Mozart Requiem. I relish simple foods again." 9 Again, after referring to his having taken sides against himself and his predilection, "A much greater piece of good fortune thereby came to me than that on which I willingly turned my back." 10 Later he makes the general observation: "The snake that cannot shed its skin perishes. Even so with spirits hindered from changing their opinions--they cease to be spirit." 11

II It is only summing this up formally to say that Nietzsche now passes into a new period--one which, though unintelligible apart from the first, is strongly contrasted with it. It lasts, roughly speaking, five or six years (from 1876 to 1881 or 1882). The literary output of it is fragmentary; at least it is made up of fragments--we have no longer connected treatises like The Birth of Tragedy, or "The Use and Harm of History for Life." Aside from the demands of his university work, he seems unable to write connectedly. He notes down his thoughts at odd moments--often when out on his walks or climbing. As the jottings accumulate, he selects from them, works them over, gives them a semblance of order, and makes a book. The three books which belong wholly to this period, and two more, which may be said to make the transition to the next, consist of aphorisms, sometimes covering three or four pages, but for the most part so brief that several of them appear on a page. They are Human, All-too-Human ( 1878), Mixed Opinions and Sayings ( 1879), The Wanderer and his Shadow ( 1879), 12 the transitional volumes being Dawn of Day ( 1881), Joyful Science ( 1882). The first of these books follows a certain order, treating successively of "First and Last Things," "The History of the Moral Sentiments," "The Religious Life," "Art and Artists," "Signs of Higher and Lower Culture," "Man in Intercourse with Others," "Wife and Child," "The State," "Man Alone with Himself"; and the two succeeding volumes follow, though less certainly, the same order. In Dawn of Day and Joyful Science, order of any kind is but slightly perceptible.

III Before taking up the new views in detail, let me note a few general marks of the period. In the first place, the spirit of change is on Nietzsche. He has known slight changes before; now it is a great change. Even his perspective of moral values is somewhat altered. He does not think, for instance, so highly of loyalty as he had. "I have not the talent for being loyal, and, what is worse, not even the vanity to wish to appear so." 13 He raises the general question whether we are irrevocably bound by vows of allegiance to a God, a prince, a party, a woman, a religious order, an artist, a thinker,--whether they were not hypothetical vows, with the unexpressed presupposition that the object to which we consecrated ourselves was really what we supposed it to be. Are we obligated, he asks, to be loyal to our errors, even when we see that by this loyalty we inflict injury on our higher self? "No, there is no law, no obligation of this sort; we must become traitors, practise disloyalty, surrender our ideals." And if it be asked why those remaining faithful to a conviction are admired, while others who change are despised, he fears the answer must be that only motives of vulgar advantage or personal fear are supposed to inspire change--a poor tribute, he thinks, to the intellectual significance of convictions. 14 Indeed, he suspects that passion and inertia have much to do with unchangeable convictions, and that the intellect, aspiring to be cool and just, is bound to be to this extent their enemy. He puts his ideal in words like these: "From the fire [of passion] set free, we move on impelled by the intellect from opinion to opinion, through alternation of parties, as noble traitors to all things that can in any way be betrayed--and yet without a feeling of guilt." 15

Naturally he has a fresh sense of the uncertainty of things. We would not die for our opinions, he remarks, we are not sure enough of them--though we might for the right to change them. a 16 He has even the feeling of being more a wanderer than a traveler--for a traveler has a destination, and he for the time has none. b 17 He tells a parable, to which he gives the title, "The worst fate of a prophet": "For twenty years he labored to convince his contemporaries of his claims--at last he succeeded; but in the meantime his opponents had also succeeded--he was no longer convinced about himself." 18 He says (and here, too, we may be sure, he is thinking of himself): "This thinker needs no one to refute him: he suffices to that end himself." 19 I confess that in reading him I have sometimes had the ironical reflection that he has an advantage for the student over most thinkers, in that you have only to read him far enough to find him criticising himself!--most philosophers leaving the most necessary task of criticising them to others. Somewhat in this line he suggests an unusual ethics of intellectual procedure. "We criticise a thinker more sharply when he advances a proposition that is displeasing to us; and yet it would be more reasonable to do this, when his proposition is pleasing" 20 --so easily, he means, do our likes and dislikes take us in. This is perhaps also what he means in the paradox: "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than falsehoods" 21 --too much passion, interest, will to believe lurk in "convictions." From a like point of view, he finds practical occupation dangerous. "He who has much to do keeps his general views and standpoints almost unchanged." This is true even if a person "works in the service of an idea; he will no longer test the idea itself, he has no longer the time for doing so; yes, it is against his interest to regard it as in general still discussable." 22 And yet, he asks, "wherein does the greatness of a character consist, but in ability to take sides in favor of truth even against himself?" 23 "Never," he charges us, "hold back something, or hide from thyself what can be urged against thy thoughts! Vow to thyself! It belongs to the first honesty of thought. Thou must every day conduct thy campaign against thyself. A victory and a fortress won are not merely thy affair, but truth's--and also thy defeat is not merely thy affair!" 24 In much the same spirit he praises the strictness and severity of science. He thinks that one who devotes himself to scientific work does not look for approval of his success, but only for censure of his failures--like the soldier. 25 He points out the less noble motives in scholarly procedure: "One person holds fast to a view, because he imagines that he has come on it himself, another because he has learned it with labor and is proud to have grasped it--both then from vanity." 26

We hear tones of irony, too. With a humiliating sense of disillusionment, he, as it were, takes it out in extravagances. He admitted in later years that in reaction from youthful enthusiasms one easily goes too far; "one is angry on account of one's youthful self-deception, as if it had been a sort of dishonest blindness, and by way of compensation is for a long time unreasonable and mistrustful toward oneself and on one's guard against all beautiful feelings." 27 He speaks almost like a cynic at times of the part which unreason plays in human affairs, 28 and once quotes, not without malicious pleasure, a parody, which he calls the most serious he ever heard: "In the beginning was unreason, and the unreason was with God, and was God (divine)." 29 Particularly does he let his irony play on idealists: they put their rainbow colors on everything; if they are thrown out of their heaven, they make out of hell an ideal--they are incurable. 30 He is disgusted with his own previous moral arrogance; he wants to have a better knowledge of what he had despised--to be juster to his own time, of which he had said so many hard things. 31 For all this, he shows his identity with his former self in speaking of the power to lift things into the ideal as man's fairest power, though he adds that we should not let it tyrannize over us, since if we do, truth will some day leave us, declaring "thou liar from the beginning, what have I to do with thee?" 32

His strictly independent career now begins. Up to this time, he has been largely under the shadow of Schopenhauer and Wagner. Though never their slave, he now first stands quite on his own feet. c We find interesting general remarks on education, in which he puts what we receive from others in a secondary place. The young man, he notes, impatient of results, takes his picture of men and things ready-made from some philosopher or poet--he learns much thereby, but not a great deal about himself. So far as he is to be a thinker, however, he must educate himself. The process of education at others' hands is either an experiment on something unknown, or else a kind of leveling to bring the new being into harmony with prevailing habits and customs; in either case it is a task that does not belong to a thinker, but to parents and teachers, whom some one with audacious honesty has called nos ennemis naturels. It is only after one has been "educated" the longest while, that one discovers oneself--and then a thinker may well be helpful, not as a teacher, but as one who has taught himself and has experience. 33 Nietzsche even raises the question whether in this age of books teachers of the ordinary sort are not almost dispensable. 34 As few persons as possible, he exclaims between productive minds and those hungry and ready to receive! Let us look on the teacher as at best a necessary evil, like the tradesman--an evil to be reduced to its smallest possible proportions! 35 Views like these, half jest, half earnest, are the reflection of his personal experience. It is not that he quite turns his back on his former teachers--after he has once found himself, he thinks there had been no harm in being among the enthusiasts and living in their equatorial zone for a while: he had in this way taken a step towards that cosmopolitanism of mind which without presumption might say, "Nothing belonging to the mind is any longer foreign to me." 36 The very extremes of a man, he feels, may further the truth--now we see one side of a thing and now the other, we cannot very well see both at once. 37

I have said that now Nietzsche is first independent. The independence, however, shows itself more negatively than positively--the period is a critical rather than a constructive one. There is more analysis in it--particularly psychological analysis --than anything else. "Reflection about the human, the all-too human, or, as the scientific phrase is, the psychological view"-such is in effect a description of its first and most characteristic book. 38 He is not so much in things and movements, as looking at them, above all at the human element in them. If he has construction in mind, it is principally in seeing what there is to construct out of--and in ruthlessly rejecting unsound material, all the vain imaginations of men. Sometimes it is called a positivistic stage--and there is a plain reaction against far flights of speculation; he wants life to rest on what is sure, demonstrable, not on the remote, indefinite, cloud-like 39 --but he is not positivist in any party sense. So it may be called a scientific stage--for at no other time does he give so high a place to science; d still he does not become master in any particular branch of scientific knowledge, e and he thinks that the best and healthiest thing in science is, as in the mountains, the keen air that blows there. 40

Partly perhaps because of the new turn his mind is taking, he appreciates the English as he never had before. He even ventures to say that they are ahead of all other peoples in philosophy, natural science, history, in the field of discovery, and in the spreading of culture, 41 and he speaks with admiration of the distinguished scholars among them who write scientific books for the people 42 --men, we must suppose, of the type of Huxley and Tyndall. The French, too, come in for praise. We find frequent references to Montaigne, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyére, Fontenelle, Vauvenargues, Chamfort. His style of composition is perhaps influenced by his study of these writers, for it has noticeably gained in simplicity and clearness, and is sometimes exquisitely polished--he owns himself that it has been often swollen and turgid before. He dedicates Human,All-too-Human All-too-Human to the memory of a Frenchman, the hundredth anniversary of whose death was about to occur, Voltaire, calling him "one of the greatest liberators of the mind."

IV It is a period which Professor Ziegler calls his "leanest." ProfessorRiehl, on the other hand, finds it in many respects the most attractive and valuable; and Jacob Burckhardt pronounced Human, All-too-Human his "sovereign book." Much depends on the point of view. If one has above all the critical temper, if one is bent on analysis and skeptical of enthusiasm, if one distrusts metaphysics and high-soaring aims, in other words if one is a typical scholar or scientific man, the writings of this period are likely to appeal to him more than any others. Nietzsche is now anti-metaphysical, anti-mystical, anti-romantic α? l'outrance. His passion for actuality makes him explore all the corners of life where the ideal throws a glamor over the real and rout it out. Or, to use a sardonic metaphor which he himself employs in a later retrospect, he lays one error after another "on ice"--with the result that it is "not refuted, but freezes." It is so, he says, with "the genius," with "the saint," with "the hero"; it is so finally with "belief," with so-called "convictions"; even "pity" cools off considerably, and "the thing in itself" freezes almost everywhere. 43 Yet a deep-seeing poet has said,

We all are changed by slow degrees, All but the basis of the soul,"

and it is true of Nietzsche. Actuality is not the whole of possible existence, and the passion for actuality was never the whole nor the deepest thing in Nietzsche. Later on he came to realize this distinctly. His present phase is really one of transition--Riehl calls it an interlude. f 44 All the same, we may as well attend to it for the time, as if no other were to follow--in fact be like Nietzsche himself, who at first does not know whether anything more is to come. He ventures a summary description of how men develop intellectually during their first thirty years:--Beginning with religious impulses as children and perhaps reaching the height of their impressionability at the age of ten, tending thereafter in a more scientific direction and keeping their religion in a weaker, pantheistic form, they at last leave the ideas of God, immortality, and the like quite behind, but yield to the charms of a metaphysical philosophy. In course of time, however, this too becomes incredible. On the other hand, art appears to last, and for a while the metaphysics lingers as a form of art or as a transfiguring artistic mood. But the scientific sense grows ever more imperative and conducts the full-grown man to natural science and history and especially into strictest methods of thinking, while to art falls an ever milder and more modest significance. 45 Nietzsche thinks that this is a kind of epitome of the intellectual history of humanity--it is at least, we may say, a summary of his own personal history down to and into his second period.

Nietzsche had a friend at this time--really since 1874--by the name of Paul Rιe. He was a positivist of the French and English type. He had written a book, Psychological Observations, which impressed Nietzsche, and during the winter of 1876-77 they were together in Sorrento, where Rιe wrote another book, The Origin of the Moral Sentiments, a copy of which he presented to Nietzsche with the inscription, "To the father of this book from its most grateful mother." g Undoubtedly Nietzsche influenced him, and yet he as certainly influenced Nietzsche. He seems to have particularly directed Nietzsche's attention to Pascal and Voltaire and Prosper Mιrimιe; he was already in that world of historical study and of fine psychological analysis which Nietzsche was to make his own, and Nietzsche once humorously dubbed his new standpoint "Rιealismus." Yet a radically determining influence may be doubted. h Nietzsche's general positivistic tendency really began as far back as when his first doubts arose as to Schopenhauer's metaphysical interpretation of the will. He speaks, indeed, of his "new philosophy," 46 but he is aware that "nature makes no leaps," and says that it is the task of the biographer to remember this principle. 47 This second period is only relatively, not absolutely distinguished from the first. i

CHAPTER X GENERAL OUTLOOK, AND ULTIMATE VIEW OF THE WORLD I I CONSIDER first Nietzsche's general outlook. The tragic background of existence still remains for him; I forbear to quote fresh and varied statements to that effect. 1 His views of the older Greek life as somber, apart from the influence of the myths, is also continued; only through art did man's lot become enjoyable. 2 Nietzsche is now, however, in an unhappy state of mind about art. He has had a disillusioning experience, and art is under a shadow--to this extent, an easement and consolation is gone. It is not that he expressly abandons his former view, but it ceases to have relevance to the existing situation. 3 For the moment he does not know but that the days of art are over. 4 In answer to the question, why it continues in its customary forms--music, theaters, picture-galleries, novels, poetry --he says in a matter-of-fact and somewhat cynical way that idle people find it hard to pass their time without it. He adds that if the needs of these people were not met, either they would not strive so zealously for leisure, and envy of the rich would become rarer--which itself would be a great gain--or else they would employ their leisure in thinking a little--something one can learn and unlearn--thinking, for example, about the sort of lives they are leading, their social relations, their pleasures; in either case, everybody, with the exception of the artists, would be better off. 5 He has more or less satire on artists themselves, or at least criticism of them. Men of science are the nobler natures; artists are effeminate in comparison 6 -and he puts himself out of their category, saying that they "find us non-artists a little too sober." 7 Poetry and music alike receive slighting comments. Poets are not worth as much as they seem to be: they throw a veil over ideas, and we have to pay for the veil and for our curiosity to get behind it. 8 Their thoughts often use a festive wagon of rhythm, because of inability to go afoot. 9 He doubts whether it is expedient for philosophers to quote from them, citing Homer's dictum, "Singers lie much." 10 He suggests that poetry may have had a utilitarian and even superstitious origin--rhythm, like musical melody and the dance, being among primitive peoples a way of pleasing the Gods. 11 As for music, he systematically forbade himself for a time all music of a romantic sort, thinking that it begot too many desires and longings, made the mind unclear, feminized, its "eternal feminine" drawing us--down! 12 a He has even occasional sarcasm for the genius. A thinker who takes himself in this way may, by begetting distrust in the cautious and sober ways of science, be an enemy to truth 13 -Nietzsche lays stress, as he never has before, on talents and industry. 14 b If ever he speaks of "genius" admiringly, he begs us to remember that we must keep the term free of all mythological and mystical associations." 15 The danger is that surrounded by incense, the genius begins to think himself some. thing superhuman; he develops feelings of irresponsibility, of exceptional rights and superiority to criticism." 16 Nietzsche mentions Napoleon in this connection; but the man who is principally in his mind is undoubtedly Wagner. Professor Riehl asserts that wherever the word "artist" occurs in Human, All-too-Human, Nietzsche had first written "Wagner." 17 In fact he contemplated a new book on Wagner--one that would in a way expiate his former laudation (for he felt that he had led many astray); and now that Wagner was victorious, he could criticise him without violating his rules of literary warfare 18 --extended preparatory notes for the book are to be found in his published remains. 19 He did not, of course, completely identify the general with the particular--he still feels the greatness of the real genius, 20 sees the place of the poet, and gives a beautiful picture of the poetry of the future (as contrasted with the unripeness and excess mistaken for force and nature now), 21 is not even without appreciation for music of the right sort; 22 c but in general, art recedes into the background of his thought, and the realities of the world are faced in their unrelieved somberness and bareness.

We might expect that in such circumstances Nietzsche would become pessimist absolutely. But this was not the case. He still has the Dionysiae will to live against whatever odds (though saying little of Dionysus); he has even a certain pleasure in probing life, partly to prove what he can endure and come out victorious over, and partly for the mere sake of knowing, the joy of energizing his intellectual self. In a most interesting preface to second editions of Mixed Opinions and Sayings and The Wanderer and his Shadow written some years later, he explains his peculiar type of pessimism. It was a pessimism which does not fear the terrible and problematical in existence, but rather seeks it; it is the antithesis of the pessimism of life-weariness, as truly as of all romantic illusion; it is a brave pessimism, a pessimism that has a good will to pessimism, 23 i.e., as I should say, it is practically not pessimism at all. We have seen Nietzsche ready at the start to justify any kind of a world--no matter how irrational and unmoral-which could be ζsthetically treated and turned into a picture; and we now find him ready to justify any kind of a world that can be turned into an object of knowledge. He thinks there is easement in this attitude too. We can transcend whatever is painful in experience by an objective contemplation in which pain has no part and the pleasure of knowing alone is felt, as a sick man may for a moment forget his sickness in seeking to analyze and comprehend it. He speaks in so many words of psychological observation as one of the means of easing the burden of life. 24 The knowledge even of the most ugly reality is beautiful. 25 He has an appreciation of Socrates and his intellectual joy, such as he had not shown before; 26 he understands Goethe's rejoicing in the world as a man of science; 27 he notes with satisfaction that thinkers as opposed as Plato and Aristotle agreed in finding the highest happiness for men and Gods in knowing, and even adds, "The happiness of the knower increases the beauty of the world and makes all that exists sunnier; knowledge puts its beauty not only around things, but permanently into things." 28 d He himself lives on in order ever better to know; his ideal is a free, fearless hovering over men, customs, laws, and traditional valuations; and in such a life, though he has renounced much, perhaps nearly all, that would seem valuable to other men, he is happy. 29 e Knowledge is the real end of existence--with the "great intellect" the goal of culture is reached. Life "an instrument and means of knowledge," life "not a duty or a fatality or a deception," but "an experiment of one seeking to know"--this is now his view of it, his justification of it. 30 f He goes so far as to say, "Knowledge has become for us a passion, which is alarmed at no sacrifice and at bottom fears nothing but its own extinction. . . . Granting even the possibility of humanity's perishing from this passion for knowledge--even this does not overcome us! . . . Are not love and death sisters? Yes, we hate barbarism--we should prefer the destruction of humanity to the recession of knowledge! And finally: if humanity does not perish of a passion, it will perish of a weakness--which should we prefer? This is the supreme question. Should we rather have it end in fire and light, or in the sand?" 31 g

II And yet the concrete results of Nietzsche's facing of reality, with no aid or comfort from art or metaphysical faith, are not pleasant for most of us to contemplate--were not indeed pleasant at the start for him. 32 How gladly, he says, should we exchange false ideas about a God who requires good of us, who sees whatever we do or think, who loves us and wishes our best good in all adversity, for truths that were equally salutary, quieting, and beneficent! But they are not to be had; philosophy at best gives us metaphysical plausibilities, and these at bottom are just as untrue. There is no way of going back to the old ideas without soiling the intellectual conscience. It is a painful situation, but without pain one cannot lead and teach humanity, and woe to him who aspires to do this and has not his conscience pure! 33 h This does not mean that Nietzsche is without appreciation of the services of religion in the past. He speaks of the deep indebtedness of music ( Palestrina and Bach) to religion, notes the impossibility of the blossoming of another art like that of the "Divine Comedy," Raphael's paintings, Michael Angelo's frescoes, Gothic cathedrals, and does not regret that he lingered a while in the precincts of metaphysics and metaphysical art, and comes into the purely scientific camp a little later than some of his contemporaries. 34 All the same, religion and artist-metaphysics are now past for him. i One must have loved religion and art, he declares, as one loves mother and nurse--otherwise one cannot become wise; but one must also be able to see beyond them, to grow away from them--if one remains under their ban, one does not understand them. 35 The simple faith that all goes well for us under a loving God, so that there is no occasion to take life hard or complain, is the best and most vital remainder of the Christian movement, but with it Christianity passes into a gentle moralism--really it is the euthanasia of Christianity. 36 So confident, settled is his conviction that he declares that if a man's attitude to Christianity is not critical, we may as well turn our back on him. 37

In the absence of theistic or metaphysical faith, the world becomes aimless, essentially meaningless to him. It is a kind of welter--history is so, as well as nature. 38 He thinks that an unprejudiced investigator who searches out the development of the eye, and observes the forms it has in the lowest creatures and its gradual growth, comes to the conclusion that seeing was not an end aimed at, but simply happened, when chance brought the requisite apparatus together. 39 Even in man's inventions, accident, i.e., an accidental inspiration or thought, plays a part--only the accident does not happen to most men. 40 Reason itself may have come by accident into the world, i.e., in an irrational way. 41 For with chances of various kinds, it may sooner or later happen that some throws of the dice are so lucky that they have all the appearance of design; 42 the best kind of results may thus arise on occasion--happy hits, we may say, on nature's part. j Accordingly Nietzsche speaks of the chaos (rather than cosmos) of existence. 43 He does not mean that things happen without a cause, but apart from any plan or ordering thought: chance is the opposite of design, out of which correlation it means nothing. 44 Chance happenings have causes behind them like everything else, and hence are necessitated like everything else. 45 Law in nature, however, he regards as a questionable conception. If people are fond of it, they must either be thinking that all natural things follow their law in free obedience--in which case they really admire the morality of nature--or else the idea of a Creative Mechanician delights them. The conception is really an attempt to humanize necessity--a last refuge of mythological fancy. 46

In this moving chaos man arises, with no end of causes behind him--but not from any superior design. 47 He arises, and he passes away--he is as perishable as any other creature. Some fancy that man is possessed of a soul in the sense of something separable from his bodily organization and capable of surviving it; Nietzsche does not think so. k "In former times the effort was to win a sense of the glory of man, by pointing to his divine origin: it is a forbidden way now, for at the door to it stands, along with other terrible creatures, the ape, who shows his teeth understandingly, as if to say: no further in this direction! So now we look in the opposite direction: the way whither humanity goes shall serve to show its glory and likeness to God. Alas, with this also nothing is proven! At the end of this way stands the funeral-urn of the last man and grave-digger (with the inscription 'nihil humani a me alienum puto'). However high humanity may have developed itself--and perhaps it will be lower at the end than at the beginning--there is no transition for it into a higher order, any more than there is an ascent to god-likeness and eternity for the ant and the earwig at the close of their 'earthly course.' Becoming draws having been in tow after it: why should there be an exception from this eternal play for some little planet, or again for a little species upon it! Away with such sentimentalities!" 48 Another passage is to similar effect. "In the midst of the ocean of becoming, we awake on an island which is not bigger than a boat, we adventuring and wandering birds, and look around us for a little while: we do so as quickly and as curiously as possible, for how quickly may a wind blow us away or a wave sweep over the island, so that nothing is left of us! But here, in this little space, we find other wandering birds and hear of earlier ones--and so we live a precious moment of knowing and of guessing, with happy flapping of wings and twittering with one another, and in spirit venture out on the ocean, no less proud than it."14. 49 One might turn these pictures into abstract philosophemes, but it is unnecessary; nor need one comment on their mournful undertone. Sometimes, indeed, our mortality is spoken of in a different tone. Nietzsche was a man to accept things as they are and make the best of them-and once, after saying that "we have lost one interest, the 'after death' question no longer concerns us," he speaks of this as "an unspeakable benefit, too recent to be fully appreciated." 50 He even asks if it is not shameless to wish an eternal continuance of ourselves. "Have you then no thought of all the rest of things that would have to endure you for all eternity, as they have endured you hitherto with a more than Christian patience?" 51 But I suspect that he makes a virtue of necessity in speaking in this way; his deeper feeling did not really change, and we shall come on traces of it in his last period. 52

Nietzsche views man largely in what I may call a physiological light. Our consciousness is not the core of our being-it is intermittent, waxes and wanes; as a late development of the organic, it is something imperfect and weak--it may lead astray as well as give help. 53 l Among the signs of progress in the nineteenth century is to be reckoned the placing of the health of the body before that of the soul, and conceiving the latter as resulting from, or at least conditioned by, the former. 54 A drop of blood too much or too little in the brain may make one's life unspeakably miserable and hard, so that we suffer more from this drop than Prometheus did from his vulture. 55 Varying foods may have varying spiritual effects. It is a question whether pessimism (of the ordinary type) may not be the after-effect of a wrong diet, the spread of Buddhism being an instance: 56 Nietzsche discourses especially on the danger of vegetarianism. 57 Possibly the European unrest of recent times may have to do with the fact that "our forefathers, the whole Middle Ages, thanks to the effect of German propensities on Europe, were given to drink; Middle Ages--that phrase signifies the alcoholic poisoning of Europe." 58 So fearfulness, from which so much evil comes in the world, is before all a physiological state. 59 Even the mental and moral disposition of those to whom the ascetic priest ministers may be explained physiologically; their "sinfulness" may be not so much fact, as an interpretation of fact, namely physiological depression. 60 For a similar reason the views of old age should not be treated too reverentially, even when they are those of a philosopher, nor are we to give too much weight to the judgments we form at the end of the day: fatigue and weariness may be unconsciously reflected in them. 61 Morality itself may have a varying tinge according to physiological conditions: the morality of increasing nerve-force is joyous and restless; that of diminishing nerve-force--in the evening or in the case of the sick or the aged--is of a passive, expectant, sad, or even gloomy character. 62 Philosophy may also vary, according as it springs from a deficiency or from a superabundance of life-energy. Every philosophy which ranks peace higher than war, every ethics which has a negative conception of happiness, every metaphysics and physics which recognizes a finale, some kind of an ultimate state, every predominant ζsthetic or religious longing for an apart, beyond, without, above, allows us to raise the question whether it was not sickness that inspired the philosopher. Indeed the unconscious disguising of physiological needs under the mantle of the objective, the ideal, and the purely spiritual goes shockingly far, and Nietzsche says that he has often asked himself whether, broadly speaking, philosophy has not been principally hitherto an interpretation of the body--and a misunderstanding of the body. 63

III Undoubtedly all this has a materialistic sound, and yet when we notice Nietzsche's ultimate philosophical views, we find that he is as far from materialism as ever. 64 This material organization on which our higher life is dependent is itself only statable in mental terms. Matter--the popular (and perhaps I might add, the popular scientific) notion of some kind of permanent self-existing substance--is illusory; it is as much an error as the God (being) of the Eleaties. 65 We deal with phenomena (mental images) in the whole range of our knowledge. One set of them is connected with another set--that is all we can say. We speak of cause and effect, but we simply describe in this way--we explain nothing. m The quality resulting from every chemical process is as much a wonder after as before; so is a continuation of motion; nobody has "explained" push. And how could we explain? We deal only with things that do not exist, i.e., lines, surfaces, bodies, atoms, divisible times, divisible spaces, all our own pictures and creations. Science is a humanizing of things--it is ourselves we learn to describe more accurately, as we describe things and their succession. Possibly, yes probably, there never is such a doubleness as we imply in speaking of cause and effect--there being before us in reality a continuum, from which we isolate now this piece and now that--just as, on the other hand, we think that we perceive motion, when we only conclude it, what we perceive being only isolated points. Our very imagery of cause and effect may thus prevent insight into the real connection. 66 All this is said by Nietzsche in general, but it applies to the point now in hand and shows that the assertions of the dependence of the mind upon the body must not be taken too literally. n

The fact is, so far as Nietzsche can see at present, we cannot get out of our mental being to explain it. Having concluded, after his analysis of Schopenhauer's metaphysical pretensions, that we do not know reality, but only our sensations or pictures of reality, he is as hopelessly shut in to subjectivism as Kant was. Our own actions are essentially unknown, as truly as outer objects are. 67 "In Prison"," he says, "There is absolutely no escaping, no way of slipping or stealing into the actual world. We are in our web, we spiders, and whatever we catch in it, we can catch nothing but what allows itself to be caught in our kind of web." 68 In another place he speaks of the mind as a mirror: "if we attempt to consider the mirror in itself, we discover nothing but the things in it; if we try to lay hold of the things, we come finally to nothing beyond the mirror." 69 "Why does not man see things as they are? He stands in the way of them; he covers the things." 70 Once he even raises the question whether there are any things independent of us, 71 --he only raises it, however, for his practically constant underlying belief is that independent realities exist, however unknown. His attitude is strikingly (I might say, unconsciously) exhibited in a comparison of the world of our experience to a dream, in the midst of which the dreamer becomes sufficiently awake to know that it is a dream, and yet feels that he must go on dreaming, as otherwise, like a sleep-walker who must dream on if he is not precipitously to fall, he might perish. 72 The dream (appearance, Schein) is spoken of indeed as the active, living thing--a world of independent reality is practically ignored. And yet the very fact that he speaks of a dream, and of becoming half-awake in it, shows that the idea of independent reality shimmers in the background of his mind, since a dream that is not contrasted with a waking state is not a dream at all.

Practically then in this second period Nietzsche ia shut up in the phenomenalist position, but with reservations or implica-] tions which keep us from calling him a phenomenalist. He says on the one hand: we have no knowledge of reality--every metaphysical thought is far from the truth; 73 even in religion, art, morality we do not touch the nature of the world in itself-no surmise (Ahnung) we can make takes us beyond the realm of ideas (Vorstellung); 74 while many have died for their convictions, it is probable that no one has ever sacrificed himself for the truth; 75 "philosophical systems" are shining mirages; 76 "metaphysics might be described as the science which treats of the fundamental errors of man, as if they were fundamental truths." 77 But, on the other hand, he always implies that things have another manner of existence than that which they have in us. Even when he asserts that this other manner of existence does not practically concern us and is as much a matter of indifference as a chemical analysis of the water would be to a sailor in a storm, he presupposes the other manner of existence; 78 even when he asserts that the questions of idealism and realism relate to a region where neither belief nor knowledge is necessary, a sort of nebulous swamp-land beyond the reach of investigation and reason, and pleads for our becoming good neighbors to the things that lie near, 79 he implies that the outlying region and swamp-land exist. Realistic implications are also evident in the strange suggestion that things as they exist in themselves may be far less significant than things as they appear, that the independent realities, which we covet so much to know, might, if we came on them, turn out so poor and empty that they would excite an Homeric laughter. 80

Indeed, he thinks that men have not ordinarily sought truth in the past, but simply ideas that would be serviceable to them-continuing a line of thought on which we have seen him starting in the earlier period. The antithesis is implied in a general remark like the following: "As soon as you wish to act, you must close the door to doubt--says the practical man. And do you not fear to be deceived in this way?--answers the theoretic man." 81 For all such warnings, however, the practical man goes on his way, and Nietzsche does not upbraid him. Truth may, of course, be useful, 82 but error may be useful too 83 -we have no guarantee that it is always the true that is helpful to life; there is no pre-established harmony between the two. 84 The illogical man has often been useful or even necessary-and so with the departure from perfect justice in judgments, so with error about the worth of life. 85 Illusions may be a source of force, and it might be well if there were two compartments in man's brain, one for illusions, the other for science to regulate them and keep them from doing harm. 86 Without two capital errors, belief in identity and belief in free-will, mankind, in any distinctive sense, would never have arisen-for, to mention only the second, its ground feeling is that man is free in a world of unfreedom, a marvelous exception, a superanimal, half a God. 87 Doubt, intellectual scrupulousness, only arise late, are always relatively weak factors in human life, and really can only be allowed a limited rτle there. 88 Philosophy itself--what has gone by that name--has ordinarily been animated by concern not so much for "truth," as for health, growth, power, life, and the future--Nietzsche knows that it is a daring proposition to throw out, but he ventures it. 89 Errors may even have a part in making reality--in making character, for instance, and in making history. 90 Pretend to a virtue (kindness, honor), and the result may be in time that you have it; 91 act on a belief, and you may win it--as Bφhler said to Wesley, Preach the faith till you have it, and then you will preach because you have it." 92 Errors, when useful to life, may in time become incorporated in the living organism and act as impulses there. 93 Yet errors are errors, whatever their effect, whatever their beneficence. The question of the usefulness of an idea is separate from that of its truth. 94 Not only does the agreeableness or comfort of an opinion prove nothing, its necessity to life proves nothing--among the conditions of life, error may be one. 95

CHAPTER XI ATTITUDE TO MORALS IN turning to Nietzsche's attitude to morals in this period, I find it convenient to distinguish between his views about morality and his own moral views. For morality may be taken as an historical phenomenon like any other, and studied and analyzed; and it is in fact the critical analysis of morality as an objective fact in history which now chiefly engages him. At the same time he puts forth ethical views of his own to a limited extent.

I First, then, as to historical morality. Here too as in the theoretic realm he comes on elements of illusion. Man thinks he is free, and thereby distinguished from the animal world; notions of responsibility, of desert, of guilt, habits of praising and blaming, of rewarding and punishing, arise. But Nietzsche sees no way out of determinism. Causes lie behind human actions as behind all other events in nature. That in given circumstances a given individual might have acted otherwise than as he did is something he cannot admit; and it is only turning this around to say that the consciousness of freedom is illusory. Kant and Schopenhauer had saved themselves from this consequence by postulating a metaphysical being for man--saying that while as a phenomenon in time his actions are determined, his real being is timeless and not subject to the laws of phenomenal succession. But Nietzsche has now left metaphysical views behind (at least, they no longer count for him)--and this way of escape is not open. a

Seeing illusion in free-will is nothing novel, b and if there is any novelty in Nietzsche's procedure at this point, it is in the thoroughgoing way in which he follows up the consequences of the admission. I mention them simply as he states them--and he hardly more than states them, deeming extended argamentation superfluous. The consequences are far from agreeable in some cases. For example, responsibility goes, and he calls it a bitter drop--"the bitterest which one bent on knowing must swallow." 1 Through feelings of responsibility man has lifted himself out of his animality; it was a necessary illusion ( "Moral ist Noihlόge"). 2 Yet the conclusion is inevitable: without freedom, no responsibility. We are as responsible for our dreams as for our waking conduct--that is, we are responsible for neither. Cruel men are no more responsible for what they do, than granite is for being granite. 3 Guilt also goes. Although judges of witches and witches themselves have been convinced of their guilt, there was no guilt, and it is so with guilt of every kind. 4 Desert of praise or blame goes (which is not saying that either may not be dealt out for effect); 5 c and so with praising and blaming ourselves. Bad conscience is like a dog biting against a stone--a stupidity. 6 Giving way to remorse is to add to our first folly a second; if we have done harm, let us do good--this is the better way. 7 d Indeed, things being necessarily what they are, "wrong" in any absolute sense disappears from the universe, and "ought," as contradictory to what is, becomes meaningless. 8 All actions are innocent; even the emancipated individual who becomes "pious" again (a type Nietzsche particularly dislikes) only does what he has to do--though it may be a sign of degeneration going on within him. 9 Revolutionary and more or less unwelcome as all this is, Nietzsche sees compensations, and in some ways has a sense of relief--for the dark shadow of sin vanishes and the world is clothed in innocence again. 10 Later on he says along this same general line, though with a special shade of meaning [he has been speaking of the liberating effect of comparative studies], "We understand all, we experience all, we have no longer hostile feeling in us. . . .'All is good'--it costs us effort to deny. We suffer, if we are ever so unintelligent as to become party against a thing"; he even suggests that in this way scholars best fulfil today the teaching of Christ. 11 If we bid farewell to a passion, he would have us do it without hateotherwise we learn a second passion; he thinks that the souls of Christians, which have freed themselves from sin, are usually ruined by the hatred of sin--"Look at the faces of great Christians! They are the faces of great haters." 12

Nietzsche becomes very warm against punishment--he would banish it out of the world. 13 It is really anger and revenge, to which we give a good name so as to have good conscience in inflicting it. e The truth is that the evil-doer is not even the same person that he was when he committed the evil deed; we punish a scapegoat. In any case, the punishment does not purify him, is no expiation; on the contrary, it soils more than the transgression itself. 14 The punishment here in mind is that which masks as justice (the wrong-doer receiving his deserts); viewed as a deterrent, however (whether for others or for the wrong-doer himself in the future), and wrought in that spirit, Nietzsche does not question but rather asserts its utility. The wrong-doer by suffering it benefits society, and a sense of this should determine his mood, which should not be remorse, but the feeling that having done evil, he is now doing good--he should be free to consider himself a benefactor of humanity. 15 Nietzsche is also troubled about the way society has to proceed to protect itself against crime--about the tools it has to create and make use of, the policemen, jailors, executioners, not forgetting the public prosecutors and the lawyers; indeed, "let one ask whether the judge himself and the punishment and the whole course of judicial procedure are not in their effect on non-criminals depressing rather than elevating phenomena." As often, he says, as we turn men into means to the ends of society and sacrifice them, all our higher humanity grieves. 16

He is aware that there is some danger to society in the doctrines of general human innocence and unresponsibility--they might throw courts and the course of civil justice out of gear; there was similar danger, he observes, in the teaching of Jesus to just the opposite effect, namely that since all are sinful, they should not judge one another. 17 But Nietzsche is no revolutionary, and while he wished to see civil institutions purged of the spirit of revenge, he had no desire to abolish them. He did not even oppose capital punishment, and wished to allow an incurable criminal, who became a horror to himself, to end his own days. His concern was chiefly for a point of view, namely, that the criminal is one deranged or sick, and should be treated as such --not then with patronizing compassion, but with a physician's penetration, a physician's good will: he has subtle reflections to offer in this connection on the psychology of crime. 18 21Joyful Science, - 184. One of his hopeful thoughts for the future is that there will be institutions where men can betake themselves for spiritual cures, according to their varying needs--in one place, anger would be fought, in another lust, and so on. 19 f He can also imagine individuals and whole groups abstaining from recourse to the courts on their own account, after the primitive Christian fashion 20 As for himself he says, "Better allow yourself to be robbed than have scarecrows about you to prevent it--such is my taste." 21 g

II

Nietzsche also criticises certain ideas which come nearer the content of morality. He finds an element of illusion in the view that good impulses and evil impulses differ in kind. He thinks that in all man does, he acts for his preservation, his pleasure, his advantage. h Some actions are, however, more intelligent than others, and this fact gives rise to diverse judgments. It is a view not unlike that of Socrates and Plato, who held that man always does the good, i.e., what seems so to him, according to the grade of his intellect, the measure of his rationality. Acts called evil are really stupid. Good acts are sublimated evil ones; evil acts clumsy, unintelligent good ones. In accordance with such an understanding of things, Nietzsche raises the question whether humanity might not transform itself from a moral into a wise humanity. 22 i

Especially is there illusion in the idea of unegoistic actions, by which Schopenhauer, and he himself at the outset, had set such store. He by no means denies the genuineness of the actions which go by that name; he throws no suspicion on the reality of benevolence, self-sacrifice, heroismp--his reasoning is different from that of La Rochefoucauld; but he thinks that when we look for the ultimate source of such actions, we find the same desire for personal gratification leading to them which leads to all other actions. 23 A mother, for instance, gives her child what she denies herself--sleep, the best food, on occasion sacrificing her health and her means. Is this to be treated as an exception to the rule of human conduct--a wonder in the world, something, as Schopenhauer said, "impossible and yet actual"? Or is the fact simply that the mother sacrifices certain impulses to other impulses, yielding to the strongest --that she nowise differs, so far as the psychology of the matter goes, from a stubborn person who would rather be shot than go a step out of his way to accommodate some one else? 24 We do not and cannot cease to be egos seeking for personal gratification, no matter what we do. And yet Schopenhauer thought unegoistic motives the essential mark of a moral action--and the idea is not uncommon today. 25 j

Again, morality tends to draw the line so sharply between good and evil that one cannot be supposed to come out of the other. Nietzsche, however, finds evil sometimes passing into good. The passions excited in war, the impersonal hate, the cold-blooded killing with good conscience, the proud indifference to great losses, may in time be translated into spiritual equivalents, and add to the sum of available energy in the workshops of the mind. 26 Destruction and the destructive spirit may prepare the way for new things under the sun, new forms of life.

As mighty glaciers hollow out valleys and in time leave meadows and woods and brooks in their track, so frightful human energies--what we commonly sum up as evil (das Bφse)--may be cyclopean architects and road-builders of humanity. 27 Even deception, violence, ruthless self-interest may play a part-and a genius of culture might employ them with so sure a hand that he would seem like an evil demon, and yet his aims, now and then shining through, be great and good, and he himself have angel wings. 28 We cannot build good "on good alone," as Wordsworth's "Happy Warrior" does--at least on what is commonly called good. A spirit of contradiction may lie at the basis of one man's virtue; a readiness to agree at the basis of another's; a third may draw all his morality out of his lonely pride, and a fourth out of a social impulse. That is, what is called evil, as well as what is called good, may be the basis of good, and the most inept teacher of the four types of individuals mentioned would be the moral fanatic who failed to bear this in mind. 29

The very ideas of what is good or evil may vary. A lonely man may console himself by thinking that he is ahead of his time; but the world may not go his way. 30 Even a good conscience does not necessarily attend a good man. Science is something good, and yet it has often come into the world stealthily, in roundabout ways, feeling like a criminal, or at least like a smuggler. Good conscience has as its first stage bad conscience--for everything good is sometime new, i.e., unusual, against use and custom, unmoral [in the primitive sense of that term--the German here is wider die Sitte, unsittlich], and gnaws at the heart of its discoverer. 31 In other words, good conscience is a late fruit of bad conscience.

III

All this, however, does not mean that there is nothing constant in morality--that in a broad way it is not a tolerably distinct and recognizable phenomenon in history. What is most constant about it is its form; but within limits the content of it tends to be constant, too.

Historically speaking, that conduct is always moral, ethical (moralisch, sittlich, ethisch) which conforms to a long-established law or tradition. The fundamental antithesis is not between "unegoistic" and "egoistic," but between being bound and not being bound by traditional law. To practise revenge is moral, if revenge belongs to established custom--as it did among the older Greeks. A feeling of respect for what is authoritative is the fundamental note; and the older, i.e., the more authoritative, the custom, the greater the respect, until at last the custom becomes holy and the respect turns into reverence. The morality of piety, Nietzsche remarks, is a much older morality than that which calls for unegoistic actions. 32 For most of us even now the content of conscience is what was regularly required of us apart from any reason when we were young by those whom we revered or feared: when we ask "why?" we leave the realm of conscience proper. 33 "Good," as more than "moral," is applied to those who obey the traditional law as if by nature, after long inheritance, hence easily and gladly.

How the customs of a community arise is another question-one which belongs rather to history or sociology than to ethics. Only after they exist do moral distinctions have a meaning. Nietzsche attributes them broadly at this time to the community's instinct for self-preservation. Such and such practices are seen [supposed] to be useful to the community, hence they are favored. They may be of the most varied character-some may not really be beneficial to the community, but being thought to be they become part of customary law. 34 Moral action is thus at bottom adoption by the individual of the community's point of view. Utility is the standard, but public not private utility. 35 The logic is: the community is worth more than the individual, and a lasting advantage is to be preferred to a fleeting one, hence the lasting advantage of the community is to be placed unconditionally before the advantage of the individual, particularly his momentary well-being, but also before his lasting advantage or even his continuance in life. If the individual suffers from an arrangement which benefits the whole, if he is stunted, goes to pieces on its account--the custom must none the less be maintained, the sacrifice made. This is from the community's point of view. The individual himself may think differently; he may invert the propositions and say in his own case that the individual is worth more than the many, and that present enjoyment--a moment in paradise--is to be rated higher than a dull continuance of indifferent states. But the community has the upper hand, and in it and under it the individual is trained--trained not as an individual, but as a member of a whole, one of a majority; and the normal outcome of the training is that he takes the side of the majority (der Einzelne sich selbst majorisirt): this indeed is what morality essentially means. 36

The training is a long historic (one might say, prehistoric) process. In subjecting individuals, checking their egoisms, binding them together, the community operates at first more or less by force; it struggles long perhaps with their selfishness and wilfulness. Only late does free obedience arise. But when this is reached and it becomes at last almost instinctive, pleasure coming to be associated with it, as with all things habitual and natural, it receives the name of virtue. 37 Individuals now not merely submit willingly to the ordinary social restrictions, they are ready to sacrifice on occasion, not holding back their very life. And this, not in violation of the general psychological law already mentioned that every one seeks personal gratification, but because gratification is now found in doing whatever serves the common weal. 38 k

In the course of this developmental process there is another result. As stated, morality has its basis in social utility. But in time actions come to be performed without thought or even knowledge of this--perhaps from fear or reverence for those who immediately require them, or from being accustomed from childhood up to see others perform them, or from benevolence, since the practice of them creates joy and approving faces everywhere about one, or from vanity because they are praised. In other words, the original reason for the action (or the custom to which it conforms) is lost out of mind: the custom stands as a thing by itself--actions that conform to it are good on their own account. Now such actions are called moral particularly--not of course because they are done from any of the special minor motives mentioned, but because they are not done from motives of conscious utility. 39 l A late echo of such a view appears, I may add, in Kant's treating reverence for the law, irrespective of any utilitarian considerations, as the only properly moral motive. A second reason for the traditional contrast between morality and utility has been already hinted at. Communities had to struggle long with individuals seeking their own advantage or utility--so long and so hard, that every other motive came to be rated higher than utility. It appeared then as if morality had not grown out of utility, while in truth it grew out of social utility, which had great difficulty in putting itself through against all manner of private utilities. 40

Customs and customary norms widely vary--indeed, so widely that, since morality is simply conformity to them, there may seem to be nothing really constant about it. And yet Nietzsche notes that some actions are quite universally regarded as good and others as evil, inasmuch as they affect a community's welfare in such direct and obvious ways. Amid all the variations of norms, benevolence, pity, and the like are universally regarded as useful, and at the present time it is pre-eminently the kindly, helpful individual who is called "good." So to injure one's fellows has been felt in all the moral codes of different times to be harmful, and today when we use the word "evil," we have the willing injuring of a fellow particularly in mind. 41

"Good" and "evil" have been used thus far in quite general senses. But Nietzsche has a keen scent for shades of meaning, and he thinks that at times these words have particular significations. For instance, to a ruling tribe or class "good" has certain associations which are quite different from those that it has to a weak and subject population--associations of power, self-satisfaction, and pride. "Evil" (schlecht), the opposite of "good," they apply to those contrasted with themselves whom they look down upon, the weaker, incoherent mass whom they have subjected. To this extent "good" and "evil" are like high and low, master and slave. "Evil," so understood, does not apply to an enemy who is strong--in Homer, Trojan and Greek alike are good; "evil" is an epithet of contempt. On the other hand, among those who are subjected and powerless, and whose predominant sentiment is one of fear, practically every other being is evil (bφse), i.e., capable of injuring them--they do not trust one another enough to form a community, or more than the rudest kind of one, and this is why they easily become subject, or else disappear. These contrasted meanings of good and evil are very imperfectly worked out now--we shall come on a fresh and much fuller statement in Nietzsche's succeeding period. 42

I pass over Nietzsche's analysis ("dissection" he sometimes calls it) of special moral conceptions, like justice, equality, rights, and duties; he goes on along the same lines in his later period and it will be convenient to treat the material together in dealing with that period. I also pass over his keen exposure of the part which vanity and self-interest play in much that passes as moral conduct, though every student of morality would do well to attend to it. m

IV Turning now to his own moral views, we find him still with a sense of the greatness of a dominating idea or aim, 43 and if he does not soar so high and has not so confident a tone as before, he is nearer to life and actuality, or, as we might say, more human. The eager thought and expectation of something great and almost superhuman to come, and of a new German (or European) culture which should look that way, have more or less abated, but he honors the philosopher as before and counts as the highest pleasures those of conceiving works of art and doing noble deeds--so that in effect the old trinity still lingers in his mind. 44 With all his determinism, and perhaps quite consistently with it, he has a sense of human power. Not only can man know, he can do. Active natures, he says, not so much follow the saying, "Know thyself," as feel an inner command, "Will a self--and so become one." 45 We can deal with our impulses more or less as a gardener does with his plants, encouraging now this one and now that: "Woe to the thinker who is not the gardener, but the soil for his plants!" 46 We can strip from our passions their fearful character--it is by neglect that they become monsters; he who conquers them is like a colonist who has become master of forests and swamps and can now turn them to account. 47 "Every day is ill-used and a danger for the next in which we have not at least once denied ourselves in some way: this gymnastics is indispensable, if we wish to keep the joy of being our own master." 48 Nietzsche is sometimes compared to Callicles in Plato "Gorgias"; he is at least not like him so far as Callicles says, "The temperate man is a fool; only in hungering and eating, in thirsting and drinking, in having all his desires about him and gratifying every possible desire does man live happily."

Nietzsche holds, indeed, that all men seek personal gratification, but he does not mean by this "self-indulgence," nor does he imply that men care for comfort, or luxury, or gain, or honor, or even continued existence more than anything else. The happinesses of different stages of human development [or of different kinds of men] are incomparable and peculiar. 49 The Greeks preferred power which drew upon itself much evil to weakness that experienced only good: the sense of power was itself pleasurable to them--better than any utility or good name. 50 And what Nietzsche's own ideal is, where gratification lay for him, is suggested in what he says, after remarking on the sordid political parties of his day, "Live as higher men, and do evermore the deeds of the higher culture." 51

While he does not recognize, any more than earlier, the practicability of making every one an end in himself, while he thinks that we may easily overdo pity, and speaks of the need of discrimination and judgment, 52 his feelings of broad human sympathy and love are as strong as ever. The cold look which superior people have for their servants displeases him. 53 He finds it something fearful for a man to have less than three hundred Thaler a year, or to have to beg like a child and to humble himself. 54 He has even sentiment for the criminal, as we have seen--and speaks of our crime against him in that we treat him as a scamp ( Schuft). At times a wondering sense of the worth of man as such comes over him: not only is nature too beautiful for us poor mortals, but man is, not merely one who is moral, but every man. 55 Really Nietzsche wishes (now as earlier) to consider all, and, though in varying ways, to give a meaning to every life. 56 This does not imply, however, that we must always be directly doing for others. One who makes a whole person out of himself, who developes all his peculiar individual being, may in the long run go further in contributing to the general advantage, than one who gives himself up to acts of benevolence and pity. 57 If egoism be taken in this higher sense, it may be questioned whether the egoistic is not useful in a much higher degree, even to other men, than the unegoistic. 58 n The individual is thus still regarded in the light of a public utility, and so far Nietzsche does not in his own view transcend the utilitarian standpoint which he accredits to morality in general.

At the same time we feel that a different standpoint is shaping itself in his mind, though at first tentatively and questioningly. Communities, as we have seen, are the raison d'κtre of morality--without them and their fixed norms (Sitten), it would never have arisen. The individual is looked at as existing for the community, as a function or functionary of it--apart from it he really means nothing, nothing of importance: such, in abstracto, is morality's standpoint. But just here Nietzsche finds himself questioning. Is this social [moral] significance all that a man has? Has he no properly individual being and value? May there not be acts of no advantage to society and still well worth while? He has a reflection like the following: There are certain things which we cannot do as members of society, though we may as private individuals, e.g., show mercy to a breaker of the law; it is something which endangers society--society as such cannot do it or sanction it, though it may leave certain favored individuals free to do it (the king or executive), and we may all be happy when the privilege is exercised, though glad in our private hearts rather than as citizens. 59 The idea of a possible significance which is purely individual appears still more clearly in the following: "The active class of men lack ordinarily the higher type of activity; I mean the individual. They are active as officials, business men, scholars, i.e., as members of a species, but not as quite definite individuals and single men; in this respect they are lazy." 60 The paragraph closes: "All men may be classed, now as in all times, as slave and free; for whoever does not have three-fourths of the day to himself is a slave, whatever else he may be--statesman, business man, official, or scholar." We have already observed his feeling about society's turning men into functionaries to defend it against crime; but if man's being is in his social functioning, why should our "higher humanity" be hurt, and what is the sense in speaking of "sacrifice"? There is the same implication in a distinction he makes, in speaking of factory slavery and organization, between a person and a screw--the underlying thought being that a screw is for others' uses, a person for his own. 61

Indeed Nietzsche once raises a strange question (strange that is, to us of today with our prevailing social estimates of everything): Grant that all men exist for social purposes and are functions of the social mechanism, what is the purpose of the mechanism itself? To quote his words, "Humanity uses up regardlessly each single person as fuel for its great machines: but for what purpose then are the machines, if all single persons are only of use in maintaining them? Machines that are ends in themselves--is that the umana commedia?" 62 To us in these days society is an ultima ratio--if anything can be shown to be for the good of society, we are as completely satisfied as former ages were to have it shown that anything was for the glory of God. The import of Nietzsche's question will become clearer later on. CHAPTER XII SOCIAL AND POLITICAL VIEWS AND FORECASTS IN no way, perhaps, did Nietzsche come to differ more from Schopenhauer than in his sense of the possibility of change-whether in the individual or in society generally. What may be called the historical view of reality was almost lacking in Schopenhauer--owing in part no doubt to his conviction of the subjectivity of time. a No thoroughgoing Kantian, I may say, can believe in the final reality of an historical process. It is possible that Nietzsche's vivid sense of his own changes had something to do with the formal relinquishment of his early subjectivism as to time, which we shall come upon later on. b

I In any case the area of possible change for men and society is now large to him. Disillusioned about the near advent of a new tragic culture, he is not without compensatory thoughts. Is it not possible, he asks, to remove some evils rather than merely try to turn them into subjects of art, or to find consolation for them in religion? 1 The ancients strove to forget the sufferings of existence, or else to make them agreeable through art--they worked palliatively; we today wish to work prophylactically and attack the causes of suffering. 2 "Artists glorify continually--they do nothing else," he somewhat impatiently observes. 3 He thinks that art is a resource for moments and becomes dangerous when it sets up for more--a halt should be called to its fanatical pretensions. 4 With a touch of irony, he notes that removing evil may make it hard for the tragic poets, whose stock of material would so far diminish, and harder still for the priests, whose main business hitherto has been to narcotize; but both classes, he thinks, belong to the non-progressive forces of society. 5 Progress is doubted by artists, and by metaphysical philosophers like Schopenhauer, but the very fact that we are now passing out of the tropical zone of culture with its violent contrasts and glowing colors, in which artists live, into the cooler, clearer, temperate zone of science, seems to him an instance of progress. 6 He questions indeed the necessity of progress and thinks that the days of the unconscious sort may be over; all the same, he urges that we might now consciously strive for a new culture, might create better conditions for the rise of human beings, for their nourishment, training, and instruction, might undertake an economic administration of the earth as a whole, measuring and distributing the forces of men wisely to this end--and this would surely be progress and would itself destroy the old mistrust of progress. 7 Nietzsche really began, as we have seen, with a general hope of this character; the difference is now that he has been somewhat chastened and no longer looks for appreciable help from art, and that he emphasizes certain practically necessary measures--something which preoccupation with art is liable to make one neglect. At the same time he continues to be thinker rather than himself reformer--believing, like Socrates, that "a private life, not a public one," is alone suitable to him, and not having any too high idea of existing states and of the kind of political activity they make necessary anyway. 8

As regards the economic structure of society, there is no change from the view that slavery is necessary. A higher culture can arise only where there are the two castes of those who labor and those possessed of leisure, or, as he sometimes puts it, of compulsory labor and free labor. The way in which happiness (Glόck) is distributed is not vital when the production of a higher culture is at stake; in any case it is those with leisure, to whom come the greater tasks, who have less ease in existence, who suffer more. If only there might be exchange between the castes, so that worn-out stocks and individuals in the upper could descend into the lower, and freer men among the lower could rise to the higher, a state would be reached, beyond which only indefinite wishes are possible. 9 Something of this sort was, I think, suggested by Huxley--and it shows that it was not a caste system, in the sense of one with impassable barriers, that Nietzsche had in mind. More or less of this exchange--at least in the downward direction--takes place in caste societies as matter of fact. According to Professor Sumner, a Plantagenet was a butcher in a suburb of London a few years ago, and representatives of the great mediζval families may now be found as small farmers, farm laborers, or tramps in England ( Hardy using a fact of this kind in Tess of the D'Urbervilles). 10 If things like this could happen in both directions and with reasonable promptness and in accordance with a recognized social law, Nietzsche's somewhat shadowy idea would be realized--of course, changes in the laws of inheritance would be necessary.

As to property (Besitz), Nietzsche thinks that only those with mind should have it; otherwise it is an element of danger in a community. He who does not know how to use the free time which its possession gives strives for more--it is his way of diverting himself, of fighting boredom; and so from moderate possessions, which would suffice an intellectual man, comes wealth proper--a shining consequence of the lack of independence and intellectual poverty in one who amasses it, and at the same time something that excites the envy of the poor and uneducated, and prepares the way for a social revolution. 11 Only up to a certain point does property serve its purpose of making one more independent and free; beyond that, property becomes the master and the owner a slave. 12 Nietzsche sometimes draws almost a contemptuous picture of mere riches, his attitude being only softened by the reflection that rich men are half-ashamed of themselves 13 [a type with which we do not appear to be acquainted in America]. He makes sport of the dinners of the rich, 14 gives instances of how the love of money makes one unscrupulous, 15 notes the unhappy effect of American gold-hunger on Europe in destroying the true estimate of leisure, in banishing ceremony from social intercourse, in making letter-writing the style-less, mindless thing it has come to be, in reducing pleasure to what overworked slaves have to have to recreate and amuse them--we all want to be "busy," and are ashamed of what makes for the ease and grace and dignity of life. 16

This does not mean that Nietzsche fails to appreciate what industry and commerce are doing for our time--he even says that it is the commercial class who keep us from falling back into barbarism (having in mind telegraphs, geographical explorations, industrial inventions, etc.). 17 It is not commerce, but the motives behind it, the methods it too often pursues, that lead to reflections like those cited. Men are after money, and do almost anything for a rich return. 18 He finds exchange honorable and just, when each party is guided by the thought of what an article is worth (taking into account a variety of factors that determine worth); but when either is influenced by the thought of the needs of the other, he is only a refined robber and extortioner. 19 He notes that the merchant and the pirate were for a long time one and the same person, bartering being resorted to when force was not expedient; and current business morality now is really only a refinement of pirate morality--the maxim being to buy as cheaply and sell as dearly as possible. 20 It is accordingly the mark of the higher type of man not to be at home in trade. For a teacher, an official, an artist to sell his ability for the highest price, or to practise usury with it, is to drop to the shop-keeper's level. 21 A principal cause of bad conditions in Germany is, that there are far too many living off trade and wishing to live well there--hence reducing prices to the utmost limit to producers, raising them to the utmost limit to consumers, and drawing profit from the greatest possible injury to both. 22

Nietzsche's attitude to the laborer, whether we agree with it or not, cannot be called unsympathetic. We today, in contrast with the ancient world, like to exalt labor, but he does not think that we treat the laborer much better, and he raises the question whether our talk has not some cynicism in it, or at least tartuferie. 23 c He prefers plain speaking, and uses such terms as slavery, and in particular factory-slavery, much as the socialists do. 24 He has a sense of the unhappy effect of the modern machine upon the workers. It depersonalizes labor, strips it of its bit of humanity, turns men into machines. Although it liberates a vast amount of energy, it gives no impulse to higher development, to doing better work, to becoming more artistic; it shows how masses may co-operate by each one doing one thing, and so becomes a pattern for party organization and the conduct of war--its most general effect is to teach the uses of centralization. 25 Once he suggests certain remedies against what is injurious in machine-labor--first, frequent interchange of labor among those working at a machine or at different machines; second, getting a comprehension of the total structure of the machine, including knowledge of its defects and the possibilities of improving it; he finds suggestive the example of a democratic state, which changes its officials often. 26 As to the deserts of labor, he gives up the attempt to estimate them-indeed, desert in general is for him an illusory conception, as we have already seen; all the same he finds considerations of utility in order, and believes that justice as a highly refined utility may well come into play. By this he means a long-range view of consequences, one which takes account not of a momentary situation merely, but of the future as well, hence of the well-being of the laborer, his contentment in body and mind, so that he and his children may work well for coming generations. From this point of view the exploitation of the laborer is a stupidity, a robbery at the expense of the future, an imperiling of society. Nietzsche thinks that we have now almost come to a state of war in society; at least the costs of maintaining peace are becoming enormous, the folly of the exploiting classes being so great and so persistent. 27 . He deems a social revolution not unlikely. 28

The educated classes in general are not without responsibility for the situation. If we complain of lack of discipline among the masses, the reproach falls back heavily on them; the masses are just as good and just as bad as the educated are; they set the tone, and elevate and corrupt the mass as they elevate or corrupt themselves. 29 A part of the trouble, too, lies in the lack of personal relation between employers and employed. We pay any one we know and respect, who does us a service, whether he be physician, artist, or hand-worker, as high as we can, perhaps beyond our means; but an unknown person we pay as little as practicable--the human element or relation disappears. 30 Manners, breeding are also a factor. It is strange, Nietzsche says, that subjection to powerful, fear-inspiring, even frightful persons, to tyrants and military commanders, is not so painfully felt, as subjection to unknown and uninteresting persons such as the great men of industry are: the laborer sees in his employer usually only a cunning dog of a man, who drains him and speculates on his needs, and whose name, shape, and reputation are utterly indifferent to him. Manufacturers and great leaders of business have apparently lacked quite too much thus far all those forms and signs of a higher race, which first make persons interesting; had there been the distinction of the born noble in their look and bearing, perhaps socialism would never have developed among the masses. For these at bottom are ready for any kind of slavery, provided that the man who stands over them continually legitimates himself as one born to command--by distinction of manner! The commonest man feels that such distinction is not to be improvised and that in it he honors the fruit of a long past--but the absence of it and the notorious manufacturer-vulgarity with red fat hands bring him to the thought that only accident and luck have elevated one man above another--and so he says to himself, "Let us try accident and luck! We will throw the dice!"--and socialism begins. 31 d And yet Nietzsche does not think it necessary that the workers shall always live as they live now. Dipping into the future, one of the things he conceives possible is that economic relations might be so ordered that there would be no longer the desperate anxiety about living and dying which prevails at present. 32 This does not mean, however, really rising out of slavery. If the workers are bent on that, they must be ready to leave existing civilization, become emigrants, colonists, incur risks of want and danger. He is evidently not without admiration for those who should take so heroic a step, and is ironical about those who are willing to remain screws, if they can only be better paid, i.e., who put a price upon their personality-ironical too about those who think, socialist fashion, that if they can only be screws in the great machine called the state, all will change, and their slavery become a virtue. "Poor, happy, and independent! this is all possible at the same time; poor, happy, and slave!--this also is possible"--though there can be little doubt which of the possibilities Nietzsche ranks higher. 33

II Turning now to the political field, we find Nietzsche inclined to look at democracy as a fait accompli, and disposed to turn it to the best possible account. The "enlightenment" (Aufklärung) of the eighteenth century was in itself a good, and if the changes naturally ensuing had been slow, if customs and institutions had been gradually modified, all would have been well. But with the French Revolution the movement took a violent turn, and trying to be sudden and complete the Revolution became a pathetic and bloody piece of quackery. 34 e Democracy, however, is not his ideal. He desires a rule of the intelligent rather than of the many, and once ventures to suggest a way for getting them. It would be really a process of self-selection, or rather mutual-selection. First, the honest and trustworthy of a country, who are at the same time in some respect masters and experts, would segregate themselves, by a process of scenting one another out and reciprocal recognition; and then from among these, such as are of the first rank in each special line would select themselves, again by reciprocal. recognition and guarantees. These last would constitute the legislative body, and thus the highest grade of specialized ability would be brought to bear on the making of laws, each branch of specialists deciding on the questions in their province, the rest being honorable and decent enough to leave things in their hands. In this way laws would be strictly the outcome of the intelligence of the most intelligent. Now parties decide things, and every time that a vote is taken there must be hundreds of bad consciences--so many are ill-instructed, or incapable of judging, and simply follow others or are dragged along. Nothing lowers the dignity of a new law so much as the blush of dishonesty to which every party vote compels. Nietzsche is aware that it is easy to propose and hard to carry out such a scheme, but he has the hope that sometime faith in the utility of science and of men who know will arise in the most unwilling and replace the present faith in numbers. 35 Besides, he argues that the system of having everybody vote depends logically on everybody's wanting to vote, the will of a majority not being sufficient to constitute a universal rule, and he doubts whether all do want to vote now, since so many do not use the privilege they have. 36 But with all his argumentation he accepts the situation as he finds it, and he realizes the ironical side of it for the old ruling classes. 37 "The poor reigning princes! All their rights are turning themselves now unexpectedly into claims, and all these claims soon sound like pretensions!" 38 King and emperor are becoming almost ciphers in ordinary times--symbols, ornaments, beautiful superfluities; though on this account they cling the more tenaciously to their dignity as war-lords--and need wars on occasion, i.e., exceptional circumstances in which the democratic pressure is interrupted. 39

Nietzsche even finds advantages in the new régime, in which government does not so much rule the people as become their organ. "Democratic institutions are quarantine stations against the old pest of tyrannical ambitions--as such, very useful and very tedious." 40 The democratizing of Europe now going on seems to him a link in the chain of those immense prophylactic measures, characteristic of the new time, by which we are marking ourselves off against the Middle Ages. At last we are to get a sure foundation, on which the future can build. We shall make it impossible for fruitful fields of culture to be destroyed in a night by wild and senseless mountain floods, shall put up dams and walls against barbarians, against pestilences, against whatever would subject the bodies or the minds of men. It is crude, rough work at the start, but it will prepare the way for something higher and more spiritual to come--as the gardener has first to protect his field, and then proceeds to plant. Yes, Nietzsche will not judge the workers for democracy too harshly, if for the time being they consider democracy an end, instead of a means. 41 What democracy wants to do is to create and guarantee independence for as many as possible--independence of thought, of manner of life, and of occupation. To this end, however, it must make restrictions--must deny the right to vote on the one hand to the propertyless, on the other to the really rich. These are the two unpermissible classes in the community, for whose removal democracy must continually labor, the one because they are without independence, the other because they threaten it; they and the party system are the three great foes of independence. He is aware that democracy of this character belongs to the future; for present-day democracy differs from older forms of government simply in that it drives with new horses--the streets are the old ones, and the vehicles the old ones too. 42 With similar concern for independence, Nietzsche hopes that the new rulers will not try to rule everywhere, or make standards convenient to the majority binding on all. Some scattering individuals should be allowed to hold aloof from politics, if they will. They should also be forgiven if they do not take the happiness of the many as so supremely important, and become ironical now and then; their earnestness is in other directions, their ideas of happiness are peculiar, their aim is not one that every hand with five fingers can grasp. Still further, they should be allowed on occasion to break their solitude by speaking to one another (they will be somewhat like men lost in the woods) and encouraging one another, even if they say some things which jar on ears for which they were not intended. 43 Despite all this, Nietzsche thinks it perfectly natural and legitimate that the many should act with a view to their own interests; it is to be expected that, through the great parliamentary majorities they are likely to obtain, they will attack by progressive taxes the capitalistic, commercial, and speculating classes. Indeed in this way they may gradually bring about a condition of things between the extremes of poverty and wealth, in which socialism will be forgotten. 44 f

Socialism is a combined economic and political problem, and it may be well to note Nietzsche's views at this point in some detail. Anarchists he looks upon as backward and untamed people who will rule hard, if they get the upper hand--they enjoy the sense of power too much; but for socialists he has a certain limited sympathy--he speaks of them as one of the signs of the "coming century." 45 He practically takes the socialist movement as a "rising of those oppressed and held down for centuries against their oppressors." The problem it presents to us practically is not one of right, "how far should we yield to its demands," but one of power, "how far can we utilize them"--just as with a force of nature, steam, for example, which may either be brought into the service of man or may destroy him. To solve the problem, we must know how strong socialism is, and in what modified form it might be used as a lever in the present play of political forces; in certain contingencies, it might be a duty to do everything to strengthen it. 46 It will first win rights, when war threatens between the old forces and the new, and prudent calculation on both sides creates the desire for a compact or agreement--for compacts are the source of all rights ( Nietzsche remarks that up to the time of his writing--1877 apparently--there had been no war or compacts, hence there were no rights or "ought" in the matter]. 47 The movement is, of course, a movement of those interested, but Nietzsche recognizes that it may also be espoused by persons from other classes animated simply by sentiments of justice and ready to practise it at their own cost-high-minded (if not just very discerning) representatives of the ruling class might act in this way. 48

For his own part he admits the socialist contention that the present distribution of property is the consequence of numberless injustices and violences; he simply adds that this is only one instance, the old culture in general being built on a basis of force, slavery, deception, and error. He thinks that the unjust disposition lurks everywhere, in the propertyless as well as propertied, and that the needful thing is not violences, but the gradual alteration of men's minds, justice becoming greater and violent instincts weaker on all sides. 49 He considers the remedies of an equal division of property and common ownership, and finds them both impracticable. Instead he urges that avenues to small ownership should be kept wide open, and that the acquisition of wealth suddenly and without effort should be prevented. In particular should all branches of transportation and trade which are favorable to the amassing of great wealth-he instances especially banking (Geldhandel)--be taken out of private hands: 50 it comes pretty near to practical socialism. g He even meets by an illuminating explanation an objection often made to socialism, namely, that it overlooks the matterof-fact inequalities between men. It does so, he says, much as Christianity overlooks differences in human sinfulness--they are too slight to be taken into account: in the total reckoning all are sinful and need salvation. So socialism regards the common nature and powers and needs of men as so much more important than the respects in which they differ, that it deliberately puts the latter to one side--and in the resolve to ignore differences lies an inspiring force. 51

And yet on the whole Nietzsche is hostile to socialism. The only means of counteracting it which the well-to-do have in their power is, not to provoke it, to live temperately and frugally, to avoid all luxurious display and support the state instead of opposing it when it lays taxes on superfluities and luxuries. If they lack the will to do this, the only difference remaining between them and the socialists is that they possess and the socialists want to--the aims are the same. He gives a scathing description of the lives and pleasures of the present possessing class. 52 The unhappy thing is that the workers are now bent on aping them, are becoming "fellow-conspirators in the present folly of nations, who want before everything else to produce as much and to become as rich as possible." 53 Nietzsche's ideals are elsewhere, and he does not think too much comfort and wealth and security good for man. If the socialists and worshipers of the state had their way, they might with their measures for making life happy and secure bring Europe to Chinese conditions and a Chinese "happiness," with dissatisfaction on any great scale and capacity for transformation gone." 54 Ideals of security and comfort are pre-eminently the mark of a commercial age, which wants to have everything easy for trade and the state a sort of arm-chair. 55 He wishes, indeed, a certain measure of comfort and security for the working class, but to make this an absolute ideal, to leave no free, wild spaces in society where risk and danger exist--this, he feels, would be to banish the conditions under which great men and great enterprises arise. 56 To him socialism seems practically identical with a despotic state, in which individuals with individual instincts and aims appear unjustifiable luxuries, and all are turned into organs of the community--a conception the general form of which we saw him questioning at the end of the last chapter. Minor criticism of socialism I pass over. h The greatest benefit coming from it is, he thinks, the stimulus it gives--it entertains men and brings to the lowest strata a species of practico-philosophical discussion; so far it is a spring of power to the mind. 57 But from the theory itself he turns away, and while admitting a social revolution to be not unlikely, he thinks that its result will be less than is expected, since man can do so very much less than he wills (as is shown by the French Revolution). 58 He is thus really at home nowhere. While the old aristocratic order is dead, the new commercial order is vulgar and tame, nor does the socialist order which may be coming attract him either. He says in substance, "We [he and his kind] are émigrés, observers of the time,--we wish only to become free of it and understand it, like an eagle flying over it; we have no desire to be citizens or politicians or property-owners, we only want the greatest possible independence; we will be deadly enemies of those of our contemporaries who take refuge in lying and wish reaction; our interest is in individuals and educating them--perhaps humanity will some day have need of them, when the general intoxication of anarchy is past." 59

IV Yet, ill-moored as he is to the present time and standing for nothing actual, he has certain expectations--at least, there are better possibilities for the future, to which he more than once recurs.

As for politics, he would like to see it ordered so that moderate intellects might meet its demands, and we should not all have to be continually concerned with it. It is not so great a matter as we sometimes think. We [Germans] rank it so high, because we are deficient in the instincts that make it in the normal man something natural and matter-of-course--we need incitement. 60 He can even imagine an ultimate disappearance of the state--as the old unities of the tribe and the family have disappeared. Its functions might be taken over by private individuals and associations. He admits that it is a different thing to work for such an end: it would be presumptuous and show little knowledge of history to break up old soil, till new seeds are at hand, and he hopes that the state will last yet a good while, and that destructive attacks on it by hasty, half-educated people will be averted. 61 The reason for his relatively low estimate of it is, on the one hand, that the ends it serves (security and comfort) are lesser ends in life, and, on the other, that it none the less wishes to call the highest talents to its aid. Mind ought to be free for other things. "Our age that talks so much of economy is a spendthrift: it wastes what is most precious, mind." 62 It is the business people particularly who want the state, and it is they, with their philosophy, who are ruling the world now--artists, scholars, even religion following in their train. 63 i

He gives much attention to war--a state-phenomenon. He knows its uses in the past, is far from absolutely condemning it, admits that it may have uses in the future--there is one aphorism with the extravagant title, "War Indispensable." 64 It is a remedy, he thinks, for peoples growing languid and miserable --a remedy, that is, supposing that they really want to live--a sort of brutal cure. 65 It is a return to barbarism, but also to barbaric strength, a kind of hibernating time for culture, out of which one issues stronger both for good and for evil. 66 It may also be a good to a commercialized people, too fond of security and ease. 67 On the other hand, a people living full and strong has no need of war. 68 Its effect is to make the victors stupid and the vanquished malicious. 69 The military system not only involves enormous expense, but, what is worse, it takes the strongest, most capable men in extraordinary numbers away from their proper occupations, to make them soldiers. 70 After drawing a vivid detailed picture of the various inequities and stupidities in military life, he sets down the modern military system as an anachronism, a survival, having for the wheels of present-day society only the value of a drag or brake (i.e., in case a nation is going up or down too fast). 71 He even suggests that a strong victorious people might some day disarm. "Perhaps a great day is coming, when a people distinguished by wars and victories and the highest development of military organization and intelligence, accustomed too to bring the heaviest sacrifices to these objects, will voluntarily proclaim, 'We break the sword'--and allow its whole military system down to the last foundations to fall in ruins. To disarm whilst most capable of arms, from an elevation of sentiment--that is the way to real peace, which must always rest on a disposition for peace; while the so-called armed peace, such as we find in all lands now, rests on warlikeness of disposition, which trusts neither itself nor its neighbor, and half from hate, half from fear, refuses to lay its weapons down. Better perish than hate and fear, and twice better perish than make oneself hated and feared--this must some day be the supreme maxim of every individual political society." 72

Yes, Nietzsche goes still further. He is aware that, as I have said, war is a state-phenomenon, and that the continued possibility of it in Europe is bound up with the system of separate states which exist there, 73 and he deliberately sets himself against the nationalist spirit (or spirits), which has grown ever stronger since the reaction against Napoleon, and calls for a federation of European peoples, a "united Europe." It is interesting to note that his first thought of such a consummation was as a result of the democratizing process now so generally going on. He makes a notable forecast along this line, which I may summarize as follows: The practical outcome of the spreading democratic tendency will be a European federation of peoples. Each people will be like a canton with its own separate rights. Boundaries between cantons will be determined largely by geographical considerations. The historical memories of the various peoples will not be taken greatly into account, for the innovating and experimental spirit of democracy tends to uproot sentiments of this description; while corrections of boundaries that may be necessary will be carried out so as to serve the interests of the large cantons and of the whole federation, they will not be in deference to recollections of any hoary past. To find suitable points of view for the corrections will be the task of future diplomats, who will need to be at once adepts in the history of culture, agriculturists, and trade experts, and they will have not armies, but reasons and practical utilities to back them. 74 Some breaks with the past being inevitable, there will be plaints for lost national traits (in dress, customs, legal conceptions, dialects, forms of poetry), but we must not lend too much ear to them. It is the price that has to be paid for rising to the super-national, to universal goals of mankind, yes to a real knowledge and comprehension and enjoyment of other pasts than one's own (des nicht Einheimischen)--in a word, for ceasing to be barbarian. 75 Crude patriotism, such as the Romans had, is now, when quite other and higher tasks than patria and honor await us, either a dishonest thing or else a sign of arrested development (Zurückgebliebenheit). 76 National differences are, much more than is commonly realized, differences in stages of culture, not anything permanent, so that there is little obligation to argue from national character for one who is trying to recreate convictions, i.e., to elevate culture. If, for example, one thinks of all that has been German, the theoretic question, What is German? gets at once the corrected shape, "What is German now?"--and every good German will answer it practically just by overcoming some of his German qualities. When a people goes forward and grows, it breaks the girdle that gave it hitherto its national appearance; if it stays as it was, becomes stunted, a new girdle fastens itself around its soul--the ever hardening crust becomes as it were a prison, whose walls ever grow. Has then a people very much that is fixed, it is a proof that it is ready to petrify and become a monument--as was the case at a certain point of time with ancient Egypt. "Hence he who wishes well to the Germans will for his part see to it, that he ever more and more grows out beyond what is German. Turning to the un-German has ever been the distinguishing mark of the strong (Tüchtigen) among us." Nietzsche entitles this paragraph "To be a good German means to un-Germanize oneself." 77

He thinks that already modern tendencies--commerce and industry, the interchange of books and letters, the common features in all higher culture, the easy changing of abode--are weakening nations and tending in the direction of a European man. j Not the interest of the many, as is often said, but above all the interests of certain princely dynasties, and then of certain commercial and social classes, push in the nationalist direction. 78

Taking this larger view, Nietzsche finds the Catholic church suggestive, i.e., the catholicity of it, particularly when it was a sovereign and super-national power in the Middle Ages and made states and nations look petty in comparison! The church met fictitious needs, it is true, but some day there may be equally universal institutes to meet man's real needs. 79 He boldly anticipates "the united states of Europe," holding that while the uniting of the various German governments in one state was a "great idea," this is a still "greater idea." 80 He even broaches the idea of an international ministry of education, which should consider the intellectual welfare of the entire human race, independently of national interests. 81 Europe has a lofty dignity; in his eyes: its task, once united, will be to guide and watch over the development of the entire earth. 82 In this connection an extraordinary suggestion is thrown out that a medical geography of the globe be made, so that, as a physician sends his patients to this and that climate or particular environment for the cure of their varying ailments, so ailing peoples and families may be gradually taken to zones and circumstances favorable to them till their infirmities are overcome--the whole earth becoming thus in time a set of health-stations. 83 One may skeptically ask who is to be the physician for so great a task, and to this Nietzsche gives no formal answer, but may be presumed to have in mind some such organization of the accumulated science and wisdom of mankind as a "united Europe" might effect. Continuing these large prospects, he speaks of an "economy of the earth," of letting poorer races die out and training better ones, of one language--in general, of entirely new conditions for human development, particularly for the development of beings of a higher type. 84 He thinks that by the conquest of nature more force may be won than is actually needed, and then something of the luxurious might come among men, of which we have no idea now; great projects would be feasible of which we do not dream. "Aerial navigation alone throws all our old cultural conceptions aside" [he might have added, "undersea navigation," had he lived now]. Instead of our usual works of art, we might try to beautify nature on a great scale by means of labor extending over centuries--for example, bring to perfection suggestions and motives of beauty in the Alps. We might have an architecture, in which we should build for eternity, as the Romans did. We might utilize the backward peoples of Asia, Africa, and elsewhere as laborers. 85 Cyclopic work has been done by other forces in the past; the day of science is to come. 86 k

For progress Nietzsche finds an advantage in the freethinking habits of mind which have arisen in recent times (though he distinguishes free-thinking from what is popularly known as "free-thought"). Prehistoric ages were determined during immeasurable stretches of time by custom, nothing happening; in the historic period the matter of moment has always been some departure from custom, some disagreement of opinion: it is free action of the mind (die, Freigeisterei) that makes history. 87 There is corresponding signifleance in the dissolution of old religious traditions now going on. We are ready to experiment, to take things into our own hands. Our courage rises as we have need of it, and if we fail or err, we believe that it is our own affair--"God," as one to whom we are accountable for mistakes, and "immortal souls," with which we are to pay penalties, have disappeared. 88 And yet, Nietzsche urges, we should be at our work betimes. The aim he proposes few will question the greatness of--he speaks of it as an "ecumenical" one, embracing the whole inhabited globe; 89 he reminds us, however, that while time is long, propitious time is not necessarily so. We cannot assume that mankind will always be able to go on in the higher direction. Things do not improve by instinct or any divine destiny. There may be movement down as well as up, and mankind at the end of its career may be on a lower level than it is now. With the downfall of Roman culture and the spread of Christianity, man became increasingly unsightly within the Empire; and human-kind in general, as it has come up from the ape, may at last go down to it. 90 The race may be nearer the heights possible to it in the middle of its journey than at the close--the end of a melody is not its goal, the end of a man's life (above all when it is in weakness) is not its goal. 91 Therefore let us compass the utmost possible now--the chance may not come again.

Nietzsche has certain anticipations even in the religious field --if religion may be taken broadly to cover any kind of a cultus of ideal things. "A Vision" is the title of one aphorism, which reads as follows: "Lectures and hours for meditation set apart for adults, mature and maturest, and these daily, uncompulsory, but visited by every one from force of custom; churches, as the places worthiest and richest in memories, to be used for this purpose; almost daily festivals in honor of the attained or attainable dignity of human reason; a new and fuller blossoming of the ideal of the teacher, in which clergyman, artist, physician, scholar, and wise man, blend in one . . . this is my vision, which ever comes back to me, and about which I firmly believe that it has lifted a corner of the future's veil." 92 He expresses the desire for a new style of architecture which shall more worthily, more fittingly express the serious ideas of men today--still, ample spaces, where no sound of traffic is heard and a finer decency even forbids praying aloud to the priest, where one can think and for a few moments be by oneself. 93 But the religious suggestions of Nietzsche I must practically leave out of account in the present volume. 94

THIRD PERIOD CHAPTER XIII GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE PERIOD, AND VIEW OF THE WORLD I IN the spring of 1879 Nietzsche resigned his professorship at Basel. Already--some three years earlier--he had been obliged to give up his work at the Pädagogium there. There were intervals of exuberant animal spirits, but as a whole his life appears to have been one of suffering. He was not teaching to his satisfaction--he confesses this in his letter of resignation. 1 Moreover, the thought came over him at times that his strength, supposing that he could turn it to account, lay in writing rather than in teaching--in any case that he was coming to have views of his own and that he ought to be developing them. Questions of this sort had disturbed his academic serenity before. Twice--in 1874 and even as early as 1870--he had been tempted to renounce his university work: his free time was too little, and he could not say his best "to the boys." 2 But now a grave illness precipitated matters, and he definitively put an end to his teaching career. The University granted him a pension of 3,000 francs a year, and with this and a little income of his own (the whole amounting to around $1,000.00) he began that entirely private life as a thinker which ended with his apoplectic stroke ten years later. The intervening years were spent mostly in the south of Europe--as stated in the opening chapter. It was a lonely existence for the most part; he sorely missed the presence and sympathy of friends. Indeed, he had already lost many of his early friends, so unusual was the course his thinking had taken. He found refuge with books and with solitary nature--and, I might add, with people in the humbler walks of life; his sister remarks that in Genoa during the winter of 1880 and 1881 he perhaps first came to know the common people, finding much that was lovable in them, and they showing a kind of affectionate reverence for him. 3 Something in his manner of life at this time is hinted at in a private memorandum. His ideal, he says, is "an independence that does not offend the eye, a softened and veiled pride, one that equalizes things with others (sich abzahlt an die Anderen) by not competing for their honors and enjoyments, and not minding ridicule. This shall ennoble my habits of life: to be never common and always courteous, not to be covetous, but to strive quietly and keep in the upper air; to be frugal, even niggardly toward myself, but unexacting (milde) toward others. Light sleep, a free quiet step, no alcohol, no princes or other notabilities, no women or newspapers, no honors, no intercourse except with the highest spirits and now and then with the common people--this is as indispensable as the eight of vigorous and healthy vegetation--foods easiest had, which do not take one into the press of greedy and smacking crowds, if possible self-prepared foods, or those not needing preparation." 4 a

At least six or seven of these years belong to the third period of Nietzsche's life--though fixing a date for its beginning is a more or less arbitrary thing. Some scholars put Dawn of Day ( 1881) and Joyful Science ( 1882) into it, others class these works with those of the second period, while still others-and with probably the greatest show of reason--think that they mark the transition from one period to the other. The fact is that there is no break, no catastrophic change, such as occurred in 1876. All we can truthfully say is that gradually the tone becomes more positive, that, while criticism continues or is even sharper than ever, constructive thinking appears more and more, and an approach to a comprehensive world-view.

The books unquestionably belonging to this period include the two which are the best known, or rather most quoted, of all of Nietzsche works, Thus spake Zarathustra ( 1883-5) and Beyond Good and Evil ( 1885-6); also Towards the Genealogyof Morals of Morals 5 ( 1887), Twilight of the Idols ( 1888), The Antichristian 6 ( 1888) "The Case of Wagner" and "Nietzsche contra Wagner" (both 1888, and little more than pamphlets). Besides these, are the autobiographical notes (not originally meant for publication) entitled Ecce Homo, and voluminous material for a contemplated and never achieved systematic work, Will to Power--material which has been more or less successfully put together by later hands and now appears under that title (second and much improved edition, 1906). There are also three posthumous volumes of private notes and unfinished sketches. 7

II The most general mark of the period is confidence--one might say, joy: the book which may be taken as a herald of it is entitled Joyful Science (Die fröhliche Wissenschaft). 8 Nietzsche is now quite emerging from the gloom and depression that had ensued on the overthrow of his first ideals. He had momentarily lost his goal; he is now sure of one. He needed a cure from his early romanticism, he had had too much sweet, too rich a diet; but he has got it--and is well again (in soul, at least). 9 Chastened, disciplined, he feels once more ready for battle. As our fathers, he says, brought sacrifices of wealth and blood, rank and country to Christianity, so will we sacrifice, not for our doubts or unbelief, but for our faith. 10

Nietzsche once said, in referring to Human, All-too-Human, "It is necessary to take up this whole positivism into myself, and none the less be a bearer of idealism." 11 By positivism he means positive knowledge, i.e., the attitude which insists on actual facts, as distinguished from fancies and speculations. We have seen something of his passion for verity in the previous period, his wish to face facts, however bare, comfortless, or empty of higher significance they might be; and we are not to imagine that he ever becomes an uncritical idealist again-he has no lapses such as are common among those who become tired of doubt; in Dawn of Day, with his face setting in the new direction, he speaks of "idealizing" as reprovingly as ever he had when his positivistic attitude was at its height. 12 And yet this attitude takes now a secondary place, for he feels that it is not equal to the whole of life. Philosophy is to his mind something more than science, or even criticism and critical science, counter as this view was to the prevailing opinion in his day. He advances a variety of considerations at different times and in different connections--I state them here in my own order. In the first place, certain knowledge is not always to be had, and in action we have often to go on chances and possibilities--indeed there is a certain weakness in always wanting to know, in not being ready for risks. 13 Secondly, facts of themselves are miscellaneous, scattering--it is really a bric-àbrac of conceptions that so-called positivism is bringing to market today; they need to be interpreted, related, put in order. 14 The special sciences cannot make themselves independent of philosophy, which is a general view from a height above them, involving an "Ueberblick, Umblick, Niederblick." 15 Philosophers have usually been against their time, and now there is a duty incumbent on them to oppose the tendency to put every one into a corner and speciality. "What I wish is that the genuine concept of the philosopher shall not entirely perish in Germany." 16 b Nietzsche even goes to the length of questioning whether there are any bare facts separable from interpretation of some kind, whether it is possible, as some propose, to stand by the facts simply and not go beyond them--he does not think much of the idea of putting philosophy "upon a strictly scientific basis." 17

Moreover, facts have to be valued as well as ascertained-and it appears to be his opinion that the ultimate canon for interpreting, relating, and ordering is derived from the valuing process. The valuing attitude is sharply contrasted with the "scientific" one. It is not a mere mirroring of the facts, and Nietzsche draws a satirical picture of the "objective" man who mirrors everything and is nothing--presque rien. 18 It involves choosing, preferring, judging of facts--that is, a standard which is independent of them and is projected by the mind. Zarathustra accordingly is represented as having left the house of scholars who only want to observe; the present age seems to him one of polyglot knowledge, not one of belief and creative capacity. 19 This prostrating oneself before facts, without standards by which to judge of them, has become a sort of cultus-Nietzsche admits that Taine is an example of it. 20 The only explanation of it is that men have been long happy in the unreal and are now surfeited with it. 21 Positivism is a rebound against Romanticism, the work of undeceived romanticists. 22 But to love the real, irrespective of its quality and character, is to be tasteless. Zarathustra does not like those to whom each and every thing is good and this world the best world--he honors rather refractory, fastidious tongues and stomachs that have learned to say "I," and "Yes" and "No." 23 The trouble with our science today is its ideallessness, its lack of a great love. 24 For it is man's task to set himself an end, and thereby a standard of value--above all is this the task of man at his highest, of the philosopher. The sciences are preliminary and preparatory to this supreme functioning--the solving the problem of value, the determining the order of precedence in values. 25 Genuine philosophers say, "So should things be"--they are commanders and legislators; they determine the Whither? and For what? of man, laying creative hands on the future, and turning all that is or was into means and instrument. Nietzsche puts it boldly, "Their 'knowing' is creating, their creating is a legislating, their will to truth is--will to power." 26 c That is (stating the matter in my own language), we human beings can observe, but we can also strive for that which is past all observing, since it is the projection of our minds and imagination, and belongs as yet among the viewless and, strictly speaking, non-existent things of the world. We can look at existence, whether ourselves or reality outside us, as so much matter, ?λη, on which we are to impress a higher form. Science at its best is necessarily fragmentary--and equally so is history; if we limit ourselves to their report of things, we leave out the whole area of possibility. To quote Nietzsche's own words: "Man is something fluid and plastic--we can make out of him what we will." 27 Again, "In man is creature and creator in one: there is matter, fragment, superfluity, clay, excrement, unreason, chaos--but also creator, former, the hardness of the hammer, the contemplativeness of a God, and the glory of the seventh day." 28 Instead of Schopenhauer's doctrine of redemption from existence, Zarathustra ( Nietzsche) gives us a doctrine of the re-creation of existence. Every fragmentary "it was" is to be changed into a "so I would have it": 29 the doctrine rests on a belief in the changeability of the world and in the power of men to make change.

Accordingly we feel--not always, but as a rule--an atmosphere of great faith in this last period. We know our powers, he says, not our power--we should regard ourselves as a variable quantity whose capacity of performance might be of the highest under favorable circumstances. 30 "Raphael without hands," i.e., genius without the happy conditions that lend it power to execute,--may it not be the rule rather than the exception? The world--particularly the human world 31 --is a bottomless rich sea. Things which have been long weak and embryonic may at last come to light; unconscious possibilities in fathers may stand revealed in their children or children's children--we all have hidden gardens and plantations within us, or, to use another metaphor, are volcanoes which may some day have an hour of eruption; 32 even in the souls of Germans, "these poor bears,' lurk "hidden nymphs and wood-gods" and "still higher divinities." 33 Nietzsche is as far as ever from deriving our higher powers or qualities (after the manner of Kant or Schopenhauer) from a metaphysical source; but they are real all the same--he once speaks of the hero who is hidden in every man, and he can imagine transgressors giving themselves up to justice. 34 Though our unrealized possibilities are a chaos rather than a cosmos, a kind of milky way or labyrinth, 35 his faith is plainly that order, suns and stars, may come out of them. If man is sicklier and more uncertain than any other animal, it is just because he makes so many changes--because of the undefined range of his possibilities. He the great experimenter with himself, the unsatisfied, who enters the lists for the last supremacy with animals, nature, and Gods; he the still unconquered, the eternally expectant, whose own inner force urges him on and gives him no rest--how could he not be liable to maladies such as nothing else in nature knows? 36 We know what is or was, not what may be or might have been. Nietzsche touches on Plato's reforming thoughts and attempts to carry them into effect in Sicily--he thinks it conceivable that he should have succeeded, even as the legislation of Mohammed went into effect among his Arabs, and the still stranger thoughts of Christianity prevailed in another quarter: a few accidents less and a few accidents more, and there might have been a Platonizing of Southern Europe-though as things turned out, Plato has come to be known as a fantast and utopian (harder names perhaps having been used in ancient Athens). 37

Naturally along with the larger outlook is a fresh appreciation of poetry. He thinks that poets might do more than paint an Arcady, nor should it be necessary for them to employ their imagination in falsifying reality; it is their high mission to open to us the realm of the possible. Starting with suggestions from the course of evolution in the past, they might with bold fantasy anticipate what will or may be--picture virtues such as have never been on earth, and higher races of men. "All our poetry is so restricted, earthly (kleinbόrgerlich-erdenhaft)." He waits for seers who will tell us of the possible, astronomers of the ideal who will reveal to us purple-glowing constellations and whole milky ways of the beautiful. First after the death of religion (in the old sense) can invention in the realm of the Divine again luxuriate--and perhaps just because we can no longer flee to God, the sea within ourselves may rise higher. 38 He knows the charm, too, of poets who but imperfectly express the vision of their souls, who give us foretastes of the vision rather than the vision itself: 39 it is the charm of suggestiveness--a very different charm and a much wholesomer one than that upon which George Eliot dilates in "A Minor Prophet," where imperfection becomes almost dear for its own sake.

To sum up: if science, knowledge of the actual whatever becomes of ideals, may be taken as the characteristic note of the second period, science and the ideal are the note of the third. Close observation of reality and an unblanched face before it continue, but there is a fresh sense that the actual is only a part of the totality of things. Science is simply a negative test--we must not have ideals which are inconsistent with it. 40 Accordingly Nietzsche is happy again--but with an ennobled, purified happiness. Frau Andreas-Salomι thinks that the land of his future expectations was not really a new one, but the old one from which he originally set out--and in a deep sense this is true; but she admits that the products of the new period were more or less shaped by the experiences of the intervening years. "Certain great perspectives of the spiritual and moral horizon are my strongest springs of life," he wrote her, after referring to the fearful existence of renunciation he had been obliged to lead. "I also have morning-dawns . . . what I no longer believed . . . appears now possible--as the golden morning dawn on the horizon of all my future life." 41

III Though the general outlines of the world are much the same to Nietzsche as in the preceding period, conceptions of possibility and change and man's power play, as just intimated, an ever larger part. One might almost say that he becomes optimist. He had earlier said, "Away with the wearisomely hackneyed terms, optimism and pessimism!" He maintained that they stood for theological contentions, and that no one cared any longer for the theologians--except the theologians themselves. Good and bad have only human references--the world itself is neither good nor bad (not to say best and worst), and we should stop both glorifying it and reviling it in this way. 42 But favorable or unfavorable judgments of the world may be based on other grounds, and he inclines more and more to a favorable judgment. The world comes to seem good to him just as it is, without any intrinsic order, or inherent purpose, or moral governance--good, that is, as a place one is willing and glad to live in. 43 Indeed, he approximates to religious feeling about it--at least he uses religious language. His mouthpiece, Zarathustra, says, "To blaspheme against the earth is now the most dreadful thing." 44 Even change and accident are regarded with a semireligious veneration. All becoming is to Zarathustra a "dance of Gods," a "wantonness of Gods." 45 The earth is likened to a dice-table--one which Gods have spread out, and on which they play with men; it trembles from the throws they make and their creative new words. 46 We hear of the "heaven of accident" standing over all things--and to teach that accident has so high and ruling a place in the world is not to revile, but to bless. 47 In The Antichristian, after saying that indignation at the general aspect of things is, along with pessimism, the privilege of the Tschandala [the lowest class of men 48 , Nietzsche uses this remarkable language: "The world is perfect--so speaks the instinct of the most spiritual men, the affirmative instinct-imperfection, what lies beneath us of every kind, distance, the pathos of distance, the Tschandala himself belongs to this perfection." 49

This does not mean that Nietzsche has altered in the slightest his estimate of things from a moral standpoint--that he is not still pessimist, as most would understand that term. "We are seethed," he says, "in the view, and have become cold and hard in it, that things do not go on at all divinely in the world, or even according to human measure rationally, mercifully, or justly; we know it, the world in which we live, is undivine, unmoral, 'unhuman'"--that it is not valuable in the way we have believed is the surest result we have. 50 Injury, violence, stealing, killing inhere in all life. 51 He honors Schopenhauer (in contrast with men like Schiller, W. von Humboldt, Schleiermacher, Hegel, and Schelling) for seeing the world as it is, and the deviltry of it. 52 He feels himself an heir of the veracity and old-fashioned piety of Luther, who recognized that reason could not of itself make out a just and merciful government of the world, and of Kant, who saw that morality could not be based on nature and history, since immorality ruled there; 53 d both, that is, had to put the Divine outside the world (a logic which our new "immanent" theologians might well ponder over). But, he in effect argues, because we are pessimists in this sense, because the world has not the particular value commonly ascribed to it, it does not follow that it is less valuable--it may be more so. For what are the standards of value which are commonly set up? what is it that is deified? Goodness, justice, love. But what are goodness, justice, love but qualities by the help of which men get along together in societies, necessary rules for their association in flocks? What are we doing then but taking certain utilities of flock-life and making a God of them, an absolute standard by which the world is judged, so that it is good if it conforms to them and bad if it does not. 54 It seems a presumptuous thing to Nietzsche, an extravagant aberration of human vanity and unreason--indeed he finds something laughable in man's proposing to invent values that are to exceed the value of the actual world. 55

How the world is still valuable in his eyes after the downfall of moralistic faith, we have already seen in part and shall see more clearly later on. I may only say in general now that it is the possible outcome of existence, which justifies existence to his mind--the type or types of life that may emerge. It is not that pleasure may preponderate over pain--to considerations of pleasure and pain he gives a quite secondary place. Every sound individual, he thinks, refuses to judge life by these incidents. Pain might preponderate, and there be none the less a mighty will to life, a saying yes to it, a feeling even of the necessity of this preponderance. 56 A measure of the will's power is its capacity to endure opposition, pain, and torture, and to turn them to advantage. With this in mind, he says, "I do not reckon the evil and painful character of existence an objection to it, but hope that it will sometime be more evil and more painful than heretofore." 57 He despises the "pessimism of sensibility" and calls it "a sign of deep impoverishment of life"; 58 more than once he quotes Voltaire's lines,

"Un monstre gai vaut mieux Qu'un sentimental ennuyeux." 59

He thus departs widely from Spencerian and all hedonistic measurements of the worth of life. When we come into the region and atmosphere of his thoughts, it is like passing into a new zone and climate. If we still call his view pessimism, we must admit that it is, to use his own phrase, "Dionysiae pessimism," one that affirms life despite or even because of suffering and change and death, and so practically as good as optimism--one might say better than the soft sweet thing which often goes by that name. He speaks of Dionysiae pessimism as his proprium and ipsissimum. 60 e If nature, in her ceaseless flow of change and accident, gives a chance for greatness, it is to him enough. 61

IV Some details in his picture of the world may now be given, though they are not absolutely new. (1) Let us guard, he says, against conceiving of the world as a living or organic thing. Toward what should it develope? From what should it be nourished? How could it grow and increase? Living organic things are simply phenomena in it--and late and rare phenomena. (2) Nor should we regard it as a machine--a machine is something constructed for an end, and the world has no marks of being constructed in this way; we really do it too much honor in speaking of it as a machine. (3) We should guard against assuming that the regular cyclic movements of our and neighboring planets are everywhere--there may be much ruder and more contradictory movements, our astral order being an exception, and chaos marking the world as a whole (chaos in the sense of an absence, not of necessity, but of order, organization, form, beauty). (4) There is no occasion for blaming or praising the world. We should avoid ascribing to it heartlessness and unreason or the opposite. It is neither perfect nor beautiful, nor noble, and has no wish to be--it does not at all strive to imitate man and none of our æsthetic or moral judgments hit it. It has not even an impulse of self-preservation, or impulses of any kind. (5) It also knows no laws. Let us be on our guard against saying that there are laws in nature--there are only necessities: there is no one who commands, no one who obeys, no one who transgresses. Moreover, since there are no ends in nature, there is strictly speaking no accident; only in a world of ends has the word "accident" a meaning. (6) Let us be on our guard against making death the antithesis of life-the living is only a species of the dead, and a rare species. (7) Let us be on our guard against thinking that the world eternally creates new things (it is really a finite quantity, and sooner or later reaches the limits of its power). 62 Moreover, it is important to stop speaking of the All as if it were a unity, a force, an absolute of some kind--we easily come in this way to take it as a highest instance and to christen it "God." We must split up the All, unlearn any particular respect for it, bring back feelings we have given to the unknown and the whole, and devote them to things next us, our own things. The All raises ever the old problems, "How is evil possible?" and so on. To speak bluntly, there is no All, the great sensorium or inventorium or storehouse of power is lacking. 63 Nietzsche is thus altogether a pluralist. Such unities as we find are, to him, derived and created things, and lie in a larger sea of the chaotic. This is true not only of the world at large, but of an individual soul. Those thinkers in whom all the stars move in cyclic paths are not the deepest; he who looks into the vast space within himself and is aware of the milky ways there, knows also how irregular all milky ways are--they lead into the chaos and labyrinth of existence. 64 Nietzsche is accordingly distrustful of systematizers, and he conjectures their descent from registrars and office-secretaries, whose business it was to label things and put them in their pigeonholes. 65 "He is a thinker: that means that he understands how to take things more simply than they are." 66 Particularly now, when science is just beginning its work, does system-building seem to him childishness. "I am not narrow enough for a system--and not even for my system." 67 f

But though Nietzsche regards the world as a more or less chaotic, irregular thing, 68 he avoids, as already stated, thinking of it as infinite, whether in extent or power--such a view seems to him an unwarranted extravagance. Though immense and practically immeasurable, it is none the less a definite quantity, something capable neither of increase nor of diminution, surrounded by nothing, for there is nothing outside of it, terms of this sort being applicable only to relations within it and empty space being but a name. 69 In no way does he more radically depart from modern, romantic, Christian notions and return to old Greek habits of thought, than in this view of a finite rather than infinite world. As Zarathustra sees it in a dream, the world is something measurable, weighable, compassable, divinable--not, indeed, simple enough to put men's minds to sleep, and yet not enigmatic enough to scare away human love, a kind of humanly good thing, like a perfect apple, or a broad-boughed tree, or a treasure-box open for the delight of modest revering eyes. 70 It is, indeed, of such measured scope that the things which once happened in it are likely, or even bound in the course of time, to happen again--there cannot be ever new things. Sometime the possibilities of change will be exhausted, and then the new things will be old things over again. This becomes a special doctrine which we shall consider in the next chapter. Suffice it now to say that by this recurrence, and, supposing that time goes on forever, ever renewed recurrence of the past, a semblance of succession or order arises in the world, despite its chance nature--or rather just because of this, for the recurrence is entirely a matter of accident and necessity, not the result of any design or ordering will.

Nietzsche's attitude to chaos and accident is a double one. Because of what may come out of it, and partly because it represents the actual conditions of existence which a brave man will accept anyway, he speaks at times of "beautiful chaos," "dear accident." In this mood amor fati is his motto. He writes on the opening of a new year, "I will ever more learn to recognize the necessary in things as the beautiful,--so shall I be one of those who make things beautiful: let this be from now on my love!" 71 Zarathustra calls (by a play on words which it is impossible to give the effect of in English) "von Ohngefdhr," literally "by chance," the oldest nobility in the world, and says that the heaven above him is so pure and high, just because there is no spider or spider-web of reason there, because it is a dancing-ground for divine accidents, a divine table for divine dice and dice-players. 72 And yet we are not to infer that Nietzsche reveres chance or accident for itself, and sometimes we find him describing it as a giant to be fought. 73 . So far as man is concerned, it is at best an opportunity, a situation from which something may be wrested. He speaks of compelling accidents to dance in measure like the stars. 74 He instances the way in which a master of musical improvising will, if he strikes an accidental note, turn it to account--fitting it into the thematic framework and giving it a beautiful meaning and soul. 75 He represents Zarathustra as superior to chance: the prophet uses it, boils it in his pot-indeed, only in this way does it become his eatable meat. 76 g Nietzsche is perfectly aware that those who do not know how to use chance, may find in it their undoing.

CHAPTER XIV THE IDEA OF ETERNAL RECURRENCE ALLUSION was made in the preceding chapter to the idea of recurrence as a part of Nietzsche's general view of the world; I shall now treat it with some particularity. 1 It is sometimes regarded as fanciful or mystical. Professor Ziegler calls it "a phantastic hypothesis." 2 ProfessorRiehl relegates it to the childhood of science--it cannot be proved or even made probable. 3 A distinguished German physician and psychiatrist even thinks that when a conceit, which might have been pardonable in the times of Pythagoras, unhinges a man who has read Kant, something is the matter with him. 4 Professor Pringle-Pattison can only say, "So long as it remained a real possibility which might be established on scientific grounds, it haunted him like a nightmare; so soon as it receded into the realm of speculative fantasy, he began hymns to eternity as to a bride, and to the marriage ring of recurrence" 5 --that is, he was attracted to it in inverse proportion to its scientific character. Even Dr. Dolson speaks of this "half-mystic doctrine." 6 It must be admitted that Nietzsche is himself partly responsible for views of this sort. He once speaks of the idea as if it had come to him suddenly--the day and place are specified. 7 There is a description of it that is weird and uncanny--the details are almost like those of a nightmare. 8 And yet if we look into Nietzsche's general psychological world, we see that the idea arose with something like logical necessity, that it has broad theoretic grounds.

First, we must remember that to Nietzsche the world was a finite quantity (as explained in the last chapter). Undulations in the amount of existence, now more and now less, were to him unthinkable. He believed that the modern doctrine of the conservation of energy pointed that way. Fixed or definite, and infinite were contradictory terms. A refusal to speak of infinite force he regarded as one of the marks of scientific, in contrast with the old religious habits of thought. 9 Second, he refused to admit the idea of empty space around the world. The notion of infinite space was gratuitous; he thought it based on the conception of empty space, which is an abstraction and unreal, all space being full of force of some kind. Space itself, as a separate category from matter or force, was an unreality, a subjective form. 10 But on the other hand (thirdly), he had come by this time to believe in the reality of time; there was a before and after irrespective of our thought or experience of it--and to this before and after no limits could be set, it was infinite. a 11 a We have then so far a finite sum of force working in infinite time. And now, following ordinary ideas of causality, he argues that there can have been no beginning to the activity of the force (this a fourth point), that change of some kind must have been forever going on. But, the question may be asked, Granting all this, may not the activity at some time come to an end? May not an equilibrium be finally reached--a state in which, activity having played its part, becoming passes into being, a changeless goal of all preceding change? Nietzsche does not deny that this is conceivable, but he argues that if it were really possible, the goal would have been already reached, since time extends infinitely backwards as well as forwards and in absolutely unlimited time everything that could have happened must have happened. The simple fact then that an equilibrium does not exist now (for once reached, it would last forever), proves that there never was an equilibrium, and never could be--that the world is eternally in process of change. The mechanical view, as sometimes expounded, leads one to anticipate a final state in which heat and all forms of energy are evenly dispersed through space, so that transformations become thereafter impossible (save by a miracle of some kind); but Nietzsche goes so far as to say that if the mechanical theory cannot escape the consequences of a final stationary state, such as Sir William Thomson describes, the theory is ipso facto disproved. If any such state were really possible, it would have been attained in the limitless stretches of past time, and we (if there were any sense in speaking of "we" in such a connection, being ourselves changeable beings) should be in it. 12 b

Fifthly, so far as the special cosmic order now existing is concerned, Nietzsche thinks, agreeably to current views, that it had a beginning sometime in the past. There was some relatively simple state of forces, from which the present more or less organized world has gradually evolved. Moreover, all the processes of this evolution, even the minutest details of it, hang together--so much so, that if any least thing were different from what it is, all other things would have to be different too, and if we approve any one thing we have to approve everything else, each being bound up with the others, whether as condition or consequence. And as this cosmic order began, so it will in the course of time end, the forces relapsing into some such unorganized state as they had at the start. 13 This view of a relative beginning and end of things is a common one, and it is at least not uncommon to think that after one ending there will in time be another beginning--so that, if we go far enough along this line, we gain the idea of a succession of worlds or cosmic orders.

So far as there is any novelty in Nietzsche's speculation, it is from this point on. It by no means follows, he thinks, that because these worlds follow one another they will be like one another, save under certain extremely general aspects. They may differ widely. Mechanical laws as we know them may not be strictly necessary, and so it may be with chemical affinity and cohesion--they may be simply temporary habits of things, holding while the present cosmic order lasts, and perhaps not universally or permanently even here. All depends on the initial state of things, the way forces happen to have been collocated there. With one combination or constellation of forces one kind of world will result, and with another, another. There may be as many different kinds of worlds as there can be different arrangements and collocations of the primitive forces. To our world may then succeed a totally different kind of world, just as one totally different may have preceded it. There is no ordering of these things, no controlling design regulating them--it is all chance and accident. 14 But--and here is the real turning-point of Nietzsche's thought--in the course of time, supposing that it goes on indefinitely, the different possible combinations of forces will have all been made. If the total amount of force, however vast and practicably incalculable, is definite, fixed, the number of combinations which its constituent parts can make is not limitless; the number may be myriad, but it cannot be infinite. If then the limit is reached, there can thereafter only be repetitions of the combinations that have already occurred--new ones are impossible (sixth point). 15

I may offer a very simple--seemingly too simple--illustration on my own account. Suppose that we--the reader and I--are playing dice. We throw various numbers, various combinations of numbers. There is no regularity in the succession--it is all haphazard (if we play a fair game and let chance be chance absolutely). Some time may elapse before either of us reaches any special combination, say double sixes. And yet, sooner or later we do reach it, both of us do--not because we will it, but because chance itself in the course of time is bound to give it to us. If we play on and on and do not reach it, we inevitably suspect that something is the matter with the dice, i.e., that they have been loaded, that pure chance does not rule. So of each and every combination--we are bound to throw them all, if we take sufficient time, and there has been no tampering with the dice. But after we have thrown all the combinations, what else is there for us to do, if we go on playing, but to throw the old ones over again? The recurrence of the old ones is of strict necessity--it is chance and necessity in one. The order of the throws may be different, is likely to be different--but the repetitions themselves are unavoidable. Nor if there were numbers running into the thousands, or millions, or tens of millions, would it make any difference; if we played long enough, all possible combinations would in time be exhausted, and then, if we continued to play, the old combinations would be repeated. Moreover, if we or others had been playing before, there would have been, however great the number of combinations, the same exhaustion of them in course of time, and thereafter a repetition of previous ones. Repetition, repetition without end, is the law in conditions like these. Grant the suppositions, finite numbers, infinite time, and pure chance (i.e., no interference from an arbitrary will outside, whether in forming the dice to start with or in influencing our muscles in throwing), and the result is inevitable.

The illustration is ridiculously simple--but I think it covers the nerve of Nietzsche's argument. Assuming his preliminary data, the same initial combination of the forces of existence would recur again and again, and each time there would ensue from that combination according to ordinary laws of cause and effect the same identical cosmic evolution, with exactly the same result at any given instant of the process. Indeed, Nietzsche argues that only in this way is there such a thing as strict identity. In our existing world, no two things can be exactly alike, if only because they are differently located in space and outside forces impinge differently upon them, and no one thing can be identical with itself at different times for similar reasons. Whenever then in the distant ranges of the future, after our present world has relapsed into the simple and relatively chaotic state from which it once emerged, the fortuitous course of things shall again bring about a combination of forces like that of which our world is the result, a world precisely similar to ours will again develope and the whole secular process of evolution be repeated: at a certain point everything will be like what it is now, the stars, the sea, the land, the peoples, the philosophies, the arguments, you and I, down to the last detail of our existence. 16 Grant chance (i.e., the absence of any set will controlling things), grant a finite sum of forces which never began and never will cease to act, grant infinite time, grant the negation of infinite empty space in which forces might be dissipated, grant the determinist view of the connection of events, and the result is apparently unescapable. c It also follows that to such a recurrence of the world, another recurrence will be added later on, and to that, still another,--and so on ad infinitum. With equal necessity it follows that earlier editions of the world have existed--in this direction too, ad infinitum.

As stated, there may be many kinds of worlds, and varying orders of succession between them. When our world passes away, it does not follow that at once or at any definite time it will be recomposed. Nietzsche especially warns us against the analogies of recurring planetary courses, or the ebb and flow of the sea, or day and night, or the seasons--all of which succeed one another regularly. 17 The point is not when or in what order recurrence takes place, but that it takes place. In one place he says that between each combination and its recurrence, all other possible combinations will have had their turn; 18 this might be so, but it does not appear to be necessary--the repetition of the combination might come soon; the only certainty is that it will come sometime, even if the whole gamut of combinations has to be swept. But though no regular order of succession can be predicated, existence comes in general to have a cyclic or circular character in this way. The same things are ever and anon recurring. Things do not simply cease to be as we commonly imagine--in time they come back to themselves. The flow of existence is not straight on--it bends and returns on itself. Hence Nietzsche's simile of the ring. "Krumm--bent, curved-is the path of eternity," says Zarathustra. 19 No geometer makes the ring; it is nowise inconsistent with the "chaos" of things; it is a simple "irrational necessity, apart from any kind of formal, ethical, or æsthetic considerations." 20 Forall that, it is necessary, eternal, involved in the very nature of things, an eternal law of things. The course of the stars, the succession of seasons, day and night, may arise and pass away--the ring never. What is will come again--a breath of eternity touches things, all things; no thing so slight or so insignificant or so fleeting, but is in a sense eternalized. "Everything goes, everything returns, eternally does the wheel of being roll; everything dies, everything blossoms again, eternally does the year of being run its course; everything breaks, everything is put together again, eternally does the house of being build itself anew; all things separate, all things greet one another again, eternally is the ring of being true." 21

ll The reader may detect a note of joy in the quotation just made, but if so, I am anticipating, for the first effect of the view was depressing. There are plain intimations of Nietzsche's struggle with it in his writings, and we have also the testimony of one who for a while was in close contact with him-Fräulein von Salomé, now Frau Professor Andreas-Salomé of Göttingen. The idea was no more welcome at the start than some others to which his thinking had conducted him. He communicated it to few, dreading a possible confirmation of it. 22 Those who think that a man believes what he wishes to believe, should observe this case. He says, for instance, "If a demon should slip into your loneliest solitude some day or night and should say to you: This life, as you are now living and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times, and nothing new will arise in it . . . should you not fling yourself down and gnash your teeth, and curse the demon that so spoke?" 23 . He makes Zarathustra say, "Ah, man comes back again, ever comes back! the small man ever comes back! All too small even the greatest--and unceasing return even of the smallest! Ah, horror, horror, horror!" 24 he idea is like a serpent, which crawls into a shepherd's throat unawares as he lies on the ground and threatens to choke him. 25 The first quoted passage continues, "every pain and every pleasure, and every thought and sigh, and everything unspeakably small and great in your life must come back to you, and in the same order and succession--and even so this spider and this moonlight between the trees, even so this moment and I myself. The eternal hour-glass of existence is ever again turned, and you with it--dust of dust." It is an almost "spectral" impression we get (to use Professor Riehl's adjective), 26 and the undertone of feeling is manifest. If this is to be called immortality, it is immortality of a new kind, as Riehl observes, 27 for it is only this present life, petty and pitiable as it may be, over again. It is possible to despair at such a prospect. We know that a future life has sometimes been dreaded rather than welcomed--for example, among the Buddhists; and this would seem to be another instance. Mr. Henry L. Mencken pronounces Nietzsche's idea "the most hopeless idea, perhaps, ever formulated by man." 28

And yet Nietzsche learned how to right himself in this as in other emergencies. Amor fati! If something had to be, it could be endured--and must be made endurable. And much, he saw, depends upon the nature and character of our life. If the recurrence of it is a forbidding thought, is it not because our life has failed to satisfy us, has been unworthy, or full of pain, or at best commonplace--so that we want no more of it? But if it has been a happy life, or at least if there have been supreme moments of happiness in it, if we have known for however brief a time some great measureless satisfaction of our whole being, the situation changes. While suffering we do not wish again (at least for its own sake), not so with joy. Nietzsche puts the thought in poetic form--it is Zarathustra's song:

"O man! mark well! What saith deep midnight with its knell? 'I've slept my sleep-And wakened from the dream's deep spell: The world is deep And deeper than the day can tell. Deep is its woe-- But joy's more deep than misery; Woe saith: "O, go!" But all joy seeks eternity-- Seeks the deep, deep eternity.'" 29 d

That in this human life of ours there may be joy and that it may transcend woe, is Nietzsche's faith. But it is a joy which he conceives after his own fashion. The root of his misery lay in a sense of the lack of the great, the Divine in the world. It was the commonplaceness, the smallness, the meaninglessness of life that preyed on him. In the decay of ancient religion, heaven and hell are no longer felt as supreme issues among us; and aims of comfort, pleasure, and success, such as most men lose themselves in, could not satisfy him. But the question arose, granting that the great and Divine do not exist, whether now or by any necessity in the future, might they not exist--might they not be created? Might not life then get a meaning even if of itself it had none--with a sublime possibility like this before it? Even to turn one's thought that way, even only to expect the outcome, though the consummation itself was far away, could give joy. Such at least was his experience, and with this thought and joy he could confront a recurrence of his life, dreaded as it might otherwise be. The day and hour when all this stood luminously before him became memorable--even the particular spot he was in, near a boulder in the woods of the Upper Engadine, "6000 ft. above the sea, and far higher above all human things"; 30 it was an "immortal" moment, as he afterward noted down. 31 e

In other words, the thought of recurrence gives rise to a practical ethical problem. The task being to "endure our immortality," the problem is, how to live so that we shall "wish to live again." "When thou incorporatest the thought of thoughts within thee, it will transform thee. The question in connection with all thou doest, 'is it something that I wish to do innumerable times?' is the greatest determinant." 32 "Not to look for distant, unknown bliss and blessing and mercy, but so to live that we shall wish to live again and to live in the same way eternally!--our task comes to us in every instant." 33 The sort of life which made Nietzsche wish to live again we have just seen. Life was welcome, would be ad infinitum, when lit up with a thought like that described--when a vision of the Divine opened out to it. "God," in the permissible sense of that term, was just the maximal epoch or state of the developmental process, and the general course of existence was a making and unmaking of the Divine. 34 He particularly notes, in speaking of propagating the idea of "recurrence," that the outlook on the superman and the ethical legislation which naturally accompanies it, must come first--and then the doctrine of recurrence, "now endurable!" 35

This thought of a possible sublime result compensated for all that was untoward, pitiful, or commonplace in life--yes, compensated for its recurrence also. For such is the connection and reciprocal dependence of things, that the great and the little, the good and the bad, must go together--as now, so in the future. If one moment of a man's life returns, the others must too. If we wish a single experience over again, we must wish all the rest. 36 "It is absolutely not the first question whether we are content with ourselves, but rather whether we are content with anything. For if we consent to a single moment, we have thereby consented not only to ourselves, but to all existence. For nothing stands by itself, whether in ourselves or in the world at large; and if only once our soul has trembled like a harp with happiness, all eternities were needed as a condition of this one happening--and all eternity was in this single moment of our consent approved, redeemed, justified, and affirmed." 37 From this point of view Zarathustra stretches out his hands, so to speak, in blessing on all existence. "Pain is also a joy, curse is also a blessing, night is also a sun. . . . Say also to woe: go, but come again joy wills the eternity of all things." 38 It is a kind of theodicy. Nietzsche thinks that the doctrine of recurrence redeems us from a sense of the transitoriness of life: "I teach you redemption from the eternal flux." 39 "Let us impress the image of eternity on our life," he says; 40 and he quotes Dante's line,

"Come l'uom s'etertia. . . ." ( Inf. XV, 85). 41

But the eternalization which comes to man comes finally to all things. Affirm as he might against Schopenhauer the reality of time and change, he felt the poignant elements in those conceptions, the tears in perishing things, and once gives a moving expression of his mood. "That Emperor [referring doubtless to Marcus Aurelius] kept continually before his mind the perishability of all things, so that he might not attach too much importance to them and be able to remain at rest. On me this perishability has a quite different effect--to me everything appears of too much value to be so fleeting: it is as if the most precious wines and ointments were poured into the sea." 42 In repeating the paragraph later, he adds, "My consolation is, that everything that was, is eternal :--the sea washes it up again." 43 The theodicy, if I may so speak of it, covers the whole world, and the eternal repetition of it. Yes, in the eternal repetition of things he finds an approximation to the old idea of being, which, as opposed to change, he had felt obliged to renounce. "That everything comes again is the nearest approach of a world of becoming to a world of being--summit of the view." 44 If time and numerical difference are left out of account, the world in its totality--the different successions of the same world and also the successions of different worlds--is the same identical changeless thing.

III

I have already referred to the contrast between Nietzsche's view and the ordinary idea of immortality. The latter presupposes a different life from this one--happier, better. It implies too the idea that the soul is something distinct and separate from the body. But Nietzsche has a physiological, if not materialistic view of man--" souls are as mortal as bodies," he says, and may even perish "quicker." 45 His "other life" is this life over again--a course of evolution exactly like that which has produced this life producing it a second time. The very solemnity of Nietzsche's ethical injunctions rests on this thought of identity. Make this life over, he in effect says, for as you make it, it will be eternally. And he thinks that after all there are deep instincts binding us to this life. He describes an experience which cannot be altogether strange to any of us. "You feel that you must take farewell--perhaps soon--and the sunset colors of this feeling strike in upon your happiness. Note this witness: it signifies that you love life and yourself, and indeed life as you have hitherto found it and been shaped by it--and that you long for an eternalizing of the same. Non alia sed haec vita, sempiterna." Hence the fortifying influence which he accredits to his doctrine--for change and death "are ever singing their brief song, and with the bearing of the first strophe we almost perish of longing at the thought that things may be gone forever." 46 When a man has nothing with which to offset this experience--the old religion had its way of meeting it--he is inwardly lamed, weakened; he no longer schools himself in striving and enduring, wants present enjoyment, makes things easy for himself. Here is part-explanation, Nietzsche thinks, of the secularist tendency (Verweltlichung) of our time and of the political and socialistic illusions growing out of it--the object is the welfare of the fleeting individual, who has no reason for waiting, as men with eternal souls and eternal possibilities for growing better had in the pasta. 47 Against this whole weakening, laming tendency Nietzsche thinks that his doctrine is a counterpoise--it gives weight, dignity, yes eternity to life. "This life--thy eternal life." 48 "This thought contains more than all religions, which have despised this life as something fleeting and have directed men's attention to an undetermined other life." 49 Nietzsche holds that the old Alexandrian culture went to pieces, because with all its discoveries and love of knowledge, it did not know how to give supreme weight to this life, but regarded the beyond as more important. 50 f He even thinks that his doctrine is the turningpoint of history. 51

The difficulty of course arises (and it is urged by several critics), g that if our action now fixes so far the character of our future existence, it must also be true, according to the terms of the theory, that this action is itself determined by what we (or our counterparts) have done in an earlier existence, so that real self-determination is out of the question. It is a difficulty not unlike at bottom that which the Calvinist has in reconciling free-will with Divine predestination. Indeed, since the influence of our past existence is not direct, but through the medium of a set of causes which have been operating through untold intervals of time and are now at last the immediate antecedents of our present action, the difficulty is the same as that which is connected with any kind of determinist view of human conduct. How can I really decide what my action shall be, when it is but a link in the general causal chain? Nietzsche does not solve the problem, nor does he specially discuss it--but he was perhaps not unaware of it, and once makes a remark, which, I think, shows how he would have approached it. To the question, "But when all is necessary, how can I decide (verfügen) about my actions?" he answers, "Thought and belief are a determining influence along with all the other influences that press upon you, and are more of an influence than they. You say that food, place, air, society change and determine you Now your opinions do it still more, for they determine you to this food, place, air, society. When you incorporate in yourself the thought of thoughts [eternal recurrence], it will transform you." 52 That is, the thought or belief (with which the "I" is practically identical) is itself a part of the deterministic chain; the causal law is not violated by the seemingly free act. In any case Nietzsche is entirely undisturbed by the determinist difficulty when it comes to deciding how he is to act, and as little by the remoter difficulty of a predetermination ages on ages ago--and probably Calvinists and determinists in general are quite like the rest of us in acting as if they were free from day to day now. h

That the doctrine of recurrence can withstand criticism, I by no means assert. Writers on the whole friendly to Nietzsche have criticised it. i I am simply endeavoring to set it forth as he held it. But it is tolerably evident that it is not an entirely fantastic or mystical doctrine. Nietzsche himself was not dogmatic about it. One of his critics notes that he simply called it "the most scientific of all possible hypotheses" 53 --hypothesis then still. He speaks of recurrence as "more probable" than non-recurrence. 54 He is even willing to say, "Perhaps it is not true; let others wrestle with it." 55 j Still he was aware that practically speaking, as Bishop Butler has told us, probability is the guide of life. Remarking on the effect which repetitions in general have (e.g., the seasons, periodic illnesses, waking and sleeping), he says, "If the circular repetition of things is only a probability or possibility, even the thought of a possibility can agitate and refashion us, not merely actual sensations or definite expectations. How has the possibility of eternal damnation worked on men!" 56 And yet Nietzsche wanted as much proof for his ideas as he could get. Not for nothing was he the child of a scientific and experimental age. He even said once that he no longer wished to hear of things and questions about which experiment was impossible, 57 and we have his sister's testimony that he mistrusted all those enraptured and extreme states in which people fancy that they "grasp truth with their hands." 58 We know that in the winter before the thought of eternal recurrence crystalized, he had been reading with lively agreement Helmholtz, Wundt (his earlier writings), and the mathematician Riemann. 59 Professor Richter even says that he worked out his doctrine with the help of three mathematical and scientific books, which he specifies. 60 We know also that a year after he had made his first fragmentary formulation of it, he wished to test and criticise it afresh, and proposed an extended course of study at Vienna (or Paris or Munich)--he would stop writing for several years, he declared, and begin student-life over again. Unhappily (or happily) the plan could not be carried out, because of poor health, and particularly the state of his eyes. k And yet it must be doubted whether scientific and physical studies such as he looked forward to, however careful and extended they might be, could ever dispose of questions of this far-reaching nature. Professor Fouillée called speculations like Nietzsche's "toutes subjectives."? 61 The element of truth in the reproach is that in the nature of the case they are incapable of scientific verification. How can one by experimental investigation decide whether the sum-total of force in the universe is finite or infinite How can there be a scientific demonstration of the state of the cosmos billions of years ago, or billions of years to come? How can one get objective evidence that time is unending or that empty space is unreal! How at the very best can we get beyond certain necessities of thought, which it is open to any one to pronounce "toutes subjectives"? The fact is that probabilities or possibilities are all we can have in regions like these--and yet must we not proceed on probabilities and possibilities in our concrete (as opposed to formal) thinking almost everywhere! However this may be, Nietzsche never had his years of projected study, and never got beyond such fragmentary formulations of his doctrine as we have, and the lyrical expression of it in Zarathustra.

IV Nietzsche is commonly taxed with error in claiming to be the first to teach the doctrine. Indeed he himself says that it might have been taught by Heraclitus--that at least the Stoa, which inherited nearly all its fundamental conceptions from Heraclitus, has traces of it. 62 l Something like it appears in Hölderlin "Empedokles," in Heine Voyage de Munich à Génes, in Blanqui Éternité par les Astres--and, to speak of more strictly scientific or philosophical writers, in Julius Bahnsen's Zur Philosophie der Geschichte, in Guyau Vers d'un Philosophe, in von Nägeli's address before the Congress of German Naturalists in Munich, 1878, in Gustave Le Bon L'Homme et les Sociétés. 63 Professor Meyer even refers to Nietzsche's old enemy, von Wilamowitz-Möllendorf, as having expressed belief in similar "cosmic periods" (in a lecture, Weltperioden), 64 and Professor Saintsbury would turn the idea into ridicule by calling it "only an echo of the carpenter in "'Peter Simple.'"" 65 Nietzsche had early referred to the Pythagorean view (that under the same constellation of the heavenly bodies, the same things would happen on earth), but he thought that it savored of astrology and did not take it seriously." 66 The basis for the charge of error against him is a certain passage in Zarathustra--at least I can find nothing beyond this. In this passage the animals who attend the prophet, and are joyfully welcoming him back to life after an illness, divine the meaning of the illness and exclaim, "Sing and bubble over, O Zarathustra, heal thy soul with new songs, that thou mayest endure thy destiny, which was that of no one yet. For thy animals know well, O Zarathustra, who thou art and must become: behold, thou art the teacher of eternal recurrence--that is now thy destiny! That thou must be the first to teach this doctrine--how should this great destiny not be also thy greatest danger and illness!" 67 The natural interpretation here is that Zarathustra is to be the first of a line to proclaim the doctrine, with then the dangers and risks of an initiator--the thought is rather of the future, than of exclusion in relation to the past. But if "first" is taken otherwise and implies what the critics assume, the question is, whether in the form in which Nietzsche taught the doctrine, it is not new. For to him it is bound up with the idea of something superhuman to come--only in this shape would he have published it: unrelieved, unrelated in this way, he would probably have allowed it to remain in the dark chambers of his own mind. Zarathustra is made to say, "I come again, with this sun, with this earth, with this eagle, with this serpent--not to a new life or a better life or a similar life; I come again eternally to this identical and selfsame life, in its greatest and also in its smallest, to teach again the eternal return of all things--to announce to men the superman." 68 The italics are mine. The two things--eternal return and superman--are interwoven in Nietzsche's mind; and no one, I imagine, will claim that this full-orbed view had ever been taught before.

On another point, however, it is difficult to acquit Nietzsche of error, and even of a certain naïiveté. He entertained the idea --nay, appears to have been convinced of it--that the doctrine would make a veritable selection among men. The weaker, he believed, would not be able to stand it, they would be undone at the thought of an unending repetition of their pitiful lives, and not knowing how, or being without the energy, to transform them, they would be driven to despair and suicide. Only the strong, the brave, those capable of great things could face the doctrine with equanimity, and with this type of men surviving and occupying the earth, things would be possible, of which no utopist has as yet dreamed. 69 "It is the great disciplinary (züchtende) thought: the races that cannot endure it are doomed, those that feel it as the greatest benefit are chosen for dominion." 70 But that the relatively unreflecting and unimaginative mass of men are going to be deeply affected by something that is to happen to them ages on ages to come is most improbable; if they are not driven to suicide now by the character of their lot, a prospective renewal of it at some unknown time in the future will hardly disturb them much more deeply. In truth, Nietzsche, in thinking as he does, transfers to others quite different from himself his own imaginative intelligence; because he would suffer to despair in their place, he infers that they must--while it is just because he is so different from them that he does so suffer. Unquestionably the view is very real to him. He says, "You fancy that you would have long repose before rebirth--but do not deceive yourselves. Between the last moment of consciousness and the first appearance of the new life, 'no time' intervenes--it is as quickly by as a lightningflash, even if living creatures measure it by billions of years or cannot measure it at all. When the mind is away, timelessness and succession are compatible with one another." 71 He even fancies that the mass may look approvingly on his doctrine at the start, since it means immortality of a certain kind and the most ordinary impulses of self-preservation will respond to it. 72 m Equally, he suspects, the finer, nobler spirits will be at first depressed and in danger of extirpation (even as he had been), leaving the commoner, less sensitive nature to survive 73 -a probability the reverse of the view first stated, and, I should say, likelier. He is thus not really certain as to what the popular effect of his doctrine will be--now he suspects one consequence and now another. The only thing we or he can speak with real assurance about is its effect on himself--for to him the doctrine became something like a religion.

But if a religion, it is one without the gestures that often accompany religion. It is "mild to those who do not believe it; it has no hell and no threats--the only result is that one is left with a fleeting life in his consciousness." 74 It were horrible to think of sin in such a connection; whatever we do, even if we repeat it innumerable times, is innocent, and if the thought of eternal recurrence does not convince us, there is no blame, as there is no merit, if it does. 75 He has no desire that the doctrine should become a religion suddenly--it must sink into men's minds slowly; whole generations must work on it--long, long must it be small and weak. What are the two millenniums during which Christianity has existed--the greatest thought will require many millenniums! 76 He wishes the doctrine stated "simply and almost dryly"--it "must not need eloquence to commend it." 77 He wards off followers who believe easily and get enthusiastic--they must have passed through every grade of skepticism, must have bathed with pleasure in waters icycold, otherwise they have no inner right to the thought. 78

The idea of eternal recurrence was very vital to Nietzsche for a time; but, though still held, it seems to have receded somewhat into the background in his latest years--at least his ethical and social views develope quite independently of it, and have whatever validity they possess irrespective of it.

CHAPTER XV ULTIMATE REALITY AS WILL TO POWER 1 I HAVE considered Nietzsche's general view of the world and of the law of recurrence in it--it remains now to state his conclusions as to its ultimate nature. They were reached (so far as they were reached) by a complicated process of arguing with himself, which it is not altogether easy to resolve. The way is labyrinthine--I have come near being lost in it myself. We have only notes preparatory to his final systematic treatise, not the treatise itself. I can only give the best results which I have been able to attain--perhaps even so I make him more consistent than he really was. The essential logic of his procedure (I do not mean the temporal order) appears to have been something like the following--at least I can best present his varying judgments or attributes under these heads: 1. The world (the world as we commonly understand it) is not real--the world of "science" as little as that of common sense. 2. We make the world real, i.e., posit it as such, have to for life, and none the less delude ourselves. 3. Is there any reality? 4. Reality conceived as power and will to power.

I

The first proposition, the world is not real, is only a restatement and amplification of the view which was taking shape in his first period. The world of colors, sounds, resistances, etc., exists only in our mind or feeling. 2 Abstract the sensibilities of sentient beings, and it would disappear. We have no reason to suppose that our images of tree, stone, water, etc., faithfully reflect things outside us. They are our creation, in response to stimuli that come to us: to one stimulus we respond with color, to another with sound, and so on. a We may think that we can account for the stimulus by saying that it comes from an object, but all the objects we have any acquaintance with are resolvable themselves into sensations and groups of sensations like the preliminary ones we set out to explain. If we say, for example, that green comes from a tree, we soon become aware that the tree itself (so far as it is separable from its greenness) is but a cluster of other, perhaps more elementary, sensations of the same general kind, such as hardness, resistance, pressure, or weight. If we abstract from all the sensations, no tree is left. As Nietzsche puts it, the known outer world is born after the effect, of which it is supposed to be the cause. 3 Our bodies themselves are, as we know them, groups of sensations like everything else--what they really are in their intimate nature we have not the slightest idea. b

Nor if we consider the more refined world of science, do we leave the subjective sphere. The world of atoms and their movements, which physicists conceive of as a true world in contrast with the ordinary world of sense-perception, is not essentially different from the ordinary world; its molecules or atoms are only what we should see or handle had we finer senses,--they and their movements are entirely of a sensational nature. 4 Moreover, the supposition that there are ultimate, indivisible, unalterable units like molecules or atoms is pure invention; it is convenient to have them for purposes of reckoning, and, as we do not find them, we proceed to create them-this is all we can say. 5 c Mechanics is purely a practical or regulative science. 6 (I may remark in passing that Nietzsche thinks that the Dalmatian Boscovitch put an end to materialistic atomism, as the Pole Copernicus had done to the notion of a fixed earth). 7 It is the same with "force" or "forces," in the purely mechanical sense. We know only effects--no one has ever got hold of a force, as mechanical philosophy pictures it. Force, in this sense, is really a piece of abstraction, a more or less arbitrary creation. We ourselves have a certain feeling of force (of tension, of overcoming opposition) in muscular exertion, and the physicist proceeds to take this force apart from the consciousness and feeling that it is and all its human accompaniments and to put it into the external world--really there it is an empty word. 8 Similarly fictitious are the purely mechanical push and pull, attraction and repulsion, imagined to exist between the atoms. Without an aim, an attraction or a repulsion is an unintelligible thing. The will toward something and to get it into our power, or against something to repel it, is something we can understand; but the physicist's "attraction" and "repulsion" are words simply. 9 So as to necessity in the world: we put it there--we add it to the facts, for, because something acts definitely and always so acts, it does not follow that it is forced to. 10 Equally mythological are the laws which things are supposed to obey. 11 Sometimes scientific men give up attempts at explaining things, and content themselves with description--reducing phenomena perhaps to mathematical terms, and causality to relations of equivalence between them; but this mathematizing of things brings us no nearer objective reality, perhaps takes us further away from it--the abstract quantities and their relations being still essentially sensible things, though eviscerated and ghost-like forms of them. 12 d

Although Nietzsche does not question the reality of the psychological world itself, he finds that fictitious elements are more or less introduced here. A subject, for example, in the sense of something added to the feelings and thoughts themselves, is fictitious. He criticises "I think," suggesting that "it thinks" would be a more proper expression, but adding that the "it," too, must in the end go: there is no "I" or "it" separate from the thinking--no constant unchanging reality of that sort. 13 e

A "substance" of mind goes in the same way; 14 f indeed the body comes nearer to being a substantial reality than the mind, though to neither is "substance" really applicable. 15

In the same way "things," as any wise distinct from their attributes or activities, are not real; object taken as a "thing" is no more real than subject, matter no more real than mind. 16 A "thing" is only a certain sum of activities bound together by a concept or image. "Things," "objects," "subjects," "substance," "ego" "matter" are the metaphysics of the people, by which they seek to transcend the shifting realm of change, alone directly known to us; they want something permanent and this is the way they get it: but the entities are fictitious, imaginary.

Hence, in general, the world we commonly picture is a false one, not real: we fancy that it exists quite independently of us, that we simply find it--and we are mistaken. We may correct our images in this way and that, may make one interpretation of the world succeed another, but we do not get beyond images and interpretations: the original data in the case are a meager quantity, and even they are not reality itself (in the independent sense), but the way or ways in which reality affects us. 17 g

II Second, we make the world real, i.e., hold it so, do so the better to live, and none the less delude ourselves. The underlying thought is that life, uncertain and changing as it is, needs something on which to stay itself; with this it walks more securely, has greater confidence. 18 We assume that what we need exists, and, by a subtle process of self-deception, transfer some of our experiences into an objective and supposably unchanging world. As Nietzsche puts it, we project our conditions of maintenance, and turn them into predicates of existence. 19 We convert trees and stones and stars into independent realities and feel thereby at ease and secure. And when science comes with its analysis and makes us aware that these sensible objects cannot exist just as they appear, the same feeling and craving leads us to form (or to acquiesce in the effort of science to form) the idea of elementary kinds of matter, molecules, atoms, or what not, that do not have these palpable subjective references. Indeed, practical need plays no small part in determining our beliefs in general. For example, experience gives us a whole host of particulars--how shall we get on with them? If everything is particular, and nothing like another, how can we know what to expect and how to act? Accordingly we classify the particulars or try to, make groups of them, so far as they have points of resemblance, say, this is the same as that--and reason and act accordingly. But there is no real identity in the world, and a purely theoretic instinct never would have come on such a notion: our ordinary reasoning and logic are but a rough rule of thumb. 20 h So practical need, rather than theoretical interest, determines the common ideas of causality, substance, subject, ego, being as opposed to becoming, also the ordinary articles of religious faith and conceptions like desert and guilt --they are useful to man and society, therefore we hold them valid and true. 21 Christianity, Nietzsche observes, is necessary to most in old Europe now, and a religious doctrine may be refuted a thousand times, but if necessary, man will still hold to it. 22 So valuations of things are necessary to life, and under the workings of similar impulses and by a similar self-deception we put good and bad into things, making them intrinsic there, though as matter of fact all values are of our positing and represent simply conditions of our self-preservation. 23

In other words, a large range of belief and even of so-called "knowledge" has nothing to do with truth and never came from the search for it. i Nietzsche remarks that those who urge strictly scientific methods of thinking have the whole pathos of mankind against them. 24 And so far does he go in sympathy with "mankind" that he is ready to say that if a choice has to be made between truth and the requirements of life, the requirements of life should come first. Why may not illusions be allowed to stand, he virtually asks,--on what ground do we say that truth has the greater right to be? He is the first thinker, to my knowledge, to turn truth itself into a problem. 25 He criticises truth for truth's sake as much as art for art's sake or the good for the good's sake, 26 saying that those who, instead of valuing these things from the standpoint of life, make them supreme over life, are only logical as they postulate another world than this one, since here truth, science at any cost, may be inconsistent with life and an absolute will to truth may be a hidden will to death. 27 Knowledge (in the strict sense) may actually not be desirable for most, j the world as we picture and conceive it under the stress of life's needs may be better than the world as it really is 28 --our ignorance, even a will to ignorance, may be expedient for us. 29 k

So keenly does Nietzsche feel all this, that for a moment he is willing to revise his idea of truth. Wishing to keep the word in its customary honorific sense, he says, let us agree to designate as truth what furthers life and elevates the type of man. 30 As he once puts it paradoxically (mingling the two meanings of truth in the same sentence), truth is the kind of error without which a definite type of human being could not live. 31 l He tries valiantly to keep to this new definition. 32 And yet the settled uses of languages prove too much for him and we find him continually relapsing into the ordinary methods of speech. He says time and again that the necessities of life prove nothing as to truth. Schematizing for purposes of practical control he still specifically distinguishes from knowing. 33 Is it really knowing a thing, he asks, to class it with something else with which one is already familiar and so find it less strange?--this when both alike may be unknown, the things we are most familiar with being sometimes the least known, inasmuch as they excite no curiosity and we fancy we know them already. 34 Comprehending, explaining, understanding--that alone fills out Nietzsche's idea of knowing; and classifying, not to say mathematizing, only touches the borders of the subject. m That a belief is convenient, practical, even necessary, proves nothing as to its standing in foro scientiœ. The law of causality, for example, may, like other so-called a priori truths, be so much a part of us that unbelief in it would cause our undoing--is it therefore true? As if truth were proved by our remaining alive! 35 The idea of an "ego" may be indispensable, and for all that be a fiction. 36 The ideas of a given type of being simply prove what is necessary for it, and the ideas may vary as the types vary. The Euclidean space may, like our kind of reason, be simply an idiosyncrasy of certain kinds of animals--other kinds might find necessary a space of four dimensions and have a different type of logic from the human. 37 So with valuations. The valuations of one species, being from the standpoint of its particular interests, may differ from those of another species, the interests of which are different; or, if the ruling impulses vary, differing estimations of ends and means, different interpretations of historical events, different world-perspectives generally may result. 38 n It is naïve to take man as the measure of things, either theoretically or practically. 39 We do not know but that some beings might experience time backwards, or forwards and backwards alternately, whence would result other directions of life and other conceptions of cause and effect than those with which we are familiar. It is a hopeless curiosity, indeed, to wish to see round our corner, but Nietzsche thinks or hopes that at least we are modest enough not to claim that our perspective is the only one. He even says that by reflections such as these the world becomes infinite to him again, i.e., capable of an infinite variety of interpretations,--though he has no notion of worshiping the new infinity, since it may include undivine interpretations as well as the other kind. 40 All the interpretations may be justified relatively to those who make them, and none have strictly objective warrant. But then the question arises (and this is the third point):--

III

Are there any objective things, is there any reality (in the independent sense) at all? Nietzsche may have wavered here at times--in any case his language is not always consistent. Still two things stand out with tolerable distinctness. One is, that his very language about falsehood, error, illusion, indicate that in the background of his mind lurks the idea of something or other, the knowledge of which would be truth. Indeed he explicitly says as much--as, for example, in speaking of the possibility that the "real make-up" (wahre Beschaffenheit) of things may be so harmful to life, so opposed to its presuppositions, that illusion is needed to make life possible. 41 He even uses Kantian and Schopenhauerian language at times, speaking of the "intelligible character" of the world, i.e., the world "seen from within." 42 Zarathustra is described as willing to see "the ground of all things" and the ultimate ground. 43 o The other thing is the practically constant recognition of an original mass or chaos of sensations. They are indeed our creation, but in response to stimuli--and the stimuli Nietzsche distinctly does not contemplate as self-generated. p They do not come from the outer word as we picture it, for this is an after-product of the sensations themselves; all the same we "receive" them, and Nietzsche is inevitably driven to ask, whence? 44

The idea of reality outside us is thus inexpugnable to him. What it is, what its constitution, is another matter. It is not this familiar world of common sense; it is not the world of atoms and denatured "forces" of popular science; nor is it the world of purely quantitative and mathematical relations of refined science. Still more, it is not a world of "things-inthemselves," as this phrase is often bandied about by philosophical writers who think to refute Kant by showing that the idea of things out of any kind of relation is absurd; neither Kant nor any other realist worth mentioning has ever meant by independent reality that. Things are always in relation-and when conceived of (if they can be conceived of) as isolated, they are a pure invention of the mind, an illusion. 45 Most emphatically it is not a world of pure and changeless being such as Schopenhauer dreamed of. That being changes is our ground-certainty about it. 46 Schopenhauer's other world is the product of a mind ill at ease in the order of change and suffering we know and conjuring up another order for its relief, i.e., it is the offspring of subjective need, and Nietzsche distrusts (at least for his own account) constructions that come from any other need or impulse than the theoretic or knowing one itself. 47 Even moral needs are no safe basis for construction, not to speak of the needs of happiness, comfort, or inspiration. q

What is left, then? one may ask. There is evidence that Nietzsche was for a time in sore perplexity. The very extreme of skepticism and uncertainty as to both metaphysics and morals is pictured in "The Shadow" in Thus spake Zarathustra-- Nietzsche had been that shadow and had said to himself in bitter irony: "Nothing is true, everything is permitted. 48 r There is nothing in things that we have not put into them, science, too, being this sort of child's play. 49 We can conceive only a world That we ourselves have made--if it appears logical, it is because we have logicized it. 50 There are no facts, only interpretations; we cannot fix any fact in itself -- perhaps it is absurd to wish to. 51 s We have no organ for knowing [in the strict theoretic sense, erkennen], we know ["wissen," oder glauben oder bilden uns ein] only what is useful for our human herd or species-and even as to this utility we only have a belief, cherish an imagination, and perhaps a stupid one with which we shall sometime perish. 52 Such are some of the extreme expressions of his despairing mood. And it must be admitted that along the ordinary lines of objective search and analysis Nietzsche finds no way of meeting the skepticism. Though he has the general idea of objective reality, he cannot give any content to it. Though he recognizes certain primitive data of sensation (or rather of stimulation), these are so primitive, so far away from anything like our actual world in which data and interpretation are inextricably combined, that they might almost as properly be designated by an x or an interrogation mark as the original realities themselves. What Nietzsche really now does is to vie the whole problem from a new angle. And here I pass to the fourth point:--

IV Reality as power and will to power. Some of the steps by which he reached this conception seem to be these: (1) It came over him at times that his fellow-men were different from things in general. Thoroughgoing idealism is necessarily solipsistic. If we--each of us--think that nothing exists outside our sensations and thoughts, then our fellow-beings exist only in our sensations and thoughts, i.e., have no independent being of their own; and though this might not matter greatly, so far as each other's bodies are concerned, every one would probably feel that to make his thinking or feeling dependent upon the thinking and feeling of another was absurd--indeed, no clear-headed person will assert that he feels another's feeling or can, or that another can feel his (we can only reconstruct one another's feelings and feel them in imagination, and the same is true of thoughts). Opposed as Nietzsche was in a general way to the idea of "another world," a "transcendent world," he came to see that, strictly speaking, other souls were themselves another world, a transcendent world, and he makes Zarathustra say so. 53 Once he formally argues the matter: "For a single man the [independent] reality of the would be without probability, but for two it becomes probable. That is, the other man is an imagination of ours, entirely our 'will,' our 'idea': and we are again the same in him. But because we know that he deceives himself about us [in thinking that we are simply his imagination] and that we are in reality despite the phantom-picture of us which he carries in his head, we conclude that he too is a reality despite our imagination of him: in short, that realities outside us exist." 54 (2) Another line of reflection came to him: Although distinguishing absolutely between "true" and "false" in the world at large is a difficult and perhaps impossible thing, setting up an en ourselves and trying to make thinks go that way is another matter--and it is what every strong man does to a greater or lesser extent, indeed, what practically every one tries to do. 55 The very arranging, classifying, interpreting, valuing of the world and of things in it, about the objective validity of which Nietzsche is in doubt, is an incident to this end. The most wonderful of all things is not the world in its mystery, or the truths of values about which we dispute, but what is immediate and best proved, our own willing, valuing, creative selves. 56 The extraordinary turn is accordingly made that the factor the action of which breeds skepticism as to our possession of objective truth, viz., our will to power and exercise of it, is that about which skepticism is impossible; the very changing of things which it works, a change so complete that we hardly know whether any of the original lineaments of things are left, is a proof of its reality. 57

Here then is something to start with. Nietzsche feels this power in himself and thinks that it is really the bottom thing in him; and as he is not solipsist, he thinks that there are similar centers of power in other men. And turning his thought to the world at large, the question arises, may not animals and plants and even insensate things be centers of power in varying measures and ways? May not the world in its real being be made up, not of "things," substances, subjects, egos, atoms, causes and effects, spatial quantities and movements, but of these centers of power more of less conflicting and struggling with one another? 58 t Each being a will to power seeks to prevail, and is only prevented by others which want to do the same; each estimates all that is outside from its own standpoint, and to the extent it is conscious, builds up a world accordingly--images, concepts, categories, and all; each is real and its created world is real (at least, till another center of power puts an end to one or the other or both), and this is what and all that reality means. u The question as to the truth of the estimates or images or concepts, save as it is a question of what each can make good or can successfully act by, is irrelevant and without meaning, since estimations, images, concepts only exist in relation to the power which creates them and seeks to effectuate itself by their aid. Sensations, or rather the stimuli to which we react with sensations, become then construable, as a part of the effect which some outside center of power makes upon us--it is a kind of signal that another power is there. By the sensations, the memories we keep of them, and the ordered picture of the world we draw up, we know a little better how to act in relation to these unseen friends or foes. It is, however, only in the initial semi-physical contact that we are in direct, first-hand relation to them, and our sensations themselves need not have the slightest resemblance to the original realities. 59 v

Such is the construction which Nietzsche offers in its most general terms. It is an hypothesis purely--he so speaks of it. 60 To take it as a dogma is to misconceive it and miss its value (whatever value it has). It is something to mull over--and then to accept or no according as it seems to cover the ground and meet theoretic requirements. (Other requirements have to be left out of account by one who takes up the problem in Nietzsche's spirit.) I shall be content in what follows if I can make the hypothesis reasonably clear.

In the first place, "will to power" is a theoretic proposition. By many it is taken as an ethical standard (and rather a brutal one); but primarily it is with Nietzsche an analysis or interpretation of reality--a view as to its last elements. 61 Secondly, it is manifest that it is not merely power on a physical level that is in his mind; indeed, it may be questioned whether the discovery that instincts of power lie behind a large range of mental operations and also play an important part in the varying moralities of men, did not contribute as much as anything else to the formation of the view. Further, the view is relatively new in his intellectual history. It is, in a sense, metaphysical and stands in contrast with the purely critical and positivistic attitude of his middle period. 62 Then he had spoken of the idea that will is the essence of things as "primitive mythology"; w now he is ready to argue from analogy, and frankly takes man as his starting-point. 63 One might almost call it a return to the metaphysics of his first period, except that now he is less assured of the subjectivity of space and time (time at least he asserts to be objective), and the will is many, not one--the Primal Will (Urwille), that eases itself of its pain by looking at itself objectively and so creating the world, being left our of account. The view might be described as Pluralistic Voluntarism. x The question of the origin of the many wills is not even raised--so that, if Schopenhauer's system is metaphysics in the second or highest degree, Nietzsche's is so only in the first; 64 still it is metaphysics so far as this means a transcending of experience and the phenomenal realm in general. Certain positivist writers regard Nietzsche as going backward--reversing in his procedure Comte's law of the three stages. 65

The starting-point is, as I have said, man. The bottom thing in him is his impulsive, willing nature. Each impulse, indeed, would rule if it could--the human problem being to establish an order of rank or precedence between them. Mind itself is of a commanding nature--wants to rule. 66 Philosophy, which seeks to arrange, grasp, comprehend the world and establish values in it, is the most sublimated form of the will to power. 67 One who thinks that philosophy has nothing to do with power should grapple with a philosophical problem, or with Nietzsche himself--and see whether power is needed. Nietzsche regards the scientific specialist as a tool--a precious one, one of the most precious that exists--but a tool in the hands of one more powerful than he, the philosopher. The philosopher is the Cæsarian trainer and strong man of culture. 68 The saint is interpreted in similar terms. He is commonly thought to turn his back on power, but he is a supreme type of power, and of the will to it, according to Nietzsche. He is revered by the mightiest--why? Because, Nietzsche answers, they feel in presence of one of their own kind--whose power, however, turns inward rather than outward. 69 Even love is an exercise of power--it gives the highest feeling of power; and Jesus, in telling his disciples to call no one master, really recommended a very proud life under the form of a poor and serving one. 70 Nietzsche thinks that the sense of power is what in varying form we all crave, that the love of power is a central, universal instinct: he defines psychology as a doctrine of the development of the will to power and of the forms it takes. 71 Such is his analysis of human nature.

But the driving force which he finds in us, he thinks he sees traces of, though in simpler form, in the lower ranges of life. Indeed in ourselves it is something more elemental than conscious choice or than consciousness itself. It becomes conscious on occasion, but itself lies deeper, and in a more of less unconscious form Nietzsche imagines that it exists in animals and plants, and indeed wherever there is activity. y He does not attempt to demonstrate this inference--he attempts no demonstration even of the primacy of will in man, he has not unsaid his old criticism of Schopenhauer to the effect that we have no real first-hand knowledge of will: 72 it is all, whether as regards man or as regards lower beings, hypothesis, a view without pretense to certainty, speculation, as perhaps any kind of metaphysics must be.

VI Let me give the interpretation in still further detail--beginning with the lowest forms of existence. 73 Physical motion, for example, is a subjective phenomenon--an alteration in our sensations: the reality in the case is a change in the relations of two or more centers of power--a change that is symbolically revealed to us, being translated into the sign-language of eye and touch. 74 The world of mechanics in general is sign-language [unmeaning and unexistent apart from us or beings like us] for will-quanta struggling with one another, some perhaps temporarily overcoming [which are real, quite independent of us]. 75 The unintelligible "forces," "attractions," and "repulsions" which physicists speak of get concreteness and meaning, construed as kindred to impulses in ourselves; they reach out to control or they repel foreign control much as we do. 76 The same may be said of chemical action and reaction, which are always of a specific character--the elements of preference or choice [according to the nature of the elements in question] cannot be left out of account in explaining them. 77 "Qualities" are the expression [sensations in us] of definite kinds of action and reaction, and Nietzsche suggests that quantity may be the outcome of quality [of the objective counterpart of quality]--the center of power wishing to become more, to grow, to attain greater size. 78 z Causality appears in a new light. How, we ask, can two contrasted things, such as mind or will in us and an object outside us, affect one another? Nietzsche's view makes them fundamentally alike--will acts on will everywhere, not on something foreign to it. 79 Moreover, causality is not so much a relation of succession, as a working in an upon one another of two powers or wills, with its natural and inevitable result, either of a compromise, or of conquest on one side and subjection on the other. There is no cause and effect in the sense of an antecedent and consequent, nor is there a transference of energy from one thing to another, but rather a measuring up of forces against one another and a result--and this is why cause and effect, as ordinarily conceived, are rated a fiction, equally with "substance," "atom," and the rest. 80 Further, the ordinary idea of causality is of an unending process of change, an effect once reached becoming the cause of another effect and so on. But why, Nietzsche asks, need this be so, why might not a state once reached continue indefinitely, why would not the impulse of self-preservation itself ten that way--why, unless aside from self-preservation there is an instinct in every living thing to be more and greater, to expand and enlarge itself, in short an instinct for power and domination? 81

Peculiarly interesting is the revision of biological notions that ensues. Mere self-preservations is not the life-instinct proper. 82 The will of living creatures is a special case of will to power. It is a will, however, not only to dominate (this all power strives for), but to dominate by incorporating, by making the foreign substance of power an integral, though subordinate, part of itself. 83 This is manifest in hunger and the overt acts of seizure--the living thing perhaps takes more than it can actually appropriate. 84 Exploiting stealing belongs thus to its nature. According life is radically misconceived when it is taken as mere adaptation to environment; "adaptation" is something secondary--is reaction, while life is action, activity itself (self-activity, one might say, though Nietzsche does not use the phrase--he does say "spontaneous" activity)--activity positive, aggressing, an "attacking, encroaching, freshly-interpreting, freshly-directing and shaping" force. 85 To be controlled by outer conditions, or mere accommodation to them, is, for Nietzsche, a sign of decadence--he thinks that Darwin and Spencer both overvalue outer conditions in their view of life. 86 aa Indeed, as he conceives the matter, life wants opposing outside forces--wants them to feel its power over them. In this way he interprets the pseudopodia of lower forms of life: the living substance is reaching out after something on which to expend its power, and appropriation is merely the consequence. 87 And when it appropriates more than it can really control, it proceeds to divide itself--as two, it can still control. There is, however, no "altruism" in the process. As "nourishment" is something secondary, the original impulse being simply the will to close in on whatever is at hand, so self-division or propagation is equally derived--where one will does not suffice to organize what has been appropriated, another arises. 88 bb Structure, organization, is another result: it is necessary to the end of disposing of what has been appropriated--its meaning is arranging, ordering, putting in place to the end of dominance and use. 89 Incident to all life is power that commands and power that obeys--whatever does not command must obey, i.e., be used, become subservient. 90 Here is the foundation for the distinction between means and end in an organism. The superior power overcomes the lesser, incorporates it, gives it its place, making it a means to its own end. 91 Hence the definition of an organ--something that would otherwise be independent is turned into a means, an instrumentality. For example, something that happens to be more or less suitable becomes an eye for the organism, something else a foot or hand, something else still apparatus for digestion, and so on; 92 they may not have been formed for these purposes, but the superior power turns them to account in these ways, cc just as one man may make others his slaves or as the state may convert this or that individual into its tool or agent. dd Wherever we find a thing that serves a purpose and is useful, "a will to power has made itself master of something less powerful, and of its own motion has stamped the meaning of a function upon it." 93

If we do not read the organic world in terms of power, i.e., of controller and controlled, of master and servant, there is little sense in speaking of organs, functions. The very "meaning" of a thing implies that a superior power has got control of it and given it a place in relation to its own ends. The meaning may have nothing to do with its origin or essence --a thing may in the course of time have various meanings, depending on the nature of the power that gets control of it. Accordingly, the "evolution" of a thing (whether an organ of a body or a custom of society) is by no means necessarily progress toward a goal prefigured in its nature, still less a logical movement along the shortest lines and accomplished with the least expenditure of force, but rather a succession of processes of subjugation which it undergoes, the changes going more or less deep and having no necessary connection with one another--to which may be added its own resistances, attempts at change of form in self-defense, and any successes it may win. The form changes, flows, and the "meaning," purpose, still more so. Even in an individual organism it is not otherwise: with every essential growth of the whole, the "meaning" of single parts shifts also--under given conditions, a parital perishing of some parts, a reduction in the number of others (for example, an elimination of intermediate organs) may be proof of the growing power and perfection of the whole. In other words, degeneration, losing of meaning and purpose, or death, may belong to the conditions of actual progress-something that ever appears in the form of a will and way to greater power and is accomplished at the expense of numberless lesser powers. The greatness of an advance may, indeed, be measured by the amount of what is sacrificed to it. For example, the mass of mankind sacrificed to the growth of a single, higher, stronger species of man--that would be an advance. 94

This relation of controller and controlled (in whatever form of organic life) involves what Nietzsche calls an order of rank (Rangordnung). It is a conception that plays a great part in his social speculations; but it originates in the general biological field. 95 The human body itself involves an order of rank; there are higher and lower in it, ends and means--it is teleologically constituted, though the teleology comes not from God or from a vague thing called Nature, but is established by the supreme controlling force in the body itself. Nietzsche speaks of the "lower world" in the body and of "the higher functions and functionaries for ruling, anticipating, predetermining,"--for "our organism is oligarchically arranged." 96 The mind is a part of the ruling, determining forces, and an instrument for accomplishing that on which they are bent. Every center of power in a sense measures and estimates other power outside it, but when this is done in clear consciousness, the measuring may be surer and more effective. 97 In the development of mind and consciousness, the need of communication between those with common interests plays an important part. Mind grows in intercourse and with reference to the needs of intercourse--hence also the limitations of consciousness: we see the general, the communicable with greater distinctness than the altogether individual and specific (e.g., our individual acts and experiences, which may be incommunicable). 98 But consciousness is not an end in itself, but a means to the heightening of power. 99 ee Nietzsche even suggests that there may be an oligarchy in the mind itself, there being not necessarily one subject there, as we commonly think, but several, the play and struggle between them making the hidden basis of our thinking and consciousness --or, to use the physical terms, there may be an aristocracy of cells, with vassals more or less obedient. 100

Nietzsche has interesting reflections on will to power as involving pleasure and pain--pleasure resting on the increase of power, pain consisting in the feeling of weakness 101 --but I must merely refer to them. ff

Will to power also lies behind thought or philosophy, as already explained. It too is a kind of appropriation, mastery. Thinking is only a sublimated action of the same forces manifested in the amœba. Man seeks to turn all that is into something like himself, to make it thinkable, visible, feelable--he subjects it to categories and turns it into his own substance, as the amoeba does foreign material into its own body. 102 gg

There is only one higher expression of the will to power and that is in the saint (in the nobler meaning of the term), the hero-saint, who does not turn his back on the world, but impresses the image of his highest thought upon it and transforms it--who knows, thinks, only to love and in love to act, to create. hh

So does Nietzsche interpret the whole gamut of things in terms of power and will to it. ii

CHAPTER XVI CRITICISM OF MORALITY. INTRODUCTORY I IT was a saying of Goethe that a bold and free work of art should be contemplated in the spirit in which it was originally conceived. This is something to have in mind as we turn to Nietzsche's final ethical and social views--perhaps the most characteristic product of his genius. He is daring, loves strong and telling expressions, easily exaggerates or seems to--and if we do not make allowances, we may often be offended and think it hardly worth while to give him the attentive study he requires. We need for the moment to be touched with a little of his own geniality, and to exercise toward him something of the persistent "good will" which Emerson says gives "insight." He speaks as freely about himself as about other subjects. Once after noting that every society has a tendency to caricature its opponents, as we do today the "criminal," as Roman aristocratic society did the Jew, as artists do the bourgeois type, as pious people do the man who is godless, and aristocrats the man of the people, he says that immoralists--his class--incline to caricature the moralist and gives as an instance his own references to Plato. 1 Plainly we must read between the lines and not press every word in dealing with such a man.

I begin with the ethical views. The material to be considered falls naturally under two heads: criticism and construction. Constructive effort is much more pronounced in this period than in the preceding, and yet criticism continuesindeed, it is more keen and mordant than ever. The two things really go hand in hand, and even his construction is not as complete--or even as unmistakable in meaning--as we could wish; his end came too early to allow him to leave more than torsos in any department of thought. The consideration of the criticism will require several chapters, the present one being a kind of introduction to the general subject.

II Nietzsche notes that modern Europe (really the Western world in general) is in a kind of chaos as to moral conceptions. The old morality was built on the God-idea, and this is passing away--indeed is already dead, 2 i.e., for the intellectual circles of which he takes account. It is naïve to think that the morality can long remain when the sanctioning God is lacking--the "beyond" being necessary, if belief in it is to be unimpaired. 3 We are in a "moral interregum" 4 --Nietzsche might have assented to Matthew Arnold's language, describing us as wanderers between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born. The dissolving of the old morality is leading to the atomistic individual as a practical consequence, and even further--to the breaking up of the individual himself, so that he becomes several things rather than one; a state of absolute flux. 5 Superficial critics think that this is a result in which Nietzsche found satisfaction, being opposed to "all ideals and all faith"; 6 but he calls it "something fearful." The passage in which he says this is worth quoting: "I see something fearful ahead--chaos in the first instance, everything fluid. Nothing that has value in itself, nothing that commands "Thou oughtst." It is a condition of things not to be borne; to the spectacle of this destruction we must oppose creation; to these wandering aims we must oppose one aim-create it." 7 Nietzsche had noted the mere fact of varying standards earlier (without urging a corrective an now), see e.g., ibid., XI, 193-8. The passage paraphrased immediately before ends, "On this account an aim is now more needed than ever and love, a new love."

Nietzsche gives several illustrations of the existing chaos. Here is one man for whom a morality is proved by its utility, and there one for whom a morality is refuted, if its origin in utility is shown. 8 Now an action is held in esteem because it comes hard to the doer, and now one because it is done easily; one action is valued because it is unusual, another because it is customary; one, because a man thereby shows his regard for his best good, another because he does not think of himself at all; one because it is duty, another because it is inclination; one because it is instinct, another because it is clearest reason. 9 There is another list of contrarieties, covering somewhat the same ground, but adding the following particulars: we call a mild conciliatory person good, but also one who is brave, unbending, and strict; we call the unconditional friend of truth good, but also the man of piety who transfigures things; we call one who obeys himself good, but also one who is devout; we call the superior, the noble man good, but also one who does not despise or look down; we call a good-natured man, one who avoids strife good, but also one who is eager for strife and victory; we call one who will ever be first good, but also one who wishes no precedence over others. 10 In other words, there are different moralities in us today, different standards and ideas of good. 11 And not only do men disagree with one another, but individuals disagree with themselves, now judging from one standard of valuation and now from another. 12 We are really a kind of mishmash (this is to Nietzsche one of the characteristic marks of modernity)-we are so intellectually and we are perhaps so physically, differing races and old-time social castes being mingled in us. We are not without moral feeling, we have an immense fund of it, immense force, but no common aim in the pursuit of which this may be turned to account. 13 a How to transcend the present moral anarchy becomes a driving motive with Nietzsche, particularly in this last period of his life.

III First, however, and all the more because of this ultimate aim, be feels the need of moral criticism--a path on which, as we have seen, he started in his previous period. He turns morality, the whole circle of conceptions involved, into a problem. In taking this attitude he is unusual, if not unique. b The common view is that morality is something given, selfevident, at least easily made so, that the real difficulties are with practice; or that, if there are theoretic difficulties, these are simply in finding an adequate formula or adequate "basis" for something, the obligation of which is unquestionable. Kant and Schopenhauer take this view--ProfessorSimmel particularly notes Nietzsche's difference from them in that he does not limit himself to the task of codifying moral demands commonly recognized. 14 Dr. Dolson also comments on the striking difference between Nietzsche and most ethical writers in this respect. 15 Schopenhauer had cited neminem laede, immo omnes, quantum pores, juva as if it were a rule which nobody questioned and about which all moral philosophers are agreed; Nietzsche regards him as naïve. 16 He regards Kant and Hegel also as uncritical. Kant wrote, indeed, the "Critique of Practical Reason," but it is not criticism in the sense in which Nietzsche feels that there is need of it--Kant took our ordinary morality, even Rousseau's extreme democratic formulation of it, for granted, he did not skeptically inquire into it. Hegel's criticism did not touch the moral ideal itself, but only asked whence comes the opposition to it, why it has not been attained or is not demonstrable in small and great. 17 Spinoza did question the finality of the moral valuations, but it was indirectly only and as a consequence of his theodicy. 18 English Utilitarianism looked critically into the origin of the moral valuations, but it none the less believed in them as implicitly as the Christian does. 19 Our latest moral investigators, says Nietzsche, are thoroughly convinced that science has here only to explore a matter of fact, not to criticise. 20 c

The vital omission of these investigators and historians of morality is that they do not ask what it is worth, and hence what binding quality it has for us today. Ethics is a question of norms; it means what we should do--it cannot be reduced to a set of historical or psychological propositions. And where the vital question is envisaged, Nietzsche feels that the reasoning is apt to be superficial. A consensus of peoples, or at least of civilized peoples, as to certain points in morality is asserted, and hence, it is argued, it is unconditionally binding on you and me; or, on the other hand, the differences in the valuations of different peoples are pointed out, and the conclusion is drawn that there is nothing obligatory about morality at all. Both proceedings are childishness. The worth of a prescription "thou oughtst" is independent of opinion about it, as truly as the worth of a medicament is independent of whether one thinks scientifically or like an old woman about medicine. A morality could grow out of an error, and with such an insight the problem of its value would not even be touched. 21 Even the general principle "we must act and hence must have a rule of action," cannot be taken for granted; the Buddhists said, "we must not act," and thought out a way of deliverance from action [a way to nirvana]. 22 For Nietzsche morality is thus problem from top to bottom. The idea that it constitutes a realm where doubt is impossible, one indeed in which we may take refuge when doubt is assailing us in all other spheres-this idea that has played no small part in the spiritual experience of earnest men in recent times--is to his mind without warrant. There is no helping it--we must extend skeptical inquiry and critical reflection to morality itself. d

What particularly presses in this direction is the fact of varying types of morality in the world [not "types of ethical theory" merely, or principally] between which we must choose. Previous ethical writers, including the historians of morality, ordinarily stand quite unsuspectingly under the commando of a special morality and have no idea how limited their vision is. Their good and bad they regard as good and bad itself. Socrates indeed was skeptical and modest, but his disciples did not imitate him. 23 And this morality, which is so commonly accepted, is simply the morality of the common man, the socialcreature man, who lives in and with and for his herd or community as the animal does in, with, and for its. Morality, the prevailing morality, is Heerdenthier morality; and it thinks that it is morality itself, and that there is no other! But history shows that there are other types of morality, and the genuine thinker has to ask, Why this and not that? 24

It is only putting this into other language to say that philosophical reflection has been at its poorest in dealing with good and evil. Predominant social forces have always been against thoroughgoing criticism here. Morality has been invested with authority, even visible authority--and authorities are not to be questioned, but obeyed! Indeed to question morality--was it not immoral? Yes, Nietzsche asks, is it not immoral?--does not a similar feeling exist today? There is also something seductive about morality; it throws a kind of spell over us--in face of it the critical will is lamed; he calls it the "Circe of philosophers," citing as instances Kant, with his desire above everything else to clear the way for "majestic moral structures," and Schopenhauer, who was seduced so far that in the name of morality he was ready to turn against life itself. 25 A result of the unquestioning attitude to morality is to make discourse about it trite--it becomes a twice-told tale. Talking about it, Nietzsche somewhat mockingly remarks, is a good preparation for sleep. 26 This may be part reason, I may add on my own account, why keen thinkers, who wish to accomplish something with their thinking, sometimes feel no particular attraction to ethics--they want to face problems, and ethics hardly seems to offer any. e As I understand Nietzsche, he by no means questions the utility of this matter-of-course morality--it functions most usefully in average society; he simply finds it intellectually uninteresting, or rather first interesting when a sense of the problematical in it is aroused. Then indeed it may become dangerously interesting, so much so that it is perhaps just as well that few regard it in this light. 27 But however this may be, morality does become a problem to him-I might say, his great and specific problem. "To see and indicate the problem of morality--that seems to me the new task and principal thing. I deny that it has been done in previous moral philosophy." 28 The most settled and commonplace features of the subject excite his skeptical wonderment. "I wonder at the most recognized things in morality,--and other philosophers, like Schopenhauer, have only been struck by the 'wonders' in morality." 29 He calls his an "attempt to think about morality, without standing under its spell." 30

IV As just stated, he does not recommend his attitude to all. The question as to the origin and root meaning of good and evil he speaks of as a "stilles Problem" which "addresses itself selectively to only a few ears." 31 "We are the exception and the danger" and "forever need justification," he admits, adding that something may be said in favor of the exception, provided that it does not seek to become the rule. 32 There is perhaps also a suggestion of the dangerousness of his undertaking in an aphorism labeled "Casuistic": "There is a bitter (bitterböse) alternative to which every man's courage and character are not equal: as passengers on a ship to discover that captain and pilot are making dangerous errors, and that in nautical knowledge we are superior to them--and now to ask ourselves: How is it, should you not incite a mutiny against them and have them both imprisoned? Does not your superiority obligate you to do this? And on the other hand, are they not in the right in locking you up, since you undermine authority?

This is a parable for higher and worse situations; whereby the question still remains what guarantees to us our superiority, our faith in ourselves in such cases. The result? But for this we must do the thing that carries all the dangers with it-and not only dangers for us, but for the ship." 33 Hence Nietzsche takes responsibility solely--or if he wishes companions, it is only men of like temper and mind with himself; his writings are chiefly to find out persons of this type--not to persuade others. He is a law for his own, not for all. 34 His ground is

"Glattes Eis, Ein Paradeis Für den, der gut zu tanzen weiss." 35

And the positions he finally reaches are often themselves frankly tentative, experimental. f

In this ethical field as elsewhere Nietzsche gives us little in order. There is a somewhat connected treatment of certain themes in Genealogy of Morals; but aside from this we have only a mass of aphorisms and notes, written at different times, in different moods, and from different angles of vision. At times I have been almost in despair over the multifariousness of my subject-matter, and I can only offer as orderly and consistent a statement as the refractory character of it will allow. It is like trying to make a cosmos out of the chaos of the world itself; perhaps the world is chaos rather than cosmos; and yet, on the other hand, it may be that the trouble is with us and that finer perception and a larger outlook would discover unities in difference that now escape us.

CHAPTER XVII CRITICISM OF MORALITY (CONT.). THE SOCIAL FUNCTION AND MEANING OF MORALITY I CRITICISM has for its presupposition a certain detachment from the object criticised; it is a curious look at it from the outside, unbiased by personal feeling--at least it is in this sense that Nietzsche criticises morality. "In order for once to get a view of our European morality from a distance, to measure it by other moralities, past or to come, we must do as a traveler does who wishes to know how high the towers of a city are: to that end he leaves the city. 'Thoughts about moral prejudices,' if they are not to be prejudices about prejudices, presuppose a position outside morality, some kind of a beyond good and evil, to which we must climb, clamber, or take a flight--and, at all events in the instance supposed a beyond our good and evil, a liberation from all ' Europe,' this being understood as a sum of valuations of mandatory character, which have passed over into our flesh and blood." Nietzsche is aware that there may be a little madness in proposing to do this, and that the question is whether we really can. a He answers half-playfully that it is in the main a question of how light or how heavy we are, the problem of our "specific gravity"; we must be very light to rise to a height from which we can survey millenniums and besides have pure heaven in our eyes, must have freed ourselves from much that weighs just us Europeans down, must first of all have overcome our own time--yes, and our hostility to the time, our disharmony with it, our romanticism. 1

In describing the critical attitude Nietzsche uses the term "immoralist." The word does not occur, so far as I know, in the dictionaries (e.g., in Muret-Sanders' Wörierbuch or the Century Dictionary), and by Nietzsche it is first used in The Wanderer and his Shadow ( 1879). He there says, "Moralists must now allow themselves to be reproachfully called immoralists, because they dissect morality. Whosever wishes to dissect must kill; however, only in order that better knowledge, better judgment, better life arise, not that all the world is to dissect." Dissection, he explains in the succeeding aphorism, does not mean denial or depreciation, and he distinguishes the great moralists from the smaller sort by his token. The great ones, when they analyze the grand manner of thought, say of a hero of Plutarch's or the illumined state of the really good men and women, and find complications of motive in what is apparently simple, delicate illusions playing a part have simply the sense of a difficult problem of knowledge before them; but the small moralists say, "here are deceivers and deceptions"--that is, they deny the existence of just what the other are seeking to explain. 2 It is the intellectual motive that makes the moralist, and in another place he compares the lesser sort, who are without the love of knowledge and know only the pleasure of hurting, to small boys who are not happy save as they are pursuing and mistreating the living and the dead. 3 At the same time the genuine moralist is too preoccupied with his special work to be a preacher of morality. The older moralists, he says, apparently to mark off the new kind, who merely dissect and hence incur the suspicion of being anti-moral, that he consents to the application of the label "immoralists" to them. 4 He speaks of it to himself somewhat as one would pick up a gauntlet. One may, or even must, question the wisdom of his doing this, since the ordinary person, unaware of nice distinc¯ tions and thinking that "immoralist" must imply some sort of advocacy of immorality, as "moralist: does of morality, infers that Nietzche was on the side of license and vice. b I need not say after the foregoing that this is a mistaken view. Neither moralists nor immoralists are advocates, as he uses the terms, but critics, analysts. The scientific motive characterizes both alike, and apparently, as just stated, it was to emphasize this fact that he took up with the more unusual term. That he does not become, any more than he had been, an advocate of license and vice, will probably be sufficiently clear in future pages. Indeed, we shall find him saying strongly, "we immoralists" are "men of duty," "also to us speaks a 'thou oughtst,'" "we also obey a strict law above us." 5 All the same it must be frankly admitted that at times Nietzsche veers from this purely critical conception of the immoralist and uses the term in a more or less doctrinal, partisan sense. 6 He confuses, one might say, an attitude, a method with a result--at least with what was the result in his own case. From being "outside" European morality, a simple observer and critic of it, he came to be against it--and perhaps the truth is that he was against it from the start, however unclearly or undecidedly. Even so, he was not against morality, but against a certain type of morality--and within limits he recognized the usefulness and validity of this type, as we shall later see.

Undoubtedly Nietzsche has injured himself in the eyes of the general public by using the obnoxious term, and yet it is probable that he would have excited prejudice anyway by the detached critical attitude toward morality which he assumed. Society can hardly look on with indifference when any of its number stand outside the common agreements and look questioningly at them, least of all at an agreement so central and deep as morality. A morality is not unlike a God who wishes no other Gods beside him: it resents, Nietzsche says, the idea of many moralities, wants no comparison, no criticism, but unconditional faith in itself. It is hence in its nature anti-scientific, and the perfect moralist must be outside it (unmoralisch), beyond its good and evil. 7 " Plato has splendidly described how the philosophical thinker in the midst of every de facto society has to pass as the quintessence of all that is impious; for as critic of all mores he is the antithesis of the moral man, and if he does not carry things so far as to become a legislator of new mores, he remains in the recollection of men as an instance of 'the evil principle.'" 8 That is, it irritates men to have one question what all believe, and if he is a good man, they do not see why he should. But whether Nietzsche made matters worse for himself by using the term "immoralist" or not, his meaning (at least his initial and fundamental meaning) in using it is clear--and we may now pass on to a detailed consideration of the dissection or critical analysis he gives. The analysis, it must be confessed, is rarely pure--exhibitions of personal feeling, anticipations of his own positive views are frequent; really the distinction between his criticism and his construction in this realm is a more or less arbitrary one--and yet it is convenient and is suggested by himself, and I shall regard it as far as the material to be dealt with will allow.

II Taking then our stand with Nietzsche outside morality for the time, looking at it with as much of the purely scientific spirit as we can command, what do we find--that is, what does he find?

First, in continuation of the view we have already come upon in considering the second period, 9 morality reveals itself as a phenomenon of society, something strictly social in nature. The classical passage in this connection is Dawn of Day, § 9, which bears the title, "Begriff der Sittlichkeit der Sitte." Every student of Nietzsche should read it carefully, if only to see how much of scientific analysis he can compress on occasion into three or four pages. The ground marks of morality here appear, as not individual utility, but authority on the one hand and obedience on the other. The authority, however, is general or social; and the obedience, like the fear or reverence deepening to superstition from which it springs, is not to any person. c The central thing is. the Sitten (mores) 10 of the social group, morality, in the subjective sense, being definable as action according to them. A Sitte or mos is a long-established social habit or rule--one that may be followed or not, d and that has gravity because it is believed to be vitally related to the welfare of the group. Individuals may impose commands, but only societies can have mores; and because no one knows just whence they come, superstition has free range in accounting for them. e The mores were of a wide range in early communities; they covered health, marriage, medicine, war, agriculture, religion--so that morality was almost co-extensive with the whole of life. 11 On the other hand, in things where no tradition commanded, there was no morality; and the less life was determined by tradition the smaller the circle of morality became--so that with this in mind Nietzsche can say that we now live in a relatively unmoral time, so many things being left to individual judgment or inclination. The opposite of the moral man was one who acted (or was disposed to) according to his own ideas--almost inevitably he seemed evil to the rest of the community; indeed in all primitive conditions of mankind "evil" was practically equivalent to "individual," " free," "arbitrary," "unusual," "unforeseen," "unreckonable." 12 Even if the individual did what was moral, yet not because tradition commanded it, but for other reasons, say for personal advantage, or if in varying from tradition he acted from the very motives of the general advantage which established the tradition in the first place, but of his own motion purely, he was liable to be esteemed unmoral and might view himself in this light--morality being a matter of conformity and obedience altogether. The only way in which one could rise to independence of the mores was to become a lawgiver oneself, a medicine-man or half-God--that is, to make mores, a fearful enterprise in which one risked one's own life.

In this circle of conceptions who was the most moral? It was either he who fulfilled the law most often, and so, like the Brahman, took the consciousness of it everywhere and into each smallest fraction of time, so that he even invented occasions for fulfilling it; or else be who fulfilled it in the most difficult cases, who sacrificed most of it--at least these were the principal measurements. And where sacrifice was the thing exalted, the motive for it should not be mistaken. The mastery of self implied was not for the individual's benefit, but that the law might stand out sovereign, even against the individual's interest and desire. It is true that in the course of time, some, following in the footsteps of Socrates, took self-mastery and self-denial as the individual's most real advantage and key to happiness, but they were the exception--something we only fail to realize today because we have been educated under their influence; they all went on a new way and encountered the highest disapproval of representatives of the old morality--they were really separatists, and so far unmoral, and, in the deepest sense, evil (böse). To a virtuous Roman of the old stamp, the Christian who "sought first for his own salvation" seemed evil in just the same way.

Such were the original ground-lines of morality, as Nietzsche conceives the matter. As to whether men always existed in groups, his opinion appears to vary. So far as a view anywise approaching consistency can be made out, it was as follows: There may have been a time when men (or some men) existed independently and had to be brought forcibly under social restraint and rule; f but practically it is a negligible time, groups, flocks, or herds of some kind having existed as far back in history as we can go, so that properly we can only speak of higher and stronger forms of social organization imposing themselves on lower and weaker forms, with a comparatively weak and relatively unsocial state as a hypothetical beginning. g These groups (Heerden is the term Nietzsche often uses, not unmindful of its association with animal phenomena, and partly just for this reason) 13 were veritable entities or wholes--an individual had a feeling for his group out of all proportion to that which he had for a neighbor. 14 h Strictly personal relations were only gradually brought under the rule of morality; Nietzsche even ventures to say that in the best Roman period a pitying action was neither good nor bad, neither moral nor unmoral, or, if praised, was valued slightly in comparison with an action that affected the res publica. 15 Down to the present day he finds morality's prescriptions vague, crude, unfine for personal well-being. 16 And yet there was something elevated in this group-morality despite or rather just because of its taking so little account of individuals; fashioned in this way the individual became a public being, or, as Nietzsche puts it, a collective individual. 17 So organically was he a part of the group, so little did he have a separate life of his own, that he was ready to risk his life for it on occasion. As animals, in whom the social impulses overrule individual ones, perform actions that are to their own hurt, though useful to their herd or flock, so is it with men. 18

Nietzsche sometimes speaks as if the state [some kind of authoritative organized social existence] were prior to individuals--they arising at the end of the social process rather than existing at the beginning. 19 Older, he says, is the pleasure in the herd than the pleasure in the I; the crafty and loveless I that seeks its own advantage in the advantage of many is not the origin of the herd, but the ruin of it. 20 Society does not form itself out of individuals, does not arise from contracts between them. 21 Peoples created before individuals; indeed the individual himself is the latest creation. 22 Nietzsche roundly asserts, as against Paul Rée, that the herd-instinct was originally the stronger and more powerful thing, and that when one presumed to act separately and individually (i.e., not according to the herd-law), he seemed to the rest evil. 23 On so deep and ancient a foundation does morality rest, in his view. He virtually defines moral actions as organic functions of individuals, in which not the individual, but a higher principle is the aim. 24 Still more concisely, "Morality is the herd-instinct [ruling] in the individual." 25 i

III As to the content of morality, Nietzsche goes little beyond what we have already found him saying in his second period. 26 The mores of different groups vary widely, and superficially nothing may seem constant in morality but its form. Yet there are certain mores which tend to arise everywhere. While any mos is better than none--a great proposition with which, Nietzsche says, civilization begins 27 --some kinds of behavior are so necessary to social life that norms corresponding to them are practically universal. If men injure one another, lie to one another, if they do not to some extent help one another, they can hardly form a group at all. Animal society itself rests on something like love, constancy of affection, education of the young, labor, economy, courage, obedience on the part of the weaker, protecting care on the part of the stronger, sacrifice among all. No society can maintain itself without such qualities, and in those continuing the impulses become hereditary. 28 Sympathy ( Mitgefühl) a factor in social formations, the readiness of men to aid one another and have understandings a condition of life--such is Nietzsche's point of view. 29 To however slight an extent, rudiments of "mutual consideration, pity, reasonableness, mildness, reciprocity of services" make their appearance. 30 "Peaceable, reasonable, moderate, modest, considerate, chaste, honest, true, loyal, pitiful, dutiful, obedient, unselfish, industrious"--such is another list of the qualities and impulses that tend to be praised; all not on their own account, but as means to the group's ends, as necessary for its preservation and advancement 31 One might call them essential morality--as distinguished from the morality that varies from one people to another; Nietzsche does not use the phrase, but his view seems to warrant it. Everywhere there is a tendency toward the exaltation of virtues of this description, i.e., within each group and as conditions of the group's life.

Morality thus comes to be seen in a certain perspective, and we understand the gravity which has always been attached to it. As a condition of life for the group, 32 it is supremely important; if it is not respected, the group structure becomes loose, the group itself is liable to be dissolved. From the latter's most intimate instincts of self-preservation come affirmation and negation, approval and disapproval, praise and blame accordingly. The group may of course err in making particular judgments--may regard things as necessary to its well-being which are not, may treat individuals as responsible when they are not, but judge as best it can it must. If it will live, it must value, i.e., look at things in relation to itself and its needs, and pronounce accordingly; it must have tables of good and evil, must love and hate, praise and blame, reward and punish. 33 The good is good for it, the evil evil for it--it is indeed the first creator of good and evil, individual estimates coming later. 34

At the same time good, being good for the group, is not a good over it. It makes categories of good and evil which bind its members, but in the nature of the case they do not apply to itself. Morality has its meaning as the conduct that serves it, but the group is not in the relation of service to something beyond itself; nor as creator of good and evil is it subject to its own creation. The group simply does what it must do to live, taking itself as a fact of nature. 35 To bring it somehow under the moral categories, we may say it has a right to exist, but even this language is inexact in Nietzsche's view, for, as has already been hinted and we shall see more clearly later, he finds rights arising by contract or under a general system of law, and it is not in this way that social groups arise or maintain themselves (save in exceptional circumstances)--they are spontaneous natural formations and are guided purely by instincts of self-preservation. 36 Instead of having a right to exist, we can only truthfully say that they will exist--this will being shown indeed in the imperatives they put on their members, the rules they require them to obey: it is their will to be and to rule that is the explanation of morality. 37 In other words, the group itself is outside morality, and the virtues serve an instinct which is fundamentally different in character from themselves. As imperative and binding as morality is upon individuals, as necessary to the very life of the community as it may be, so that the latter stands or falls with it, it is not good on its own account or as an end in itself, but as means to an end beyond it--an end that can only be described in non-moral terms. 38

How true the last remark is to Nietzsche's thought, though the language is my own, is shown in what he says of the relation of social groups to one another. On occasion they feel and act in a way which is the exact opposite of what they require of their members in their conduct to one another. They may be mutually hostile, selfish, unmerciful, full of the desire to dominate--and all in good conscience. 39 The members of one group may deceive, rob, kill those of another group without the slightest self-reproach. In a famous passage ("infamous," some would say) Nietzsche describes a highly moralized race, its members self-restrained in their dealings with one another and showing all manner of mutual considerateness, delicacy of feeling, loyalty, and friendship, falling on a stranger race, murdering, burning, ravishing, torturing, and with no graver feelings than those of students on a lark. 40 Even today the groups we call nations or states have a double stardard: they forbid violence within and allow or even command it on occasion without--the very acts which are offenses, crimes in the one case, meeting with general approval or applause in the other. Inconsistent, we may say--but really so only to a confused perception. Moral conduct (in the historic sense of "moral") is the conduct becoming to members of a social whole and in furtherance of the ends of the social whole--but it is no wider than the social whole, and where there is no social whole, it has in the nature of the case no application. If some of us today condemn certain acts of nations or states as immoral, we do so in the name of a sentiment or idea to which no reality as yet corresponds; we imply a society, a social whole, which has no existence, but which, if it existed, would of necessity put this brand on the acts in question. It is surely inept to speak of the society of the human race at present; it is even inept to speak of Europe as a society--it is a collection of independent societies, of separate sovereign wholes. 41 j The only way in which separate wholes can be properly amenable to morality is to cease to be separate wholes, to merge themselves in one another or in some greater unity--then the law by which the larger whole lives becomes the law for each individual one. Independent societies already do this to a limited extent, namely so far as they make contracts or treaties with one another or have common understandings: to this extent they part with their individual sovereignty and become subject to moral rule. A society that breaks a treaty, that violates a common understanding, commits ipso facto an immoral act. But societies which have no treaties or understandings--independent, sovereign social groups--are in the nature of the case non-moral beings. 42

Yes, individuals themselves, so far as they are agents of the group, acquire a more or less non-moral character. An official of the state is without feeling of guilt when he hangs a man (kills), or puts him in prison (enslaves), or takes his money in taxation (robs), or as a policeman or detective deceives and traps him (lies), 43 --though all these things done on his own account would be immoral. The fact that he acts for the group, in the interest of the group, takes away shame. There is a double standard, but no contradiction; as a grouporgan, he shares the innocence of the group. It is so with the soldier, so with the head of the state--they cannot be judged as is the private citizen. Nietzsche remarks that the antagonism of duties, comes to a head in the shepherd of the flock--he must be both friendly, peaceable, protecting, i.e., to those within its circle, and hostile, warlike, merciless, i.e., to those without. 44 In this connection I may mention his interesting suggestion (in keeping with his general view of the priority of social to individual life), that some of the feelings which we commonly call individual or even egoistic are not really so, but are social and have been socially trained. For instance, one hates more, more violently, more innocently as a patriot than as an individual; one sacrifices more quickly for one's family or for a church or a party than for oneself; the strongest feeling which many have is honor, and honor is a social standard, meaning at bottom what is honored. 45 So-called egoistic impulses are often really impulses to social formations. Here is a person who is covetous and heaps up property (the impulse of the family); here is another who has markedly the seximpulse (something which serves the race), and still another who is vain (emphasizes the community by estimating himself according to its measurements). We speak of the egoism of the conqueror, the statesman, and so on--they do think only of themselves, but of "themselves" so far as the ego is developed by an impulse which at the same time builds or fashions a group (cf. the egoism of mothers, of teachers). 46 It may be that the individual, apart from some kind of group-function and training, is a very limited quantity.

And now I come to a kind of paradox in Nietzsche's analysis. Societies, as we have seen, set up, whether consciously or unconsciously, moral codes which correspond to the conditions of their existence and power; they say that individuals shall take their standard rather than their own--they shape them after their mold and seem almost to negate a separate and individual being; and yet it is all part of a process by which independent individuals are made. The result may even be opposed--and yet it comes. How it comes is suggested in a passage which takes the form of inquiries, as follows: (1) How far may sympathetic and communal feelings be a lower, preparatory stage, at a time when personal self-feeling and individual initiative in valuing are not yet possible. (2) How far may the elevation of the collective self-feeling, the group's pride of distance, its sense of unlikeness to other groups, its aversion to accommodation and reconciliation be a school for individual self-feeling--particularly to the extent it forces the individual to represent the pride of the whole--for he must speak and act with an extreme self-respect, if he represents the community in person (just as when the individual feels himself an instrument and mouthpiece of the divinity). (3) How far may these forms of depersonalization (Entselbstung) lend to the person in fact an enormous importance--higher powers using him (cf. the religious awe of himself which the prophet or poet feels). (4) How far may responsibility for the whole beget and authorize a wide outlook, a strict and fearful hand, a presence of mind and coolness, a greatness of bearing and demeanor, which the individual could not allow to himself on his own account. Nietzsche's conclusion is that collective selffeelings may be regarded as the great preparatory school for personal sovereignty, and that the higher (vornehme) class in any group is the one which inherits the effect of the training. 47 The point, I need hardly say, is that standing for the organism, the individual comes to share its attributes--its sense of itself and of distinctness from all outside it, its freedom to do what it will, its determination to follow its own law. He has these feelings first representatively, but later on his own account, the distinction between what he is and what he has been made passing out of view. A strong free man, Nietzsche remarks in another passage, feels in himself as over against everything else the attributes of an organism, e.g., self-regulation, reparative power, assimilation, secretion and excretion, metabolic power, regeneration, i.e., the equivalents of these physiological processes; but it is a mistake, he adds, to suppose that they belonged to him at the start--he was at first a part of a whole, an organ, and only as such did the first stirrings of the general organic qualities come to him. That is, individuals are not born free and sovereign, they become so [to whatever extent they do become so] as the result of a social process. Hence the state did not originally oppress individuals--they as yet failed to exist. 48 "The amœba-like unity of the individual comes at the end! and the philosophers started with it, as if it was already there!" 49 All the same individuals--organic unities in themselves--do come at last. Society by its own processes breeds those more or less independent of society, and morality itself helps train the future super-moral or autonomous individual--this last we shall see more clearly later on. 50

IV

The conception of morality as entirely a social thing is perhaps still the dominant one. Nietzsche remarks that the early ages of mankind have done more to fix its character than the later historical epochs 51 --and this appears to hold of its intellectual conceptions as well. Hegel speaks entirely in the spirit of the antique conception of morality, when he says that "the individual has his truth, real existence, and ethical status only in being a member of the state," that "the striving for a morality of one's own is futile and by its very nature impossible of attainment"; and again when he says, "In respect to morality, the saying of one of the wisest men of antiquity is the true one--to be moral is to live in accordance with the moral tradition of one's country." 52 The latest, or, at least, best book which America has produced on ethics-- Dewey and Tufts Ethics--has, if not the same, a similar conception. We read there of "moral, i.e., socialized interests"; we hear that in progressive as truly as in stationary society "the moral and the social are one"; that though the virtues of the individual in a progressive society are more reflective than in customary society, "they are just as socially conditioned in their origin and as socially directed in their manifestations"; that there is no attitude "which does not need to be socially valued or judged"; that the reconstructed individual, who is necessary in a time of individuals, is one "who is individual in choice, in feeling, in responsibility, and at the same time social in what he regards as good, in his sympathies and in his purposes," that "otherwise individualism means progress toward the immoral." 53 According to such a view, the action of an individual who pursued a good not primarily social, but personal, who looked upon society not as an end, but rather as a means to his own ends, and who marked out his own path in pursuing those ends, would hardly come under the head of morality at all. Professor Sumner, in his significantly entitled book, Folkways, holds even more strictly to the primitive and historic conception, and doubts whether morality in any other sense can be made out. He observes, "The modern peoples have made morals and morality a separate domain, by the side of religion, philosophy, and politics. In that sense morals is an impossible and unreal category. It has no existence and can have none. The word 'moral' means what belongs or appertains to the mores. Therefore the category of morals can never be defined without reference to something outside of itself." 54 It is important for us to keep in mind this older meaning of the term, for when Nietzsche makes animadversions on morality, as he so frequently does, it is this kind of morality--what he calls Heerden-Moral--that he has primarily in mind. In another, shall I say? more ideal, certainly more general sense, he so little attacks morality, that he offers a morality of his own. Because of these varying senses in which he uses the word, he easily confuses us, if we do not take a little trouble to see what he means. Sometimes he attacks morality without qualification, but this is only because already in common speech--and often in that of scholars as well--morality and social morality are absolutely identified.

The fact is that not merely the historic conception, but the feelings going along with it still dominate among us. Most of us, Nietzsche notes, still follow social standards rather than our own. 55 A cold look, a wry mouth, from those among whom we are educated, is still feared by the strongest; and what is it really that we fear? Isolation. 56 k We get on with a bad conscience better than with a bad reputation. 57 Indeed, conscience itself was originally of social shaping--one condemned in himself what others condemned; 58 and it is still largely so. Professor Dewey even says, "All men require social standards in their conduct: the consent of their kind. No man ever lived with the exclusive approval of his own conscience." 59 If it is urged that men have stood alone with God approving, this would not be an exception, for God is the socius in this case, and the question may be raised how far the social needs of those who felt obliged to stand alone have tended to create, or at least sustain, the faith in this invisible society.

CHAPTER XVIII CRITICISM OF MORALITY (CONT.). HAVE EVIL AND CRUELTY NO PLACE IN THE WORLD? I A PRIME category of morality is good and evil. Every social group makes the distinction in some form; its power and life depend upon its doing so--it must favor what it feels to be helpful to it and oppose what is harmful, for good and evil have originally this utilitarian significance. So strong do the instinctive approbation and condemnation become that good is easily regarded as good per se and evil as evil per se--that is, the relativity of the conceptions is forgotten, and a chasm is put between them. Good becomes something eternally different from evil; there is no passing of one into the other, particularly of evil into good. In other words, a moralistic scheme of things, an incipient metaphysics tends to arise; and just the most earnest and idealistic moral natures go this way. The view is one which we have seen Nietzsche questioning in his previous period, 1 but the questioning is now more extended and thoroughgoing. It is difficult to separate here his analysis from his conclusions, and I shall scarcely attempt to. His view of evil I shall particularly consider; what he says of good will be taken up more at length later.

The word he commonly uses is böse. It is not the same as übel (which implies a more general and perhaps more objective judgment), 2 or as schlecht (which more or less savors of contempt). Professor Riehl remarks that böse is a peculiarly German word, wanting in other Aryan languages. 3 In any case it has a peculiar shade of meaning, to which it is well to attend. The idea is of active harmfulness, along with intent to harm (real or suspected)--our English expressions "evil eye," "evilly disposed" suggest it to us. The judgment is from the standpoint of the person affected--as Nietzsche remarks, it is a judgment on others. The actor may be without evil intent in fact, but he seems böse to the other party (the judgment easily extending to non-sentient or non-active things--if there are any such, to the mind of primitive man). If, says Nietzsche, we speak of anything in ourselves as böse, it is a figure of speech--what we mean is that there is something in us (a dangerous impulse, for example) which we as it were separate from ourselves, and say that it shall not play the master. 4 Translators of Nietzsche sometimes render böse by "wicked," and this would not be out of the way, if "wicked" kept its original etymological signification of "witch-like," but so far as it suggests depravity, profligacy, and vice, it is wide of the mark. A few examples of his use of the word will make us see what he essentially means. a He speaks, for instance, of the Apostle Paul, before his conversion, as hard and böse toward the transgressors and doubters of the Jewish law, 5 and of Peter as turning on Satan with the böses word, "Thou liar." 6 He characterizes as boshaft the irony of Socrates toward those who had the conceit of knowledge. 7 . The Bible speaks of God as "angry with the wicked every day"--so far then he is böse toward them (and Jesus was böse toward the Pharisees). Nietzsche refers to the supreme kindness (Güte) of Jesus, but says also, "he was the böseste of all men." 8 He calls the early Christians böse to the old Greco-Roman view; indeed he pronounces Christianity's attitude toward antiquity in general the topmost reach of defamatory Bosheit. 9 He himself wanted to write a böses book 10 [i.e., one that would be harmful and destructive in certain directions--he could not have said an übles or schlechtes book]. He had known in his own history, he tells us, how to be boshaft to conclusions which are bred by sickness or loneliness. 11 The böse or boshafte attitude is, of course, usually somber, but it may be light and gay: Emerson says that for the great who eradicate old and foolish churches and nations--a böses work surely from the standpoint of the churches and nations affected --"all must be as gay as the song of a canary." 12 Contemplating the part which enmity and destruction have to play in the world, recognizing that it is as needful and as beneficent as that of love and creation, Nietzsche makes Zarathustra say, "to the highest goodness belongs the highest Böse,""man must become better and böser [not schlechter]--so do I teach." 13

The evil which Nietzsche particularly considers is then essentially the same as the hostile, harmful, destructive, or at least threatening, fear-inspiring--this from the standpoint of those who suffer or fear the harm. That social groups should make the judgment in relation to themselves was natural and inevitable. Living uncertainly and precariously as they did, it was absolutely necessary for them to note what helped or harmed them--particularly what harmed. Fear of evil indeed predominated in the minds of primitive men--and, as they did not know what to expect, accident, the uncertain, the sudden were forms of it. 14 To diminish such fear was part of the function of the reign of mores, for through it members of a group became regular and calculable to one another--this though members of foreign groups were still evil, i.e., incalculable to them; and members of their own group, so far as they anywise stood apart and were peculiar, were regarded in much the same light. Men wanted to be able to relax their tension. One is evil in their eyes, even apart from actual harm, if one does not allow them to do this, and one is good who does--particularly then the kindly intentioned, benevolent man, whose very look disarms suspicion. If--says Nietzsche, speaking now generally-we reckon up the qualities of the good man, why do they please us? And he answers, Because we have no need of warring against him, no need to exercise distrust, to be wary, to collect and discipline ourselves; our indolence, good-nature, levity have a pleasant day. 15 At each stage of civilization, the "good man" is one who is undangerous and useful at the same time-a sort of mean: he need not be feared and yet cannot be despised. 16

"Good" and "evil" have thus an entirely legitimate significance; if the judgments were not made and the two things held quite apart, groups would be liable to perish by the way. But to make the judgments absolute, to condemn evil unconditionally and wish to banish it from the world, to see no place for it in the total scheme of things and want only good in its place, is another matter. Such a view may be late in developing, it is conditioned on reflective habits and an ardent moral sense, but it is almost certain to rise sooner or later and exists more or less today. Nietzsche questions it. I might put his interrogatory paradoxically thus, Is evil necessarily evil?-or more simply, Is evil in one sense necessarily evil in another?--or using the German words Is the Böse necessarily übel? 17

II Nietzsche answers by observing facts of psychology and history. For instance, he notes that what inspires fear and may do harm may be a stimulant to men. If, he once says, we open our eye and conscience to the question where and how the plant "man" has hitherto grown most vigorously, we discover that to this end danger had to increase enormously for him, that his power of invention and dissimulation (his "mind") had to become subtle and daring through long hardship and compulsion, that his will to live had to rise to an unconditional will for power--in other words and more particularly, that severity, violence, slavery, danger in the street and in the heart, that what is evil, fearful, tyrannical, predacious, snakelike may serve for the elevation of the species as well as their opposites.

He accordingly draws the inference that if a higher form of humanity is to come in the future, great and terrible odds will be required--the superman will need for an antagonist a superdragon. 19 One application of the general idea is made that decidedly jars on us, living in an age of intellectual tolerance as we do. In speaking of what we owe to the Christian church, he says that its very intolerance helped to render the European mind fine and supple, and that in our democratic age with freedom of the press, thought becomes "plump." He thinks that the ancient polis was like-minded with the church and produced similar beneficial effects, while in the Roman Empire, when freedom of belief and unbelief came to be permitted, mind coarsened and degenerated. He speaks of the distinguished appearance which men like Leibnitz and Abelard, Montaigne, Descartes and Pascal present under the régime of the church. 20 Freedom of the press, he repeats, ruins style and finally the mind. "Galiani was aware of it a hundred years ago. 'Freedom of thought' ruins the thinker. Between hell and heaven and in danger of persecutions, banishments, eternal damnations, and ungracious looks of kings and ladies the mind was lithe and bold: alas! what is mind becoming today!" 21 In brief, danger and enmity are good for man. So strongly does he feel this, that he regards it as no more desirable that "good" men alone should inherit the earth, than that there should be uninterrupted good weather. 22 With blended satire and seriousness he says that to ask that every one should be a "good man," a social animal, blue-eyed, benevolent, a "beautiful soul," or as Herbert Spencer wishes, altruistic, would strip existence of its grand character and reduce mankind to a miserable Chinadom. 23 "As the tree needed the storm, that it might become strong, so evil is necessary to the growth of life."

But he goes further. Not only is evil a stimulant to life, it is a constituent of the life-process itself. That which we call evil in an animal may be for it a condition of existence--its health and strength may lie therein. 24 The most beautiful and powerful beast of prey has the strongest affects; its hatred and inordinate desire (Gier) are needed in this strength for its health, and, when satisfied, develope it magnificently. 25 The evil in ourselves, the things we are afraid of, are sources of strength, if we know how to use them. Envy and greed are capable of utilization--what would have become of man without them? Genius is egoistic, nourishing itself on others, ruling them, exploiting them. 26 In the pursuit of scientific truth we have to be now böse, now good toward things--to exercise justice, passion, and coldness in turn. At one time by sympathy, at another by violence we get results; reverence for the mystery of things brings one person forward. Indiscretion and roguery in explaining mysteries another. 27 "Even for knowing I need all my impulses the good and the evil, and should quickly reach the limit if I were not willing to be hostile, mistrustful, cruel, insidious, revengeful, hypocritical (mich verstellend), etc., toward things." 28 There are times when we need to be positively malevolent, when a mild aversion leaves us weak and ineffective. Nietzsche comments on Goethe's Faust, a dissatisfied but after all too easily compromising kind of man, in danger, like Germans in general, of becoming a Philistine when he leaves the world of thought and contemplation and enters that of action; " a little more musclar force and natural wildness in him, and all his virtues would become greater." He adds that Goethe apparently knew where the danger and weakness of his hero lay, and hints at it in words he puts into the mouth of Jarno to Wilhelm Meister: "You are vexed and bitter, that is fine and good; but when you once become right böse, it will be still better." 29 Nietzsche puts it broadly, "There must be enmity in a man if he is to come out in quite lordly fashion, all evil affects must be there"; 30 he even says, "the Böse is man's best force" 31 --not, indeed, the goal, as Professor Riehl observes, but the way to the goal 32 [i.e., a part of the way].

And when we turn from the individual and contemplate the general life and movement of the world, we see ( Nietzsche thinks) that destruction has its part to play there as well as construction or conservation--and malevolence, the Böse, is only a name for the destructive force and spirit. 33 It is necessary to distinguish between what upholds a group, and what advances the species, raises the type. 34 The social virtues--mutual consideration and friendliness, respect for authority, reverence for law and custom--strengthen and solidify an existing group, but they do not change its character; and if there is to be change, either the group must be refashioned, or the new type be reached through its disintegration or destruction. In the one case as in the other, those who attempt to make the change seem evil forces to the group as it is. A foreign conqueror is the very impersonation of evil to a group, and those who propound strange ideas at home are almost equally objects of suspicion and dread. Moreover, they may be spirits of destruction. To what extent wish to benefit mingles with malice in individual cases may be difficult to determine--but Nietzsche thinks that malice plays its part. Departure from ancient custom has often come, he remarks, not so much from better intelligence as from strong malicious impulses--the heretic being something like a witch in the pleasure he takes in harming what is established (whether men or opinions). 35 The instinct for seeing things dissolve, wanton skepticism, pleasure in adventure, even personal spite and revenge have contributed to progress, and it must be forgiven those so inspired, if on occasion they posed as "martyrs to the truth." 36 And whether initiators of change are malicious, or only wish change in order that their group may be better preserved, b they seem böse to those near them-and actually are böse to things as they are. Indeed, if change is a part of the normal working of the world, malevolent as well as benevolent impulses belong of necessity to its inner machinery. One who is pious to the past and one who is sincerely impious alike have their place. 37 Destroying a part of becoming, endangering people and their views, or even putting an end to them, as necessary from any high point of view as being useful to them and building them up, destroying values and standards of value too, destroying moralities, religions-such is the logic of the development of things, to Nietzsche's mind. 38 A perfect adjustment of everything to everything else and to itself (as is suggested by Spencer) is an erroneous ideal-it would involve the deepest impoverishment of existence. 39 As it is, adjustment may go too far, groups last too long, the social virtues be too supreme--the harm of the virtues, Nietzsche ironically remarks, is something that has not yet been pointed out! 40 But the evil dispositions are well-lodged in the world, and he takes comfort in the fact. 41

So far does he go in this direction that he uses language at times almost like that of a theodicy. Good and evil seem to him obverse sides of the strong force that keeps the world moving and alive; they go together--the root of both (save where "good" really spells "weak") being strength 42 c If, as is urged by those who investigate morality from a physiologicohistorical standpoint, the survival of the moral instincts proves that they are useful for the preservation of the species, by the same token the survival of the unmoral instincts proves their utility--only that the will in their case is not simply a will for preservation, but for advance, for something more. 43 Nothing that exists ought to be suppressed, nothing is superfluous. 44 He even speaks of a new justice to evil and evil men. "Also the evil man (der Böse), also the unhappy man, also the man who is an exception shall have his philosophy, his good right, his sunshine! It is not pity here that is needed . . . but 'a new justice.'" 45 The ideal philosopher of the future will exercise "the great justice" and courteously protect and defend whatever is misunderstood and defamed, whether it be God or Devil. 46 With all this defense of evil, however, good has the supreme place in Nietzsche's estimation. From this standpoint he says that the task of culture is to take all that is fearful into service, singly, tentatively, step by step, although till it is strong enough to do this, it must needs fight or even curse it. 47 In short, evil is not to be destroyed, but turned to account. He even makes the venturesome statement, "all good is an evil of yesterday that has been made serviceable." 48 I have already cited his language about himself: "I am by far the most fearful man that ever existed, which does not exclude my becoming the most beneficent." 49

III

Nietzsche enlarges on the aspect of fearfulness which great men in particular may have. We do not separate, he says, the great from the fearful. 50 Great men were so through the strength of their affects; a measure of individuals and peoples is how far they can unchain the most fearful impulses without going to pieces--turning them to their advantage instead and making them bear fruit in act and work. 51 Zarathustra fears that the half-formed higher men who come to him would call his superman devil, as there would be something terrible in his goodness. 52 In Napoleon the higher and the fearful man were united; the mightiest instinct, that of life itself, the desire to rule, affirmed itself in him, 53 though he was corrupted by the means he had to use and lost noblesse of character. 54 The good, the noble, and the great (all different categories) rarely come together in the same individual-- Nietzsche could point to but one instance in the nineteenth century, Mazzini. 55 "Good" differs from "great" because in the great man [as such] the specific qualities of life in general, such as wrong, deception, exploitation, reach their maximum--although when they have been overpowering, their essential nature is not perceived and they are then construed as "good"--Carlyle being an instance of this type of interpreter. 56 "The high individual gives himself on occasion all the rights the state assumes--the right to kill, to annihilate, to play the spy, etc."; men of this type have committed all crimes--whether legally so or not, depending on the temper of the times. 57 The crimes need not be obvious animal ones, but more subtle, such as treachery, apostasy, denial; higher natures none the less commit them. 58 "The great are not understood: they forgive themselves every crime, but no weakness." 59 In other words, they have and make their own law, and this is what makes them great--and dreaded. Nietzsche quotes a Chinese proverb, "The great man is a public misfortune"--and he thinks that it is not so paradoxical as it sounds. At bottom all civilizations have, he says, this deep anxiety about the "great man," though the Chinese alone confess it--and they arrange their institutions "so that he shall arise as seldom, and grow up under as unfavorable conditions, as possible: what wonder! The small have looked out for themselves, for the small!" 60 I need not now develope the compensatory thought of the ultimate beneficence of great men; it has been already stated, and will be and more fully again--I simply note the evil aspect which for the time being, as Nietzsche thinks, they almost inevitably wear. "As man is something less than the animal and something more ( Unthier und Überthier), the higher man is something less and something more than man ( Unmensch und Übermensch): so do things go together. With every growth of man in the direction of what is great and high he grows also in the direction of what is deep and fearful; the one result should not be desired without the other--or, rather, the more thoroughly the one is desired, the more thoroughly the other is attained." 61

IV If a view like this strikes us strangely, still more strange will seem what is said of cruelty. Cruelty might be called evil carried to the highest power; it is "disinterested malice," or, in the language of Spinoza, sympathia malevolens. 62 The cruel man not only produces harm and suffering, he likes to. Nietzsche remarks that one may cause suffering to another, without meaning to--this being often the case with the strong; but that weak persons evilly-minded want to produce suffering and to see the signs of it. 63 Still the strong may be cruel too.

Probably nothing in Nietzsche's teaching has given more offense than his supposed advocacy of cruelty--ProfessorRiehl speaks of it as a morbid trait in his character. 64 But his attitude in the first instance is that of the psychological and historical analyst. There are no signs of his having been in the ordinary sense of the word a cruel man. I shall speak of this later in discussing his views of pity. Once he calls it our hereditary sin that we enjoy little, saying that if we learned better how to enjoy, we should unlearn giving and meditating pain to others. 65 Plainly this indicates no natural sympathy with cruelty. It is another thing, however, to say that there is no place for it in the world.

Cruelty is willing infliction of suffering--or at least, willingness to witness it. Let us note first what Nietzsche says of suffering, then of the infliction of it. Schopenhauer had used the facts of suffering as an argument against the world. Christianity also finds suffering an objection--its ideal is of an order in which "there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain." 66 Nietzsche thinks differently. He finds a vital meaning in pain, something without which life, particularly progressive life, could hardly be. He notes the curious fact, which may be taken for what it is worth, that primitive man looked on suffering differently from ourselves, even finding a pleasure at times in witnessing it, and a still greater pleasure in causing it. 67 He notes too that on the sufferer himself pain may act in two ways--or rather in three: if he is not strong enough, it may undo him, but if he is sufficiently strong, it may either serve as a warning to take in sail, or act as a positive stimulus and challenge, leading him to put forth his highest power. Some, he remarks, are never prouder or more warlike than before great pain. 68 A well-made individual finds illnesses to be the greatest stimulants of his life. 69 Nietzsche makes a striking portrayal of the way in which sickness may strike inward and lead one to face the last realities of existence, in § 144 of Dawn of Day. "I know not," he says elsewhere, "whether such suffering make better, but I know that it makes deeper." 70 He raises the question whether even for the development of our virtue sickness and suffering can be dispensed with, and whether especially our thirst for knowledge and self-knowledge does not require the sick soul as well as the healthy one--whether the will for health alone is not a prejudice and a cowardice. 71 One may even come out of these hells with a new love and a new sense of love--and understand Dante's meaning, when he wrote over the gates of his Inferno, "Also me did eternal love create." 72 The bitter experiences may not be good for all, may submerge some, but for the strong they bring on the "great health." 73 In this connection Nietzsche has a good word for Christianity, saying that in contrast with all utilitarianism, aiming ultimately at wellbeing, comfort, pleasure, it teaches that life is a testing and education of the soul, and that there is danger in all well-being. 74 He has English Utilitarianism particularly in mind. He speaks of the discipline of great suffering, and asks whether he himself is not more indebted to the most difficult years of his life than to any others. 75 He had early quoted Meister Eckhard's words, "The animal that carries you quickest to perfection is suffering," 76 and he came to know their truth by experience. d There is then a place for suffering in the world. It belongs almost inevitably to processes of change and new creation. Pain like pleasure is but an incident, a sign-the matter of moment is what it accompanies or signifies. If we are to make ourselves over, we must pay the price and not be too pathetic about it. 77 The highest thing is to have courage to suffer. e But may we choose, inflict suffering? With this, however, we pass to cruelty itself.

Whoever is willing to suffer himself, Nietzsche observes, looks differently at cruelty; he does not regard it as in itself harmful and bad (schlecht). Further, "the cruelty of an unfeeling person is the opposite of pity; the cruelty of one who is sensitive is a higher potency of pity." 78 But before noting his estimate of cruelty, let us follow what he has further to say in analysis of it. He speaks of man as the cruellest animal-the cruellest also to himself. 79 If the question is raised why there is pleasure in inflicting pain, he can only answer that there goes with it a sense of superiority or power. The pleasure is greater when one has been relatively powerless before, when, for example, one has been injured and now takes revenge. 80 It is greater, too, the lower we are in the social scale, i.e., the less we are accustomed to the assertion of power. For example, a low-born creditor in ancient times had a quite extraordinary pleasure in inflicting harm on an insolvent debtor--for the moment he participated in master-rights. 81 In general, as already stated, cruelty is greater in the weak than in the strong. 82 But the impulse is widespread, and lurks in guises where we may not suspect it. Civilization refines, spiritualizes [shall I say! moralizes] it, rather than eradicates it. 83 Christianity has been one of the spiritualizing influences. The idea of hell, the rack, courts of inquisition, auto-da-fés, are, whatever may be said against them, a great advance on the splendid, but half-idiotic slaughtering that went on in the Roman arenas. 84 It is a step onward when men are content with spiritual instead of bodily sufferings, and with picturing them and no longer wishing to see them. 85 One of the guises under which cruelty lurks is the desire for distinction--the unconscious or at least unconfessed motive being, Nietzsche thinks, to make others feel unpleasantly the contrast with ourselves. The artist, whose pleasure in forcing the envy of competitors does not allow his forces to sleep till he becomes great, the nun who looks with punishing eyes on women who live differently, the humble, very humble man who is not unaware of the reproaches which others must give themselves for not being like him, are instances. The original motives may be forgotten, but down at bottom a subtle cruelty has been at work. 86 f

We may even be cruel to ourselves, in a subtle way. To criticise others is common--apparently it is an unfailing spring of pleasure for men and for women; but the philosopher--a rare species--criticises himself, and in a sense has pleasure in this also. He enjoys correcting his surface views, breaking up old satisfactions. It may sound nice to speak of excessive "honesty," "love of truth," "sacrifice for knowledge," but the individual himself, if schooled in introspection and strictly truthful, is apt to say, "There is something cruel in the propensity of my mind." 87 All conquests of knowledge come from courage and from hardness to oneself. 88 Nietzsche honors the English psychologists who know how to hold their heart as well as their pain in check, and have trained themselves to sacrifice wishes to truth, even to ugly, disagreeable, unchristian, unmoral truth. 89 He finds our strong sides unmerciful to our weak sides generally--yes, our very greatness may lie in our unmercifulness. 90 The ground-law of life is self-overcoming--we have to put away what is weak and old in us and be inexorable in doing so: it is the secret both of bodily and of spiritual renewal. 91 William James spoke of "imperative goods," whose nature it is to be "cruel to their rivals," and Nietzsche says, "Whoever has greatness is cruel to his virtues and reflections ( Erwägungen) of lesser rank." 92 There is something cruel in conscience itself. When man comes under the ban of society and social law, he sooner or later turns against his old nature, contradicts it, despises it, mistreats it, and makes it suffer--the process being intensified under the influence of ethical, ascetic religions like Brahmanism and Christianity. Denying self, sacrificing self, pleasure in doing this--all is a refined, elevated cruelty; 93 and the motive is the same as that behind cruelty in its crudest forms--love of superiority and power. That we can put ourselves under our feet gives us a sense of wings: in the famous story of King Viçvamitra which the Brahmans tell, the long-continued, self-inflicted sufferings of the king give him such a feeling of power, such confidence in himself, that he is ready to build a new heavens. 94

Cruelty being of this nature, capable of these metamorphoses, Nietzsche thinks there is a place for it in the world, as for the Böse in general. In a realm of change such as our world is, more or less of it has to be--without it change would be impossible. As pleasure is a sign of adjustment, so pain is necessary for a readjustment--if we are "humanitarian" purely, we faint before the stern requirements of the task; creative force and "humanity" are so far opposites. 95 If it is heroic to endeavor to diminish pain, it may on occasion also be heroic-and it is a harder heroism--to inflict it: in the one case we follow feelings that are instinctive to most of us, in the other we have to transcend them. "Who will attain anything great, if he does not feel within himself the power and the will to inflict great pain? Ability to suffer is the smallest thing: in this weak women and even slaves often come to mastery. But not to perish of inner distress and uncertainty, when we inflict great suffering and hear the cry of this suffering--that is great, that belongs to greatness." 96 As illness, whether of body or soul and particularly of the soul, is instructive, sometimes more so than health, so those who make ill may be as necessary as medicine-men and saviours. 97 Nietzsche says boldly, "To lessen suffering and to escape from suffering (i.e., from life)--is that moral? To create suffering--for oneself and others--in order to enable them to reach the highest life, that of the conqueror-were my aim." 98 g For to his mind, it is not suffering that is evil, but senseless suffering, and he throws out the extraordinary idea that we must take upon ourselves all the suffering that has been borne, whether by men or by animals, and affirm it and have an aim in which it acquires reason. He calls it his principal doctrine, that "in our power lies the reinterpretation of suffering into blessing, of poison into nourishment." 99

Nietzsche is quite aware of the unsettling effect of considerations like these. Once he says that if we are led to feel that "evil" forces are fundamentally necessary in the total economy of life and hence must be heightened, not lessened, if life is to advance, we suffer as from seasickness. 100 The trouble is, I need not say, that we have not been accustomed to seeing good and evil in perspective, that we look on them and the contrast between them as absolute. Strong feeling always tends to absolutize its judgments--and perhaps there has been no stronger feeling in the world in the past than group-feeling, of which we thus experience the effects. But there is no real contradiction between saying that certain things are prejudicial to, or even incompatible with, the life of a group, and that they may be useful in larger relations. There is no question, and Nietzsche makes no question, that societies live by what I have ventured to call essential morality, that in all ordinary circumstances their members are strictly bound by it. But if the course of the world were determined by this morality, that would be something ordinary indeed. If we deny the böse forces--those that bring harm and suffering--all play, we in effect accept the world as we find it, wishing only to preserve it or develope it along existing lines. If there is to be change, great change, these forces must be allowed room.

v Indeed, Nietzsche is skeptical of absolute antitheses in general--that of good and evil is only a special case. He calls the belief in them the ground-belief of metaphysicians--meaning by this apparently that higher things, when contrasted absolutely with lower things, become incapable of derivation from them, and hence to explain them as they appear, we must posit another, higher order of things. 101 h He questions absolute antitheses all along the line. Instinct and consciousness are not really opposites; consciousness may be secretly guided by instinct and forced by it into certain paths. 102 Health and sickness are not really, or at least necessarily, opposed; a measure of health is the efflorescence of the body, the elasticity, courage, and joyfulness of the mind, i.e., the extent to which sickness may be endured, overcome, and made tributary to health: sickness may be a stimulus to the "great health." 103 Even truth, at least what we call such, is so little opposed to error, that it has grown out of it, our "true world" being the result of a simplification, i.e., of leaving some things out of account, ignoring them, willing to ignore them, our science being not so much the antithesis of ignorance, as a refinement of it, the will to know resting on a much more powerful will not to know. 104 The state as a reign of law is contrasted with force and violence, but it originated in force and violence--it is a finer form of them, not their negation. 105 The early morality of mores had much that was hard, tyrannous, stupid about it; all the same by it man was educated and turned into a reckonable, responsible creature. 106 Some of our highest and purest moral conceptions, such as duty, responsibility, obligation, have (as we shall see later) the trail of blood on them. From impulses of hatred and revenge in ancient Israel--hatred of what was great and powerful--came a new love, the deepest and sublimest kind of love, not as a contradiction but as a climax, for by the doctrine of love the old powers were dethroned and the revenge accomplished. 107 High things grow from low things everywhere. Good conscience had bad conscience for a first stage. 108 Man descends, or ascends, from the animal--he is a higher animal. His mental and moral processes are not antithetical to physiological or vital processes, but a transmutation, sublimation of them, a carrying them to finer issues. Mind and body alike appropriate, absorb, and reject what is not appropriable. 'Man is after everything, everybody that can serve for his nourishment, and the impulse to own is but a form of this craving; knowledge is in turn a form of ownership, and love a feeling for what we own, or wish to own. Nietzsche suggests that all moral impulses may possibly be traced back to the wish to have and to hold; in any case, the four Socratic virtues--justice, prudence, self-control, courage--have beginnings in the animal world, are the result of the impulses for food and for escaping enemies, and it may not be unpermissible to designate the whole moral phenomenon as animal. 109

So good and evil are not really antithetical. The mind has been educated, sharpened in the past by distinguishing between them, 110 and the distinction has its validity, but it is not an absolute validity. Good and evil are complementary more than opposite. 111 Each is necessary, useful, good (in the final sense). Let us be naturalistic, says Nietzsche, and concede a good right even to what we have to contend with, whether within or without us. 112 In a similar strain, an American poet describes the Puritan:

I have no love of ease! My feet are shod with might! If there's no Devil in God's world, Then what have I to fight?

I am a man of war! Such things I understand: When Devils against Cherubim Are leagued throughout the land." (Anna Hempstead Branch, "The Puritan," in The Shoes that Danced ( Boston, 1906).

Nietzsche spoke of conjuring up enemies--we need them for our ideal's sake. The educator, if he is great, is like nature-he piles up obstacles that they may be surmounted. 114 More than this, the evil may become good. Lay a highest aim on your passions, Nietzsche says, and they become your virtues and sources of delight; even if you have the blood of the choleric or of the voluptuous or of the fanatical or of the vindictive in you, the result will be the same, the devils will become your angels. 115 Instincts of murder, theft, cruelty, deception are present in the most admired actions and characters. 116 i Good acts are sublimated evil ones, the stuff being the same. 117 Though we must protect ourselves against wild energies and call them evil, so long as we do not know how to use them, when we make them serviceable, they are good. 118 What we now honor as philosophical impulses--those to doubt, inquire, analyze, compare--went for a long time against the primary requirements of morality and conscience; marriage at the outset was a sinning against the rights of the community; gentle, sympathetic feelings once excited contempt, it being as much a cause of shame to be mild then as it is now to be hard. 119 And in turn, good things may become evil. From this point of view, Nietzsche once speaks of evil as an atavism of a former good; acts, once done innocently, become evil, crimes, to the conscience of a later time. 120 j Moreover, what is good for one individual is evil for another. Steady industry is not good for the perfect artist, habits of obedience are out of place in one who commands, resignation does not befit one with a great aim, though such things are all desirable for men in general. Even for the same individual, good and evil may change at different epochs of his life--the magnanimous feelings shared by Napoleon in his youth with his time became seductions and temptations later on, since they weakened the exclusive application of his force in one direction which then was necessary. 121 Nietzsche himself wished to turn some things now commonly counted good into evil. 122 He even speaks once or twice, though rather obscurely, of what is useful in one direction being necessarily evil in others, so that a thing may be good and evil at the same time, depending on the standpoint from which it is regarded." 123 However this may be, good and evil are to his mind relative judgments only--evil does not inhere in things themselves or in men themselves. With a certain humanity Zarathustra turns on judges who pass sentence on the "pale criminal," charging them, "Enemy" shall ye say, but not "villain,""sick man" shall ye say, but not "wretch" (Schuft), "fool" shall ye say, but not "sinner." 124

CHAPTER XIX CRITICISM OF MORALITY (CONT.). VARYING TYPES OF MORALITY I IN introducing some paragraphs on "the natural history of morals" in Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche urges the necessity of making a collection of different types of morality. While admitting that moral feeling in Europe is subtle, many-sided, sensitive, refined, "the science of morals" seems to him still young, tyro-like, clumsy (plump)--even the word "science" in this connection being presumptuous and against good taste, which is always a taste in the first place for modest expressions. A preliminary need, he urges, is to gather material, to grasp conceptually and classify an immense domain of delicate valuations and distinctions of value, which live, grow, propagate, and die--and to try, perhaps, to make detailed pictures of the recurring and more frequent forms of this living crystallization. But instead of such work, for which no hand could be too fine, philosophers, whenever they have addressed themselves to morals as a science, have demanded of themselves, with pedantic and amusing gravity, something far higher, more pretentious, more solemn, a basis of morality--and all think that they have provided one; but morality itself passed as something "given." The fact is, however, that they have only known the moral facta roughly (gröblich), in some arbitrary abstract or some accidental abridgment, perhaps as the morality of their environment, their class, their church, their time, their climate and zone--and just because they have been so poorly instructed and were so little curious in respect to peoples, eras, and past ages, they have not come face to face with the real problems of morality, which first arise in connection with a comparison of many moralities. 1

The expression "many moralities" doubtless seems strange to many--and we have found Nietzsche himself giving a somewhat definite characterization of morality in the chapter before the last. But though morality is always the law of a social group, and in certain essential points tends to be the same everywhere, it may vary to the extent different groups are differently situated and have different needs, or to the extent they have different specific aims. All must value and have tables of good and evil, but these need not be exactly alike. Indeed, so far as a group is peculiar, whether in its circumstances or its ideals, it must value differently from other groups, otherwise the development of its own individual life will not be secured. Nietzsche essays a brief characterization of the moralities of the Greeks, the Persians, the Jews, and the Germans--so far as each has its peculium--in a discourse of Zarathustra. "Ever shalt thou be the first and excel others, no one shall thy jealous soul love but a friend"--such was the distinctive spirit of Hellenic morality; with this the Greek went on his path of greatness. "To speak truth, and use the bow and arrow well"--this seemed pre-eminently good to the Persians. "To honor father and mother and to be obedient to them down to the depths of one's soul"--this was the maxim, by obeying which Israel became strong and immortal. "To practise fidelity, and for the sake of fidelity to risk honor and blood even in bösen and dangerous courses"--so saying, the German people mastered itself and became pregnant with great hopes. 2 Moralities like these are, of course, group-moralities proper. But there may also be minor groups within the group-social classes of various sorts; and these too may have their peculiar situations, needs, and aims. We speak colloquially now of the morality of the various professions, of the morality of business, of that of family life and so on. It is observable that individuals even acquire different characters to a certain extent, depending on the nature and aims of the class to which they belong. We can imagine that if some of these minor groups disappeared, they might leave their impress in ways of speaking and looking at things that should survive them--so that if men in future times were keen enough of scent, they might construct more or less of a picture of the vanished group from data before them. Royal institutions might thus be reconstructed after an age of democracy had set in. The family institution might be reconstructed after the family had disappeared (if that could ever be).

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Brownshirt2621stMay2005, 12:42 II It appears to have been in some such way as this that Nietzsche was led to the supposition of an original mastermorality and slave-morality. Such distinct things do not exist now, but he fancied that they had existed. He was not an original investigator in history or sociology, but he was a wide reader, and had a keen scent for the meaning, and shades of meaning, of words. In wandering through the many moralities both finer and ruder, which have ruled hitherto on the earth or still rule, he thought he detected certain traits regularly recurring together and connected with one another; and at last two ground-types disclosed themselves and a fundamental distinction appeared--there was a morality of the master or ruling class and one of the slave or subject class. He found survivals of these moralities among us today-there are contrasted ways of feeling and judging and even of speaking, that appeared to him to receive their natural explanation in this way. Sometimes the contrasted standpoints are harmonized (at least attempts are made to harmonize them), sometimes they simply co-exist; they may co-exist in the same individual, who now judges in one way and now in another--it is a part of the criss-cross, the anarchy, of the present moral situation, a as he saw it, to which allusion has been made. He found also another type of morality--that of the priestly class. The good and evil of the priestly class were at bottom identical with the pure and impure--the terms having been understood at the start not so much in a symbolical, as in a simple physical sense. A man was "pure" who bathed himself, who forbade himself foods that caused diseases of the skin, who did not cohabit with unclean women of the lower class, who had a horror of blood--not more than this, at least not much more. In the course of time, "pure" came to have the moral and spiritual meanings with which we are all familiar--yet even so there is always the lurking suggestion of a contrast to the ordinary tainted world. 3 b But the moral types which Nietzsche considers at length are those of the ruler and subject classes. c As he read history, this social cleavage is the most striking one-the one that has left the deepest marks. The cleavage does not exist in democratic communities, and if the world had started and developed democratically, "master-morality" and "slavemorality" would have no meaning.

It should be said at the outset that "master" and "slave" are not used by Nietzsche merely in the economic sense to which we in America are most accustomed, but, as has been hinted in an earlier connection, 4 broadly. The economic slave who is captured in war or purchased and put to drudgery in the fields or in the household is one kind of slave, but that which makes him a slave is subjection to the will of another--and virtually every one who takes his orders from another, and has to, gets this designation at Nietzsche's hands. d The master ( Herr), on the other hand, is one who gives orders. And inasmuch as early political societies were commonly made up of leaders and the led, rulers and the ruled, the function of the latter being as much to follow and obey as that of the former was to lead and command, the language "master and slave," in application to them, is strictly appropriate. Particularly does it apply when one society conquers another, which seems to have been the way in which large political aggregates were formed in early times. Nietzsche once goes so far as to say that classes ( Stände) always originate in differences of descent and race. 5 But this appears to be a needlessly strong statement. "Slave morality" and "the morality of the mass" are practically synonymous to him, and the "mass" in contrast with the rulers or leaders belonged to every social group--the two are constantly contrasted and their virtues and duties contradistinguished by him. e Sometimes he even uses "group-morality" ( Heerden-Moral) as identical with "slave-morality," meaning of course that the "slaves" are the greater part of the group, just as we often speak of the "people," when we mean the common people, or of a flock of sheep and its bellwether, or of a herd of cattle and its "Vor-ochsen." 6 In times past there have been the few rulers and the many ruled--this is the simple broad fact on which Nietzsche's view of a mastermorality and a slave-morality is based. For us today "slave" is a derogatory expression, and always, it is true, a slave has ranked lower than a free man; but Nietzsche knows also how to appreciate the slave--and even says that many a man has thrown away his last worth when he threw away his servitude 7 How necessary and vital in his estimation the slave class has been in the past, how necessary and vital their counterparts are today and always will be, we shall see later. 8 I pass now to a more detailed characterization of the two moral types. 9

First, the ruler morality. It is evident that the ruler class of men are a marked type. They have unusual vigor, enterprise, courage, vitality generally; they are, relatively speaking, higher, more complete men. Their ascendency can hardly be accounted for otherwise--they take the first place, because they are the first. They delight in war, adventure, the hunt, the dance, contents of skill--it is from the overflow of the energy within them. 10 Theirs is not ordinary labor in the fields or the household--others have this for their portion; and whether they subjugate roving disorganized masses or rule their own group, winning a more or less willing allegiance there, the basis of their superiority is the same. When then such men value, they are likely to do so more or less differently from those beneath them. Comfort and personal security are not a first consideration--nor are they looking to others to be kind and good to them. They use "good" in a peculiar sense: it is not a "good to," they feel themselves good; they approve not so much beneficence or benevolence, as their own overflowing power and exuberant manner of life. The mass, however, look at things from another standpoint. They are the weaker, the less self-sufficient, and have need of kindness at others' hands. They do the heavy labor, and mutual help means much to them. All live more or less in fear in primitive times, but the humbler and weaker especially, and to be delivered from it, to have others good to them instead of evil, is a supreme desire; the principal function of rulers in their eyes is to protect them from evil from outside.

It is contrasted perspectives like these which give birth, in Nietzsche's judgment, to the contrasted valuations, "gut" and "schlecht" on the one side, "gut" and "böse" on the other. The ruling class feel themselves good, and, sensible of the contrast between themselves and those beneath them, they call the latter not good, schlecht. Nietzsche remarks on the fact that the German word schlecht originally meant little more than plain, ordinary; 11 it had a shade of contempt--Wundt gives "simple," "plain," "poor," "mean" as its equivalents. 12 It came to have its present moral signification roughly speaking with the Thirty Years' War (so Nietzsche says), and still has a flavor of contempt. I know of no precise English equivalent for it, but perhaps the nearest is "bad." So the English translation of Nietzsche Werke renders it, and when we speak of work as "badly done," of a book as "badly written," and mean "in poor, inferior fashion," we approach the particular shade of significance it has. But the valuations "gut" and "böse" are different. These reflect the sentiments and situation of the subject or slave class. Here "good" is equivalent to fearallaying, kindly, benevolent, sympathetic--" böse" signifying the opposite. Indeed Nietzsche appears to think that böse is the more original conception of the two, the positive conception-"good" being an after-formation and counterpart to it. 13

The master and subject valuations are thus quite different. Each class has its good and evil (in the broad sense) corresponding to the conditions of its life, but the good of the one is not the good of the other, and the evil of the one is not the evil of the other. f The rulers can only maintain their particular type of existence by estimating things as they do--to use Nietzsche's metaphor, they protect themselves with their "good" and "schlecht" as with sacred groves; 14 and the mass equally protect themselves by judging as they do. The two classes have, indeed, a different temper throughout. The valuations of the higher class are direct, active; those of the mass are rather from ressentiment or reactive. Also the happiness of the superior class is direct--it comes from a sense of the fullness of their power, joy in activity is a part of it; but for the lower class happiness is in rest from activity, something found in times of relaxation or when under some narcotic influence. Again, the superior let themselves go more, the lower are more calculating (klüger). The higher vent their anger straightway--it does not poison them and they easily forget (Mirabeau is a modern instance); they, if anybody, can love their enemies--they indeed want an enemy, one in whom there is nothing to despise and much to honor, and honoring is a way to loving; but the lower cherish their resentment, keeping it in secret places within them, and fear their enemy rather than honor him. 15 g

It goes without saying that the contrast between the two classes and their moralities is within limits. The group as a whole must live, and what is helpful and harmful to it as a collectivity must have the first place. The sense of separateness of the higher class, their contempt for the lower, cannot go too far; and the mass, if they require protection and consideration and kindness too absolutely, will not give the services and make the sacrifices needed in time of war. In general, however, the group interests may be furthered rather than hindered by the differentiation into classes, with their respective points of view. It is a rudimentary kind of organization, and an organized mass is always stronger than a structureless one. Moreover, Nietzsche need not be supposed to mean that the classes and their moralities are marked off absolutely against each other; it is enough if, as the classes arise, they tend to take contrasted points of view--the moralities are types, schemata, not necessarily fully accomplished realities. And yet the contrasts are so great that not only is the good of the master-class not the good of the subject-class, but it may be the evil of the latter--the overflowing power of the ruler being just that which makes the subject afraid of him. A conqueror, for example, is always böse in the eyes of those whom he conquers, though it is just in conquering that he feels himself good, 16 and whether the ruling class are conquerors from outside or native to the group they rule, the ruled stand more or less in dread of them. This is especially the case, in Nietzsche's opinion, after a group has been delivered from its enemies and lives in entire security; for the abounding energy, the overflowing vitality, the love of enterprise and conquest and domination, which are the characteristic marks of the superior class and which had been utilized in the public interest in time of danger and war, are now without an outlet and all too easily discharge themselves harmfully within the group itself. 17 Indeed, members of the ruler class may seem böse when they are not; in mere exuberance of spirits and because their heaped-up energy must have vent, they may do harm and inflict suffering, without evil intent on their part? 18 h And, on the other hand, there is a tendency, Nietzsche thinks, for the "good" of the subject-class to become the "schlecht" of the ruling class, i.e., to be looked down upon with something like contempt. His language is, "The contrast reaches its climax, when, in harmony with the logic of slave-morality, something like depreciation (ein Hauch von Geringschätzung)-it may be slight and kindly--at last attaches itself even to the good man of this morality, since the good man, within the slave mode of thought, must at all events be the undangerous man: he is good-natured, easily deceived, perhaps a bit stupid, un bonhomme. Everywhere, where slave-morality gets the upper hand, language shows an inclination to bring the words 'good' and 'stupid' near together." 19

One way of characterizing the two moralities would be to say that one is a morality of self--approval, the other a utilitarian morality. Considerations of usefulness--usefulness to them-determine the judgments of the mass as to good and evil, for they are weak and need to have things arranged for their benefit. But the powerful class, who put their impress on things, who are happy in themselves--what is utility to them?

Nietzsche virtually distinguishes the moralities in this manner himself; 20 and yet in a broader sense all morality, whether of the group or of any class within it, is utilitarian according to his way of thinking--that is, it is good and binding not on its own account, but in that it furthers a given type of life and corresponds to the conditions of its preservation and development. 21

III Such are the broad outlines of his view. I give now the particular philological suggestions that seem to have inspired it, or at least, as he thought, to confirm it. He is not dogmatic in using them, and some of his conjectures he came to see were mistaken. 22 It was a method of approaching the subject that interested him, more than any particular results. In a note appended to the first treatise of Genealogy of Morals, he expressed the wish that some philosophical faculty would institute a series of prize papers on the history of morality and particularly in answer to the question, "What hints does the science of language, and especially etymological investigation, furnish for the history of the development of moral conceptions"? i It is of interest to note that after almost a quarter of a century one German university has fulfilled this wish. 23 I shall mention only the more important of Nietzsche's philological suggestions; they are mainly as to words expressive of the master-class valuations, which he thinks were the older of the two.

The Greek word for good, ?γαθο??2, is, he is aware, of uncertain derivation, but the words for "superior," "noble" were, he thinks, unquestionably class-designations (i.e., ruler-class, aristocratic) at the start, and he suspects that ?γαθο?ς, was too. 24 He instances phrases like "we superior, we good, we beautiful, we happy ones," with which old-time Greek aristocrats sometimes described themselves 25 --having in mind, perhaps, language used by Theognis, who speaks of the "nobles" constantly as "the good," and of the common maw as the "bad" or "base." One thinks too of καλοκα?γαθο?ς, with which the aristocratic ideal was summed up, though Nietzsche does not refer to it. Leopold Schmidt, it may be added, thinks that ?γαθο?ς referred to personal bravery and other characteristics, such as may be supposed to have belonged pre-eminently to early aristocracies: 26 and of one thing we may, I suppose, be sure, namely, that it did not stand for the qualities, kindly, benevolent, sympathetic, with which we pre-eminently identify "good" today. Turning to the Latin word, bonus, Nietzsche conjectures that it goes back to an older duonus (like bellum from duellum), signifying a man in dissension, a warrior: accordingly "we see what in old Rome a man's 'goodness' amounted to." 27 The prevailing etymologies of bonus are quite different (see Wundt, op. cit., I, 27) The old--time superior classes also designated themselves by other terms--perhaps oftenest, after their superiority in power, as "the mighty," "the lords," "the commanders," or, after the most visible sign of their superiority, as "the rich," "the possessors" (this the meaning of arya, with equivalents in Eranian and Slavic), or, after a typical trait of character, as "the truthful." The last term was particularly in use among the Greek nobility: in contrast with the weaker man given to lying and dissimulation, they called themselves ?σθλοι?--at least Theognis liked to describe them in this way; 28 and it is interesting to note that in Hindu "good" is equivalent to "true," "bad" to "untrue." 29

Taking up now the words contrasted with ?γαθο?ς and bonus, Nietzsche points out that in both κακο?ς and δειλο?ς fear or cowardice is emphasized. 30 Dewey and Tufts note that "base" and "mean" were originally simply antitheses to "gentle" and "noble," "villain" meaning a feudal tenant, "knave" a servant, "rascal" one of the common herd; they even say that "bad" probably meant originally weak or womanish 31 --in other words, all were practically class terms, applied de haut en bas. Nietzsche makes his most problematical conjecture as to the Latin malus--suggesting that the common man as the darkcolored (particularly dark-haired) is thus indicated. He connects it with the Greek με?λος (black)--as does also, I may add, Wundt (citing Curtius), though Wundt has rather in mind dirt or uncleanness, as viewed by the priestly class. 32 The hypothesis is that "dark-haired" points to the pro-Aryan inhabitants of Italy, whom the Latin peoples conquered, they being dark as the Latin Aryans were blond. Nietzsche finds an analogy in the Gaelic, where "fin" (e.g., in Fin-Gal)--the distinctive term for the nobility, and coming at last to mean the good, noble, pure-designated originally the blond head, in contrast to the dark, black-haired aborigines. The Celts also, in common with the other Aryan invaders of Europe, were blond--although it appears to Nietzsche that, as time has gone on, the aborigines have everywhere more or less got the upper hand of their conquerors, in both bodily and moral characteristics. 33 As to the German "schlecht," practically all the authorities agree with Nietzsche's view already given. 34 His general idea is that the ruler classes virtually stamped their view on current speech 35 -that is, did so at the start, for other valuations, coming from other classes, are the prevailing ones now. 36

As stated, "good" and "bad" designated classes at first, but in time their meaning came to be generalized, so that they stood simply for the qualities of the contrasted classes, irrespective of who possessed them. j These more general meanings were, roughly speaking, fixed for the Greek world in the time of Socrates when the cleavage between the classes had more or less disappeared k --Socrates himself doing much to fix and popularize them. They were, so to speak, the spiritual legacy of the old-time ruling class. So much then for "good and bad (schlecht)" the dominant valuations, as Nietzsche thinks, in the Greco-Roman world.

IV And now as to the other type of morality, whose antithesis is "good and evil (bφse)." Save to the extent to which it shades off into group-morality in general, it may be doubted whether it domesticated itself in the ancient world. It is the morality of the mass, and the mass had not sufficient power to impress their views upon language--perhaps were not "class-conscious" enough (to use a modern phrase), or with enough general intellectual development to perceive that they had a good and evil of their own; at best there was a tendency, an instinct, a craving in that direction. 1 This in general; but there was an exception. In the case of one remarkable people of antiquity the mass or slave morality did articulate itself--and that owing to a peculiar combination of circumstances: I refer to the Jews. The early morality of Israel was much like that of other primitive vigorous peoples; but after the rise of the prophets, m and particularly after the national downfall, there was a change. It was one of the main characteristics of the prophets that they took the side of the people, the common man, against the excesses of those who ruled. Under their influence the instinctive valuations of the weaker and poorer class attained an extraordinary development, and at last came to constitute the dominant morality of the community. Particularly when the community came under foreign dominion, when Israel became an oppressed and suffering people, did the point of view of the weaker class become that of the nation as a whole. The poor, the weak, the suffering, became almost ipso facto the righteous and the good; n kindness, mutual help, mercy, and pity were made an absolute ideal--the law of Jahweh himself. We have heard much in recent years of the transformation of the ancient religion of Israel into an ethical religion--this is its meaning. Jahweh is no longer simply an impersonation of the nation's power and might and glory, he is the God of the humble, the protector and avenger of the poor and weak--he casts down the mighty and the proud. The ideals of the mass and the priestly ideal of purity were fused into a combination--Jahweh, or, more strictly speaking, Jahweh's law--the like of which the world has never seen. Who is not aware of the difference between the literature of Greece (particularly before Plato) and the Psalms (most of them), or the prophecies of Isaiah (especially the later Isaiah) and Jeremiah? There is not so much a contradiction as a different climate or atmosphere--the stress of things, the background of ideals, the supreme values are different. The Jews become in effect a priestly people, making the mass valuations absolute and divine.

And now at length there comes an hour of supreme triumph and revenge for them--not indeed for them individually or as a corporeal entity, but for the soul of Israel, for their ideal. In Christianity, born out of Israel, that ideal virtually overcame the old Greco-Roman world--overcame the master-morality that lingered on in it. Physically Israel was no match for the Roman Empire--those who strove in that direction were not representative of her real strength. But her mind--and sometimes none develope forces of mind like the weak--overcame Rome's mind, and perhaps even contributed to Rome's physical downfall, by sapping the life of the old ideals--master-class ideals--on which the Empire rested. Christianity was in effect a message, a gospel to that class in the Empire which had not yet come to recognition and power--the poor, the suffering, the toiling, the heavy-laden; it met their instinctive cravings, gave them a sense of their significance, made them think themselves the equals of those who had hitherto looked down upon them, yes, their superiors so far as they practised faithfully the new morality--superior not only in their own sight, but actually, as would be proved when Israel's God should make over the world in their favor, giving to them the felicities of Heaven and to their enemies the sufferings of Hell. It may seem strange to speak of the spirit of triumph and revenge in connection with Christianity. But let any one read the language of the bestknown early Christian apostle, in writing to one of the churches he had founded: "You see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called; but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty; and base things of the world and things which are despised, yea, and things which are not, to bring to naught things that are." 37 One who fails to catch the undertone of triumph and sublimated revenge in these words has hardly ears to hear. A kind of animus against and desire to humiliate the "noble and great" of the world--a spirit of refined cruelty to them--came to be a part of the Christian tradition; Nietzsche cites a striking passage from Tertullian (de spectac., 29 ff.). 38 As gentle a soul as St. Francis of Assisi could say, "God has chosen me, because he could find no lower one, because he would turn to disgrace nobility, greatness, power, beauty, and the world's wisdom." 39 o

V Such is an abstract and meager statement of the historical process by which, as Nietzsche views the matter, the morality of the slave or subject class, the mass, established itself in the world--a poor substitute, I own, for his own vivid and telling descriptions. 40 p He does not mean that kindness and mutual help and pity were unknown in the ancient world--or were unrecognized as a part of the moral code; to a certain extent sentiments and actions of this sort are necessary for the maintenance of any society--and he was well aware of it. He simply means that ideals of this description never obtained the supreme and dominant place which they now have in the world, never were made absolutely binding on all men, never were identified with morality itself, before prophetic Israel and Christianity played their part. It was the triumph of the common man, of the old-time slave class. Nietzsche speaks of it picturesquely as the "slave-insurrection." No one with the slightest understanding of him will imagine that he means by this anything spectacular or sudden. A subtle, slow, secular revolution in the mental and moral realm is what he has in mind--a matter, as he says, of two thousand years, and only now out of sight and consciousness, because it has triumphantly accomplished itself. 41 For us today "moral" is almost identical with unegoistic, disinterested; our standard is the well-being of all or of the greatest number--it is only as we are unselfish that we are good, only as we serve that we are great. 42 This sweeping change in the very meaning of words is the insurrection. The former "slave" is now on top, and those once called "superior," "mighty ones," "beautiful," "happy," "loved of the Gods" are under: even if they emerge, they have bad conscience and feel that they must apologize for themselves--they too, forsooth, must serve the slave, as the slaves serve one another! At the very best we men of today have divided minds; Nietzsche remarks that there is perhaps no more decisive sign of a "higher nature" now than to be so divided--a battle-place for antithetical sets of valuations. 43 The reproach is often made against him that he proposed to overturn morality; but this is an overturning that has already taken place. The morality by which Greece and Rome lived in their great days no longer rules--it has been undermined, sapped by the Prophets and the Church. Speaking more simply, the aristocratic valuations, "good" and "bad," have been overthrown by the mass valuations, "good" and "evil." The overturning 44 which Nietzsche proposed was, in fact, as we shall see, more of a restoration than a destruction. He particularly says that by "beyond good and evil" he does not mean "beyond good and bad"; 45 he has no idea of transcending moral distinctions in general, but simply of transcending a particular set of distinctions that have won preponderance in the modern, or rather Christian, world.

CHAPTER XX CRITICISM OF MORALITY (CONT.). RESPONSIBILITY, RIGHTS AND DUTIES, JUSTICE I PASS now to Nietzsche's views on certain details in morality, beginning with responsibility, rights and duties, and justice.

I We saw, in dealing with the preceding period, that Nietzsche could make nothing of responsibility in the sense of accountability for one's actions--this idea resting on that of free will, which to him was illusory. 1 The utility of the idea he did not question, but it had no standing in foro scientiae. In another sense of the word, however, he held that responsibility could really exist, and that training to it had been a high historic function of morality itself. One is responsible in this sense who will do as he has agreed to do, who responds to the expectations he has created, who can be trusted. Nietzsche regards this as far from a state of nature for men; it is a cultural result and implies a process of social training. "To train up (heranzόchten) an animal who can (darf) promise--is this not just the paradoxical task which nature has set in respect to man? is it not the real problem of man?" 2 A preliminary requirement is memory. Psychologists and biologists have much to tell us of the meaning and physiological basis of memory; but how to get it or create it is another problem. Forgetfulness comes nearer being the natural state of man, and, what is more, forgetfulness has its uses. Nietzsche regards it as not merely a vis inertiae (perhaps the common view), but as an active power of inhibition, a form of health, by which the past is not forever kept in sight, and freedom is gained for fresh experience and the work of today. The person in whom this inhibitory apparatus is injured and prevented from acting, may be compared to a dyspeptic, who is never done with anything. Yet against this strong forgetfulness is now to be developed a contrary power by the help of which forgetfulness is suspended for certain cases-namely, those where promises have been made: not then a mere passive inability to forget, a kind of indigestion in regard to a pledged word, but a will not to forget, a continuous willing of what has been willed, a veritable memory of the will, so that between the original "I will," and the final discharge in act proper, there is no break, whatever new things, circumstances, or even volitions may have intervened. This presupposes much. In order so to dispose of the future, one must have learned to distinguish between the necessary and the accidental, to think causally, to see the future as if it were present and anticipate it, to fix firmly what is end and what means, to reckon and calculate in general. Above all, a man must have become calculable himself--that is regular, necessary, and this not merely to others, but to himself, so that he can answer for himself as a future quantity. How can a memory of this sort be given to the human animal--how stamp on this flighty creature of the moment, this bodily incarnation of forgetfulness, something which will remain ever present with him? How has it been done in the past?

The story is not agreeable reading-- Nietzsche thinks that there is perhaps nothing more fearful and uncanny in the early history of mankind than the technique used for creating memory (Mnemotechnik). "We burn in something so that it may stay in mind; only what does not cease to give pain stays in the mind"--this he calls a leading proposition out of the oldest psychology on earth, and alas! the longest-lived. It might even be said that wherever there is still solemnity, earnestness, mystery, gloomy coloring in the life of men and peoples, there lingers something of the after-effect of the frightful conditions under which promises, pledges, vows were originally everywhere made--the breath of the oldest, deepest, hardest past is upon us and rises in us, when we are "earnest." The most horrible sacrifices and forfeits (to which the sacrifices of the first-born belong), the most repulsive mutilations (for example, castration), the cruellest ritual performances of religious cults--all had their origin in the instinct to look on pain as the most powerful expedient of mnemonics. The poorer the memory was, the more fearful the practices; the severity of penal codes in particular gives a measure of how difficult is was to get a victory over forgetfulness, and to keep present to slaves of passion and the moment a few primitive requirements of social life. Nietzsche refers in this connection to the Germans and their penal laws: "We Germans certainly do not consider ourselves a particularly cruel and hard-hearted people, still less as particularly light-headed or living merely for the day; but let one look into our old criminal codes, if one wants to get an inside view of the trouble that had to be taken to train up a 'people of thinkers.'" He instances stoning (according to legend a millstone fell on the head of an insolvent debtor), breaking on a wheel (the most characteristic invention and specialty of German genius in the realm of punishment), impaling, "quartering," seething the criminal in oil or wine (still done in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries), flaying, cutting flesh from the breast, also smearing the evil-doer with honey and exposing him to flies under a burning sun. It was by the help of processes like these, or pictures of them, that men retained in their minds five or six "I will nots," in respect to which promise had been given in order to live under the benefits of society--and were brought at last "to reason"! "Ah, reason, earnestness, rule over the passions (Affecte), the whole gloomy thing we call reflection, all these privileges and ornaments of man--how deeply have they made themselves paid for, how much blood and horror are at the basis of all 'good things'"!

Measures of this character belong to the rudimentary, formative stages of society everywhere. It is by the steady pressure of social codes that man gets a "memory of the will," and is turned into an anywise regular, reckonable being. And the end justifies the means here, whatever of hardness, tyranny, stupidity, or idiocy attached to them. The Kamachatkans required that snow should never be scraped off with a knife, that a coal should never be pierced with a knife, that iron should never be put into the fire--death being the penalty for noncompliance. The rules seem absurd, but they were rules, and kept the perpetual nearness of social authority, the uninterrupted compulsion to respect it, in the consciousness; Nietzsche thinks that this was really their point rather than any utilitarian advantage, and he cites them to illustrate the view already mentioned that any rule is better than no rule, when the interests of civilization are at stake. 3

Let us attend for a moment to the result itself. It is a notable one. Men not only know now what to expect of one another and so far cease to be bφse in one another's eyes, although the world outside the group still has this character, 4 but they have a new feeling about themselves. They can promise, they may because they can--in other words, they have a sense of power. Brandes remarks that for Nietzsche a definition of man would be an animal able to make and keep vows (Gelόbde). 5 The animal world in general yields no such phenomenon--action is apparently from the feeling of the moment, no engagements being made for the future. I say "men," "man"--but it would be better to say "some men," for those who vow and keep their vows are marked off from the rest, and, naturally acquire a sense of their distinction. They are the ripe fruit of the social tree; the ages of tyrannous discipline receive at last a justification in them, and, as masters of themselves, masters of contrary inclinations within and of untoward circumstances without, how can they fail to be conscious of their superiority, and to inspire confidence, fear, reverence in others! "The 'free' man, the possessor of a long unbreakable will, has in this possession also his measure of worth: looking at others from his own standpoint, he honors or he despises; and just as necessarily as he honors those like him, men strong and dependable (who dare promise) . . . he has his kick ready for puny windbags who promise without having the right to, and his rod for the liar who breaks his word the moment it is in his mouth." It is an extraordinary privilege (privilegium, special and exclusive advantage or right), that of responsibility, and the proud knowledge of it, the consciousness of this rare freedom, this power over himself and over fate, sinks to the innermost depths of his being and becomes an instinct, a dominating instinct--he calls it his conscience (part of it]. 6 It is from those thus responsible that the type of "sovereign individual" or "person" 7 (of whom we have heard something and shall hear more) arises, for he who can answer for himself becomes naturally a law unto himself.

II In connection with responsibility Nietzsche treats of rights and duties. Buying and selling he regards as among the oldest phenomena of human society. Yet when one buys and does not at once pay, but makes a promise to pay, responsibility comes into play. The debtor naturally wishes to inspire his creditor with confidence, and may also wish to impress on his own conscience the seriousness and sacredness of his engagement; and so he agrees that in case he does not pay, the creditor may take over something that still belongs to him, parts of his body, for instance, or his wife, or his liberty, or even his life--or, where certain religious conceptions prevail (as in ancient Egypt), his soul's salvation or his rest in the grave. 8 These things will make up to the creditor for his loss, if he sustains it--be an equivalent. Bartering, estimating values, fixing prices, devising equivalents--this preoccupied the earliest thinking of man to such an extent that it was in a sense thinking itself: here the oldest kind of acuteness was developed, here the first forms of human pride and sense of superiority over other animals arose--perhaps the word Mensch (manas) means at bottom one who measures. 9 Yet when the measuring has been made and the equivalent fixed upon, the debtor and creditor stand in a peculiar relation: the former owes, has a duty, the latter has a claim, a right. 10 Duties and rights were often grim things in early times--particularly rights. There seems to have been a special desire on the part of the creditor to exact equivalents involving pain or shame to the debtor. In no other way is it possible to account for the fact that instead of being satisfied with a natural equivalent for his loss, such as land, money, property of any kind, the creditor so often demanded the right to mistreat a debtor's body, to take away his wife, or to make him a slave. It was really a right to cruelty: only to one with cruel instincts does suffering yield a pleasure equal or superior to that of a material compensation--to such an one, indeed, suffering is the equivalent par excellence. The right to cruelty was graded very fine at times and was very exacting--one could, for example, cut from the debtor's body just so and so much (according to the amount of the debt), particular parts and members having their special valuation; and Nietzsche deems it progress and a proof of the freer, greater, more Roman spirit, when the Twelve Tables made it a matter of indifference whether more or whether less was cut off in a special case--"si plus minusve secuerunt, ne fraude esto." Whether the creditor inflicted the suffering in person or a functionary of the group did so for him, made no essential difference--at least he could witness the suffering and be satisfied. 11 This idea that wrong may be compensated for by suffering has an important subsequent history, as we shall see in the next chapter.

Rights and duties were originally, as Nietzsche thinks, of this very matter-of-fact kind, and the grave, almost somber meaning which the words still have in our minds, take us back to the times when it was a serious thing to promise, when pain was an educator to responsibility, and suffering the common equivalent for wrong. And when rights and duties acquire a wider range and have a more spiritual character, their groundmeaning and perspective does not change. a In time the group comes to be viewed as a creditor, and its members as debtors to it. The community gives advantages ("and what advantages! we underestimate them today," says Nietzsche), and the individual enjoys them--he lives protected, cared for, in peace and confidence, with no concern about injuries and hostilities to which one outside is exposed; and in return he obligates himself to the community not to commit injuries and hostilities against his fellow-members. If, however, he does commit them, what happens? The community, the deceived creditor, will make itself paid somehow--of that we may be sure. The immediate injury inflicted is the least thing: aside from this he has broken his word, his word and covenant with the whole, and all the goods and comforts of community life in which he has hitherto shared are now in question. The breaker ( Brecher, Verbrecher) is a debtor who not only does not repay the advantages given him, but lays violent hands on his creditor; therefore from now on, as is reasonable, he not only loses all these advantages, but he is made to realize what their value is. The wrath of the injured creditor gives him back to the wild outlaw state from which he had been before protected; it thrusts him forth--and every kind of hostility may now be shown him. "Punishment" is at this stage of civilization a copy (Mimus) of the normal relation to a hated, disarmed, subjugated enemy. 12

The mores of a community may soften as time goes on and as the community becomes stronger, but the general, underlying idea and basis of rights and duties remains the same. Rights arise when men (individually or as a community) give something, and for this expect a return; duties arise when men receive something, and owe in return. There are then no rights or duties in the abstract, none existing per se--all are conditioned on facts of social relationship, on exchanges and contracts (explicit or implied). 13 It is accordingly a misuse of words to speak of "rights," whether of defense or of aggression, as between independent social groups, or for that matter between individuals who are not socially related, for self-defense or aggression under such circumstances is not in accordance with a contract, but is the simple outcome of natural egoism, the fatality of life itself. 14 With such a view Nietzsche can even say, "We have no right either to existence, or to labor, or even to 'happiness': there is no difference in this respect between the individual man and the lowest worm." 15

But while rights and duties rest thus immediately on contract, their more ultimate basis is certain relations of power. The creditor has a surplus, can part with something--he has more power; but the debtor also has a certain amount of power --he can make a return, apart from which he is no better than a beggar, something which makes Nietzsche say once in a general way that it is our pride that commands the doing of our duty. 16 In other words, powerless inactive entities with nothing to confer acquire no rights, and incapacitated people cannot rise to the dignity of duties. Rights and duties in concrete cases are a fine equation of powers--as power-quantities change, they do too. If our power materially diminishes, the feeling of those who have hitherto guaranteed our right changes, also; they see whether they can bring us again to full possession of our power--if it is impossible, they deny henceforth our "rights." Just so, when our power increases considerably, the feeling of those, who have hitherto recognized it and whose recognition we now no longer need, changes--they may try to hold us down to our former measure, they may be ready to interfere and appeal to their "duty" in this connection--but it is only useless talk. The history of peoples shows this waxing and waning of rights on a large scale. 17 Indeed, Nietzsche goes so far in this direction that he may seem to abandon his view of the contractual origin of rights altogether. For instance, Zarathustra says to his disciples, "a right which thou canst seize, thou shalt not allow to be given thee." 18 The idea of forcible conquest is carried into the innermost regions of one's personality. Whoever, we bear, has finally conquered himself [not then simply contracted with himself] regards it as his right to punish himself, to pardon himself, to pity himself--it is a right he does not need to concede to any one else, though he may of his free will give it to another (for instance, a friend), knowing that only "those can give rights who are in possession of power." 19 Of similar tenor is the statement, "we do not believe in a right that does not rest on the power to put itself through: we feel all rights to be conquests"; 20 also the remark that in all political questions, in the relation of parties as well, even of commercial or labor or employer parties, the questions are those of power--what one can and then what one should do; 21 and the hint to the socialists, earlier referred to, that if they would have rights, they must first get power. 22 The reconciling thought may be that relations of power, which are the ultimate foundation of rights and duties ordinarily arising through the media of contract, sometimes give rise to rights and duties directly, i.e., claims and corresponding obligations which do not rest on voluntary consent at all, but none the less come to be recognized as claims and obligations, and are practically so treated. b The view differs from the prevailing one and easily lends itself to abuse, and yet that Nietzsche does not mean to sanction any kind of self-assertion, is shown by his saying that "the worth of a man should prove what rights he may assume," and, still more strongly, that "the rights which a man assumes are in relation to the duties he sets himself, the tasks to which he feels he is grown." 23 It is because we can effectually promise much, he says again, that we are given rights; 24 and he holds that those who cannot promise (i.e., have not the right to, being slaves to appetite and the moment), should not have rights--an instance being the man with only cattle-like desires in his body, who "should not have the right to marry." 25

III

Our English word "justice" has jural connotations, so much so that Dewey and Tufts are led to say that "it is in the school of government and courts that man has learned to talk and think of right and law, of responsibility and justice." 26 . The German word, however, is "Gerechtigkeit," and Nietzsche thinks that the idea and accompanying sentiment are older than anything like organized civil society. 27 His account of the matter is somewhat as follows:

That primitive form of social relation which we have already considered--bargaining or contracting--has for its presupposition a certain equality between the parties concerned. If there is decided difference in strength, one side is apt simply to take from the other. But where there is approximate equality, and struggle would only lead to reciprocal harm, a disposition naturally arises to come to an understanding, to treat or negotiate, the outcome being an exchange, in which each gets what under the circumstances he values most (a suum cuique in the material sense). 28 This is the earliest form of justice, which is at bottom the good will to come to an agreement, to reach a mutually satisfactory settlement, something like what the Germans call, particularly in its finer expressions, "Billigkeit," the spirit of reasonableness and fairness. 29 An exchange is just and honorable, when each party asks what he thinks his article is worth, taking into account the difficulty of procuring it, its rarity, the time spent in getting it, etc., along with the fancy value; if he fixes his price with an eye on the needs of the other, he is a refined robber and extortioner. 30 That is, if there is to be exchange, not robbery, the spirit of exchange must be there-and it is with this in mind that Nietzsche makes the remark, already quoted, regarding the circumstances of today, that justice must become greater in all and the violent instinct weaker. 31 Justice may even extend to the relations of the stronger to the weaker to a certain extent. Suppose, for example, that a beleaguered town finds itself forced to surrender. It is plainly the weaker party, but for all that it has something on its side, something that it would be of use for the conqueror to obtain. The inhabitants might burn the town and make way with themselves--then the conqueror would have little for his pains. There is then a certain advantage for both sides in not going to extremes--and on this basis of mutual advantage they may treat--each getting what under the actual circumstances he values most. In the same way there may be rights between masters and slaves--that is, to the extent the possession of the slave is useful and important to his master. Justice goes originally as far, as one side seems valuable, essential to the other. The weaker accordingly acquires rights, though they are more limited ones. Hence the well-known unusquisque tantum juris habet, quantum potentia valet (or more exactly, Nietzsche says, quantum potentia valere creditur). 32 The underlying motive of justice, Nietzsche points out, is individual advantage--in just exchange each one profits; although in time the original motive may be forgotten, and just actions may seem disinterested or unegoistic. 33

This of the beginnings of justice. Needless to say, it takes on finer forms as social life advances. It gives rise to settled mores; it comes under the protection of government and courts, though itself subtler than anything which government and courts can command; it passes into reasonableness, fairness (Billigkeit) in general. 34 Justice is good will and intelligence combined--there cannot be justice without both. Plato held that justice could not be separated from wisdom, the true measure of all the relations of life, 35 but Nietzache's view is that justice is measuring--the intellectual, objective attitude is part of its essence. In accordance with this view, he speaks of the high, clear, deep- as well as mild-glancing objectivity of the just man, when he is not only injured, but insulted, mocked, as a piece of perfection, a specimen of the highest mastery on earth. 36

And hereby is justice differentiated from revenge. Justice has sometimes been derived from revenge, being supposed to be a sublimated form of it--it was, I think, the view in substance of John Stuart Mill, and it was held by a German contemporary of Nietzache's, to whom he pays some attention, Eugen Dόhring. 37 And if revenge were simply return of some kind, Nietzsche would have no occasion to dissent; he sometimes speaks himself of gratitude as the good revenge, of magnanimity as a sublimated revenge. 38 But ordinarily--and practically always in discussing the relation of revenge to justice --he means by revenge what most of us mean, namely, an instinctive tendency, half of the blood and liable to all manner of excess, to strike back when we are injured or affronted. He construes it as one of the expressions of the instinct for power, which, having been temporarily thwarted, seeks to assert itself and feel itself again. 39 Now justice, too, calls for a return for injuries; for, to revert to its earliest and simplest form, when a debtor does not pay his debt, the creditor may exact a substitute for it; the substitute or equivalent has been agreed upon beforehand, and the creditor has a strict right to it--the debtor's property or wife or person may become forfeit. And when injuries become offenses against the community, compensation of some sort comes to be the right of every injured person-that is, under justice also, a second injury follows the first. Revenge and justice may thus seem to come to much the same thing. And yet they are distinct from one another. For under justice, the compensating injury which the injured person inflicts (or has inflicted for him) is in accordance with an understanding in advance, either directly between the parties, or as a matter of general custom and law; measuring eyes have been at work fixing it, there is definition and limitation--there can be then no varying or excess. In other words, justice is an intellectual matter, and hence directly antithetical to the blind rage with which rage does its work. Revenge is for injury simply and is dictated by the sense of injury; just requital is for a wrong (violation of contract or agreement) and is determined by an antecedent idea of what is fair and reasonable. Revenge is personal, justice borders on impersonality. In the one, the blood rushes to our eyes so that we do not see, justice is seeing (or remembering what we saw). So different are they in origin and principle, that revenge may overthrow justice, and justice may set limits to revenge. 40 It becomes a leading function of the state (when such a thing arises) to put an end to the blind raging of revenge, and either to rescue the victims or else to proceed against them itself for the injuries they have committed, persuading or compelling the injured party to accept compensations, equivalents, in lieu of revenge. 41 Here lies the reason why those in the habit of practising revenge--those who keep up "blood-feuds," for instance--are reluctant to come under the control of the state, and have to have justice forced upon them. 42 The state makes private injuries offenses against it, and the treatment of them is so far taken out of the jurisdiction of personal feeling; it virtually adopts what Nietzsche calls the oldest, simplest canon of justice, "everything has its price, all can be paid for," and trains its subjects in this objective, impersonal way of looking at things--even influencing, though perhaps least and last of all, the injured person himself. 43 I need not say that so far as men take the law into their own hands, as in parts of our own country, there is reversion to primitive pre-political conditions. As I might put it briefly, under the state justice becomes law (which is far from saying, I need not add, that law is ipso facto justice).

The state, viewing injuries as offenses against itself, punishes them. But Nietzsche notes that as political communities become stronger, they take offenses less seriously, and mitigate their penal codes. A private creditor naturally becomes more humane, as his wealth increases--it may even be a measure of his wealth how much he can lose without appreciably suffering. And a consciousness of power on the part of a political society is not unthinkable, in which it might indulge itself in a luxury than which there could be no greater--that of letting offenders go unpunished. With easy sense of its superiority it might say, "What are these parasites to me?--let them live and thrive. I can stand it." And so the justice that began with the dictum, "Everything is payable, everything must be paid for," would end by looking through its fingers at those who are insolvent and letting them go free--end as all good things on earth do, by abrogating itself (sich selbst aufhebend). There is a beautiful name for this self-abrogation of justice--grace. It is a prerogative of what is mightiest--its beyond law (sein Jenseits des Rechts). 44

CHAPTER XXI CRITICISM OF MORALITY (CONT.). BAD CONSCIENCE, A MORAL ORDER, OUGHT, EQUALITY I I CONFESS that in taking up Nietzsche's analysis of "bad conscience," I find it difficult to trace a clear and consistent course of thought. The main treatment of the subject is in the second treatise of Genealogy of Morals.

First, it may be noted that elsewhere, and incidentally here, he often uses the phrase in a way that causes no perplexity. It simply designates the feeling which one has in departing from a standard which one acknowledges. The first standards of men were, as already explained, social; to disobey the group's mores in any particular was attended with an uneasy consciousness. Even to have different ideas from those commonly recognized did not seem quite right, and science has often come into the world stealthily, feeling like a transgressor, or at least like a smuggler. 1 The phenomenon continues in its essential features down to the present day. To a troubled young friend Nietzsche wrote: "It is curious to observe: he who early departs from traditional paths to enter on one that seems right to himself, has always half or altogether the feeling of a man who has been exiled and condemned by others and has fled away: this kind of bad conscience is the suffering of the independently good." 2 He thinks it impossible to estimate what just the rarer, selecter, more original minds in the past have suffered from the fact that they were looked upon as bφse and dangerous--yes, appeared so to themselves. 3 But there may be individual as well as social standards, and one may have "bad conscience" when one forgets these too. "Why do we have pricks of conscience (Gewissensbisse) after ordinary social companies? Because we have taken serious things lightly, because in discussing persons we have not spoken with complete loyalty, or because we have been silent when we should have spoken, because we have not on occasion sprung up and taken ourselves off--in short, because we conducted ourselves in society as if we belonged to it." 4 A scientific man may have bad conscience, if he allows himself views unsupported by scientific evidence. 5 One who has determined to become and achieve something in his own person may have bad conscience, if he allows himself to be allured into ordinary benevolent work--it is something which may accompany altruistic acts as well as egoistic ones. 6 Emerson seems to have experienced it when he succumbed to certain philanthropic appeals, calling it a "wicked dollar" that he on occasion gave for "your miscellaneous popular charities, the education at college of fools, the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand, alms to sots, and the thousandfold Relief Societies." 7 In one of Stendhal's novels a Jew has a bad conscience when he falls in love and takes money out of his business for a bracelet; and so it was with Napoleon, remarks Nietzsche, after he had performed a generous act, and may be with a diplomat who for once is honorable. 8 Sometimes the feeling may be indicated in indirect ways, as when a man, conscious of the callings of a higher self, but giving himself up to society or official work or his family, talks much of fulfilling his "duty"--he seeks thereby to excuse himself to himself, to quiet himself. 9 Nietzsche himself wished to give a bad conscience to other-worldly aspirations, to the antinatural ideals of Christianity and Schopenhauer, i.e., he wished to set up a standard from which these would be felt as a conscious defection. 10 There is no special difficulty in understanding bad conscience in cases like these.

But in making a problem of "bad conscience" Nietzsche has in mind something different--at least graver. If I should say "guilt" or "sense of guilt," I should more nearly suggest it-though guilt, too, may have different shades of intensity or blackness. The guilt he has in mind is that implied when man is spoken of as a guilty being or as having a guilty nature. It is the religious, or more specifically still, the Christian conception of guilt, the conception essentially shared by Schopenhauer, that concerns him. With it a man feels wrong in his essential make-up, particularly in the animal ground-work of his being. He looks on his natural impulses with an evil eye, finds something praiseworthy in denying them, chastising them, mortifying them. 11 Sometimes one goes so far in painful selfanalysis that one draws up a list of the things that make one ashamed of oneself--as Pope Innocent III did, who enumerated "impure procreation, nauseous nourishment in the womb, baseness of the material out of which man grows, abominable stenches, secretion of spittle, urine, and excrement." 12 How could an attitude like this--a bad conscience about man as man-have come about? What were its probable beginnings?

Nietzsche starts out by saying that guilt originally was a form of debt--or rather a development of it under certain conditions. The German word Schuld, I may note, means both debt and guilt. A debt arises when one does not pay for something one has received at once, but if one does not pay eventually, one owes something more, namely, the substitute, equivalent, or pledge for the debt, which at the outset was agreed upon. The latter is guilt in the full, or at least distinctive, sense of the term; the act is a wrong or trespass proper and one can only expect the infliction of the penalty. It is interesting to note that in our English version of the Lord's Prayer, "debts" and "sins" (or "trespasses") are used interchangeably, 13 --a sin or trespass is simply an increased or heightened debt. Following this cue and remembering that, as already explained, creditor and debtor relations come to apply to the community and its individual members, it is easy to see how immorality in general, i.e., non-conformity to the community's mores, may be felt as guilt--i.e., how "bad conscience," in the customary moral sense of the phrase, may arise. In immorality of any kind there would come to be a certain "fearful looking for of judgment," and, the tendency to immorality being observed to be deep, it might easily be concluded that it had its roots in a guilty nature. This is a line of thought, however, which Nietzsche, oddly enough, does not follow up. He starts on it, 14 and then stops or switches off--and even proceeds to argue at length that punishment does not give the feeling of guilt, and rather works to harden, at best stimulating prudence and taming the transgressor (not making him better). 15 But has any one ever argued that punishment produced the sense of guilt?--the latter being obviously the direct result of violating an admitted standard. Surely, to call in something extraordinary and catastrophic to explain "bad conscience," because punishment does not account for it, seems strange and unnecessary. Yet this is what Nietzsche does. For directly after arguing the inefficacy of punishment, he broaches his own special view. This is that bad conscience had its origin in that most thoroughgoing of all the changes which man has experienced in the course of his history, the change consequent on coming definitively under the jurisdiction (Bann) of society and of peace. Up to this time--I need not say that Nietzsche is referring to a prehistoric period--he had been little more than a wild, roving animal, free to follow all his natural instincts, including those to pursue, surprise, injure, and kill. Suddenly, however, he found himself subjected to a social strait-jacket, and his old instincts were deprived of an outlet. With then no outer vent, but still fresh and strong, these instincts turned on their possessor--man became hostile, cruel to himself. "Enmity, cruelty, pleasure in pursuit, in surprise, in change, in destruction--all this turning itself against the possessor of such instincts, this is the origin of 'bad conscience.' The man who, in lack of outer enemies and oppositions, confined under a close, oppressive, and unvarying rιgime of mores, went at himself impatiently, rending, pursuing, biting, startling, mistreating himself, this animal, put into a cage to be tamed and bruising himself against its bars, this creature, who, deprived of his wilderness and consumed with homesickness for it, has to make out of himself a field of adventure, a place of torture, an uncertain and dangerous wilderness--this fool, this longing and despairing captive became the inventor of 'bad conscience.'" The change in situation was so great that Nietzsche compares it to what water-animals must have experienced when they were first obliged to live on land, and, instead of being upborne, had to go on foot and "carry themselves"--a horrible heaviness seized upon them. In default of guidance from their old impulses, men had to fall back on thinking, reasoning, calculating, combining causes and effects, in general on their "consciousness"--the organ in them that had been poorest developed and was most liable to err. Never on earth was there such feeling of misery, such leaden discomfort as then; and yet the old instincts were still there and unsatisfied, and blindly produced the result just mentioned. 16

If it be asked how man could be subjugated, what or who there was to subject him, the answer is "other men." Some superior group or race, falling on wandering, formless populations, subjugated them and clapped their iron rule upon them. The feeling of misery, the unsatisfied instincts preying on their possessor, which make the essence of "bad conscience," do not appear in the conquering, ruling class, but in the conquered. "Bad conscience" is not a universal phenomenon, and the conquerors, as Nietzsche conceives them in the present instance, are quite without it in what they do. 17

Nietzsche notes that all depends, in his theory, on the suddenness of the supposed change to which the wild populations were subjected; if there had been a gradual, voluntary passing from a wild to a civilized (or semicivilized) state, an organic growing into new conditions, the old instincts would have fallen little by little into disuse and lost the vigor and edge needed to produce the characteristic features of the new phenomenon. The roving populations were violently subjected--there was no give and take, no contract: the earliest "state," Nietzsche remarks (and here he expresses a not uncommon opinion), was a fearful tyranny--it was only in this way that the raw formless material could be kneaded, made pliant, and given a shape. 18 He does not mean (I take it) that this was done for all the world at once, but only that the process of subjugation and social formation was of this character as it occurred: always was there for those subjected a violent break with their animal past, the old instincts then surviving in latent form and forced to act in the subterranean way described. Neither does he mean that the full result--bad conscience as we find it, for instance, in Buddhism, Christianity, and Schopenhauer--was reached at once; it suffices to his theory if the general characteristic features of the new phenomenon appeared--if men savagely turned on themselves, and preyed on themselves, however confused their feelings might be. 19

The theory probably strikes the reader (as it has me) as far-fetched and artificial, and I should add that Nietzsche simply speaks of it as "my hypothesis" and calls the exposition of it which we have--as it turns out, the only one--a "first preliminary expression." And yet it covers three points in the phenomenon in a rather striking manner; first, the sharpness of "bad conscience," its stinginess and fierceness, these being traced to primitive instincts of cruelty--simple departure from an admitted standard might not yield anything so extreme; second, the sense of a guilty nature (not merely of wrong acts), man's animal make-up being particularly in mind--this coming from a forced and violent break with an animal past; third, the lack of reason and intelligence in the phenomenon (as Nietzsche views the matter, for he regards it as an Erkrankung), this because a hitherto unused instrument, the conscious reasoning mind, was now for the first time acting.

Positive proofs of the hypothesis are, of course, impossible-Nietzsche does not offer any. I suspect that the idea of it came to him from something he observed--or thought he observed-in quarters nearer home. We find him describing, for instance, the probable spiritual fortunes of a German noble, when brought under the influence of the Church in the early Middle Ages and shut up in a monastery. It is in the course of a discussion of two historic methods of "bettering" man, one of taming the animal man, the other of rearing a certain type. These are zoφlogical terms, and the former process is like what goes on in menageries with wild beasts--they are weakened, their power to harm is diminished, they are made sickly through fear, pain, wounds, and hunger. It seemed to him that something of this sort was what a German "blond beast" underwent, when he was tamed by the Church, above all when lured into a monastery. The Church was a kind of menagerie, and the most beautiful examples of the "blond beast" were everywhere hunted down in its interest. And how did one of these "bettered" nobles look within the monastery walls? Nietzsche answers, "like a caricature of man, like an abortion; he had become a 'sinner,' he was fast in a cage, he had been shut in between horrible conceptions. . . . There he lay, sick, wretched, malevolent against himself: full of hatred against the impulses of life, full of suspicion against everything that was still strong and happy." 20 Plainly it is a phenomenon much like that to which we have just been attending--only that now it is a superior type of man instead of a wandering savage who is subjugated, and that the subjugating force is spiritual rather than physical. What seems to me likely is that Nietzsche generalized from instances of this kind. The passage is in a later book than Genealogy of Morals, but the reflection may have been earlier. A similar psychology of bad conscience is presupposed in another passage. Answering the question, "What is it in Christianity we fight against?" he says, "That it seeks to crush the strong, to take away their spirit, to exploit their bad hours and wearinesses, to convert their proud assurance into unrest and distress of conscience; that it knows how to turn superior instincts into poison and to make them sick, till their force, their will to power turns backwards, turns against themselves--till the strong go to pieces from the extravagances of their self-contempt and self-mistreatment: that appalling way of going to pieces, the most illustrious example of which is furnished by Pascal." 21 The same essential idea is repeated when he says that now that the slave-morality of humility, selflessness, absolute obedience has conquered in the world, ruling natures are condemned either to hypocrisy or to torments of conscience. 22 It is an identical inner experience in all these cases, and the process of generating it is the same. Whether the conquerors are an early superior race or a refined spiritual power like Christianity, whether those conquered are primitive roving populations or splendid examples of the "blond beast," like German nobles of the early Middle Ages, conquest lies at the basis of the phenomenon, instincts that had been free and strong before turning while still strong against their possessor and making him ill. The amount of truth in the view may be left to future criticism to disentangle.

Despite Nietzsche's unsympathetic tone, he is far from regarding the rise of bad conscience as an unmixed evil-and he warns us against thinking lightly of it. Let one read § 18, and note also the close of § 16, of Genealogy of Morals, II. When-he says in substance--man turns against himself in the way described, when his old Bosheit is directed inward, a new line of possibilities is opened for him; he awakens an interest, a surprise, a hope, almost a certainty, as if something were heralding itself in him, as if he were no goal, but only a way, an episode, a bridge, a great promise. Sickness is utilizable--it is one of Nietzsche's constant points of view--and this sickness may be one only as pregnancy is 23 A new kind of self may be fashioned by the cruel instincts working remorselessly on the material against which they turn--if they criticise, contradict, despise, say "no" to this and that and burn it in, it may all be to this end. He speaks of this active bad conscience as a veritable womb of ideal and imaginative results, a bringer forth of a fullness of new strange affirmations and beauties. It may be, he adds, that it first created beauty in general--"for what would 'beautiful' mean, if contradiction had not first been sensibly felt, if the ugly had not first said to itself, 'I am ugly'?" At least, after this hint, he thinks that the enigma becomes less enigmatical how far an ideal, a beauty may be intimated in contradictory conceptions such as self-lessness, self-denial, selfsacrifice--one thing being henceforth plain, namely, of what sort the pleasure is from the start which the selfless, selfdenying, self-sacrificing person experiences: it is a pleasure belonging to cruelty. 24 This line of reflection is developed but a very little way, and Nietzsche is far from reaching a balanced view on the general subject. But we may say with assurance that he was not without appreciation for ascetic ideals, and recognized a place for them in the world, even if he did not personally share them. 25 Moreover, he had no repugnance to bad conscience in itself; he wished rather, as we have already seen, to create it in a new form, to give it to persons quite innocent of it at the present time, namely, to those who, disloyal to this world, cultivate other-world aspirations, antinatural ideas--to Christians (of the historic type), to followers of Schopenhauer. 26 He once said that for some a spasm of repentance may be the highest exercise of their humanity, 27 and he wanted the Christian world to have a taste--and more than a taste--of it. Whether he was strong enough to conquer in this fashion and breed bad conscience anew--for it is a question of strength and conquest--is one of the future's problems.

II The idea of a moral order in the world rests ultimately, according to Nietzsche, on an attempt to infect the very nature of things with conceptions of guilt and punishment such as those we have been considering. 28 He states the personal form of the assumption thus: "That there is a will of God as to what man is to do, to refrain from doing; that the worth of a people, or an individual, is determined by the extent to which the will of God is obeyed; that in the fortunes of a people or individual, the will of God demonstrates itself as governing, i.e., as punishing and rewarding according to the degree of obedience." 29 We may substitute for the "will of God" here an "Eternal Tendency making for righteousness" in the world, or the "Moral Law" (as often conceived), and say virtually the same thing,

"Nur mit em bischen andern Wortens."

Nietzsche thinks that the idea arose somewhat as follows 30 :--The starting-point is individuals conceived of as in debt or guilty toward the community. The community is seen, however, to be not of the moment only, but an extension of the past, so that there is debt to ancestors as well as to the existing generation. The debt thus grows larger, and sacrifices are an endeavor to repay. In time the remotest ancestors become heroes, Gods-particularly does this happen with the ancestors of a powerful and conquering race. Finally, perhaps as the result of a conflict of races and the ascendancy of some one, the idea arises of a supreme, perhaps an only, God. The exact nature of the God-making process is a secondary matter; the important point is that at last debt or guilt to a God arises. Disobedience to the community's mores becomes trespass against the God, sin; if the mores are reduced to what I have ventured to call essential morality, this is none the less, rather the more the case. And now what is the requital for guilt in the new situation, what the satisfaction to the Invisible Creditor? Essentially the same as to the human creditor. As in lieu of the unpaid debt, the latter could exact a certain amount of pain and humiliation, so with the God. To him also suffering is an equivalent (Ausgleichung) for loss--he too is satisfied when he can inflict or witness it; he has pleasure in suffering, i.e., cruel instincts, just as man has--only as his debtor presents him the spectacle of suffering, is he reconciled. The religions of antiquity, the socalled "ethical religions" included (except atheistic Buddhism), do not get beyond this circle of conceptions. For all wrongdoing pain must follow--it is the satisfaction or compensation par excellence. Even Christianity is no exception--I mean of course the historical movement going by that name, not modern rationalizations or emasculations. It perpetuates the Israelitish view that sin is debt and must be paid, atoned for, 31 and sometimes the guilt is so great that it cannot be atoned for, i.e., suffering must continue without end. It is true that Christianity is a redemptive religion, but this does not mean that satisfaction is not exacted, but only that it is rendered by other than the guilty parties--one next to God paid with his sufferings the debt due from men (or, shall we say ? from some men, since the rest have still to suffer and to suffer forever) b

"Sorrow follows wrong"--this Sophoelean refrain contains the gist of the idea of a moral order. It is accordingly an easy inference that wherever we find sorrow (suffering or ill-fortune), wrong must have preceded it. 32 c So the prophets of ancient Israel interpreted the calamities which befell that people; and it was with such a view that later priestly hands rewrote and more or less falsified the early history of the nation, attributing successes to obedience and reverses to disobedience to the nation's God. 33 Sometimes the view is carried to such lengthsfor example by Schopenhauer--that life itself, in which so much suffering is involved, is regarded in the light of a punishment, the result of a fall (Abfall) in metaphysical regions; and if all earthly things pass away, it is thought to show that they ought to pass away, eternal justice demanding the penalty. 34

We in America and England are familiar with a more comprehensible and less ambitious form of the same belief in Matthew Arnold's attempt to find chiefly moral causes for the downfall of men and nations--to make life and history so far a parable of a moral order. It is a form of faith to which some of us have clung the more, if we have had to renounce much that we once held sacred; for with it we could still feel morality to be central in the scheme of things, and so far have an object of quasi-religious reverence. Whether, we have said to ourselves, a God inflicts harm and suffering on man for wrongdoing or not, they are inflicted--there is a natural and necessary connection between righteousness and life, and between unrighteousness and death; even if men succeed outwardly in wrongdoing, their conscience does not leave them at ease, and sooner or later their success is undone. But Nietzsche's criticism follows us even into this stronghold. It is true that wrong, in the strict sense, i.e., breaking an agreement, brings naturally inner unrest to one doing it, and ordinarily has to be compensated for as well. 35 But wrong in the broad sense in which it is often used, wrong as injury and intent to injure simply, does not necessarily have these consequences. If there is no agreement, explicit or implicit, to the contrary--and there is implicit agreement between all members of the same group or community--injury need cause no bad conscience. There was no bad conscience (according to Nietzsche's view 36 , when early superior races fell on wandering populations and deprived them of their liberty, as described in the earlier part of the chapternot even if they did all manner of violence to them. Even within the same society, if it is a caste society and the division of classes is recognized as beneficent or at least necessary, the ruling class may accept sacrifices from the classes below them without twinges of conscience, and the lower classes may not feel wronged in having to make them. 37 It is an error in psychology to think that bφse men are necessarily wretched inwardly, or that the passionate are unhappy. 38 There are bφse men who are happy--a species about whom moralists are silent. 39 Bφse impulses become unpleasant when carried to excess or when inhibited by other impulses--they are so far like impulses in general, like pity, for example, which may be felt as miserable weakness, or like thinking, which when unrestrained may become painful. 40 More suffering comes from opinions about the passions than from the passions themselves. 41 Indeed, why it is suffering that must needs follow an evil deed is not clear--why not as well another evil deed? 42 That the evildoer's work is undone sooner or later is equally a doubtful propositionindeed it is less likely to happen later than earlier, since an order of things may be established on that basis and this be consented to all around. Nietzsche sums the matter up by saying, "That in the consequences of actions reward and punishment are already contained--this thought of an immanent justice is fundamentally false"; 43 and, commenting on the Laws of Manu, he offers interesting suggestions as to the way in which the natural consequences of actions have been turned into rewards and punishments. 44 As for a moral order in the more general sense that the good, kindly, benevolent impulses have a natural sanction, in that they alone contribute to man's advancement and progress, we have already seen Nietzsche contesting such a premise. Evil (bφse), unfriendly, destructive impulses are as vital in the total economy of the world as those called good. It is as necessary to be evil to things that cumber the ground as to be good to those that have the promise and power of life.

III I pass over briefly Nietzsche's scattering remarks on obligation or "ought" --there is no special treatment of the subject and his view may be anticipated from what has gone before. "Ought" is primarily a phenomenon in contractual relations-- for in every exchange not completed at once, the debtor binds himself and is in turn bound; and yet wherever there is a relation of enforced subordination, whether of individuals to other individuals, of individuals to a group, or of impulses to other impulses in the same individual, something similar arises. From the controlling side, it means, "so must you do," from the controlled, "so must I do. " At bottom it is a relation of wills, one commanding, the other obeying--for there is no sense in a command, where there is not something to obey. 45 This holds of an individual's inner life as truly as of society: one impulse gets on top, commands, the others have to obey. 46 That regulation of impulses which is implied in morality rests in the last resort on one impulse that has the upper hand. 47 In relation to this dominant impulse, we have to let the question Why? go. 48 Of an ought over and above human relations and human wills, Nietzsche knows nothing. 49 d "Ought" is our creation, though it is a necessary one, growing out of the fact that we are at bottom wills--and will must either command or obey. The great man must command, cannot be saved from doing so; and his imperative "thou oughtat" is not derived from the nature of things, but seeing the higher he must put it through, compel obedience to it. 50 There is nothing wrong or unnatural in this--rather may it be as natural for the Weaker, the unateadier, to obey as for the stronger and higher to command; it may be positively easier for the weaker to do this after the first recalcitrancy, 51 may be even a relief [compare, I may say on my own account, the sentiment of Wordsworth "Ode to Duty"]. e That is, two types of individuals may fit organically together in a societyand two kinds of impulses may fit organically together in a single soul. 52 There is thus a strictly natural order of rank in the world (Rangordnung). The order of precedence, the classification of higher and lower, which appears in a social group, is typical of a phenomenon that is universal in natureat least in organic nature. "We may consider all that has to be done to preserve the organism as a 'moral demand': there is a 'thou oughtst' for the single organs which comes to them from the commanding organ." 53

IV We are accordingly led straightway to what Nietzsche considers the very problematical notion of equality. He takes it broadly--perhaps too broadly--and appears to have no objection to it in and for itself. We may seek equality, he says, either by bringing others down to our level, or by raising ourselves and all up to a higher level. 54 He has, too, as we have already seen, a sense of the intimate unity of human nature and is instinctively offended at the thought of using others merely as means to our own ends. 55 He admits that it was the noblest spirits who were led astray by the ideas of the French Revolution, in which "equality" played so large a part (though he makes an exception in the case of Goethe). 56 And yet in the actual constitution of things there is more inequality than equality--and not merely artificial inequality owing to outer conditions, but natural inequality. The mark of a good man for Schopenhauer was "that he less than the rest makes a difference between himself and others"; 57 but if differences exist, what boots it? Must the good man be a little blindan idealist, or an artist? A tendency of goodness to stupidity (Dummheit) has been already noticed. It is sometimes said that to God all men are equal, and Carlyle spoke of Islam as a "perfect equalizer of men"; 58 but so from a high mountain the tallest men are pygmies like the rest--there is no distinguishing vision from so far off. f Nietzsche does not question that it may be expedient to treat men as equal under certain circumstances or that there are conditions in which differences between them may be actually negligible. He notes, for instance, that after some hours of mountain climbing a scamp and a saint are two tolerably similar creatures--exhaustion being the shortest way to equality and brotherhood. 59 He gives also a serious instance. When communities are first organized and all alike are in need of protection from the enemy, men may be considered equal. Even long-established communities manifest equalitarian tendencies, whenever danger arises, such as war or earthquake or flood--differences of rank and privilege being quite lost eight of in face of a common misfortune. But save in these exceptional circumstances, native differences between men, gradations of rank of some sort, tend ever to appear in old and well-established communities; and this also happens whenever social order is broken down and anarchy sets in (cf, what happened at Corcyra, according to the account of Thueydides). 60 The differences really exist all the time, however they may fail to show themselves, and Nietzsche thinks it not truthful or just not to recognize them, and estimate men accordingly. As animal life ranks higher than plant life, and human life ranks above that of the animal, so there is an ascending scale of potencies in human life itself--all men are not on the same level: some are higher, others lower. 61 We in our day are apt to collocate equal with just--"just and equal," we are accustomed to say. But if justice means giving to each his own (suum cuique), and if one person is on one level of life and another on another, then to treat them as if they were on the same level is not justice, but injustice. "Equality to those who are equal, inequality to those who are unequal"--this were the true teaching of justice. 62 "Wrong lies never in unequal rights, it lies in the claim to 'equal rights.'" 63 " The doctrine of equality! . . . But there is no more poisonous poison; for it appears to be preached by justice itself, while it is the end of justice." 64

The present-day sentiment in favor of equality becomes then a curiosity to Nietzsche, and he seeks to account for it. He does so in this way--really two ways, which on the surface do not harmonize. First, he views it as an accompaniment of the dominating place which the mass have won in modern societies. 65 The instinct of the mass is to say (and there is something of the spirit of revenge in it), 66 "there are none better than we, all are equal, no one is to have rights and privileges above the rest." In other words, it is a doctrine for a purpose, a kind of tool in a class-war--the end being to bring all men into one class. Second, the doctrine is the reflection of a certain matter-of-fact resemblance or process causing resemblance--which is accomplishing itself in the modern world. We latter-day beings are a mixture, purity of blood and race is disappearing--we are actually becoming alike: the old differences of high and low cut small figure. Gaps between man and man, between class and class, variety of types, a will to be oneself, to mark oneself off, the pathos of distance,--these are marks of every strong time; 67 but we are fallen on other days--we want no gaps, we are very sociable, it is sheep like sheep, and we hardly want a shepherd, ni dieu ni maitre, as our advance-guard, the socialists, sometimes say. 68 g

Some argue that while there may not be, and perhaps should not be, outer equality, there is an inner equality, that souls are equal; but Nietzsche questions it. Souls are as different as bodies; what strong ones endure and profit by may undo average natures--what nourishes and refreshes the higher kind of man may be to others poison. Dangerous books, for instance, that break in pieces and desolate lower souls may act like herald-calls to others and elicit their bravest. 69 His own books are not for all--he himself is not good for all: his problems address themselves in the nature of the case selectively to a few ears. 70 h He questions indeed whether really great and beautiful things can be common property: pulchrum est paucorum hominum. 71 In the same way he sees basis for the distinctions of esoteric and exoteric in a doctrine or a religion, corresponding to different dates grades of intelligence in its followers. 72 Even the same the same words people understand differently --they have different feelings, scent, wishes, in connection with them: " what group of sensations and ideas are in the foregruond of a soul and are quickest aroused, is the ultimately decisive things about its rank." 73 Not all have the right to the same judgments; Nietzsche will not admit the right of others to criticise Wagner as he does. 74 He hates hi pure " i will" from course mouths. 75 Independence is for the fewest-- a privilege of the strong. 76 One must have the right even to do one's own thinking, and not all have it, for right is conditioned on power. 77 Men are indeed so different that there cannot be an universal law for them; it is selfishness to say that what I should do under given circumstances is imperative on all others --a blind kind of selfishness too, since it shown that I have not yet discovered myself and created my own ideal, something that can never be that of another, not to say of all. 78 "And how indeed could there be a 'common good'! The expression contradicts itself: that which could be common has ever only small value. In the end it must be as it is and ever has been: great things remain for those who are great, abysses for the deep, delicate things and tremulous things for the fine, and, to sum of briefly, everything rare for the rare." 79 The. way, the ideal, there is not; that such a thing may be, all must be alike, on the same level. 80

Nietzsche goes so far as to admit that, because of radical inequality, of ascending grades of life, sacrifice is necessary. Our natural instincts not only of sympathy, but of fair play, lead as to regard all forms of life, event he lowest, as ends in themselves and to wish for each a full and perfect development. But these instincts have only a limited scope in a world constituted like ours, and if we insist on following them absolutely we in effect posit another order of things than this we know-something which Schopenhauer did, at the same time turning his back on this world and feeling that the height of ethics was in renouncing it. For here, save within narrow limits, life lives off life--as the plant off the inorganic world, so the animal off the plant, and higher animal off the lower animal (or the plant). There is no way of avoiding this--the law of sacrifice is ingrained into the constitution of things. The necessity extends even to the relations of men with one another. That some may develope to their full stature, others must be content with less than theirs. At the basis of ancient culture, as already noted, were slaves, and slaves equally exist today, the only question being whether there is a culture compensating for the enormous sacrifices which they--our working, business, professional classes--make. The law of sacrifice may be freely accepted, but it cannot be changed; Nietzsche thinks that it has been accepted in the past and might conceivably be again. And perhaps (I may add on my own account), if our working and business and professional classes could see above and beyond them, and as a result of the freedom they make possible, an Ζschylus, a Sophocles, a Phidias, an Aristotle, in short a drama, a sculpture, an architecture, a noble civic and intellectual life, like that of the ancient Greeks, they might be less unwilling to bring their sacrifice than they are--I say "perhaps" and "might," because the indications are at present that they think more of themselves than of anything else, and only care to "get out of life" (as the saying is) all that they possibly can.

CHAPTER XXII CRITICISM OF MORALITY (CONT.). THE "ALTRUISTIC" SENTMENTS 1 A SENSE of the gradations of life noted in the last chapter underlies also the discussion of the "altruistic" a sentiments. These sentiments may be said to make up the finer, more inward, more spontaneous part of morality, as contrasted with conceptions such as rights, duties, justice, obligation. b

I However inconsistently with views expressed in other connections, Nietzsche regards the roots of altruism as lying very deep in man--he even says in one place that more than any other animal, man is originally "altruistic." 2 He seems to look on two factors as co-operating to produce the result. On the one hand, social existence requires it, and, on the other, individuals themselves find compensation for a sense of their unimportance in serving others--mothers their children, slaves their masters, the soldier his commander, even the prince his people, and in general. 3 Pleasure in the group to which one belongs is really older than pleasure in oneself, and the sly, loveless ego that only seeks its own advantage in the advantage of others, is not the origin of the group but its destruction. 4 Altruistic sentiment, however, implies egoism somewhere or to some extent--not as its contrary, but as its complement and condition. If there is service there must be those willing to be served--individuals, or the group (as such); altruistic sentiment cannot be universal and all-controlling. In fact, quite apart from individuals the group or community is almost always egoistic, freely allowing its members to serve it, calling on them to do so, and even allowing them on occasion to injure themselves or be killed in its behalf. Many of the great "virtues" are simply practices or qualities that serve this naοve egoism of the community. If the community should itself become altruistic, it might sacrifice for individuls rather than allow them to sacrifice for it. That is, altruism taken as a universal maxim, conducts to an impasse. Only as a limit is set to it, is it really possible. 5 Perhaps some of my readers have found how difficult it is to deal with thoroughly altruistic people: they will scarcely allow us to do anything for them-they want to be ever giving, and are not willing to receive. In a way they are the most embarrassing people in the world-they frustrate our own virtue! But though, taken universally, altruism is self-contradictory, it makes an excellent, rough, practical rule for great masses of people. The community's instinct of self-preservation is behind the sanction given to it; and most actually do best when they serve others or the community, rather than themselves--the "self," in their case, not being massive or important enough to justify special attention; where individual distinctions do not stand out, many, not to say all, are more important than one. 6

But there is another way in which egoism is indispensable-egoism now of an active sort. The view appears in sayings like these:--Love your neighbor as yourselves, but first be such as love themselves--loving with a great love and a great contempt 7 (looking down on ourselves being a condition of our rising). Grant that benevolence and beneficence make the good man, one must first be benevolent and beneficent to himself-else one is not a good man. 8 Making oneself into a whole person goes further in the direction of the general advantage than compassion towards others. 9 Hence there may be a "quite ideal selfishness." 10 It involves an art--of all arts the finest and the one requiring most patience. In practising it we learn to endure being by ourselves and do not need to be ever roaming about. 11 Even too much reading is to be guarded against, because then we learn to think only by reacting, not spontaneously. 12 The broad objection to a sweeping unegoistic morality is that it easily leads to sins of omission, and just because it has the guise of human friendliness, it seduces the higher, rarer type of man the most. 13 c So strong at this point is Nietzsche's feeling that he is led to the view that the absolute supremacy of altruistic conceptions would be an indication of degeneration--for if all should find the significance of their lives in serving others, it would show that none found value in themselves, did not know how to protect and preserve themselves, had no real self (none worth while), and humanity would be so far on the downward grade. 14 Deficiency in personality revenges itself everywhere. A weakened, thin, obliterated, self-denying person is useful for no good thing--"selflessness" of this type has no value for either heaven or earth. 15

The egoism thus so strongly preached is, however, regarded for the most part under an ultimately altruistic perspective: it is for the good of others, however dimly or impersonally they may be conceived or far off they may be put. And yet Nietzsche raises a rather daring question: Why is the man better who is useful to others than one who is useful to himself? And the answer comes, that this is true when others are of more value, higher than oneself. But suppose that the contrary is true--that others are of less value: in such a situation, he who serves himself may be better, even if he does so at the expense of others. 16 The reasoning sounds coldblooded, yet can hardly be gainsaid--and the underlying point of view conducts to important distinctions. The character of selfishness (if we use the opprobrious word, and Nietzsche, in a half-defiant way, sometimes does) much depends upon who it is that is selfish. When he speaks of the "wild waters and storm-floods of selfishness" in Europe in the sixteenth century, he means ordinary, vulgar selfishness--the selfishness of princes and peoples who were grabbing, among other things, for the possessions of the Catholic Church 17 --and this he despises as much as any one. Once he formally distinguishes two kinds of egoism: a sacred one that forces us to serve what is highest in us; another, the egoism of the cat, that wants only its life. 18 Both are preservative--the only question is, of what? The higher kind of selfishness is so contrasted with the lower that he even refuses to call it by this name: "heroism is no selfishness (Eigennutz), for one perishes of it" 19 --this, though he is perfectly aware and expressly says that the higher virtue, so far from being selfless, is that into which one's very self goes. 20 The distinction between the two kinds of selfishness and the two kinds of men is not sentimental or arbitrary. It turns on whether the selfishness represents the advancing or the retrogressive line of life. To quote: "Selfishness is worth as much as the man is worth physiologically who has it; it can have a very high worth, it can have no worth at all and be despicable." 21 Some only want to receive and gather in--the weak, needy, sickly in body and mind; when such people say "all for myself," they are a horror (Grauen) to Nietzsche. But there are others who get and accumulate only to give out again in love: their selfishness, even if it is insatiable in gathering to itself, is sound and holy. 22

II

And yet what is love? Somewhat daringly and bluntly Nietzsche puts [finds] at the bottom of it a desire to possess. It is not fundamentally different from, is a kind of spiritual form of, the feeling for property or for what we want to make such. 23 Love between the sexes, marriage, is palpably that: each wishes to possess the other, to possess indeed exclusively--here is the basis of jealousy. In very love one may kill, as Don Josι does Carmen; if he had not loved her, she might have gone to other men. 24 On other levels, too, love shows its root character--though in subtler form. What is love of truth but desire to get it, to make it our own, to be so far enriched--and what does love of new truth often mean but that, acquainted with and perhaps a little tired of what we have, we reach out our insatiable hands for more? Is the love of our neighbors quite destitute of the desire to have something of our own in them? And when with sympathetic heart we help and tend those who are suffering or ill, is there not some secret pleasure in thus extending our power over them, in feeling that for the moment they are ours? We may not confess it to ourselves-but suppose that we are told that we are unnecessary, is it not as if something were taken from us? The desire for possession may have very subtle shades. 25 Does this, then, mean that there cannot be an unselfish desire to give and bestow? Not at all, but (says Nietzsche in effect) let us analyze what is meant by such a desire. Here, for instance, is a philosopher who wants to give his ideas to the world. In the first place, let us not be too ready to credit him with unselfishness. Very possibly he simply wants to impress himself upon the world, to put his mark on it, and so far make it his world-philosophers generally, especially the great ones, want to rule. 26 And yet we can imagine that pure blessing may be the aim--and if philosophers are not frequent instances, there are plenty of instances from other walks in life, parents, for example, or wherever the essentially parental impulse manifests itself. 27 But what is the real psychology of this unselfishness? Nietzsche can only answer: the soul is full, over-full, and has to give. For love may be of two kinds: here a soul is empty and wants to be full; there a soul is already overflowing and wants to pour itself out. Both seek an object to satisfy their needs, and really the full soul is as needy and is as much prompted by the sense of need as the empty one--neither is, strictly speaking, unegoistic. 28 Some of the supreme passages in Nietzsche are those in which he pictures the great soul giving. When Zarathustra is expostulated with for leaving his high solitudes to come down among men, his answer is, "I love men--I bring to them a gift." 29 When the mountain comes down to the valley and the winds from the heights descend to the levels below, what is the right name for such a longing? Zarathustra asks, and "bestowing virtue" is the only answer he can give. 30 It is a love that does not wait to be thanked, but thanks any one who will receive it--a love that suffers if it cannot pour itself out. 31 Perhaps when we reach this love, if only in imagination, it does not matter much what we call it, egoistic, unegoistic, selfish, unselfish--words, categories, being but

"Sound and smoke, Hiding heaven's glow."

Nietzsche criticises the "golden rule." He considers it first as a dictate of prudence, showing that one's ends are not necessarily reached in the manner prescribed by the rule, and remarking that one's best actions are marked by a disregard of prudence anyway; but secondly and principally in so far as the notion of equality lies behind it. So far as men are equal, it is indeed a reasonable requirement, and the flock instinct, disregarding differences between the members of the flock, is behind it. 32 But so far as men are unlike, it is without application. What a great man does, that others cannot do to him. "What thou doest, no one can do to thee in return." Moreover, "What I do not wish that you should do to me, why may I not be allowed to do it to you? And, indeed, what I must do to you, just that you could not do to me." 33 The thought is that, so far as men are different, their powers and privileges and duties are different.

That, however, Nietzsche was inspired by no lack of consideration and tenderness for others appears in what he says of the treatment of injuries. It is paradoxical in form, and the reader is liable to be shocked by it at first. Zarathustra is the speaker, and he says (in substance), "If you have an enemy, do not return his evil with good--that will humiliate him; if he curses you, curse a little back; if he does you a great wrong, do him a few small ones--dreadful to behold is one under the weight of wrong that he has done alone; more humane is a little revenge than absolutely no revenge." 34 Of course, this has to be taken in the spirit rather than the letter (like the paradoxes of the Sermon on the Mount), but we do not have to attend long to see that an extreme (if you will, fantastical) tenderness breathes through it. A certain great apostle urged returning the evil of an enemy with good, "for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head." One can hardly say that tenderness for the wrongdoer inspires that; the desire is rather to cover with shame--the subtlest spirit of revenge breathes through it. Which is the truer, or even more Christian spirit, I leave the reader to judge. Nietzsche wanted to spare shame and to purge the world of the spirit of revenge. As he put it, he desired a justice that should be "love with seeing eyes," and that would absolve all, save him who judges. At the same time he knew that this was not a height for every one, but only for those rich in inner wealth, the overflowing. 35

The analysis of sacrifice resembles that of "love": on the one hand there is a psychological Aufklτrung; on the other an assertion of the thing itself, so strong that to many it may seem extreme. It is not unselfish, he declares, when I prefer to think about causality rather than about the lawsuit with my publisher; my advantage and my enjoyment lie on the side of knowledge; my tension, unrest, passion, have been longest active just there. 36 Hence he finds something hypo-v critical in the current language about sacrifice. Naturally, he says, in order to accomplish what lies near his heart, he throws much away--much that also lies near his heart; but the throwing away is only consequence, incidental result--the bottom fact is that something else lies nearest his heart. 37 And this is why a proposal to reward sacrifice is inept. Nietzsche even demurs at speaking of virtue as its own reward--he dislikes the latter word altogether. When, Zarathustra asks, was it ever heard that a mother would be repaid for her love? and a man should love his virtue as his child. 38

Who will be paid? The saleable." 39

"You are too pure for the soil of the words revenge, punishment, reward, requital." 40 And yet sacrifice (for he does not eschew the word) may go far. Virtue, in the great sense, is an arrow of yearning and a willingness to disappear. 41 To be free in any great way is to be indifferent to hardship, severity, privation, even to life; to be ready to sacrifice men for a cause, oneself not excepted. 42 Nietzsche's mind goes back to ancient customs, and he says, "whoever is the first-born, he is ever sacrificed. Now we are the first-born. But so wills it our kind and species; and I love those who will not hold themselves back." 43

With perspectives like these Nietzsche criticises "love of neighbors." Higher than love to those near us is love to those far away. Yes, higher than love to men is love to things (Sachen) and ghosts (Gespenster). "This ghost that follows thee, my brother, is more beautiful than thou; why givest thou not to it thy flesh and thy bones? But thou art afraid and fleest to thy neighbor. . . . Let the future and what is furthest off be the motive of thy to-day." 44 More prosaically he puts his idea and demand thus: "to bring beings to existence who shall stand elevated above the whole species 'man'; and to sacrifice ourselves and our neighbors to this end." 45 The motive is still love, but love with distant instead of near perspectives. He formulates the "new problem" in this way: whether a part of mankind might not by training be developed into a higher race at the expense of the rest. 46 Sacrifice would thus become part of a deliberate program. Undoubtedly to most the thought is repulsive. We may sacrifice ourselves, but how can we exact sacrifice from others! How can we willingly contemplate men suffering, living stunted lives, or dying prematurely--all for an end beyond themselves? But suppose they consented to the sacrifice. Suppose that with some dim sense of a greatness to come they were willing to be used up, and to disappear when they could no longer serve! That were a possibility not ordinarily reckoned with. Indeed, our prevailing methods of thought today tend to keep it out of mind. We want to alleviate men's lot. Our altars are to pity. The idea is abroad that no one should suffer or be sacrificed. All have rights to what pleasure and enjoyment can be got out of life, we say--and they, the great mass, are beginning to say so too. Unconsciously we play into their latent instincts of self-assertion, their egoism--not now the egoism that gives, but the egoism that takes and that takes all it can get. Where do we hear nowadays that men might willingly deny themselves or even disappear for a glory possible to mankind! There may be such voices, but I do not hear them. The result is that all classes, "high" and "low" (to use the conventional terms), are pervaded by the same greed for near and personal goods. But Nietzsche credits better things of men, of the "low" as well as the "high," even of those who are no longer of any use in life--all might be guided by the thought of a great end beyond them, willingly enduring hardship and even consenting to end their lives when it is better not to live. 47

III

And now I come to that part of my subject about which perhaps more nonsense has been uttered than about any other aspect of this debatable thinker--his view of pity. The current idea is that Nietzsche was a sort of monster. "Close the hospitals, let the weak perish and tend the strong"--this is supposed to be his counsel. 48 It is a doctrine inciting "the overman ruthlessly to trample under foot the servile herd of the weak, degenerate, and poor in spirit," according to the Encyclopœdia Britannica. 49 The ironical remark is made that in his last days Nietzsche "had to be cared for by Christian charity--Christian charity, which in health had been the object of his bitterest attack." d The late Professor William Wallace was one of the few English-speaking writers of distinction to attend carefully enough to Nietzsche's thought to get his real meaning. 50

The German word is "Mitleid." "Mitgefiihl," fellowfeeling in general, is one of Nietzsche's "four virtues." 51 He also uses "Sympathie," where we should say "sympathy" (in the broad sense). 52 I remember no special criticism of fellowfeeling or sympathy. e It is pity that he dissects and estimates. Pity is, even more distinctly in the German word than in ours, suffering--suffering with, really suffering with suffering. It is, of course, a species of fellow-feeling or sympathy, but of this peculiar character.

There was a special occasion for Nietzsche's analysis of pity--an occasion that we in America and England do not easily appreciate. Perhaps in general we are less reflective peoples than the Germans, and some problems that occupy them we hardly feel. Pessimism, i.e., the ripe philosophical view, not mere spleen or fits of indigestion, has no hold among us. But it was pessimism, spreading like a contagion through Germany and becoming almost a religion with many, pessimism of the peculiarly seducing type which Schopenhauer represented, that awoke Nietzsche to the necessity of criticising pity. For what is pessimism? Without pretending to a formal definition, I may say that it is a sense so great and so keen of the suffering and wrong in the world--of suffering and wrong, too, as bound up with the individual existence which characterizes the world-that one is led to turn his back on life. And how is release from life secured? By pity itself--at least, this is the first step. For in pity, we take others' plight on ourselves, become one with it--and if we go far enough, we may almost cease to feel separately, individual craving and even individual consciousness tending to disappear; partly in this way, and partly by actively mortifying ourselves, crucifying the instincts that lead to life, we sink at last into Nirvana. 53 It is pity in the light of its Schopenhauerian consequences of this description that fixed the attention of Nietzsche, and made him look into it and over it in all its forms and guises. 54 A sentiment similar in character, though unaccompanied by the radical general view, is characteristic of Christianity. Indeed, pity is an under (or over) note in modern socialism and anarchism, and in the modern democratic movement generally. 55 To Schopenhauer, pity was the essence of morality itself. f

Now, I find no natural hardness of heart in Nietzsche, and, what is stranger, considering the common opinion, no failure to approve pity within limits. He once spoke of it as shameful to eat one's fill while others go hungry. g "I am thinking," he writes in relation to a friend who had had a sad experience, "how I can make a little joy for him, as proof of my great pity." h His sister says as to his experiences as ambulance nurse in the Franco-Prussian war: "What the sympathetic heart of my brother suffered at that time cannot be expressed; months after, he still heard the groans and agonized cries of the wounded. During the first year it was practically impossible for him to speak of these happenings." 56 Nietzsche himself says in a general way that one who begins by unlearning the love of other people ends by finding nothing worthy of love. 57 He speaks reverently of Prometheus's pity for men and sacrifice in their behalf. 58 i Addressing judges, Zarathustra says, "Your putting to death should be an act of pity, not of revenge." 59 "That you are pitiful I presuppose; to be without pity means to be sick in mind and body"--this though it is added that much mind is needed to dare to be pitiful. 60 Nietzsche gratefully recognizes what the "spiritual men" of Christianity have done for Europe in giving consolation to the suffering, courage to the oppressed and despairing, however otherwise these same men have sinned. 61 He speaks of the pity of the saint as pity for the soil (Schmutz) of the human, all-too-human. 62 One who says things like these can hardly be said to be without appreciation of pity. He does, indeed, speak of triumphing over pity at times--but this presupposes that one has it. His "higher men," called to great tasks of creation and destruction, are usually beings with normal sympathetic feelings--otherwise how could he speak of their not going to pieces from the suffering they bring? 63

In fact, ordinary sympathetic feeling for those who are temporarily disabled or sick or otherwise unfortunate, such as we show in our homes or as the community shows in public institutions, I see no trace of disapproval of in Nietzsche: he rather comments with implied satisfaction on the immense amount of humanity attained by present-day mankind, though putting on the other side of the balance-sheet the fact of decadence. 64 He knows that communities as hard-hearted as he is sometimes supposed to have been simply could not hold together or live--and he once mentions the care of the sick and poor as among the natural customs and institutions of society (along with the state, courts of justice, and marriage). 65

What he has in mind in criticising pity comes out in the saying of Zarathustra, "Not your pity but your bravery has saved hitherto the unhappy"; 66 and again in a remark that where there is the impulse to help, the unpleasant sensation of pity is overcome. 67 For here pity is taken as feeling simply --and feeling of a sad and depressing sort. 68 If we become the echo of others' miseries, he questions whether we can be really helpful or quickening to them. 69 One day, as Zarathustra is walking along, he comes on a repulsive object which he at last makes out to be a human being; at first pity overcomes him and he is described as sinking down like a falling tree, heavily; and then he arises, and, his face becoming hard, he speaks the truth to him. 70 Pity of itself weakens, unnerves--such is the idea. We know that the Greeks, viewing it in this light, classed it along with fear, and, according to Aristotle, the purpose of tragedy was to give, as it were, a vent to these emotions, and so effect a purgation of the soul. So Nietzsche says that if any one should go about seeking for occasions for pity and holding ever before his mind all the misery he could lay hold of in his neighborhood, he would inevitably become sick and melancholy. He who wishes to be a physician--a physician in any sense--must accordingly be on his guard, otherwise the depressing feeling may lame him and keep his fine hand from doing its proper work. 71 The Nation ( New York), December 12, 1912. A reviewer of one of Mr. Galsworthy's recent books says: "The spectator in these vignettes . . . is always pensive, always passive, prone to lose himself in what might not unfairly be called an intoxication of pity." 72 Here is the point of view of a part of Nietzsche's criticism. Pity of this kind tends to leave things as they are--is a kind of sinking and melting before them; one who gives up to it is really taking his first step in the downward Schopenhauerian path.

And yet when pity is active, j it may do harm unless it is guided. Much mind, Nietzsche urges, is needed in exercising it. With the sense of the danger connected with it, he once puts the problem thus: "To create circumstances in which every one can help himself, and he himself decide whether he shall be helped." 73 Helping, he feels, is a delicate business; if the impulse to it were twice as strong as it is, life might become unendurable for many. Let a man think, he says, of the foolish things he is doing daily and hourly from solicitude for himself, and then what would happen if he became the object of a similar solicitude from others--why, we should want to flee when a "neighbor" approached! 74 What has done more harm than the follies of the compassionate? asks Zarathustra. 75 Benevolence must be newly appraised, and the limitless injury perceived that is continually worked by benevolent acts--for example, what a subject for irony is the love of mothers! 76 In short, pity is dangerous; it must be held within limits, intelligence must master it--it must be habitually sifted by reason. 77

I pass over the further and more detailed analysis of pity. At bottom it is not unlike the analysis of love and sacrifice, although it of course brings out the specific features of pity, such as that it is the opposite of admiration and means a looking down, and hence should be practised with shame, not publicly, out of regard for its object. 78 Nietzsche is, to my recollection, the first moralist to point out the lack of delicacy in pity as often shown, its intrusiveness--so that to be protected from it is the instinct of many a fine nature, and a certain purification is necessary for us after we have shown it, inasmuch as we have gazed on another in suffering, and, in helping him, have hurt his pride. 79 k

IV

What, then, are the limits for pity? If one stops to reflect a moment, one sees that an answer to the question depends upon what sort of an ideal one has in his mind; indeed, upon whether one has any ultimate ideal. Early Christianity, for example, had its ideal--that of the kingdom of heaven. Into that heavenly order (whether to be consummated on this earth or not) were to be gathered the good, the just, the loving, the merciful, the pure--they from the Christian standpoint were the wheat of the harvests of the world, they were to be garnered up in the coming order for ever. It is a dream that still has power to charm the heart. But what of those of a different moral character--the chaff or waste of the world, or, to use still other images, the trees that bore no fruit, the salt that had no savor? Was this kind of material, this waste and wreckage of human life, to be tenderly regarded all the same, to be nursed, pitied, allowed to continue and perpetuate its kind? Hardly: we know rather that the chaff was to be burnt up with unquenchable fire, the trees hewn down, the salt cast out and trodden under foot. I use the consequence not in the slightest as an objection to Christianity. There is the same logic implicit in any affirmation of a great end of life--and something kindred is involved in our most commonplace practical purposes. If we have any good thing in mind, we reject what does not correspond to it. If we set out an orchard, we leave to one side trees that come maimed or broken from the nursery. If we send our apples to market, we exclude those below a certain grade. Well, Nietzsche had an ideal, an ultima ratio of human life. It was a wholly earthly (diesseitige) ideal, and yet it was of humanity rising to what may relatively be called superhuman heights, of men who should be half like Gods--not merely good, but much more, beings to be feared, revered as well as loved. They should be the consummate fruit of humanity's tree, and, if all could not be such men or supermen themselves, they could at least facilitate them, work for them, fit themselves into a scheme of social existence that would tend that way. Nietzsche conceives that humanity might actually be turned into an organism working to this end--no longer then a disconnected, sprawling mass of atoms (smaller or larger) as at present, but a related, interdependent, organic whole--a whole with an aim, this aim. And so arises his principle of selection, and canon for pity. What will fit into an organism of this sort is worth preserving, what will not is not worth preserving. Equal regard for all material is impossible. What will make itself a part of an ascending humanity, of a process by which the type will be raised and the power and splendor of the species shine forth, what will at last give us it supermen"?--that is the critical question. If the energy of ascending life is in a man, or, if not just that, if he is willing to be used for ascending life, if he will do good work, even if only to stand and wait on those who are better than he, such a man is good, and all, high and low, will protect him; but if a man is a sponge, a parasite, unfruitful, unproductive--not to say diseased and degenerate--he is bad, and pity to him is misplaced.

Nietzsche argues substantially in this way: there can be no solidarity in a society where there are unfruitful, unproductive, and destructive elements, which may moreover have still more degenerate offspring than themselves; to this extent the law of altruism does not apply; there is no right to help, to equality of lot, of unsound members--the organism is liable to perish if such a course is pursued; when within it the smallest organ fails to do its part in however slight degree, the organism degenerates; the physiologist accordingly--the social physiologist as truly as one who deals with a physical body--demands the removal of the degenerate part, denies solidarity with it, is at the farthest remove from pity for it. 80 Undoubtedly it is strong doctrine, and yet Nietzsche must not be taken to mean what he does not mean. It is not, for example, temporary illness or disability that he has in mind; I might almost say that it is not primarily sickness of the body at all, but rather of will and character, and bodily incapacity so far as it is a symptom of this, of defective life-energy. We read that Zarathustra is gentle to the sick and wishes that they may recover and create a higher body for themselves. 81 It is the hopeless, the badly made in the beginning, that Nietzsche has in view. Secondly, he does not mean, as some have understood him, particularly the working class, the poor pecuniarily. Nietzsche has as much honor for the worker with his hands, as much sense of his necessity, his indispensableness in an organic humanity, as any one--he even questions if he need be poor as he now commonly is. 82 He means the defectives, the incapables, the "good-for-nothings" everywhere--men who hate a day's work more than they do vice or crime, and will live in idleness if they can; and these are not confined to the so-called lower classes in the community.

And yet what do we modern peoples do, what have we been doing for centuries? Somehow we have acquired ( Nietzsche thinks largely through Christian influence) the idea that men as such are beings of infinite worth, that all are equal before God, that we must love, cherish, protect, care for every one of them. And the idea of the individual's importance and of equality, equal rights, has taken political form in democracy and is now taking a still more accentuated form in the socialistic and anarchistic movements. The single person has become so important, so absolute in our eyes, that he can't be sacrificed; the sickly, degenerate, misshapen specimens of the race are, forsooth, ends in themselves along with the rest, and we must minister to them. And so here they are, apparently in accumulating numbers as time goes on, in view (and out of view) in all the great centers of population--so that a recent writer has calculated (let us hope that it is an overestimate) that while in England of "superior men" there are about one to four thousand of the population, of idiots and known imbeciles (not counting those kept out of sight) there are one to four hundred. 83 Not only can we not sacrifice these miserable individuals; they think themselves that they can't be sacrificed--they feel that they have as much right to life as others: we have stuffed them up in a sense of their importance--have played, as thoughtless altruism is apt to do, into their egoism. Their methods of keeping themselves alive have become instincts, institutions, are called "humanity." 84 And the "good" man-and this is the terrible thing to Nietzsche--is just the one who takes the side of these miscarriages; goodness, as it is now commonly conceived, being pre-eminently shown in pitying, caring for, and tending them. 85

In other words, by following mistaken ideas we have cut athwart the law of selection, which is an inevitable part of the law of development. 86 We have ourselves acquired a sickly and unnatural sensibility (we can't stand the sight of suffering, we weak creatures of today); 87 we have stimulated the egoism of the sickly and degenerate, and, by holding fast in life great numbers of misshapen beings, have given to existence itself a gloomy and questionable aspect. 88 And for the result, Nietzsche holds, as I have said, Christianity chiefly responsible. l By giving, as it does, an absolute value to the individual, it makes it impossible to sacrifice him. Genuine human love is hard, full of self-conquest, because it needs sacrifice; while this pseudohumanity which is called Christianity strives just that no one be sacrificed. 89

Nietzsche is sometimes said to have been carried away by Darwin--his ideas have been called "Darwinism gone mad." m This is superficial ( Nietzsche's attitude to Darwin was in reality a very mixed one), n indeed a bit childish, when one considers the rτle which the idea of selection has played in the world. Emerson, in "The World-Soul," says:

"He serveth the servant, The brave he loves amain; He kills the cripple and the sick, And straight begins again; For gods delight in gods, And thrust the weak aside; To him who scorns their charities Their arms fly open wide."

And this was before Darwin. Indeed, the idea of selection, of acceptance and unpitying rejection, of an immanent struggle for existence in the world, is as old as the Bible--as the prophet Isaiah, with his doctrine of the survival of a remnant. The question is, what is to be selected? Nature does not do so very ill herself, and, in Nietzsche's estimation, is not to be set down as unmoral because she is without pity for the degenerate; 90 and yet man with clear vision might do better than nature, and avoid her enormous waste--he might, substitute purposive selection for natural selection and intelligently aim at what she is blindly groping for, or at least making possible. 91 The aim which Nietzsche suggests is that organic aim, culminating in something transcendent, which I have hinted at. It springs from a love that looks far away, and conquers and transcends pity. "Spare not thy neighbor. Man [present man] is something that must be surpassed." 92

Just how the selective process is to be carried out in detail Nietzsche does not tell us--there is no systematic or special treatment of the subject. He hints at the segregation of undesirable elements." 93 He tells the story of a saint who recommended a father to kill a misshapen, sickly child, and who, when reproached with cruelty, said, "Is it not more cruel to allow it to live?" 94 He urges a new and more sacred conception of marriage. Are you a man, Zarathustra says, who dare wish for himself a child? Are you a victorious one, a self conqueror, master of your senses, lord of your virtues?I Not only onward shall you propagate yourself, but upward. Marriage: so call I the will of two to create one who is more than they who created him. 95 Those with only cattle-like dispositions in their bodies, it is elsewhere stated, should not have the right to marry. 96 Stern and exacting as all this sounds, Nietzsche is not conscious of any real inhumanity. 97 While he would not have the higher, stronger types leave their own tasks to tend the sickly, he has so little idea of wishing to put an end to the latter summarily that he wants them tended by the more spiritual and gifted members of their own class--defining thus the function of the ascetic priest. 98 He would make their lot as easy as possible. Ironical as it may sound--he does not mean it ironically--he would help them to pass away. When something has to fall, it may be a mercy to hasten its fallingsuch is his feeling. 99 He puts it as a proposition of human love, his first proposition: the weakly and misshapen should pass away, and we should help them to this end. 100 He also hints that they may come to choose their own passing away, dying then in perhaps greater dignity than they have ever lived, and almost winning the right to life again. 101

Such, then, and so inspired are the limits which Nietzsche would set to pity. 102 Pity of the prevailing, thoughtless kind he calls a crime against life, an extreme immorality--he does not mince his words in speaking of it. 103 Indeed, he goes further, and in a lofty way would not pity his own disciples. "To the men that concern me, I wish suffering, solitude, illness, mistreatment, disgrace. . . . I have no pity for them, because I wish them the one thing that can prove today whether a man has value or not--that he hold his ground." 104 Yet the warnings which Nietzsche utters in general against pity are not, he says, for all, but rather for him and his kind, i.e., those who rise to his point of view; the implication being that otherwise to renounce pity might be mere callousness and brutality. 105 o And how far he is from condemning pity per se, is shown in what be says of "our pity," "my pity." It is a pity for the too common lot of the higher, rarer types of men, seeing how easily they go to pieces, what a waste there often is of their capacities. 106 It is a pity over the low averages of human life, over the process of making men smaller, that he thinks is going on under Christian and democratic influence, over the very pity of which we Christians are so proud, which does not see the place and necessity of suffering and sacrifice in the world--so pity, he says, against pity! 107 Oh, for a glimpse now and then, he exclaims, of something perfect, wrought out to the end, happy, mighty, triumphant, in which there is still something to fear--of a man who justifies man, a complementary and redeeming instance, in view of whom we dare hold our faith in man! But what he sees has a wearying effect upon him. We modern creatures, indeed, want nothing to fear, we want great men only as they serve us, as they make themselves one with us--no, they must not harm us or the least thing that lives! And yet for Nietzsche to lose the fear of man, is also to lose the love of him, reverence for him, hope in him, yes, the wish for him--it is the way to satiety with the umana commedia, to nihilism.

CHAPTER XXIII CRITICISM OF MORALITY (CONCLUDED). TRUTH AS AN OBLIGATION. NET RESULTS OF THE CRITICISM I As we have already seen, morality is conceived of by Nietzsche as a law (condition of life) of social groups, and, in the nature of the case, truth, i.e., truthful relations between members of the group, forms a part of it. There is no need to show in detail how habits of deception would prove destructive to the life of the group. But a further step may be taken, and is sometimes taken. Deception or dissimulation may be considered wrong in itself. Moreover, since speaking the truth involves knowing it, this too may be considered obligatory--and obligatory not merely for reasons of social utility, but as an ideal in and for itself. Truth, in both meanings of the term, may come to seem absolute duty--and as matter of fact a fine and exacting conscience in these directions has arisen among civilized peoples.

But Nietzsche asks, Is truth an unconditional obligation? First, is there an absolute obligation to speak or act the truth-never to dissimulate It is necessary to distinguish between his personal attitude and conduct, and the answer he gives to the theoretic question. He himself was an example of the finest openness 1 --it might have been better for him in certain ways, had he concealed more and said less. He was apt, too, to judge others according to his own standard. For example, the change in his attitude to Wagner was due in no slight degree to the feeling that Wagner was something of an actor. He found Bismarck also guilty of lack of sincerity, though from a different motive (viz., negligence). He remarks that we should today condemn Plato for his sanction of pia fraus, and Kant for deriving his categorical imperative as he did, since faith certainly did not come to him in that way. 2 All the same he asks whether dissembling can be absolutely condemned. He has to admit that it has played a part in the evolution of man, and even in the evolution of morality. In his conduct primitive man more or less concealed his real self; he, so to speak, clothed himself with the mores of his environment, and put his fearful side out of sight--his morality was a kind of protective device. Yet paradoxically enough the pretense might become reality in time; for if dissimulation is practised long enough, it becomes nature. This holds of the strong as well as the weak. "Goodness has been most developed by long-continued dissimulation which sought to appear goodness: everywhere, where great power existed, the necessity of just this kind of dissimulation was perceived--it inspired assurance and confidence and multiplied an hundredfold the actual amount of physical force." "In the same way honor has been developed to great proportions by the demand for an appearance of honor and uprightness--in hereditary aristocracies." Falsehood is then, if not the mother, the nurse of goodness. By a kind of biological dialectic dissimulation at last abolishes itself, and organs and instincts are the little expected fruits in the garden of hypoc-risy. 3 Evidently then truthfulness, as the opposite of playing a part, is not an absolute duty. Nietzsche even thinks that a philosopher, who will be at the same time a great teacher, must assume some of the rights of a teacher and hold back much; yet he must not be suspected of doing so, and a part of his mastery will consist in the success of his dissimulation. 4

Second, is there a strict obligation to know the truth--never to be deceived? Probably few men have had a finer intellectual conscience than Nietzsche--it is the key to much that was tragic in his intellectual history: he would not be taken in, whether as to the make-up of existence, as to religion, as to Wagner, as to Schopenhauer, as to morality, or as to truth itself. But this was his idiosyncrasy--did he regard the remorseless pursuit and facing of reality as a duty for all? On the contrary, he came to question such a duty. I say "came," since for a time he seems to have regarded knowledge as an absolute good. "We should rather have humanity go to ruin than that knowledge should go back, "he once wrote. 5 Indeed, he still honors the conscientiousness of scientific investigators--"Were scrupulousness in knowing gone, what would become of science?" 6 The same fine sense for objective truth is at the bottom of his criticism of morality; he even says that skepticism of morality is a selfcontradiction, since if the skeptic does not feel the authoritative nature of truth, he has no longer any reason for doubting and investigating in this realm. 7 Nor does he question that reason, the intellectual nature, is the final arbiter of truth 8 --he knows of no short-cuts to truth like "intuition," "will to believe," the "needs of the soul," etc. That a belief "makes happy" proves nothing--a truth may be dangerous and harmful; the groundcharacter of existence may be such that knowledge of it would be ruinous to most; it might be the measure of a mind's strength, how far it could stand truth or had to have it attenuated, veiled, sweetened, falsified. 9 Nietzsche's critical questioning goes deeper than all this--it is as to the value of truth. 10 We have been bearing much discussion of late as to the meaning of truth, but philosophers have not often asked, What is it worth? Most appear to take for granted that the possession of it is desirable, and Nietzsche is the first--or among the firstto disturb this naοvetι. Why, he asks, prefer truth to appearance? Why may not appearance be better? Why may not something we in part create be better than what ist Indeed, what reason is there for preferring, how can we speak of better at all in this connection, save as we have a standard of valuesomething which we do indisputably create?-

I may give one or two illustrations, which will perhaps make his meaning clearer. Suppose that reality had ultimately a tragic character, as Nietzsche early, and in a sense always, believed, that most men could not look on it and live, would it still and none the less be their duty to face it? Would facing it and perishing be better than deception about it and life? It is of course an extreme case, but it may none the less serve as a test, and now as at the beginning Nietzsche puts life first. "We must be conscienceless as regards truth and error, so long as life hangs in the balance." 11 Again, the mass of men believe in things, bodies, atoms, substances. They are illusory beliefs in his estimation, but none the less convenient and useful for the practical purposes of life. "If we take the strictest standpoint of morality, e.g., of honesty (Ehrlichkeit), intercourse with things and all the articles of faith of our ordinary action (as, for instance, that there are bodies) are unmoral." 12 . But Nietzsche does not consider us obliged to throw away these articles of faith on this account. 13

What he has in mind appears in still another connection. There is a tendency among scientific men today to eschew theory and hypothesis--to lay the emphasis on getting facts, ever more facts, even the petits faits. We see it not only in the natural sciences, but in history--the important thing is thought to be not to prove anything, not to judge, to approve or disapprove, but to fix the facts, describe them, be a mirror of them. 14 Nietzsche regards it as a kind of asceticism. In a way indeed he honors it; he calls the painstaking, scrupulous, scientific men who deny the vagrant speculative instincts in which it is so easy to wander or wallow, the real heroes in the intellectual world of our day. 15 And yet he asks himself, Why, in the last analysis, this worship of the actual, this rigid separation of everything subjective from it, this feeling that truth only is sacred and that thinking which is not devoted to getting it is labor thrown away? In other days, when God was supposed to be behind all and in all, reality as a whole might be something to be revered and the smallest particle of it better than any work of man's; but now, why this extreme respect? Nietzsche sets it down as mere prejudice that truth is of more value than appearance ( Schein)--he calls it the worst proven opinion in the world. He even asserts the contrary: "If there is in general anything to worship (anbeten), it is appearance that must be worshiped; it is falsehood and not truth that is divine!" 16 Hence he sees science--so far as this means simply an accurate, painstaking account of the actual--in a new perspective: no longer is it an intrinsic, self-evident good in his eyes. It needs a justification; it gives rise to a problem. This is, of course, from a standpoint beyond science: "the problem of science cannot be recognized (erkannt) on the ground (Boden) of science." 17 Nor can it answer the question it raises. To this end other things must be taken into account; there must be a larger, more ultimate view, a final standard of value--in short, some kind of philosophy, or "faith." Only as we have a supreme value, can we measure the worth of science, of actuality, or of anything else. To attempt, then, to put philosophy "on a strictly scientific basis," as is sometimes proposed, is really to invert the true order of things: it is, as Nietzsche half-humorously remarks, to make not only philosophy, but the truth stand on its head--a violation of all decency for beings (Frauenzimmer) so respectable! 18 Nietzsche thinks that science, however unconsciously to itself, has rested on some kind of faith in the past. Even the ascetic form of science with which we are familiar today has its presupposition ("there is no presuppositionless science"), 19 namely, the idea that getting pure unadulterated facts is greatly important, that truth is more important than anything else--itself a broad, extrascientific, and most discussable proposition. 20 And when this faith is gone or shaken, and the mere blind mechanical impulse of knowing lags (for it may be as blind and unreasoning as any other), what, in the absence of some other faith, will keep it going, what purpose shall inspire it? 21 Nietzsche thinks that there is more or less restlessness and inner discontent among scientific men today: "science as a means of benumbing oneself (Selbst-Betδubung)--do you know that?" 22 The, supreme value which he himself postulates is life, ever stronger and more victorious life, life rising to the superhuman and divine. With such an ideal he has something with which to measure the worth of other things: now science may receive a direction, a meaning, a limit, a method, a right to be. 23 Truth is valuable so far as it helps in attaining the great end, is necessary to its attainment; but that which gives it its value, fixes also the limits of its value, and to the extent that truth would militate against life, not to say undo it, its sacredness and authority cease. Life is beyond true and false, as it is beyond good and evil.

Instances of the utility of truth and science it is needless to give--they are on every hand. But instances of the utility of error and illusion may be in order. I have just referred to the utility of the error which most men make about the physical world. Nietzsche also recognizes--as we have seen--the beneficial rτle which illusions of free-will and responsibility have played in the past." 24 a In social life and intercourse now there may be useful illusions. There is no duty to see things too clearly, too exactly. It was one of Zarathustra's prudences to be to some extent blind in face of men, to allow himself to be deceived by them. 25 Nietzsche outgrew, but did not regret his illusions about Wagner--in certain years, he remarks, we have the right to see things and men falsely, to have magnifying glasses to give us hope. 26 There is a value in illusions like those of eternal love, eternal revenge, eternal mourning--the feelings become ennobled in this way, even if the event proves that the vows cannot be kept. 27 Making absolute knowledge a duty is a madness of the period of virtue; we must hallow falsehood, illusion, faith--life would be in peril if we did not. 28 Nietzsche had known himself the perilousness of the pursuit of truth. "For so dangerously does it stand with us today: all that we loved when we were young has deceived us. Our last love--that which makes us confess this now, our love of truth--let us see that also this love does not deceive us!!" 29 That is (as I understand him), intellectual honesty itself, the finest spiritualization of morality, is dangerous--only the few are equal to all the risks it involves. b

So torn was Nietzsche by contrary instincts, one to life, the other to truth at any cost, that he undertook, as we have seen, the desperate expedient of changing the meaning of truth, so that it should signify hereafter life-preserving and upbuilding ideas--but unavailingly. 30 Indeed, he was led to language stranger still. There was an order of assassins in the Orient whom the Crusaders came upon, who--or rather whose superiors --had for their secret motto, "Nothing is true, everything is permitted." The words struck Nietzsche by their daring and subtle suggestiveness. He quotes the motto more than once and with semi-approval 31 --and has scandalized many. c On the face of it, it means complete license, intellectual and moral. How can he, we ask, take it up and make it in a way his own? Is he turning his back on all his past? He does indeed once say, "We have libertinage of the mind in all innocence," but this is in characterizing Europeans of the nineteenth century, and the "we" is not necessarily personal; 32 if it is taken personally, it is out of harmony with other references to intellectual libertinism and his ever repeated emphasis on intellectual scrupulousness? 33 We really get at his meaning in using the motto (and also in the remark about "libertinage of the mind," in case that has to be taken personally), when we notice the connection in which its principal use is made, and follow the highly refined discussion of the value and significance of truth in which it plays a part--a discussion which I have just inadequately summarized ( Genealogy etc., III, § 24). In an earlier chapter [XV] we observed the extent of his skepticism as to our possession of truth, and now we see his skepticism as to its value. He could offer an hypothesis only as to the nature of reality, and now be is aware that any kind of a judgment of value presupposes some standard which is created by the mind. Hypotheses, mental constructions or creations are then all he has --and he knows that his right to have them may be questioned by the sort of asceticism that goes by the name of science today. If we bear all this in mind--if we remember that to his mind "truth" is not strictly true, but provisional, shifting, and that instead of an antithetical true and false, there are only grades of likelihood, lighter and darker shadings, different valeurs (to borrow the language of painters), 34 if we remember also that a standard of value is not something independently existing, but a projection of the mind and that he wanted to be free to project his standard, we may perhaps understand (if we do not justify) how in a kind of bravado, reckless of whether he was understood or not, he took up the revolting assassin-motto and made it in a sense his own. Nietzsche proposed life, ascending and victorious life, as the goal and measure of things; he aspired to be one of those philosophers who are at the same time commanders and lawgivers, saying "so should things be," who determine a whither and a reason for man, 35 and the goal and law he proposed were more or less different from those that have been credited in the past, particularly in the Christian past; indeed, the Christian world confronted him with the view that the law for man existed already, laid down by God himself, and it was a law enjoining certain things, like benevolence and pity, which, however good and necessary within limits, cut athwart advancing life, when taken absolutely, as they were by Christianity. And so he turned about and said, No, this is not God's law, nor anybody's save those who posit it; there is no objective reality or truth in this realm and I am free to propose my law. "Nothing is true, everything is permitted"--it is his charter of liberty for the new valuations. 36 Those who take the words out of their connection, and interpret them as a sanction for thinking and acting in general as one likes, do violence to the whole character and history of the man. d

With these remarks on his views of truth, I bring the consideration of the criticism of morality to an end.

II Before turning, however, to his constructive work in this realm, it may be well to sum up the main results of the criticism. Some have the idea that he rejected morality in toto, and it must be admitted that language he sometimes uses would, taken literally, justify such a conclusion. He speaks of the selfdestruction of morality, 37 of his campaign against morality, 38 of his boring, undermining work in this direction. 39 He declares that it should no more be disgraceful to depart from morality. 40 "Morality is annihilated: exhibit the fact. There remains 'I will.'" 41 One writer speaks of him as bent on destroying morality root and branch, challenging not merely this or that idea of the current code, but wishing to annihilate the very conception of the code. 42

But few thinkers may less safely be judged by single utterances than Nietzsche. One or two things must be borne in mind if we wish to get at his real meaning. First, by morality he understands the historical phenomenon going by that term, namely a social, socially imposed, rule of life. That an individual may have a rule of life of his own making and that this may be called morality, he does not question, but it is not the kind of morality which he criticises. Second, in his criticism he often has in mind not so much actual moral codes as the theory of morality, more particularly the religious or absolutist theory, as it has developed especially under Christian influence, and still finds an echo in the philosophies of Kant and Schopen. hauer. The word he uses in the passages just cited, for instance, is not "Sittlichkeit" or "Moralitδt," but "die Moral," which is somewhat like "morals" or "moral philosophy" with us--and the moral philosophy he has in mind is generally the Christian, or at least Kantian or Schopenhauerian. This type of moral philosophy is not so common in our secular and positivist days as it was once--and perhaps if Nietzsche had lived in England or America, where ethics is usually quite divorced from theology and metaphysics, he would have written differently. The older view is expressed by one who was perhaps the last great Englishman to maintain the Christian tradition, John Henry Newman, when he refers to conscience as a "messenger from Him, who, in nature and in grace, speaks to us behind a veil," as "the aboriginal vicar of Christ, a prophet in its informations, a monarch in its peremptoriness, a priest in its blessings and anathemas"; 43 and also by the late Father Tyrrell, when he says, "It is from the Sinai of conscience (individual and collective) that He thunders forth His commandments and judgments." 44 In a modified form it is perpetuated by Kant and Schopenhauer, both of whom, though in differing ways, conceived of morality as bringing man into connection with a supersensible, metaphysical world. It is this morality of the grand order which Nietzsche criticises, rather than the modest, utilitarian morality, little more than a working program, which is most in evidence among scholars today. He speaks, for instance, of a possible unmoral humanity in the future, the connection showing that he means one aware that "there is no eternal moral law." 45 The morality he considers is something that has been the object not only of honor, but of worship; 46 it is an assurance "on which we philosophers have been wont to build for now two thousand years as upon the surest foundation"; 47 it is something which gives to every man an infinite worth, a metaphysical worth, and ranges him in a different order from this earthly one; 48 it is "die Moral im alten Sinne," covering all practices and mores on which the power of Gods, priests, and saviours rests, including ideas of free-will, sin, guilt, of an offended deity, of calamity as punishment, of a way of salvation, of conscience as supernatural--the whole of what he calls "the moral interpretation of existence," and none at bottom made it more assuredly than Schopenhauer. 49 The historical (as opposed to Nietzsche's imaginary) Zarathustra shared in it essentially, turning morality as he did into something metaphysical, making it a force, a cause, an end in itself, and viewing the contest between good and evil as the driving wheel in the general machinery of things. 50 Such is the morality which Nietzsche thought his criticism undermined--at least it is oftenest what he has in mind.

To put the results somewhat in order (and stating them always as he conceives them), the criticism undermines, first, the faith that morality brings one in any special sense into contact with ultimate reality. Rιe had said that the moral man stands no nearer the intelligible (metaphysical) world than the physical man does, and Nietzsche follows him. 51 To put morality into the nature of things, as philosophers in common with peoples have done, to give the world a moral significance has as much validity and no more than ascribing a male or female gender to the sun. 52 Kindness, sympathy exist and have a meaning in social formations--they serve and help maintain a whole in conflict with other wholes, but in the total economy of the world, where there can be no passing away or loss, they are a superfluous principle. 53 The whole circle of ethical conceptions can be explained without going out of the realm of human relations. The idea of a moral order, the construing of the fortunes of men and nations as rewards and punishments, is a palpable anthropomorphism--and not an altogether noble one.

Further, the criticism undermines the faith that morality is the thing of supreme moment in life. 54 It is but a means, and has been made an end. It is a means, too, to a special type of life, namely the social or gregarious, and there are other and higher types. Great individuals standing more or less apart are superior to the "social man," and the purely moral instinct is to suspect, look askance at them; particularly is this so with Christian morality, which is social morality par excellence. The flock says, Let them serve us, make themselves one of us, if they are to be good: its type of goodness is the type, the only type. Nietzsche cannot restrain his irony. Why, he asks, should people with these little gregarious virtues imagine that they have pre-eminence on earth and in heaven-"eternal life" being especially for them! Even if an individual brings these virtues to perfection, he is none the less a dear, little absurd sheep--provided always that he does not burst with vanity, and scandalize by assuming the airs of a judge. 55 Again, "What is it that I protest against? That one should take this little peaceful mediocrity, this equilibrium of a soul that knows not the great impulsions arising from great heapings up of force, for something high, possibly even as the measure of man." 56 In a similar spirit he makes reflections on the morality that becomes popular, on the reverence for morality that hinders progress in morality. 57 To him exclusive emphasis on (gregarious) morality is a kind of poison--he invents a chemical name for it, moralin. 58 The social virtues take man a certain way, they are indispensable to the existence of social groups, but, when made absolute, they go against the development of a higher, stronger type--they tend to fix man's form, although it has been a distinction of the human animal hitherto that he was without a fixed and final form. 59 Moreover, the propitious time for the blossoming of great individuals may be limited, and an absolute dominancy of morality may mean the defeat of the higher possibilities. 60 Morality a danger!--this is one of Nietzsche's points of view. The language is not so startling as it sounds--sometimes old-time religious teachers have used it, though from another point of view; and even in Nietzsche's mouth it is not without a touch of religious meaning, since his thought is that morality covers only the lower ranges of man's life and that there are higher! With questions of morality and immorality, we do not even touch, he holds, the higher value of man, which is altogether independent of social utility--a man may have it, though there is no one to whom he can be useful; indeed, one may be injurious to others and yet have it. "A man with a taste of his own, shut and hidden by his solitude, incommunicable, uncommunicative--an incalculable man, hence a man of a higher, in any case a different species: how are you going to measure him, since you cannot know, cannot compare him?" Moral preoccupation then puts one low in the order of rank, since it shows that one lacks the instinct for separate right, the a parte, the sense of freedom of creative natures, of "children of God" (or the Devil). 61

To mention one or two details, the criticism undermines the ordinary idea of conscience. Conscience is a social product, and may vary as social standards vary. Yes, as a late result of social evolution, there may be an individual conscience against social standards. But conscience of itself is no standard at all. The notion is also undermined that evil is to be stamped out in the world, that only the good has a rightful place there. The total necessities of the world, i.e., of progress in it, require good and evil (understanding by "good" the friendly, preservative impulses, and by "evil" the destructive ones). The criticism still further undermines the idea that moral acts are of a peculiar kind, i.e., free and unegoistic. There is an absolute homogeneity in all happening; there are no moral phenomena, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena. As the perspective, the interests differ, so do the moralities. 62 . A curious incident of the criticism is the discovery that the actual empire of virtue is not always secured by virtuous means--that is, that false assumption, defamation, and deception contribute to the result. 63 A virtue comes to power, Nietzsche observes, much as a political party does, by misrepresenting, casting suspicion upon, undermining the opposition, i.e., contrasted virtues already in power; it gives them other names [one thinks of how missionary religions have sometimes turned the native Gods of a country into devils], systematically persecutes and derides them. 64 An instance is the way in which Christian ideals managed to triumph over the ancient ideals.

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Brownshirt2621stMay2005, 12:46 III What is left of morality, after the criticism? In speaking once of modern tendencies generally, Nietzsche observes that traditional morality suffers, but not necessarily single virtues, like self-control and justice--for freedom may spontaneously lead to them and hold them useful. 66 He by no means denies that many actions called unmoral are to be avoided and striven against, and that many called moral are to be done and furthered--but for other reasons than heretofore. 67 Utilitarians, ζstheticians, friends of knowledge, and idealists may make the same demands which morality makes, so that its self-destruction need not practically change matters. 68 He once attempts a kind of balancing of morality: he finds it harmful in certain ways, useful in others. It is harmful, for instance, in hindering the enjoyment of life, and thankfulness to life; in hindering the beautifying and ennobling of life; in hindering the knowledge of life, and also the unfolding of life, i.e., so far as it seeks to set the highest forms of life at variance with themselves. But, on the other hand, it is useful as a preservative principle of social wholes and a means of restraining individual members-- here useful for the "instrument"; as a preservative principle against the peril of the passions--here useful for the "average"; as a preservative principle against the life-destroying effects of deep want and misery--here useful for the "suffering"; as a counter-principle against fearful explosion on the part of the powerful--here useful for the "humble." 69 He notes an experience like this: "I said to myself today, 'O that is a good man'! I had a feeling as if I had in my hand a beautiful, ripe, perfect apple with smooth skin: a feeling of tenderness, as of being drawn to him; a feeling of security, as if I might repose near him as under a tree; a feeling of reverence, as if I were in presence of an object to be touched only with the purest hands; a feeling of being satisfied, as if at one stroke I were released from discontent. That is, to the moral judgment 'good,' there corresponded a state in me arising as I thought of a certain man. It is the same as when I call a stone 'bard.'" 70 Surely one who could speak in this way cannot be taxed with insensibility to goodness. It is true that after a similar picture in another place, he asks, "Why should this undangerous man who affects us pleasantly, be of more worth to us than a dangerous, impenetrable, unreckonable man who forces us to be on our guard? Our pleasant feeling proves nothing" 71 --but the sensibility to goodness, the sense of its beauty, is none the less real. There is the same implication of a due valuation of contrasted things in another remark: "I do not wish to undervalue the amiable virtues; but greatness of soul is not compatible with them. Also in the fine arts, the great style excludes the pleasing." 72 The amiable virtues are not the highest, but they have their place. So with another remark: "Beyond good and evil [this of himself and his kind,] --but [in the group] we demand the unconditional holding sacred of group-morality (the supreme categories of which are "good and evil?"]. 73 That is, "good and evil," though not the highest categories, are valid, unconditionally valid, in large realms of human life. So he calls it well to take "right," "wrong," etc., in a definite, narrow, "bourgeois" sense, as in the saying "do right and fear no one": that is, to do one's duty according to the rough, definite scheme, by following which a community maintains itself--and he charges us not to think lightly of what two thousand years of moral training have bred in our mind! 74 Although morality is now oppressive, i.e., to those of his type, he expresses the "deepest gratitude for the service it has hitherto rendered"; it has itself bred the force that now drives us to venture on the untried 75 --indeed, we need very much morality to be immoral in this fine way. 76 That Nietzsche means to preserve something of the subtle spirit of the old morality, we shall see still more clearly in the ensuing chapters.

Once we have a list of what he deems the four principal virtues--they are courage, insight, sympathy, solitude. Other formulations are: honesty, courage, generosity, courtesy; honesty, courage, justice, love. 77 I have already cited what he says of a "broken word." 78 There are actions we cannot permit to ourselves, he declares, even as means to the highest ends, e.g., betraying a friend; better perish and hope that there will be more favorable conditions for accomplishing the ends. 79 He comments on the shameless readiness of the ancient Greek nobles to break their word. 80 Though he sees the place of destruction, malice and hatred in the world, as well as of conservation and love, the highest thing to him is love--at least the highest love, the "great love"; it is this indeed that is the final sanction of war and inequality and all the successive stages and bridges of advancing life. 81 Justice stands out the higher to him as it is differentiated from revenge. At times he may seem to justify injustice, but if we notice carefully, we find that it is injury he has in mind, 82 injury which is so often called injustice, but is only really unjust when committed against a promise or understanding. I do not remember a single case in which he defends injustice proper. 83 Over against the fact that so many great men have been unjust, he says, "let us be just" and perhaps admit that the great were as just as their insight, their time, their education, their opponents permitted--either this, or else that they were not great. 84 e It is also a very high, if not an absolute place, which Nietzsche gives to honesty with oneself-something which does not appear, he remarks, among the Socratic or the Christian virtues. He honors it in the scholar; genius itself does not make up for the lack of it. 85 It even has a field for exercise in sense-perceptions; e.g., "it is easier for our eye on a given stimulus to produce an image that has often been produced before, than to hold fast what is distinctive and new in the impression: the latter requires more force, more 'morality.'" 86 With this and similar things in mind he goes so far as to say that there are no other than moral experiences, intellectuality itself being an outcome of moral qualities. 87 Is there not, he asks, a moral way and an immoral way of making a judgment--even in saying "so and so is right"? 88 Learning to distinguish more sharply what is real in others, in ourselves, and in nature, is a part of progress in morals. 89 Indeed, as if with a half-rueful memory of all he had had to part with, he speaks of honesty as the sole virtue which survives to him. 90 "What does it mean, then, to be upright in intellectual things? To be on one's guard against one's heart, to despise 'beautiful feelings,' to make a matter of conscience of every yes and no." 91 The general idea of duty also remains. Many "duties" are questioned, and the old absolutist conception of duty disappears--it must be with this absolutist understanding of the word that he says he had never met a man of parts who was not ready to admit that he had lost the sense of duty or had never possessed it. 92 All the same, the superior man, he tells us, ranks his privileges and the exercise of them among his "duties," and if one of this type handles average men with tenderer fingers than he does himself and those like him, it is not mere politeness of the heart-"it is simply his duty." 93 As already noted, even his "immoralists" are "men of duty." 94 Nietzsche's thought is evidently that men may place duties on themselves, that will in man as well as in God, in the individual as well as in society, may generate duty--but of this more hereafter. Even piety does not altogether disappear. A man of the old religious type says to Zarathustra, "Thou art more pious than thou thinkest with such unbelief! Some God converted thee to thy godlessness. Is it not your piety itself that no longer allows you to believe in a God!" 95 And it is always, I may add, with reverence that Nietzsche uses the word "divine." 96 We are then not unprepared for something more than negation in Nietzsche's total attitude to morality.

CHAPTER XXIV MORAL CONSTRUCTION. THE MORAL AIM PROPOSED BY NIETZSCHE 1 I IN passing to Nietzsche's construction in morality I may say at the outset that it is a mistake to suppose that he was by temperament and instinct a radical--traces of a certain natural conservatism are plainly visible in his writings. He mentions with pride that he came of a line of Protestant pastors, 2 and it is evident that it was intellectual necessity more than anything else that led to his departure from the ancient ways, and that even in his mental revolutions he kept something of the old spirit. He once speaks of conscientiousness in small things, the self-control of the religious man, as a preparatory school for the scientific character. 3 He says in so many words, "We will be heirs of all the morality that has gone before and not start de novo. Our whole procedure is only morality turning against its previous form." 4 If he speaks of an overcoming of morality, it is a self-overcoming, 5 i.e., not by a foreign and hostile party. "Why do I love free thinking? As the last consequence of previous morality"--and he goes on to indicate how it comes from justice, courage, honesty, loving disposition to all. 6 The demand for a wherefore, a critique of morality, is a form of morality, the most sublimated kind of it. 7 In reflecting over the struggles and changes he had gone through, he says, "at last I discovered in the whole process living morality, driving force--I had only imagined that I was beyond good and evil" 8 (here using the latter phrase broadly), or, as he puts it in paradoxical form, "I had to dissolve (aufheben) morality, in order to put my moral will through." 9

Moreover, criticism had revealed to him the fact of varying types of morality, and the question arose, might there not be still other and perhaps higher types? 10 Of course, this presupposes a generic idea of morality, more or less separable from special instances. Nietzsche does not make a formal definition, but we gather from a variety of direct or incidental references what he thought was involved. In the generic sense, a morality is a set of valuations resting on supposed conditions of existence of some kind. 11 Further, it is something regulating, commanding, so that it introduces order into life: some things may be done, others may not be done--discipline, strictness hence arising. 12 On the subjective side, its root is reverence, the only properly moral motive. 13 As action, it is free (not in the indeterminist sense, but in the sense of voluntary, not forced). 14 Nietzsche sometimes criticises ideals, but when he does so, he has in mind mere abstract desirabilities, fancy pictures unrelated to reality. 15 A morality, as he understands the term, must be a really possible ideal of real beings--something then related to the earth and actual men. 16 Further, although he objects to praising and blaming with their ordinary implications of responsibility and free-will, he none the less recognizes things to honor and things to despise, 17 things to further and things to oppose 18 --so that a basis for moral discriminations still remains. All this in general. And now as to the special type of morality which he proposes.

II It is conceivable, he says, that the existence of man should be so precarious on the earth, that any rules and any illusions would be justified by which he was kept alive--the strictest discipline might be necessary. In this way primitive types of morality were justified, even if they covered much that seems to us superfluous or absurd--man could live only in and by society, and the social strait-jacket was imperative. Now, however, human existence has become relatively secure. Man abounds, perhaps superabounds. While under the early situation morality was not a matter of choice, now a certain freedom arises: we can more or less choose our ends, aiming in this or that direction as our imagination or taste or reason dictates. 19

It is under such a presupposition that Nietzsche proposes his moral aim. The problem appears to him in its most general form like this: Here within what we call humanity is an immense mass of force, accumulated and kept from wasting and self-destruction in no small measure by the influence of past morality--what shall be done with it, what impress shall be put upon it, what direction shall it take? Shall we let it drift? Shall our policy in relation to it be laisser aller, laisser passer-trusting to Providence or to destiny? Nietzsche thinks that confidences like these have an uncertain foundation and that humanity has already drifted too long. We should rather, he urges, seek to put an end to the horrible rule of folly and chance, hitherto called "history," for things do go to a fearful extent by accident in this world, and the call for foresight, for reason, is great. 20 "The immense amount of accident, contradiction, disharmony, stupidity, in the present human world points to the future"; this is its "field of labor, where it can create, organize, and harmonize." 21 A goal does not exist now, the ideals of men contradict one another; they arose in far narrower relations and were born of numberless errors. 22 Moreover, it is an aim for the totality of humanity that is wanted; it is humanity as a whole that needs to be organized. What is the ideal that may make an aim, a goal, and a principle of organization? 23

Before giving Nietzsche's actual answer to this question, a word may perhaps properly be said as to the general logic of his procedure. In the first place, he remembers that it is an interregnum in which we live--hence we cannot be dogmatic, can only propose: "we are experiments, we wish to be." 24 He is simply convinced in general that the future (future possibilities) must regulate our valuations--that we cannot seek the laws of our actions behind us. 25 . Secondly, the end or goal is not given to us. There is no absolute command, saying "so and so thou must choose," there is none from metaphysics and there is none from science: science indicates the flow of things, but not the goal. 26 Once with an ideal, science may tell us how to reach it; science also gives us presuppositions (the general nature of existence) with which an ideal must correspond--but it does not fix the ideal itself. 27 Herbert Spencer's picture of the future, for instance, is not a scientific necessity, it simply indicates a wish born of present ideals. 28 Indeed, thirdly, this realm of ends is a field where the ordinary categories of true and false do not apply. In the final analysis, an end or goal or ideal is not a reality, an object to which thought must conform, but a something projected by the mind and set (made objective) by the will. We make ends, goals, ideals, they are a proof of our creative power. When we have set them, there are real conditions of attaining them, and these we do not make; we have to discover them, here we are bound, and science is supreme. But the ends do not exist save as we posit them: they are beyond questions of true and false. 29 Here the extraordinary assassin-motto holds: "Nothing is true, everything is permitted." 30 But, fourthly, we do not need to have an end given us (by God or nature); we have creative power and can make one ourselves. I say "can," for it is at last a question of strength; perhaps some cannot. Zarathustra draws a picture of the history of man's mind; there are three stages--it is in turn a camel, a lion, and a child. The camel carries, bears what is heavy, dutifully submits, originates nothing, endures all things. The lion wants freedom, gets it, does away with all masters, still is not able to create. The child, however, can; it arises in innocence and oblivion of the past, is a new beginning, a first motion, a wheel turning of its own energy; the child plays, and is equal to the play of creation. The camel represents the old morality, useful, but limited in power; the lion the critical, destructive spirit, also useful, but limited in strength; the child positive creation. Man's mind in its historic course passes through these stages; and now it is the age of the child. 31 Fifthly, as to how the mind shall create, what it shall produce, there is in the nature of the case no outside law. It is a matter of choice, of will absolutely, not of will as opposed to reason, for reason makes no deliverances on a supreme question like this [reason is the faculty of reasoning, and proceeds from a starting-point which it presupposes, i.e., finds, but does not create]. In a moral aim, one puts forth one's supreme choice --there is no other basis than this voluntaristic and ζsthetic one. Nietzsche sometimes uses this word, "ζsthetic," so often repugnant to moral thinkers. 32 His meaning becomes clear in illustrations he uses. For example, we commonly take for granted that we should do this and that, since otherwise our life would be in danger. But suppose a man is ready, for the sake of honor or knowledge or some supreme passion, to risk his life or to throw it away, how shall we argue with him, what common premise have we to start from, since we take life as supreme and he something else? Or, again, we often say that this or that is good, because posterity and the preservation of the race depend on it. But this presupposes that we will posterity and the preservation of the race. Suppose that some one does not, the instinct and demand that is so strong in most of us being weak or lacking ( Nietzsche thinks that it is not necessary)--what then? What will reasoning help in such circumstances? 33 Or, supposing that we are all agreed that existence is desirable, what kind of existence shall it be? Some may prefer the greatest possible amount of existence, at least of comfortable, happy existence. Others may prefer the highest type of existence, even if small in amount, or if the comfort and happiness of the mass would have to be sacrificed somewhat to attain it. How is a decision to be reached? There would appear to be a difference of ultimate ideals, last choices. That the welfare of the mass is in itself the more valuable end is a naοvetι which Nietzsche leaves to the English biologists. 34 In truth, there is no value in itself, all values are posited, set, and relative to those who posit them. Instead of a rationale (i.e., rational deduction) of supreme ideals, it is possible only to give a psychology of them--that is, to indicate how as matter of fact they arise: and this is the sixth point. Ideals, says Nietzsche, [though he is speaking here of his own personal ideals, I think he would say that the truth is general] are the anticipatory hopes, i.e., hoped-for satisfactions of our impulses; as surely as we have impulses, so inevitably do they work on our fancy to produce a scheme of what we [or things] should be, to satisfy them--this is what idealizing means. Even the rascal has his ideal, though it may not be edifying to us. 35 Nietzsche does not blink the fact that ideals, and ideals of honest people, may vary, that there is no one of which we can say with logical honesty (men being as they are today) that it is the ideal. Especially at the present are differences rife. 36 Even when men agree in calling certain things good, they differ as to which are better and the best--that is, the order of rank (Rangordnung) is different. 37 The very concepts of things--of health, for instance--differ. To a Schopenhauerian or Buddhist, a strong lusty man, eager for life and power, is not in a state of health at all; while from another point of view, it is the Schopenhauerian or Buddhist, craving for the extinguishment of his individuality, who is sick. 38 It is the final ruling impulse in every case that fixes the ideal, and even gives names to things corresponding to its valuations.

The practical conclusion of all this is that in his own case Nietzsche, who most surely has an ideal, does not make any pretensions of absolute rationality about it and does not propose to force it upon any one else, whether by arms or by logic. He simply says to us, "This is my way; what is yours? The way there is not." In other language, "I am a law only for my own kind, I am no law for all." 39 Indeed, having in mind the native differences and inequalities of men, he thinks it no special distinction to have an ideal that everybody shares with us. An ideal is something in which we body forth our very will and personality; how can we expect that all others will have just the same, unless we are like all the rest and have no distinctive being of our own? 40 As we shall see, particular ideals Nietzsche expects will vary more or less among different classes. The ideal that mankind may have in common can only be very general and one that for many will perhaps seem far away.

All the same, ideals may be recommended, and the possibly universal ones to all. While mankind has no generally recognized goal at present, and to go ahead and lay down moral rules as if it had, is unreason and trickery, recommending a goal is different, for if it pleased mankind, mankind could adopt it and give itself a corresponding moral law of its own pleasure. 41 And despite all Nietzsche's concern for freedom, he is eager to recommend his own ideal--eager and, one might almost say, imperious. The higher meaning of the world's spiritual endeavor, the supreme significance of the striving of the highest minds is, he thinks, to find the thought that will stand over mankind as its star. 42 He enters the lists--here is the practical meaning of his will to power.

Yet, though Nietzsche recognizes this voluntaristic or ζsthetic basis of the moral aim he proposes, we must not be led to think that there is any lack of stringency, whether logical or practical, in the aim when once accepted. All morality, Nietzsche's included, involves law and subordination. We choose the ideal, not the means by which to attain it--these are fixed by the general nature of things. The taste that is voluntary is only the supreme taste, not the lesser ones. If we want a strong physical organism, what we like or dislike at the moment, whether as to exercise or to diet, may count for little--so and so we have got to live. 43 It is the same with a great social ideal: if we will the end, we must will the means, whether they strike the fancy and please us or not. Even a musical melody, remarks Nietzsche, "has laws of logic which our anarchists would cry down as slavery." 44 ProfessorRiehl cites in this connection Goethe's word about "exact fancy," the fancy of the classic artist, of classic art; he says that moral judgments, even taken as ζsthetic, remain absolute demands, whose object is formed by generally valid ideas of value. 45 Nietzsche thinks that connecting morals with art in general means no reproach, I may say in passing. It is true that art has as a rule looked backward, glorifying the past; but in its essential nature it is simply an ideal-building force, a making visible of our innermost hopes and wishes. 46 From this point of view, morality is itself a species of art. But it is a very particular species, since while it starts with a picture, it proceeds to create in flesh and blood, the philosopher-artist taking the lead, the rest of us being fashioned or fashioning ourselves according to the requirements of the ideal projected. So Goethe "Prometheus":

Here sit I, form men After my image." 47

Life comes thus to be very strictly under law, and obedience a part of the nature of most of us. "To the good soldier 'Thou shalt' sounds pleasanter than 'I will.'" 48 And for the men of the future whom Nietzsche anticipates, there will be something a hundredfold more important than how they or others feel at the moment, namely an aim for the sake of which they are willing to suffer everything, run every risk, and sacrifice all (themselves and others)--the great passion. 49

III

And now what is the final aim which Nietzsche proposes? As I have already stated more than once by way of anticipation, it is no other than life, and particularly the highest ranges of life. Man is higher than the animal, and there may be something higher than man, i.e., than man as we ordinarily know him. The instinct for something perfect, or as perfect as the conditions of existence will allow, is, I take it, the bottom instinct, the ruling impulse in Nietzsche. Essentially he was a religious man. Perhaps in the last resort we should not call him a moralist in the ordinary restricted sense of that term. As I read him, deep instincts of reverence preponderate in him, instincts that have their ordinary food and sustenance in the thought of God. But as his scientific conscience forbade him that belief, the instincts were driven to seek other satisfaction and found it (measurably) in the thought of the possibilities of mankind. Very far, indeed, was he, from a Comtean worship of humanity; the mass of men excited little reverence, rather pity or disdain, at best moderate respect for the moderate work they do. But now and then there emerge from the ordinary run of our species extraordinary individuals, and the thought of them, the possibilities they suggested, set his mind on fire. If there be no God, he, as it were, said to himself, may there not still be something beyond man! From our human stock, may not something transcendent arise? It is in the light of such a view that I interpret a remark to the effect that his tendency as a whole was not to morality, and that from an essentially extra-moral way of looking at things he was led to the consideration of morality--from a distance. 50 The distant elevation on which he stood was that essentially of the religious nature. For from this standpoint something great belongs to the fabric of things, something awe-inspiring, something unreckonable, something sovereign and clean above us, and the world and life become inevitably flattened, when the thought of it is lost. 51 It was Nietzsche's experience, and is the secret of the undertone of melancholy that we feel in him. One who knew him intimately (at least for a time) thinks that his history turned on this loss of faith, on "emotion over the death of God," and that the possibility of finding a substitute for the lost God became an animating thought with him. 52 Later, when a readjustment had taken place, Nietzsche uses [makes Zarathustra use] this significant language: "Once, when men looked on the far-stretching sea, they said God; but I teach you to say, Superman." 53 That is, the conceptions are in a way correlative. The future lords of the earth, he says, will "replace God," begetting in those whom they rule a "deep, unconditional confidence." 54 Nietzsche's moral aim starts with a transcendent conception like this. The task of the race is to create these lords or Gods-if you cannot create a God, Zarathustra says, stop talking of one. 55 That is, the morality of Nietzsche is a semi-religious morality. To this extent, he belongs in a different category from Utilitarians and others, who, taking men as they are, simply think of a way in which they may get along pleasantly and profitably together. 56 He rather belongs to the company of those, or of One, who said, "be ye perfect," and set up as the standard the infinite perfection of God. a "Let the future and the furthest be the motive of thy today." "Do I counsel you to love your neighbor, the one nearest you? I counsel you rather to flee the nearest and love the furthest human being." 57 In such sayings the spirit of the man and the final principle of his morality come to light. Man [as he exists] is something to be surpassed: 58 that is his starting-point. It is not a proposition that can be proven, nothing that can be deduced, nothing that can be scientifically established; naοvetιs of that sort he leaves to others: it is simply his choice, the outcome of his ruling impulse, which is to see the great, the transcendent in the world, so far as the conditions of existence allow. b If we do not make such a preliminary choice with him, his practical prescriptions will have little meaning to us.

In a sense, the aim might be called cosmical, i.e., the world is apparently thought of as pressing to a higher realization of its potencies through us in this way. Nietzsche says, "We are buds on one tree--what do we know of what can come out of us in the interests of the tree! . . . No. Beyond 'me' and 'thee'! To feel cosmically!" 59

I have spoken of Nietzsche's instinct for the perfect--how real it was comes out in a variety of minor indirect ways. Zarathustra gives comfort to his guest-disciples in the thought of the little good perfect things already in the world--put them around you, he says, their golden ripeness heals the heart; the perfect teaches hope. 60 Nietzsche knows the charm of the imperfect, but, as already explained, it is in its suggestions, not for itself. 61 Oddly as it may sound in these secular days, he pronounces the love of man "for God's sake" the most superior and elevated sentiment which mankind has hitherto reached--a love of man, without this thought of something beyond that hallows it, being a more or less stupid and brutish thing. 62 "To man my will clings, with chains I bind myself fast to man, because so I am pulled up to the superman: for thither moves my other will." 63 "Grant me from time to time a glimpse of something complete, finished, happy, mighty, triumphant, in which there is still something of fear, a glimpse of a man who justifies mankind, a complementary and redeeming instance, for whose sake we can hold fast our faith in man!" 64 For man as he is is not a happy throw of nature's dice; there is something fundamentally wrong (verfehltes) with him; connecting with the old religious language, Nietzsche says that in place of the sinfulness we must substitute the general ill-constitutedness (Missrathensein) of man. 65 He is tentative material merely; the failures preponderate; broken fragments, ruins (ein Trόmmerfeld) are what we see about us. 66 Hence suffering is Nietzsche's main feeling. 67 We thirst, he says, for great and deep souls, and discover at best a social animal. 68 Only a living habitual sense of perfect things could beget a dissatisfaction like this.

The aim which Nietzsche proposes is different, he thinks, from that of previous moralities. The various moral judgments of the past have been in the interest of "peoples," "races," etc., not of the species man and its utmost development, and indeed of peoples who wished to assert themselves against other peoples, classes who wished to mark themselves off from other classes. Morality has been an instrument for the preservation of a group (of some kind), not for the development of the race. 69 This we have seen in the preceding criticism. Even in Christian morality he finds no exception, since he sees in it an assertion of the interest of the mass as against the class that had ordinarily stood above them, the kingdom of heaven being only an order in which the mass-morality (Heerdenmoral) should rule absolutely, leaving no room for moral conceptions of another order, and no place for another than social type of man. But for the mass to aim at their own good and make their valuations supreme, is not necessarily to raise the type of man; nay, just to the extent this morality dominates and excludes all others, it tends to fix the human type as it now exists and prevent the rise of anything different and higher. Here is the secret of the antagonism, violent at times, which Nietzsche manifests to Christian morality. By its very attractiveness and sweetness, by the very validity it has within a limited area (for he never questions the place of mutual love and help), it seduces us to give it an absolute authority and leads us away from the thought of those higher possibilities of mankind that alone, to his mind, make life greatly worth while. The carrying life to new and [practically] superhuman heights, not security, happiness and comfort for the mass, is Nietzsche's ideal.

IV

The aim is vague and yet already with it Nietzsche has a principle for judging things. With an ultimate value, he estimates other things accordingly. If the highest reach of life is the measure of things, then good is what tends that way, and bad what tends in an opposite direction. There are lines of procedure now, possible actions, feelings, thoughts, institutions, laws that harmonize with movement toward the desired goal-they are then to be furthered; other courses are to be opposed.

Nietzsche calls it a naturalistic view; by this he means that there are no "oughts" or "ought nots" transcending life, but that life itself is the ultimate standard, and that "ought" and "ought not" are fixed by the demands of life 70 --in the last resort, the demands of the highest life. He also has in mind the fact that we are bodies, a certain type of physiological organization, something far more and deeper than our momentary thoughts and feelings, or, for that matter, the whole reign of our conscious life, c and that it is this perduring substratum, the same whether we are awake or asleep, the same more or less in father and son, this actual line of physiological descent, out of which the higher men of the future are to spring--in other words, that we carry in our loins now the superman, that he is no angel from other spheres or bodiless phantasm like the Greek Gods. 71 This is the meaning of the value which Nietzsche gives to the earth, of which we hear so much in Zarathustra. Stay true to the earth, he exclaims, and lead the virtue that has flown away from the earth back to it, back to body and life. 72 Deserting life and wallowing in the thought of some other sort of existence is the supreme disloyalty. 73 To spin the threads of our human life so that they ever become stronger--that is the task. 74 Let us now see how the supreme valuation brings still other detailed valuations in its wake.

First, we have a standard for measuring truth and goodness. These are valuable so far as they serve life, but they are not supreme over life. If there are truths that are unfavorable to life (and we have no guarantee that there may not be such and rather reason to think that there are some--unfavorable at least to the life of most), there is no absolute duty to know them. Some forms of goodness--for instance, the mass ideals of goodness taken absolutely--may work contrary to the highest forms of life, may paralyze the springs of great desires 75 --they are not binding upon all. The hostile, destructive spirit (the Bφse), not love and pity only, has work to do in the world.

Second, we are able to judge the popular ethical notion that the aim of morality is the general welfare, or, as it is sometimes put, the preservation and furthering of the interests of mankind. Preserving, says Nietzsche, but in what, along what linet Furthering, but toward what? Is it the longest possible duration of mankind that is in mind or its greatest possible deanimalization!--for these things may contradict one another. To Nietzsche, I need not say, a line of ascending life is better, even though it comes to an end, than life continuing on the same level, even though it be indefinitely prolonged. 76 "General welfare" is equally ambiguous; or, if it means that the welfare of the mass is the goal to be aimed at as opposed to the evolution of higher types, which may have to be at the expense of the mass, then "general welfare" is a false and antievolutionary principle. 77 Indeed, remembering how man has risen from the animal and higher races from lower, only as superior members of a species got an advantage over the rest and bred more successfully their kind (a higher species thus in time resulting), Nietzsche says that the principle, "the good of the majority is to be preferred to that of individuals," is enough to take mankind in the course of time back to the lowest animality, for it is the reverse principle, "individuals are of more importance than the mass," that has elevated it. 78

Third, we have a measurement of healthy and sickly-health taken as covering body and spirit (things perhaps ultimately not so very different). Whatever Schopenhauer and Christian saints may say from their standpoint, to Nietzsche those who turn away from life and exalt virtues antithetical to life are sick, and they rank lower, are less desirable members of the species, on this account. It is the sound and strong who keep alive our confidence in life--and their right to be, the prerogative of the bell with full tone, is a thousandfold greater than the right of the discordant and broken; the latter undermine life and faith in life--they, and not the Bφsen and "robber-animals," are man's greatest danger. 79

Fourth, we can now measure egoism and altruism from a standpoint superior to either. Dr. Dolson, perhaps the earliest philosophical student of Nietzsche in America, says that "the one name that can be given" to his system "without qualification is egoism"; but she straightway begins to make qualifications-and really they are most necessary. 80 For all depends on who or what the ego is. The egoism of one who represents the rising tide of life is justified, though only in those who reach the highest crest is it completely justified, all the rest having their ends more or less beyond themselves. The egoism of the sickly and the degenerate, on the other hand, is not justified, it is rather something pitiful and revolting. 81 In a similar way altruism is justified so far as there are (or may be) others better than ourselves; altruism under these conditions is justified, even if carried to the point of sacrifice. But altruism is not justified, when the "others" are not worth preserving and belong to those whose reason for existence has ceased to be (if it ever was). d

Fifth, life being essentially a process, a series of actions, a successive accumulation and expenditure of force, an adverse judgment is necessarily involved on viewing anything that is static, like pleasure or happiness, as an end. Life is not a means to enjoyment (Genuss). The noble soul does not wish to enjoy, save as it gives enjoyment. 82 Whether it be pleasure or happiness or Carlyle's "blessedness" or peace of mind or good conscience, any and all are but incidents by the way. 83 We are here rather to develop a certain kind and way of acting, and move toward a certain end; it is this, and not any momentary state or how we feel, that is the critical thing. It seems to be taken for granted in many quarters that pleasure of some kind (gross or refined) must be the final end of every act, moral action only differing in that it seeks lasting pleasure, or the greatest or the highest pleasure, or others' pleasure as well as our own; that there is no raison d'κtre for an action save in the agreeable feeling it gives somewhere. e Nietzsche had argued more or less in this way in his purely critical period, but he has now come to give pleasure an entirely subordinate place. 84 He thinks indeed that it is the commoner sort of men who especially seek pleasure, the greater sort wishing above all to expend their force, more or less indifferent to pleasure and pain calculations. 85 He regards marked emphasis on pleasure and particularly craving for enjoyment as "symptomatic": it implies people who lack these things--a more or less suffering and unhappy class. 86 "Utility and enjoyment" are really "slave" theories of life, i.e., of those who are overburdened and want relief from their hard lot. 87 The strong man is not after happiness--but he acts, acts successfully, and in that action is happiness: happiness comes without his seeking it-it is comes, not dux of his virtue. 88 This does not mean contempt of happiness--Nietzsche knows its place as an adjunct in life. 89 He even gives to utilitarianism a certain relative validity--it is the natural doctrine of the great working mass of men, and of those who take their standpoint. 90 But he absolutely refuses to regard happiness (sensation of any kind) as the final measure of what is desirable, and has a kind of contempt for "green pastures and quiet waters" felicity, when made a universal ideal; 91 he even thinks that the "salvation of the soul" is a better aim and a fuller conception than the happiness which moralists talk about, since it covers the whole willing, creating, feeling self and not merely a secondary accompanying phenomenon like happiness. 92 f

Sixth, Nietzsche's final principle involves judgment on the idea sometime advanced that we are to develop all the impulses of our nature. "Develope all thy powers? but that means: develope anarchy! Go to pieces!" 93 g A ruling principle, a master impulse is necessary, something to bring all the rest of our being into order, and that is what a final aim like Nietzsche's does. h

And now I come to a paradox, Nietzsche makes life supreme and yet honors on occasion those who risk their life or even sacrifice it. Indeed, he says in general that one should part with life as Ulysses did from Nausicaa--more blessing it than in love with it. 94 Is this inconsistent? Let us see. What is life (as he understands it)? Heaped-up force which in turn expends itself, a continuous process of this sort. The acting, expending is the final thing, and doing this in a certain way, for a certain end, is to his mind the moral. But suppose such action puts one's existence in peril, what then? If persisted in, is life thereby despised? In a sense it certainly is--for we no longer set a supreme value on continued existence. If we care for life in that sense above all else we may go far, but shall not actually put it in jeopardy--simple prudence will hold us back. And yet we find Nietzsche on occasion despising prudence. He even honors a strong sinner more than one who is held back by motives of this sort. 95 Those he counts great are always those who can transcend them. "I love him," says Zarathustra, "whose soul is prodigal," who "will not save himself." "What matters long life! What warrior wishes to be spared!" "Myself I sacrifice unto my love, and my neighbors as myself." 96 Nietzsche goes so far [he is careless of formal consistency] as to say, "much is more highly prized by the living being than life itself"; and again, "men have become so pitiable that even the philosophers do not notice the deep contempt with which antiquity and the middle ages treated this 'self-evident value of values, life.'" 97 Have we then a contradiction? Verbally, yes; but not really in thought. The fact is that "life" may be taken in two senses: on the one hand it may mean the inner active process already described, on the other, something static and external, mere existence. Nietzsche implies the two meanings and puts the matter in a nutshell, when he says that to risk life is not to despise it, but rather to lift it to a higher potency. 98 i The supreme act of life (in one sense) may be to lose it (in another). Even the life of the species, in the sense of its mere continued existence, is not the end to Nietzsche. 99 The great man, the genius, the superman, the final raisan d'être of the species, is himself a prodigal (Verschwender)--that he spends himself is his greatness; the instinct of self-preservation is suspended in him, the mighty urge of the forces streaming out through him forbidding every such care and precaution. 100

V

A word as to the objectivity of Nietzsche's standard. He is sometimes said to give us only a subjective arbitrary moraity, 101 being compared to the Greek Sophists who denied all objective norms. The element of truth in such a view we have already seen--all morality is, according to him, the result of subjective demand somewhere; but in another way it contains more error than truth. Though ends are set by the intelligent will have no existence apart from it, the particular end which Nietzsche himself chooses is something that belongs to the realm nature itself, and, once turned into an end, it becomes as exacting, and as independent of individual caprice or individual welfare in its requirements, the natural law itself could be. j An American writer from whom many seem to get their ideas of Nietzsche, but who unfortunately more or less vulgarizes him, says that completely rejecting "all fixed codes of morality," he leaves a man to "judge a given action solely by its effects upon his own welfare, his own desire or will to live, and that of his children after him." 102 There could hardly be a greater misunderstanding. For what has the ascending life of humanity necessarily to do with any chance individual's personal welfare, or that of his children, unless indeed they are a part of that ascending life, in which case their welfare is a matter not so much of personal, of general moment? This writer says, " Nietzsche offers the gospel of prudent and intelligent selfishness, of absolute and utter individualism." 103 But Nietzsche expressly declares, "my philosophy aims at an order of rank, not at an individualistic morality" ; 104 he declares the morals of then individual happiness, it is not science and not wisdom, but mere prudence mixed with stupidity; 105 he calls it the most immodest of arrière-pensées to measure good and evil from the standpoint of our personal selves. 106 Particularly if a man belongs to the descending line of life, as it a horror in Nietzsche's eyes when he says, "all for myself." 107 Ascending life and the highest possible ascent being the measure of things, 108 individuals are themselves good and bad as they belong to it or no--at least as they further or retard it.

The standard is of such a nature that it is independent of personal feeling--or even opinion. Can one think, Nietzsche asks, of a madder extravagance or vanity than to judge the worth of existence by agreeable or disagreeable feelings? 109 One is not well because he feels so, any more than one is "guilty," "sinful" because he feels so--witches not only were believed to be guilty, but they thought themselves so. 110 By this is meant that as health is a matter of objective physiological measurement, so is life, advancing life, and the highest life. 111 The value of a "thou oughtst" is independent of opinion about it, as certainly as the value of a medical prescription is independent of whether one thinks scientifically, or like an old woman, about medicine. 112 The greatest sincerity of conviction avails nothing; on the other hand, decisive and valuable actions may be done without assurance of conscience. 113 It is plain from utterances like these that Nietzsche thinks that in his standard of value he has something absolutely objective. It is even independent of our chance affirmation of it. To call an action good, he derisively exclaims, because our conscience says yes to it! It is as if a work of art became beautiful because it pleased the artist! As if the value of music were determined by our enjoyment of it, or the enjoyment of the composer! 114 All this subjective way of judging things that have really a law and logic of their own is abhorrent to Nietzsche. 115 Life is something objective to him; being at bottom an organization of power, the worth of any particular specimen depends upon how much power it incorporates, and upon how high the level is to which the power attains. 116 The whole range of feeling, even of consciousness, is more or less accidental in relation to it. Feeling makes nothing good, and consciousness is a means of life, more or less a help, too much of it a hindrance, 117 but never a basic thing in life--he holds to the old Schopenhauerian view in this respect, which has points of contact with what is called the "instrumental" view now. Nietzsche himself speaks of the necessity of an objective valuation. 118 He believes that he has an objective value. He is in reality the opposite, as Professor Simmel has remarked, of the Greek Sophists or of a thinker like Max Stirner in recent times, for whom the only reality is the individual subject, each subject judging according to its own personal standpoint; in Stirner, not in Nietzsche, is the position of the Sophists revived.

CHAPTER XXV MORAL CONSTRUCTION (CONT.). THE MORAL AIM AND WILL TO POWER I "Will to power" is primarily with Nietzsche an analysis of reality--as we have seen in Chapter XV, he finds an impulse of this description at the base of man's being, and then proceeds to construe life and the world at large in terms of it. It is fundamentally a psychological and cosmological, not ethical doctrine. So and so man and the world are made, here lies the bottom spring (or springs)--such is the meaning of it. 1

As matter of fact, Nietzsche was not laudatory of power in his early days a nor was he unqualifiedly so in his second period, and some kinds of power did not have his admiration even in the last period.

Indeed, power in and of itself was never a standard to Nietzsche--and since there is so much misconception on this point, it may be well to bring out the fact clearly at the outset, and then later indicate the connection between power, or will to it, and the general ethical aim which he proposes, as stated in the last chapter. 2

II

Use is made by some 3 of an incident in Nietzsche's early life, when he was caught out in a thunderstorm and felt, as he said, an incomparable elevation in witnessing the lightning, the tempest, the hail--free, non-ethical forces, pure will untroubled by the intellect. 4 It was an experience such as any reflecting student, harassed in various ways, might have, and is essentially Schopenhauerian in the manner in which it is described. But though he felt the glory of nature's life, he did not set up nature as a model, then or at any time. In a striking passage in one of his later books, Beyond Good and Evil, he speaks of the impossibility of living "according to nature." Nature, he says, is wasteful, indifferent, without purpose or consideration, pity or justice, at once fearful, desert-like, and uncertain, indifference itself being power--one recalls Matthew Arnold's sonnet "In Harmony with Nature." The Stoics really put their moral ideal into nature--and then proceeded to find it natural! 5 Indeed, Nietzsche dissents from the whole conception, so common in our day, of morality and life as consisting in adjustment to external conditions. To be determined by our environment, rather than to shape it more or less ourselves, is to him a sign of decadence. 6 Much that looks like a simple effect of environment is, he urges, really the result of an active adaptation from within--exactly the same circumstances being treated in different ways (according to the nature of the inner impulse). 7 He criticises Spencer and Darwin for overvaluing outer conditions 8 and would probably have agreed with William James against John Fiske and Grant Allen in their famous controversy about "Great Men" some years ago. d A genius, he says, is not explained by the conditions of his rise, 9 and he counts it one of the weaknesses of modern life that we no longer know how to act, and can only react on incitement from without--examples being historians, critics, analyzers, interpreters, observers, collectors, readers, and scientific men in general, i.e., all who merely note what is and do not create. 10 It is from nowhere save from within and from the innermost impulses of our nature that Nietzsche takes his moral ideal.

Yes, so strong is the idealizing tendency with him that he refuses even to take the dominating morality of our time as the ideal of morality. At present the average man, the social man, is in the foreground and everything is estimated from the standpoint of his interests, to the prejudice of rarer, higher individuals who more or less stand apart; and if, says Nietzsche, we make this reality over into a morality we have as the result that the average are of more value than the exceptions--something against which he protests with the whole energy of his nature, declaring, "Against formulating reality into a morality I rebel." 11 Hence a remark, which shows again how little nature and natural tendencies are a norm to him: "I find the 'cruelty of nature,' of which so much is said, in another place: she is cruel to her fortunate children ( Glückskinder), she spares and protects les humbles." 12

That Nietzsche's ideal was not one of mere power (of whatever kind), I shall now show by a number of citations--all from the writings of his middle and later period, when the doctrine of the will to power was taking shape in his mind. We still, he says, fall on our knees before force after the old slavefashion, but if we ask how far force deserves to be revered we can only answer, to the extent reason blends with it--we must ask how far it is ruled by something higher and serves it as its instrument and means. 13 You stronger and haughty minds, he exclaims, grant us only one thing: lay no new burdens on us, but take some of our burdens on yourselves, as becomes the stronger! 14 He indicates plainly enough that tyrants of the ordinary sort are odious to him--whether in the political or intellectual realm. 15 He calls it one of the limitations of great men that they are too apt to make the lesser kind stupid. 16 We may seek to possess things, but not men; authority so as to command others is not desirable. 17 He is against the tyranny of even true opinions--as if they alone should exist! 18 It is the people with "absolute truth" who burn Jews and heretics and good books, and root out entire cultures, as in Peru and Mexico --fanatical love of power leading them on. 19 The same thing leads men of today to do all kinds of shady things to get rich. 20 "Often slime sits on the throne and the throne on slime." 21 Mistaken instincts for power, too, are behind the philosopher's will for a system--really a will, Nietzsche thinks, to make one's self more stupid than one is, "stronger, simpler, more imperious, ruder, more tyrannical." 22 Will to power lies behind religious domination: priests became the ruling class in later Israel; Israel itself, through Christianity, has become a ruling influence in our Western world--such domination is objectionable to Nietzsche. 23 The people, i.e., the mass, are coming to power in modern states--Nietzsche opposes the tendency. 24 Occasionally violent men take advantage of popular disorders to put themselves and their arbitrary will through; but the nobility he wishes to see will be enemies both of the lustful populace and of these upstarts ( Gewalt-Herren). 25 Of the Germany of today, he remarks, "It costs dear to come to power: power makes stupid (verdummi);" 26 he means that the interests of culture suffer from this preoccupation with external matters. Again, "Can one interest oneself in the German Empire? Where is the new thought? . . . To rule and help the highest thought to victory--that is the only thing that could interest me in Germany." 27 Of a certain statesman ( Bismarck, presumably), he says, "Strong. Strong. Strong and mad! Not great!" 28 He has misgivings about the book, Will to Power, he is preparing, wishing that it could be written in French, so as not to have the appearance of giving countenance to German imperial aspirations. 29 Indeed, he becomes almost contemptuous: "Power is tiresome (langweilig)--witness the Empire."! 30

All this is not taken into account by those--and they are a host, all the way from college presidents down to penny-aliners in the newspapers--who think that Nietzsche proclaims an indiscriminate "gospel of might," having particularly in mind might of the "wild beast" type; 31 and we shall have to proceed with a little care in connecting his ethical end, as defined in the previous chapter, with will to power. In a way the matter was problematical to him. He makes a note, "Rule! Force my type on others? Horrible (grä)! Is not my happiness just in contemplating a variety of types! Problem." 32 Indeed, he writes to a friend about his proposed book, Will to Power, "I have not gone beyond tentatives, introductions, promises of all sorts. . . . It has been, all in all, a torture, and I have no more courage to think about it. In ten years I shall do better." 33 If Nietzsche had lived even half so long, he might have produced something that would have made his views quite clear; as it is, we have to do the work of clarification more or less ourselves.

III

As nearly as I can make out, the logic of his procedure was something like this:--The world at bottom is a complex of forces, and each pushes itself as far as it can--each on its inner side is a will to power. There is no law over these forces restraining them, but they are held in check by one another. Sometimes order may come from a simple balancing. But some may be stronger than others: there are different levels or gradations of force. A higher level may make the lower subject. What we call the organic world masters thus to a certain extent the inorganic, and the higher organic the lower. Force becomes more sublimated, spiritual. Man, the weakest thing in nature from one point of view, controls through intelligence. 34 He is after power, like every other energy in nature, but he has this peculiar means. The single individual's weakness, too, leads him to combine with others, groups arise, and morality, the law of group-life, becomes as vital to him as intelligence--it is a means to power, just as intelligence is. 35 And group-life once attained, and the existence of the species becoming tolerably secure, the underlying urge of force may push to higher levels still and use the group itself as a means. It is the peculiar mark of Nietzsche's ethical thinking that he conceives an end for man beyond society. Society is a form of human existence, but not the highest form. Great individuals spring from society, but they rise above it--the social individual is not the highest type. 36 The lonely, the solitary, those whose occupations and interests are beyond the sympathy and perhaps even the comprehension of most of us, who are half like Epicurean Gods apart from the world and move like stars in orbits of their own--they are the real end of humanity, they alone are properly ends in themselves, mankind existing for them, not they for mankind, save as from afar they shine upon us, and lift our hearts. Yet the driving force of the whole process from humblest plant to possible superman is will to power, will not to be, but to be more, each level putting itself on top of what lies beneath it, and being a new level only as it does so--so that if the plant had not had a will to dominate, it would never have emerged from the lower inorganic realm, if the animal had not had the will to dominate, it would never have differentiated itself from the plant, if man had not had the will to dominate and put plants and animals under his feet, he would never have become what he distinctively is; and if somewhere among men now, there is not the will to dominate over other men, to use the rank and file as means, instruments to ends beyond them, there can never be a higher order of mankind or superman. In other words, will to power is the driving force in the whole scheme of cosmic evolution, and if there is to be any further advance, will to power must still be the inner impulsion.

If then, as stated in the preceding chapter, life and the highest possible ascent of life is Nietzsche's moral aim, will to power turns out to be vitally related to it--is indeed but a closer and more interior determination or definition of it. One might even say that will to power itself sets the moral aim which Nietzsche proposes--only instead of working blindly and instinctively, it now deliberately formulates what it desires. "Life is to me instinct for growth, for permanence, for the amassing of force, for power." 37 is true that the feeling of power and for power may be slight in some; it may be almost non-existent in expiring forms of life; all the same, it is, as Nietzsche conceives things, the essence of the living process, and only as it increases, can there be more and higher life. In a word, if life and the highest reach of life are the aim, here is the pulse of the machine, and this it is that must be quickened.

Nietzsche accordingly says:

"Formula of our happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a mark to aim at (Ziel).

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

"What is bad (schlecht)? All that comes from weakness.

"What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing-that an obstacle is overcome.

"Not contentment, but more power; not peace, but war; not virtue, but ability (Tüeit)--virtue in Renaissance style, virtùtue free from moralic acid." 38

But while power is the end, e and but a concrete inner rendering of life itself, it is plainly power on the human level and of the human sort that Nietzsche has in mind--not power of any and every description. He does not set up as a standard the power of physical nature, or that of tyrants, or of priests or of the mass or of an empire, but power such as essentially belongs to the evolution of the human type--the final ideal being the full and perfect efflorescence of that type, the domination in the world of men and things of just that. If mere abstract power were the ideal, then since the brute forces of the universe may sometime get the better of life, that would be an ideal consummation; or, since the weak by combination may (and actually do in our modern democratic world) make themselves masters of the strong, then that is an end to be desired-any chance force or set of forces that happened to get on top at any time would represent the desired end. Indeed, if any de facto might makes right, a question would arise as to the sense of setting up power as an ideal at all, since it effectuates itself anyway--there being no situation in the world that is not statable as the result of the action and interaction of forces, in which some get the upper hand. But Nietzsche is not bête, and so far as he speaks of power as a desirable end for man he means just a power that does not necessarily effectuate itself, that has to be striven for and may or may not be attained--it is emphatically a power that requires a will to power.

IV Even so, however, it may be said that power is a vague conception--too much so to give us any definite guidance in acting or judging of things. Let us see then what becomes of it in Nietzsche's hands--how he uses it.

In the first place we notice that in the background of his mind there is a certain sense, for all said and done, of the insecurity of life. Mankind is more or less to him, as to Matthew Arnold, "a feeble wavering line." Life is not an assured gift, it rests on effort, toil, on the will to live--so that there is sense in making it an ideal, and in exalting ideals of power. Schopenhauer and the Buddhists actually propose to weaken the will to live. Certain types of Christianity practically tend the same way. Nietzsche feels that there is need of a fortifying doctrine. It is perhaps something to make life and power in all their vagueness an end, as against non-life.

But more than this, the construing life as will to power enables him to judge between different types of life--those animated by less will to power ranking lower than those with full will to power: the descending and ascending lines of life are not of equal value. Indeed, on a general basis of this sort he conceives of the possibility of a properly scientific ethics arising, which should stand to past morals something as chemistry does to alchemy. Knowledge being scientific, as it can apply number and measure, an attempt is in order to see if a scientific order of values cannot be built "on a number and measure scale of force," ascent in the scale signifying increase of value, descent diminution of value--all other estimations being prejudices, naïvetés, misunderstandings. He is aware that we cannot carry out the program as yet, that we must have recourse to physiology and medicine, to sociology and psychology, and that these sciences are not yet developed enough to give us with confidence the data we need. 39 All the same he throws out the general idea, and we find him following it in a rough approximate way in appraising not only differing types of men, but even differing moralities. For example:

(1) He rates great individuals differently from the ordinary social man, because they can more or less stand alone, have greater strength. Gregarious creatures are, as a rule, individually weak--that is why they combine; they crave power (as everything in the world does), but they get it in this way. In packs, herds, communities they are strong. But the leaders of the flock and individuals of the solitary type (like the lion and the eagle among animals) have resources in themselves-they have strength and to spare, can give help instead of needing it, or can prey on others and take them captive. As the stronger, they stand higher in Nietzsche's scale of value. Of course, no independence is absolute and Nietzsche is well aware of it; still beings are graded in his eyes according as they are more or less capable of it. 40

(2) Moralities rank differently according as they spring from strength or weakness (for, aside from the morality involved in any kind of social existence, there are, according to Nietzsche, special moralities, bound up with the conditions of existence of particular peoples or social classes). He finds, for instance, a difference of tone, of emphasis, even of special valuations, in the moralities of the ruler and subject classes in the past--this we have already seen. And why is the "mastermorality" higher than the "slave-morality"? Because it comes from strength, formulates the conditions of life of the stronger class. The sense of overflowing power runs through it, while the slave-morality is correlated with weakness and the sense of need. If we look through the circle of virtues and excellences put in the first rank by each class--on the one hand, independence, proud self-respect, honor only for equals with at best condescending care or pity for the rest, masterfulness and daring of all sorts, contempt of danger, also capacity for otium, taste for useless knowledge and accomplishments; on the other hand, helpfulness, sympathy, modesty, obedience, patience, humility, industry, prudence, invention, and whatever intellectual virtues serve the practical needs of life--we see that the one set of virtues and excellences is as naturally the idealism of an aristocratic class, full of the pride and abounding vigor of life, as the other is that of the hard-pressed, much-suffering masses of men. And the aristocratic morality ranks higher just because it comes from the higher, i.e., stronger, type of men.

Nietzsche comments on a matter that is of interest in this connection and it may be well to take it up at this point. How shall we explain the historical antagonism of morality to will to power! Perhaps there is no more prevalent notion than that of a contrast between power and right. Now Nietzsche admits a certain relative justification for the common attitude. Power and the will to it are sometimes dangerous (particularly certain crude forms of it), and have to be held in check. 41 f And yet he finds a certain speciousness in the antagonism when stated broadly, as it usually is. "Morality" is not so much antithetical to will to power, as a concealed form of it--that is, behind it lies the will to power of the mass, or old-time subject-class. Considering itself as the equivalent of the group (it does of course compose the majority of it) the mass demands (and commands--this an essential feature in any morality) that all individuals shall serve the group, shall be good according to its understanding of the term and avoid evil as it conceives it, that none shall have separate standards, personal aims, or will to power on their own account--it fears any one who takes things into his own hands and opposes him (naturally loving those who love it, and do its will). But this is only saying that the mass wishes to prevail (have supreme power), prevail with its morality and by its morality--for it is not merely a question of physical force. And how far the instincts and desires of the mass have prevailed is indicated in the very fact that makes the starting--point of this paragraph--they have actually succeeded in identifying morality with their morality and have made the idea go into current thought and speech that morality and power are antithetical things. But the power to which "morality" is antithetical is only the power of strong men who make their own laws of conduct (persons proper); morality itself is will to power--only it is the will of the weaker sort of men and of a sort, which takes easily, as the weaker, to deception (conscious or unconscious). In other words, the historical antagonism of morality to will to power roots itself in the antagonism of the mass to higher individuals, of the average to the exceptions, of the weak to the strong. Occasionally Nietzsche turns the tables on morality, saying that it is itself unmoral--meaning according to its own specious antithesis of morality to will to power; for it is itself an assertion of will to power. 42

In fact, he finds will to power in varying degrees practically everywhere--though it assumes different forms and sometimes hides itself. It often exists in the sickly as truly as in the well-none can surpass, for instance, a feeble, sickly woman in refined ways of ruling, oppressing, tyrannizing. 43 Indeed, so many and such varying wills to power are described by Nietzsche that one is sometimes led to ask whether power and will to power make any kind of a standard to him. As he reads history and particularly modern history, the instinct for power of the mass has actually triumphed over great individuals (or those who might have been such)--a result so deplorable and pitiful in his eyes that one might parody his state of mind by saying that his appeal is to "come to the help of the mighty against the weak"! --and yet a result, to which as a triumph of power his own principles would seem to oblige him to assent. Our perplexity and confusion are only resolved (so far as they are resolved g ) as we remember that there are different grades or levels of power to his mind, and above all that he is always thinking of the individual specimen of humanity, the type. The mass, by combining, undoubtedly make themselves stronger than the "strong," but they are none the less poorer, feebler specimens of our kind. 44 h

(3) Two or three further instances of Nietzsche's fixing rank according to power may be cited. The morality of men like Heraclitus and Plato is something very different from the morality of subjection such as is practised by the ordinary members of society. It is the morality of those who would naturally have ruled in society, but who in a time of change and dissolution can only rule themselves. 45 The ranking in this case is indeed hardly different from that which most of us would instinctively make. Our ordinary judgments, too, of vanity, hypocrisy, and mere prudence seem to rest on the basis of a standard like Nietzsche's. Why do we look down on a vain person! Because he wants to please, to be what others would like, in this showing a lack of original creative force--he is "empty." We judge an unreal, hypocritical person in the same way--the contemptible thing about him is his exceeding deference to the standards of others. So the typically prudent person is not set on high, because something is lacking in him--the abounding energy that sometimes makes one headlong, frank, defiant to one's cost. On the other hand, love and unselfishness suggest one who overflows in power, and the very counting of costs that ranks low, when it is a dictate of prudence, wins an altogether different estimation when a great love, e.g., love for the community, lies back of it. 46

Nietzsche appears to have had in mind a systematic classification of men and things according to the following schema:

"What springs from strength. What springs from weakness. And whence have we sprung? The great choice." 47

Though he never accomplished the classification, it has been attempted in a most interesting way by Professor Richter, who makes a survey and hypothetical valuation of varying religions, philosophies, moralities, types of art, personalities, and cultures, from this point of view. 48

v But now let us attend a little more closely to what Nietzsche means by power. He makes no formal definition of it, i and does not attempt to say what is its final metaphysical nature. j He appears to take the concept simply as he finds it in common use--the essential element being ascendency, effectual superiority of some sort. By giving it an inner turn, taking it practically as will to power, he indicates that it is not anything static that he has in mind, but a principle of movement and progress (or at least change). The implication is that there is no result that does not tend to be transcended, perhaps destroyed. "Whatever I create and however much I love it, I have soon to be hostile to it," says Zarathustra. 49 Power, at least will to power, is eternally avid. k Hence successive grades or levels of power, a Rangordnung. It is from inattention to this that Nietzsche is much misconceived--as if "power" must always be on a physical level! Emerson speaks of a "scale of powers;" 50 Nietzsche's idea is the same. Emerson advances the paradoxical idea that it is "not talent but sensibility which is the best," and Nietzsche finds power in things which are often contrasted with it. But the higher sorts of power, though so different from the lower that they seem antithetical and a part of another order of reality, are really extensions, refinements, spiritualizations of the lower sorts, and have the same essential character. l They too give predominance, ascendency, though, in other ways, by different means. Indeed, it would seem to go along with the general view that the refinements, spiritualizations of power should be just intensifications of it--since only on this basis can their ascendency over the grosser forms be explained. m

Nietzsche gives us no set scale of powers, and I can only offer more or less vague and scattering illustrations of the general idea that appears to be in his mind. First, he recognizes power on the physical or rather animal level. 51 He does this so frankly that he has given great offense. Who has not heard of the "blond beast roving greedily after prey and victory," whom he is supposed to celebrate? Indeed, "blond beast," "superman," and other striking phrases have become catchwords, most of those who use them having scarcely an idea of what Nietzsche meant by them. As a matter of fact, the phrase "blond beast" occurs just twice, so far as I remember, in Nietzsche's sixteen-volumed works--the important passage being § 11 of the First Essay of Genealogy of Morals, the other, which puts the phrase in quotation marks, being § 2 of a chapter of the later Twilight of the Idols, entitled "The 'Improvers' of Mankind." 52 The connection in which the phrase stands in the principal passage is something like this:--Nietzsche is continuing his earlier discussions of the natural history of morals (in essentially the same spirit, I may say, as our English and American anthropologists and sociologists, though perhaps in a finer, more intimate, or at least more venturesome way), and now is giving his view of the contrasted types of morality which conquering and subject classes naturally develope. By way of illustration he draws a more or less imaginative picture of the earliest Aryan races as they from time to time descended on the aboriginal inhabitants of Europe, and, with all manner of violence, reduced them to subjection. 53 Whether Hellenic, Roman, Germanic, Scandinavian, these marauding tribes were of a common fair or blond type (in this Nietzsche simply follows the prevailing anthropological view); to quote his words, "at the basis of all these superior races, the robber-animal is not to be mistaken, the splendid blond beast roving greedily after prey and victory." It is simply a pictorial, but perhaps for all that quite exact description of our distant Aryan forefathers. In the other passage, superior (vornehme) Germans of the early Middle Ages are spoken of as fine examples of the "blond beast."

Undoubtedly Nietzsche in a certain sense "celebrates" these conquering Aryans. Many of us too are proud of our descent from them, though Nietzsche undermines our feeling somewhat by suggesting that the blood of most of us is probably much mixed. Relatively to those whom they conquered they were the more vigorous stock and had the higher promise of life--even supposing that the subjected populations were more industrious, more peaceful, more moral (in the sense in which morality stands for sympathy and mutual help). Overflowing vitality is the condition of all that is really excellent in Nietzsche's estimation. Not in lessening or depressing this, but in refining and spiritualizing it is the way of progress. But it does not follow that those in whom vitality has risen to higher and finer forms shall make the "blond beast" (in his early form) their model and shall go back to marauding and killing as our fathers did. We may indeed do it on occasion, or something like it--modern European states are doing it in their colonial ventures, 54 though even so the work might be done in a finer and less bungling manner. But in general it is no more necessary that power shall always remain on the animal level than that a grown-up man shall repeat the exuberances of his youth, and it is gratuitious to imagine that Nietzsche proposes any such thing. All the same, this seems to be the ordinary interpretation of Nietzsche, and it is sometimes shared by those from whom one expects more discriminating judgments--professional scholars and philosophers. n Among the few to discriminate are Professor Riehl, Professor René Berthelot, and Professor Frank Thilly. o While as against weakness, stagnation, or degeneration, with whatever accompaniment of refined feelings and peaceful manners, the "blond beast," the primitive Aryan, was the better man and had more promise for the race, this is not true when the contrast is with a higher, more spiritual development of the same forces that were in him. Emerson speaks in the same spirit, when he says, "In politics and in trade, bruisers and pirates are of better promise than talkers and clerks"; and again, "In a good lord there must first be a good animal, at least to the extent of yielding the incomparable advantage of animal spirits." p "Most valuations are relative, some things are better than other things (though still other things may be better than these)--and there is no need, nor is it correct, to attribute absolute valuations at this particular point to Nietzsche. q The extent to which Nietzsche attached finer and higher meanings to power than mere brute force will appear as I go on.

But before doing so a word should be said as to what Nietzsche regards as the democratic misunderstanding of will to power, namely the identification of it with ambition, love of glory. Napoleon, Cæsar, Alexander are often cited as instances --as if, says Nietzsche, just these men were not despisers of glory. 55 Glory is, of course, honor in the eyes of others, it is distinctively a craving of the social man (i.e., of one who is not sufficient unto himself); the desire for it is akin to vanity and springs from weakness. 56 But it was not the notice of others that these men sought--power itself was what they were after and this is one of the reasons why they rank so high. He also criticises the view of Helvetius that one strives for power in order to get the pleasures that are at the command of the powerful 57 --this, I might say, as many of our wealthy (or becomingwealthy) class in America do, enjoyments, luxuries, comfort being in the background of their mind. But this is to confuse the strong man with enjoyment-seekers--what such an one really wishes is to put forth his power, not to eat sweets, have country houses, live softly, and so on. 58 As Nietzsche conceives aristocracy, even the idea of it scarcely exists in America.

Nor is Nietzsche's "strong man" a swashbuckler. That this is not what he means is implied in a remark he makes (perhaps unjustly) about present-day Germans. They think, he says, "that force must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then they subject themselves gladly and admiringly. . . . That there is force in mildness and quietness they do not readily believe. They miss force in Goethe and think that Beethoven has more; and in this they err." 59 Again he says, "When one sits well on a horse he steals an enemy's courage and an onlooker's heart--why wilt thou still attack? Sit like a conquering one!" 60 Moreover, power by no means necessarily intimidates, he thinks, and when punishment is attempted with this sole end in view it is often a sign that real power is lacking--a sign of doubt of one's power. Indeed, Nietzsche's idea of a natural lord of men is often not of an oppressor at all, but of one who brings relief, benefit. 61 He is one "who can lead a cause, carry out a resolve, be loyal to an idea, hold fast a woman, punish and overthrow a rascal--a man who has his anger and his sword and to whom the weak and suffering and oppressed, and even animals gladly turn and naturally belong." 62 His thought of the future is that the European masses who are now being mixed, averaged, democratized, will sooner or later need a strong man as they need their daily bread. 63 M. Faguet overlooks this side of the matter when he represents Nietzsche as teaching that the higher class are to hold down the mass and keep them at their tasks by force. 64 The summit of power, in his conception, is just in making that cruder sort of power unnecessary. If we use violence against another, we may of course subject him, but we do not get his heart--and therefore our power over him is so far incomplete. 65 It reminds one ofwhat Lorenzo de' Medici said after foiling the Pitti conspiracy against his house, "He only knows how to conquer, who knows how to forgive." 66

Indeed, as we have already seen, power takes to Nietzsche's mind a new turn in the human world in general. Man passes as the strongest animal--but why? Because, Nietzsche answers, he is the cunningest. Intelligence is power along the human line of evolution. In the progress of mankind, ever less physical force is necessary; as time goes on, we wisely let machines work, man becomes stronger and more spiritual. 67 Once in speaking of the greatest events and the greatest thoughts, he corrects himself: "but the greatest thoughts are the greatest events." 68 He even allows Zarathustra to say, "thoughts that come with the feet of doves rule the world," and he gives as an instance the thought of good and evil: Zarathustra had seen many lands and peoples and had found no greater power on earth than this category. 69 For what is thinking or knowing? At bottom and in its most commonplace form, it is to Nietzsche a kind of grasping of things to the end of getting control over them, making an idea and orderly scheme of them to the end of control--the senses, memory, all develope in this way: behind the whole process is the instinct for power. Philosophy (as distinguished from ordinary thinking) is a more sublimated expression of the same instinct; and it is because the philosopher wants the best conditions for expanding his force and reaching a maximum of power, that he renounces on occasion the delights of other men, such as home, children, family-ties, even verging towards ascetic ideas. 70 And the difference between the mere skeptic or critic or historian in philosophy and real philosophers, i.e., constructive, creative thinkers, is a difference in power. The former can think to the extent of doubting or analyzing or describing but are incapable of more, while the latter are capable and from the fullness and overflow of their energy do creative work. 71 Equally with the robber, the barbarian, and adventurer is the philosophic innovator after power, only it is the supreme kind of power not the lesser. 72 Nietzsche speaks of the calling of the philosopher as a kingly one; he cites Alcuin the Anglo-Saxon's definition of it, prava corrigere et recta corroborare et sancta sublimare (to correct what is wicked, to strengthen what is right, and to lift what is sacred on high). 73 There is something of the Cæsar in the philosopher's nature--Nietzsche speaks of the "Cæsarian trainer and strong man of culture"; and he thinks that the type of philosopher needed in the future will be bred in a caste accustomed to rule and will be its highest spiritualization. 74 For the function of the philosopher is pre-eminently to be a lawgiver, not merely to define and name the valuations that are, 75 but to say what ought to be, to give an end and an aim to mankind, to turn what is and was into means, instruments, hammer for forging the future--his knowing is creating, his creating law-giving, his will to truth will to power. 76 Beyond the actual rulers concerned with the administration of government and in a state apart, is this highest man--a power above powers, determining the values and guiding the will of centuries. 77

Nietzsche also speaks of power on the moral level. What is the difference between vulgar selfishness (which Nietzsche looks down upon as much as any one), and the love that looks beyond oneself and gives and bestows? It is, according to his view, that the selfish man requires all his energy for his own ends and has no surplus--he is really a needy kind of man who must take in all that he can and cannot afford to give out; while the other type overflows. Wherever there is power and to spare, it must have an object on which to expend itself, either harming or blessing, and "love gives the highest feeling of power." 78 Sometimes this type of goodness is combined with greatness and then arises "angelic majesty." It is something in which the highest pride bends fatherly and benignly to others and has no other idea than to rule and to guard at once-something lacking, Nietzsche remarks, "in our political parvenus." 79 There is even a kind of prodigality resulting from inner opulence. In this way aristocrats sometimes throw away their privileges and interest themselves for the people, the weak, the poor. 80 Hence too a noble hospitality. "There is a superior and dangerous kind of carelessness, . . . that of the self-assured and over-rich soul, which has never concerned itself about friends and only knows hospitality and how to practise it--heart and house open for every one who will come in, whether beggar or cripple or king. It is the genuine courtesy ( Leutseligkeit): one who has it possesses a hundred 'friends,' but probably no friend." 81 In a similar way grace, or merciful indulgence, is the virtue, the privilege, of the strong--and can only be exercised by them. As we have already seen, Nietzsche can even imagine a society so strong and so self-assured that it could let wrongdoers go unpunished 82 --something, I need not say, that does not hold for the societies of today.

Nietzsche sees power lying back of self-control. Why is it that some always follow immediate impulses? Because, he says in effect, they lack power to inhibit them. 83 They have the power of their impulses, but no surplus, nothing transcending. It is only the strong man with heaped-up force, who can say "no" to this and that wandering desire--who can rule them, give them their proper place and no more, and thus make a harmony, instead of a discord and contradiction, of his inner life. "Unfree will" is defined as defect in inhibitory power against stimuli; 84 with power comes free-will (in the legitimate sense of that phrase). Libertinism, laisser aller, is not power, but the antithesis of it: whether practised by an individual in relation to his impulses, or by society in relation to the mass of its members, it is symptomatic of weakness and degeneration-strength is ever in rule, in organization. 85 The decadents of our or any time find their definition (in part) as those who cannot control themselves--this is the meaning of their irritability: all predominantly irritable people belong to the descending line of life--they are impulse merely, have no surplus strength. 86 This holds of the sexual as of other instincts--one who does not have them under control is not a strong man; the artist, Nietzsche holds, is a temperate, often a chaste man, his dominating instinct making him so--one of the regular symptoms of exhausted stock is inability not to respond to the slightest sexual stimulus. 87 Once he speaks of the necessity on occasion of fighting, even knocking out of their senses, impulses, though they are not on that account to be called evil, but only to be downed, made subservient--for power over, not destruction of, the passions is the true aim. 88 The body does best itself when it is best ruled 89 --and the underlying truth is a general one; power is organized and attains its maximum of efficiency and happiness, when higher, stronger power directs it. For culture as for war we need "great leaders, and all education begins with obedience." What Nietzsche calls Züchtung (training, discipline) he ranks high for this reason: it increases strength-untrained men being weak, wasteful, inconstant. 90 He even sees the higher meaning of asceticism from this point of view, however hostile he is to it in other ways. 91 Why did a mediæval baron on occasion bow before a saint--not merely one of the Franciscan type, but the sterner sort as well, above all one of the sterner sort? Because, Nietzsche answers, however strong his own will to power, he recognized in the saint a kindred will to power, though taking a different turn. 92 The baron conquered others, the saint conquered himself, laid a strong hand on the natural impulses welling up in him--and the baron might well ask from his own experience, which was the greater victory and showed the greater power? Nietzsche says that the feeling of power has hitherto reached its highest point in continent priests and hermits (for example, among the Brahmans). 93 Further, it is possible not only to control "natural impulses"; we can triumph over suffering and pain. Nietzsche uses the word "tyrannize" on one occasion. A measure of the power of the will is how much opposition, pain, torture it can bear and turn to account. 94 It is one of the characteristic marks of the most spiritual, i.e., strongest, men, the great individuals on whom Nietzsche sets his heart, that they practise hardness against themselves: "it is their pleasure to subdue themselves, asceticism becomes nature, need, instinct with them." 95

Indeed, virtue in general finds its definition with Nietzsche in terms of strength--and after all this is only returning to ancient usage. Virtue for him is literally virtus, æ, Italian Renaissance virtû, i.e., strong excellence of some sort, manly superiority. Underlying it is will, courage--its opposite is laziness, weakness, fear. Many, he says, do not put through their best right, because a right is a sort of power and they are too lazy or too afraid to exercise power--decorating then their fault perhaps by talking of forbearance and patienee. 96 Power, as Nietzsche uses the term, includes will to power, and the trouble with many is that they don't will--they long, they desire, they are ambitious, but they do not will. 97 Willing is saying, So let it be: it is a kind of commanding. 98 Hence Zara-thustra's warning, "Do what you will, but first be such as can will." 99 It is, in Nietzsche's eyes, a trouble with the Germans, that they know how to obey, but not to command, though in exceptional circumstances they may do it. 100 In general, the greatest danger for man is not in the qualities that belong to the robber-animal, but in sickliness, weakness. 101 This makes virtue proper impossible. Vice, on the other hand, is the selfindulgence of the weak, their inability to inhibit impulse. 102 I do not mean that Nietzsche counts as virtue everything that goes by that name--he will first have it proved that "virtues" are virtue, i.e., come from strength, 103 and in effect suggests a reestimation of them, according to the nature of their source. So vices are regarded as manifestations of weakness. It is even possible that what is vice for a weak man should be a permissible liberty to another.

The intimate connection of virtue with power Nietzsche implies in another connection. It is, he says, "in order that the manliest men should rule"; indeed, "there is no sorer misfortune in all human destiny than when the mighty of the earth are not also the first men. 104 And yet, he adds (and this is the point now), when the highest kind of men are not in power, there is something lacking in the higher men themselves. Not only should the best rule, but the best will rule, and where there is a different idea, the best are wanting, 105 i.e., it enters into the idea of the best that they take the responsibility their nature entails; if they do not, they are not the best. At this point we see again how impossible it is to hold that in Nietzsche's view any kind of might makes right. If we are occasionally tried by passages that look this way r we must remember that to him there are different levels of power, 106 that one level may be higher than another and yet be lower than one higher still, and that the highest kind of power alone had his unmixed admiration. In any case, the fact that men are "the mighty of the earth" nowise decides the question of their worth. Time and again he speaks of the degeneration or inadequacy of matter-offact rulers and ruling classes. 107 I have already indicated his view of the German Empire. Even in Napoleon, a far greater man in his estimation than any German of the political order, he saw defects--Napoleon was compromised by the means he had to use. 108 Of certain Roman Emperors he says: "without them and the [degenerate] Roman society [of that time], Christianity would not have come to power. . . . When Nero and Caracalla sat on the throne, the paradox arose that the lowest man was worth more than the man on top." 109 And something of this sort may always happen. Now the corrupt ruling classes are spoiling the image of the ruler in the minds of men, and many want no ruler. 110 "Often slime sits on the throne, and the throne on slime." 111 All the same, the failure of previous aristocracies, temporal and spiritual, proves nothing against the necessity of a new aristocracy. 112 And when the best come once more, the ?ρστοι, best in body, mind, and soul, they will rule again. And that Nietzsche has an ideal in mind and does not bow down before brute actuality now any more than when he wrote "On the Use and Harm of History for Life" in 1873, 113 is shown in no way more clearly than by the fact that the supreme specimens of power to which his faith and longing went out, do not exist now (though power of some description rules the world now as truly as ever), but belong to the future, the function of present humanity being above all to make their advent possible.

We may accept Nietzsche's moral aim and his practical identification of it with will to power, or we may not: it is a matter for our own critical judgment and choice. I have only sought to make his views as clear as their somewhat uncertain nature would allow. And perhaps I should append his own remark that it is part of the humanity of a teacher to warn his pupils against him. 114

VI

If a name is desired for Nietzsche's general ethical view, I know of none better than one used occasionally by Professor Simmel: Personalism. 115 Utilitarianism on a pleasure and pain basis, no matter how universalistically conceived, Nietzsche distinctly rejects. "Egoism" is misleading; the egoism of the mass of men is no ideal to him, and that of the degenerate sickens, "stinkt." 116 "Individualism" is equally objectionable. Nietzsche conducts a polemic against individualism: he does not think that each and every man is important on his own account, that all have equal rights, that progress consists in making individuals as free as possible from social control, that each should live out his own life and pursue happiness in his own way. 117

An ideal like this verges on anarchy, and Nietzsche is not a friend of anarchy. He thinks that some people are more important than others, that, as Professor Karl Pearson has recently put it, "one able leader, one inspirer or controller of men is worth to the race thousands of every-day workers," 118 or, in Heraclitus's language, that, "one man is equal to ten thousand, if he be the best." In other words, there are gradations of rank among men, and it is a caste society that makes his idea--"my philosophy is directed to an order of rank (Rangordnung), not to an individualistic morality." 119 But "Personalism," though like any general term it lacks complete definiteness, comes nearer to describing his thought than any other single word I know of. For to Nietzsche persons are the summit of human evolution, and the creation or furthering of them is the highest end which men can now propose to themselves--persons being those who direct themselves and make their own law, the strong, complete, final specimens of our kind who naturally rule the rest of us, or, if they do not rule, make a semi-divine race above us. I shall try to show in some detail what Nietzsche means by persons in the following chapter.

CHAPTER XXVI MORAL CONSTRUCTION (CONT.). "PERSONS," OR GREAT MEN I "PERSONS," in the distinctive sense in which Nietzsche uses the term, are a development in human society and do not belong to its beginnings--save in rudimentary form as rulers or leaders of the flock. Most men are not persons now. The fundamental thing in human nature is sociality and social functioning--at least since man ceased to be a roving lawless animal. Individuals are first parts of a whole--they come to exist for themselves late and rarely. They even tend to be like one another, as sheep in a flock do--some sociologists put imitation at the basis of the social process. Indeed, the wonder is, considering the circumstances of men's origin, that persons ever arise. Morality itself (the mores of a group) operates to make men alike--this is perhaps its unconscious purpose, to the end that surprises may be minimized and all feel as secure as possible. Now, as in the past, the more the feeling of unity predominates, the more individuals become uniform--and differences are felt as immoral. 1 Zarathustra says, "You were once apes, and even yet man is more of an ape than any of the apes." 2 Language, a supposed distinguishing mark of man, after all covers only what is communicable, common--words fail for our strictly particular, individual experiences. 3 The world about us--that which we so call--is what we all see alike: the rarer, personal, perceptions scarcely belong to it. Even "truth" is a matter of agreement: what one thinks is set down as individual simply, what two or more agree in thinking--that is "true." 4 Our very mind is largely a social product; what others teach us, wish of us, tell us to fear or to follow, makes up the original content of it; we get even our idea of ourselves from others, and the way we judge ourselves only continues others, combined judgment of others. 5 In other words, human beings in society tend to be standardized, averaged; "so arises necessarily the sand of humanity, all very like one another, very small, very round, very peaceable, very tiresome." 6 Indeed, since society is a prime condition of existence for the human animal, it must be admitted that when survival for a given society depends on the preponderance of certain average characteristics in it, persons are a kind of waste, a luxury, and wishing for them has no sense. 7 What would be the use of a sheep's becoming a person, or an ant's? Its whole function (unless it is a leader of the flock or community) is to be the scarcely distinguishable unit of the mass that it is and to continue the type.

II

And yet persons do occasionally arise in human society--at least there are attempts in that direction. How does it happen! Nietzsche thinks in the first place that for all that may be said of the socializing, standardizing process, each human being is at bottom in some way peculiar. Schopenhauer had held that, while among the lower orders of being there was no essential difference between individuals, the species alone being particular and peculiar, each man is himself a "particular idea," "an altogether peculiar idea"; and Nietzsche, at least for a time, followed him. 8 Never did he believe that men were born free and equal, but he recognized that they were born different. "The habit of seeing resemblances, of finding things the same is a mark of weak eyes." This is said in commenting on the effort often made to harmonize contrasted thinkers-which only shows, he adds, that one has not the eye for what happens but once, and stamps one as mediocre. 9 But it holds, in his view, of our dealing with men in general. We put them all together, leave out of account their differences, and then we call them a species! The individuals, however, are more real than the species--the latter is an abstraction, a more or less artificial thing. But if individuals do really differ, why is it that they do not act accordingly, and instead fall to imitating one another? The reason is partly, as already explained, the social strait-jacket, the pressure of social necessity, but partly also, as Nietzsche thinks, lack of force in individuals themselves. They are afraid, lazy, deficient in energy. "When the great thinker despises men," he says, "he despises their laziness (Faulheit), on which account they have the look of factory products. The man who does not wish to be merely one of the mass, only needs to cease to be easy with himself." 10 It is the few possessing the surplus vitality and courage that makes them leaders and rulers, who become anywise persons in primitive times. How it happens that while "many are called, few are chosen," I need not now seek to explain--it is a wide and general problem, and nowise peculiar to Nietzsche's set of ideas. a The many, however, are not for nought, since even if not persons, they carry on the stream of life from which now and then persons emerge.

Further, societies may be likened to storehouses of energy in which power is gathered and heaped up to a degree that would not be possible if men lived singly--this is the ultimate justification for the restraints put on individuals in them, for rigidly subjecting them to custom and law. But there comes a time in a given society when this accumulation, long quietly going on, reaches its maximum, and the society acquires at last a certain maturity and ripeness. The necessities under which it lived in precarious earlier epochs hold now in less degree. Individuals who, even if they had willed to be self-acting persons, could not have been allowed to be, may now be given liberty with less danger; indeed, the power that has been accumulating in the social storehouse presses for a vent and almost of necessity pours out through special channels of this description. All of which is equivalent to saying that men of independent force and character, individuals capable of selfdirection, tend to appear. This is Nietzsche's second point of view. The material for persons might be said to exist always, but actually they only arise under such favorable historical conditions as these. b First, social stability; then an aim is possible in new and higher directions. 11 When the greatest danger for all is over, individual trees can grow with their own special conditions of existence. 12 Horticulturists and breeders of animals know that with superabundance of nourishment and a surplus of care and protection, there is an increased tendency to variations and Nietzsche thinks that it is the same with man. When there are no longer enemies to guard against, when the means of life and enjoyment abound, the old strict discipline relaxes, the mores that helped to store surplus power become more or less "out of date," and deviations from the average type appear such as had not been known before-deviations in two directions, indeed, towards what is higher, finer, rarer, and also towards what is lower, or even monstrous. If we observe Venice after it had attained assured supremacy, or an ancient Greek polis like Athens in the fifth century B.C., or the end of the Republican period in Rome, 13 We find an essentially similar outcome, namely, an astonishing array of marked individualities, some holding themselves together well, others going to pieces. 14 It is the harvest time of a people, the raison d'κtre (in Nietzsche's eyes) of the ages of strict discipline that have gone before. Relatively to the old iron-bound order, it in a time of anarchy, and, many would say, of corruption (ripeness and corruption, we must remember, are not remote from one another in the temporal order of things) ; but it is also a time when the great moral natures appear, not men of the old type who simply obey, but men of power--those who in the old order would have ruled, but now turn their force inward and rule themselves (men like Heraclitus, Plato).

Paradoxically enough (and here is a third point of view, one already anticipated), 16 the very restraints of the old rιgime have prepared for the liberty of the new. The unremitting discipline of the ancient mores has turned men--some men--into beings who can be reckoned on and can reckon on themselves, i.e., are responsible. With this they gain respect for themselves, confidence in themselves. Especially is this the case with those who act as representatives of the group, or who guide it in war or in peace. Yet this respect for themselves and confidence in themselves lead them sooner or later to think that they need not take the law of their conduct from without them, but may give it to themselves. They have learned to act greatly on others' account, they conclude that they might also do so on their own. In short, they become self-acting, self-legislating-that is, persons. The collectivity itself has unwittingly educated them. The altruism bound up with social organization has made this extraordinary, final kind of egoism possible. 17

III

And yet the new developments, though less dangerous than they would have been at an earlier time, are not without danger. The individuals strong in themselves and conscious of their strength, may contend with one another and endanger social stability. 18 They may also intoxicate others who are not as strong as they, and make them lose their heads. 19 But gravest of all, they may themselves go to pieces. They are making a new venture, and with all their antecedent training may not succeed. To direct oneself, to take the law-of one's conduct into one's own hands, is a perilous thing. Thomas Hill Green said, indeed, "It is the very essence of moral duty to be imposed by a man on himself," 20 and Kant conceived of duty in similar fashion. But both meant little more than that one takes a commonly recognized moral law and re-enacts it in his own person. It is a naοvetι, however, to imagine that when a man takes law-giving into his own hands, he is going to legislate just as others do. He may be different from others, have a different end from others, or, with the same end, may see deeper or differently as to how to reach it. c To tell a sovereign what law he shall give himself is more than a naοvetι--it is a contradiction.

"Castilian gentlemen Choose not their task,--they choose to do it well,"

says George Eliot in The Spanish Gypsy. But a real sovereign chooses his task, as well as the doing of it. He sets himself his duty. At least so Nietzsche conceived the matter. The very thing that urges the type of individual in question to be a law unto himself is the more or less dim sense that he is different from others, and needs, in order to serve those particulars in which he is different, a different regimen and method of procedure. One who feels that he is one of many, all essentially alike, can neither have nor desire to have a peculiar moral law; but he who is conscious of a quantum of being that is unique, may feel that he is even lacking in respect where respect is due, if he owns only a common law. Rather does he ask, What agrees with my conditions of existence! and he may as reverently bend to that duty as any average individual can to his. And yet really to find out oneself and the law that will serve it--what a task! 21 Just to the extent that the individual is unique, he can get no help from others. Society, or rather societies, know (or think they know) themselves, and the kinds of conduct that will serve them--hence morality or moralities, all socially imposed laws for social purposes; but societies know the individual so little, that they either fail to consider him (save as they try to restrain him or to make him useful), or else they touch merely the surface of him--we have already found Nietzsche remarking on the unfineness of morality's prescriptions for individual well-being. 22 Hence when men take themselves in hand and attempt to mark out their own course, they may go astray. Nietzsche says that the first tentative individuals generally go to pieces. 23 They are great enough to feel the inadequacy of the law of the average, but not great enough, or lucky enough to find the law that suits them. There is a law for them as truly as there is one for society, but they do not hit it--and their impulses, still to be trained and unified in the service of the new aim, conflict with one another, or, if one gets on top, it sets up a tyranny, the others being not so much regulated as crushed. 24 Even so, they are fuller, richer, greater than the ordinary man; but regulation, organization are lacking and so they fail. Nietzsche once drops a despairing remark to the effect that man is not yet good enough for a flight in the air, out of the reach and criticism of others. He cites as examples of higher men who lacked the supreme qualities--strong, rich, but without self-control--Byron, Alfred de Musset, Poe, Leopardi, Heinrich von Kleist, Gogol; he says he could mention greater names. He calls men of this type "rudimentary men" --that is, they are anticipations, beginnings, in the higher direction, but no more. 25

And yet there are those who do not go to pieces--at least sooner or later such appear. They can not only command, they can obey--a principle of order and subordination is established in them. 26 They represent the opposite of the demoralization sometimes produced by freedom--for Zarathustra says, "Alas, I have known noble ones who lost their highest hope, and then they denied all high hopes; they lived shamelessly in momentary pleasures and scarcely had aims beyond the day. . . . Once they thought to become heroes; now they are voluptuaries!" 27 They are men able to say Yes, not only in word but in deed, to Zarathustra's challenge, "Canst thou give thyself thy evil and thy good, and hang up thy will over thee as a law?" 28 They not merely know themselves, but they follow a still greater injunction, "Will [make] a self"--they give their nature a style, mold it, bring it under a law, become masters of their wildness, unbridledness, know both how to speak and how to keep silent, are capable of hardness and severity against themselves. 29 In short, they are whole men, lawgiver and subject in one; they need no laws from without--indeed, "laws," "rules" are crude, unfine, compared with the intimate character of their self-control. 30 To them and to them only is freedom given without risk; 31 they are the justification of the rιgime of liberty, even if the other fruit of the social tree spoils --better that much should spoil, than that this perfect fruit should not appear. Yes, from this fruit new and fairer social groupings may in time arise.

For though Nietzsche's thought wavers at this point, and he sometimes speaks as if great men were an end, a consummation and not a way to something beyond, his main idea is (to use now another metaphor) that they are eggs, germinal beginnings of new societies and unities. 32 If the old society is strong enough and plastic enough (a rare combination), it may go on itself, simply assuming new forms or allowing new varieties of life within its own limits; 33 but if its strength is of the rigid type, then its flowering time is also a beginning of decay, and the great individuals who spring from it can only perpetuate themselves in a new society. The men of the Perielean epoch were an end, the sound alas! alike with the unsound--even Plato formed no new society, though what he might have done, if circumstances had been more favorable in Sicily, "gives us to think." It was much so with men like Cζsar and Cicero in Rome--though a few with more than ordinary proportions succeeded them in the Empire. In fact, with developments like these in mind, Nietzsche is sometimes tempted to the melancholy reflection that great individuals may be no advantage to a society, but rather a detriment--that its growth in power is best guaranteed by a preponderance of the average or lower type, they being the most fertile and having most of the elements of permanence in them. 34 He only resolves his difficulty by raising the question whether a permanent society is ipso facto a supreme good; whether shorter life and decay, with a flowering time, are not preferable to however long life on a monotonous level. Is China, he asks [of course, as he knew it thirty or more years ago], a desirable form of human existence upon the earth? We are perhaps here in presence of ultimate alternatives, i.e., have to choose between two ultimate social ideals. Along with the desire to eternalize a state, there is instinctively bred, he thinks, a fear of great individuals, and customs and institutions naturally arise which are unpropitious to them; hence the Chinese proverb, before quoted, "The great man is a public misfortune." 35 But for himself he does not hesitate: if the perpetuity of a state must be purchased at such a price, the game is not worth the candle--better that societies should come to an end than that the higher types should not appear. 36 And yet great men, though worth having at whatever cost on their own account, 37 are generally viewed by Nietzsche, as already stated, as the possible beginnings of new and greater societies. They are the variations on which the hope of the future hangs. If it is not merely man as we see him that we have in mind, but a higher type of man and the greatest possible variety of such types, then it is just to these individuals that we must give particular attention, encouraging them, giving them room, not measuring them by ordinary standards, and willing rather to be hurt by them than to prevent their arising, knowing that, whatever immediate harm they do, humanity's possibilities of further development are bound up with them. d

IV

The ruling tendency of our time is against Nietzsche. The highest thing now is to be a servant of the common life; the community is set above the individual--even the greatest. e This may be a wholesome reaction against the vulgar egoism of our wealth-seekers and political adventurers who want to make the rest of the community serve them--the ideal may be good for them, and for all of us so far as vulgar egoism lurks in us. But in any other sense, it rests to Nietzsche's mind on a deep misunderstanding. 38 The community, the mass or collectivity, is not really higher than the individual. It is higher than the ordinary individual, more important than the ordinary individual (with quantitative standards, many are more important than one) ; but the great individual is more important than it--for with him mankind attains a new level of being. The most human aim is not to provide for the comfort and happiness of the mass, but to raise the type--to welcome, then, exceptions to the average, to facilitate their existence instead of putting obstacles and mistrust in their way. For there is no other method of progress than the old one of variation and selection; only (and here Nietzsche departs from the Darwinian school) it is we who must do the selecting henceforth--giving to the rarer, finer, higher, stronger specimens the advantage, even taking them as leaders, instead of chilling and defeating them as alas! we may, and often do (there is always, Nietzsche thinks, a half-conscious, underground conspiracy of the little against the great, of the average against the exception). 39 The proudest, most human act of the mass would be to array itself in loyalty to what is above it (mere mutual helping and safeguarding are not a peculiarly human thing--all animal societies in some measure practice it). Robert Browning's Paracelsus says,

"Make no more giants, God, But elevate the race at once! We ask To put forth just our strength, our human strength, All starting fairly, all equipped alike, Gifted alike, all eagle-eyed, true-hearted."

But what a mixture of the sublime and the ridiculous! What a childlike view of the method of progress in the world, which is always by some starting better than others, by unlike gifts, by giants leading the way where smaller men dare not go, by slow, gradual, painful advance, instead of "at once" or by an Omnipotent Hand. The hope of humanity, the reason for cherishing humanity, the ultimate raison d'κtre for the great toiling mass of humanity, whose struggles and mutual helpfulness are surely not their own end, is, to those who think with Nietzsche, the emergence of the rarer, higher types preferred to--men who, relatively speaking, will be like Gods on the earth, and once more awaken a sentiment all unfamiliar to our democratic age--reverence.

Nietzsche remarks that the philosopher, in the deeper sense of that word, has ever found himself, and has had to find himself, in opposition to the day in which he lives--his enemy has been the ideal of that day; and it is so now. Against the wild waters of selfishness that were pouring their tumultuous floods in the sixteenth century arose the ideal of a meek, renouncing, selfless humanity. In face of the degenerate aristocratic Athenian society of the fifth century B.C., and against the old high-sounding phrases to the use of which the nobility had forfeited their right by the kind of life they were leading, Socrates stood forth and practised his irony. And now when gregariousness is supreme, when "equality of rights" is preached and easily passes into equality of wrongs, now, when there is a general war against everything exceptional and privileged, a philosopher is needed with a new antithesis--one who will say that greatness consists in standing alone, in taking duties and responsibilities that cannot be common, in being greatly one's very particular and individual self. 40

v

Let me now give Nietzsche's conception of great men a little more in detail. Though, as persons proper, they are not easily subsumable under a common type, certain very general common characteristics may be noted.

First, they are great, not by carrying ordinary virtues to a high state of perfection; their virtues are more or less different from the ordinary, for they are different men. To a certain extent they come under the same law with others; but the characteristic thing about them is that they have a law of their own, one suitable to their peculiar being. Their virtues might not be virtues for the common man, and the virtues of the common man might conceivably be vices (weaknesses) in them.

Their first duty is to respect themselves. 41 "Thou shalt become that which thou art" is what their conscience says to them. 42 f They have a morality, but it is that paradoxical thing, an autonomous morality ("moral" and "autonomous" being ordinarily opposites); they contradict the Hegelian command that no man shall have a private conscience. They do not accept duties from without; numbers, authority are nothing to them. Their duty is an " I will, " the "I must" of overflowing creative strength. It is true that Zarathustra sickens at his "I will" from vulgar mouths--for the mass of men, obedience is safer, better than individual choice; but for great men, "I will" is the sign and seal of their superiority. They are accordingly careless of popular approval or sympathy, 43 g proud though not vain; they have a sense of singular duties and responsibilities, which they do not think of lowering by converting into duties and responsibilities for every man. 44 However dependent on others for success, their rise in the first place is due to their self-assertion 45 --they make their rights rather than receive them. They have an unalterable belief that to beings like themselves others are naturally subject and may sacrifice--this without any feeling of harshness, force, or arbitrariness on their part, rather as something founded in the original law of things, as just. 46

As is natural, men of this type have a taste for rare things such as ordinarily leave men cold--for art, for science, for high curiosity, for high virtue. While willing to sacrifice them. selves, if need be, this is not what characterizes them--a mad lover of pleasure does it also; nor is following a passion--there are despicable passions; nor is unselfishly doing for others--the consistency of a certain kind of selfishness may be greatest in the highest. What singles out the nobler type (perhaps without their being aware of the singularity) is their rare and singular measure of values, their ardor in spheres where others are indifferent, their sacrifice on altars to Gods commonly unknown, their bravery with unconcern for honor, their self-sufficiency which flows over and imparts of its joy to men and things. 47

It follows that they are more or less solitary. If the rest of us admire them, it is because they are different from us, not like us--we have the sort of joy in them that we have in nature. 48 To a certain extent they wish to be by themselves--instincts of self-protection, of purity, tending that way. One accommodates oneself in the world 49 --as Emerson puts it, "we descend to meet"; in solitude, the soul and mind are easier upright and true. Away from the market and glory happens all that is great; away from the market-place have ever dwelt the inventors of new values. 50 Nietzsche quotes a Hindu saying: "As Brahma one lives alone; as a God in twos; as a villager in threes; where there are more, it is a noise and a tumult." 51 He speaks of the hundred deep solitudes one finds in a city like Venice--it was a part of the charm of that city for him, a "symbol for men of the future." 52 Solitude has practical limits, no doubt; if it is too great, one does not perpetuate oneself--the social many, kindred to one another, perpetuate themselves best, and that is why, perhaps, commonness preponderates in the world.53Ibid., XI, 238-9, § 195. The great and singular hardly even make a class. They stand apart from one another, as well as from the crowd. They may mask themselves so well that, if they meet on the way, they scarcely know one another. They do not necessarily love one another, though they cannot fail in mutual respect. Nietzsche quotes a grim remark of Abbι Galiani, "Philosophers are not made for loving each other. Eagles do not fly in company. That has to be left to partridges and common birds. . . . To soar aloft and have claws--that is the lot of great geniuses." 54 Nor is there anything undesirable in this hostility--in it all their strength comes out. 55 Tyranny is another matter. When "originality" wishes to tyrannize, it lays its hand, Nietzsche says, on its own life-principle 56 --and I imagine he would have said the same of a "person." Even when the great agree, they do not follow one another--do not press to or long after one another. 57 Nietzsche at times carries the thought of independence so far that he departs from his usual conception of the great as the rulers of the rest of mankind, and compares them to Epicurean Gods who live apart from the world. 58 He really has a twofold classification of great men, the highest, rarest type simply giving direction to mankind, but not actually ruling it-ruling being a function of the others. 59 Aristotle said that one who was not a citizen was either low in the scale of humanity, or else a superhuman being, either a brute or a God; 60 it is evident to which category Nietzsche's supreme persons belong.

I have already referred to the fear-inspiring (bφse) aspect which great men may have. 61 Nietzsche warns against a too soft interpretation; there is a certain amount of the brute in them, even a nearness to crime. 62 They will be independent, even at the risk of subjecting others or sacrificing them--not because they are inhuman, but because independence may be impossible of attainment in any other way and they can transcend feelings of humanity on occasion, as Brutus transcended pity and friendship when for the res publica he murdered Cζsar. 63 h

They can, however, give to men as well as take from them, though doing so in their own way, serving "austerely." All but the very highest of them (who live apart) function in ways that are appreciable, are helpers of their kind as statesmen, commanders, leaders in difficult enterprises. They leave aims of personal security, comfort, and happiness to others. They can endure poverty and want, if need be--also sickness. They represent a new type of sainthood. 64 Their instinctive attitude to the weak is one of protection; they come naturally to the defense of whatever is misused, misunderstood, or calumniated (whether God or Devil). They have their own kind of goodness and kindness; they take pleasure in the larger justice and in the practice of it. 65 They are counselors for troubled minds and consciences. 66 They rise to higher air, not occasionally but they live there; not so much strength as permanence of high sentiment marks them. 67

In general a high self-control characterizes these men. They are many-sided, perhaps have the most varied powers, but these are harnessed together to an end. They are not impulsive beings, but collected, cool, reasonable; they do even heroic acts in this spirit, not blindly following feeling. 68 They like naοvetι and naοve people, but as onlookers and higher beings: they find Faust as naοve as Gretchen. 69 Even giving one's life for something is not necessarily a mark of superiority--it may be from pity or from anger or from revenge; how many have sacrificed their life for pretty women--and even, what is worse, their health! 70 i For in Nietzsche's eyes, greatness of soul is not to be separated from intellectual greatness. The really great look on "heroes, martyrs, geniuses, the inspired" as not "quiet, patient, fine, cold, slow, enough" for them. 71 j Philosophers are the greatest men. They are ever against mere impulse, and first and surface views--the natural antagonists of sensualism, whether in practice or as a theory. 72 Indeed, Nietzsche thinks that individuals generally are less likely to lose their balance and be insane than groups, parties, peoples, periods. 73

Moreover, the great are happy in their lot, thankful for existence. 74 . Though they may suffer--and capacity for suffering is a mark of greatness--they can also play and laugh, laugh at themselves and their failures, make jests of pathetic situations in which they find themselves. Indeed, it was man, the most suffering animal, who invented laughter. 75 Philosophers may be graded according for their capacity for it--the greatest being those capable of golden laughter; Gods themselves laugh in some superhuman way. 76 The greatest sin on earth was the word of him who said, "Woe unto you that laugh now!" 77 Zarathustra knows rather how to sanctify laughter; he puts it as a crown upon his head. 78 For the secret of laughter is strength, abounding vitality. From this source, too, flow beauty and grace. "The great will not condescend to take anything seriously," said Emerson; and above the hero with his violent struggles and solemn ways, Nietzsche puts the super-hero, who stands with relaxed muscles and unharnessed will, dowered with beauty and grace--above the straining neck of the ox is the angel's eye." 79

In their very manners the great betray themselves, as a Greek Goddess did in her walk. The labor that stoops and deforms, affecting even the gait, is foreign to them. They are capable of leisure also, this being understood in a nobler sense than that of mere rest from toil. They may even have an air of frivolity on occasion--in word, dress, bearing. They have a pleasure in forms, are convinced that politeness is one of the great virtues, mistrust all letting oneself go, rank "good nature" low, are disgusted with vulgar familiarity. 80 In short they are gentlemen, but in an intellectual and spiritual sense. Nietzsche ventures to call his Beyond Good and Evil a school for the gentleman, the conception being taken "more spiritually and radically than ever before." k He defines it as one of the marks of the gentleman that he has the sentiment of distance, knows how to distinguish and recognize rank, gradation between man and man everywhere; otherwise one comes hopelessly under the category of the canaille. The Germans, he says in a bitter moment, are, with a few exceptions, canaille; they are so complacent (gutmόthig), that if the most profound spirit of all the ages should appear among them, some savior of the Capitol would imagine that he was to be equally taken into account. 81 The modern industrial situation has its troublous, threatening side in his eyes, partly because our new magnates are not gentlemen, but show by their vulgar ways, their cunning and unscrupulousness, their "red, fat hands" that they are an upstart class. 82 l As a rule, the gentleman is born and bred, the result indeed of generations of training: it is an ideal intimately connected with an aristocracy, 83 and manners tend to deteriorate in general, when the influence of an aristocracy declines. 84

Such is an incomplete portraiture of great men or "persons," as Nietzsche conceives them. I may add an interesting observation which he makes upon polytheism. This ancient belief rendered, he thinks, a great service in idealizing different types of individuals, and allowing them their rights against one another. While it was counted an aberration for a human being to assert a particular idea of his own and derive from it his law, his joy, and his right, those doing so excusing themselves and saying, "Not I! not I! but a God through me," in the world of higher beings it was admitted to be different. There a number of norms of conduct might exist; one God was not the denial or abuse of another; there for the first time individuals were freely allowed, individual rights revered. The invention of Gods, heroes, and supermen of all kinds, as of dwarfs, fairies, centaurs, satyrs, demons, and devils, he regards as an inestimable preparation for the justification of the human individual in asserting his rights; the freedom given to one God against others became at last the individual's freedom against statutes, customs, and neighbors. Monotheism, on the other hand--really a consequence of the doctrine of a single normal type of man, an assertion of a normal God, beside whom are only false Gods-may be viewed as so far a danger to humanity; it involves a revival of, or rather reversion to, the intellectual atmosphere that existed before the age of varying individuals; it flattens, levels men--tends to give them but one set of eyes, while the glory and privilege of man among the animals has been that there are no eternal, i.e., unchanging, horizons and perspectives for him. 85 In accordance with this strong feeling Nietzsche expresses the hope that joy in foreign originality, without desire to ape it, will some day be the mark of a new culture. 86 As for himself, he wants to help all who seek an ideal pattern for their lives simply by showing how to do it; and his greatest joy is in encountering individual patterns that are not like his own. "The Devil take all imitators and followers and eulogists and wonderers and self-surrenderers!" CHAPTER XXVII MORAL CONSTRUCTION (CONCLUDED). THE SUPERMAN

"SUPERMAN" is a strong, picturesque expression such as Nietzsche delighted on occasion to use. It occurs chiefly in the prose-poem, Thus spake Zarathustra ( 1883). It does not appear in Beyond Good and Evil, which soon followed and is a more matter-of-fact statement of essentially the same thoughts as those contained in the earlier work, and only once in The Genealogy of Morals, which succeeded Beyond Good and Evil and is a somewhat connected treatment of certain controverted special points in that book.

Yet, like all Nietzsche's extreme phrases, it covers a substantial thought. The word, oddly as it sounds (I think it was Mr. Bernard Shaw who first popularized it among us), is formed most naturally. We often speak of "superhuman" excellencies and qualities, though usually having in mind something bordering on the Divine; and any one having these superiorities is, of course, literally speaking, a "superman"--the only novelty in Nietzsche's view being that the superhuman traits are regarded as attainable by man. The substantive itself is not absolutely new. Mommsen spoke of the Æschylean heroes as "supermen." Homberger ( 1882) called Bismarck a "superman." Goethe used the word a couple of times: 2 Herder did once in an unfavorable, Jean Paul in a favorable, sense. 3 first use of it by Nietzsche (so far as I remember) is in Joyful Science ( 1882), where "Übermenschen" are spoken of along with Gods and heroes, and by way of contrast to "Nebenmenschen" and "Untermenschen" (such as dwarfs, fairies, satyrs). 4 Before this, he had made use of the adjective as we all do, speaking, for instance, of "superhuman goodness and justice"--and, indeed, "super" in general (or its equivalent) appears rather often, as in "super-German" (of Wagner's thoughts), "super-national" (of universal aims), "superhellenic," "super-historical"; he spoke of man as the "superanimal" and of a "distant super-world."

During the period of reaction against his early idealization of Wagner, Nietzsche made adverse reflections on the elevation of individuals into superhuman beings. The cultus of genius seemed to him a continuation of the old worship of Gods and princes; when one raises certain men to a superhuman level, one is apt to look on whole classes as lower than they really are. He felt that there is a danger for genius itself when it begins to fancy itself superhuman. 5 It is curious that Nietzsche always had a more or less pronounced aversion to Carlyle's hero-worship. 6 Even as late as Thus spake Zarathustra there is a slighting reference to Gods and supermen (taken as people up in the clouds); Zarathustra is tired of them 7 --as of the poets who invent them. And yet, despite such chaffing, Nietzsche's early instinct for what is superior and great is by the time of Thus spake Zarathustra in full away again, and this book itself is a product of it. He had said almost at the outset of his career (I have quoted the words before, but they will bear repeating) : "I see something higher and more human above me than I myself am; help me all to attain it, as I will help every one who feels and suffers as I do--in order that at last the man may arise who is full and measureless in knowledge and love and vision and power, and with his whole being cleaves to nature and takes his place in it as judge and valuer of things." 8 And now, after years of self-criticism in which everything in his early beliefs that could be shaken was shaken, the old attitude recurs--and stands out clearer, and more assured than ever.

When half-gods go, The gods arrive."

Wagner had gone, the early illusions about him had vanished; but the transcendent vision of superhuman excellence which Nietzsche had momentarily identified with that great figure survived.

II "Superman" is a poetic designation for great individuals carried to their utmost human limit, for "persons" in the full sense of that term. a Superman is man as he might be--not another species, but our very human flesh and blood transfigured. As Professor Simmel, one of the critical writers on Nietzsche who has penetrated most deeply into his thought, puts it, "The superman is nothing but the crystallization of the thought that man can develop beyond the present stage of his existence--and hence should." 9 Zarathustra has scanned the great men of history, and the greatest of them are, like the smallest men, "all-too-human"; "there has never yet been a superman." 10 Individuals like Alcibiades, Cæsar, Frederick II, Leonardo da Vinci, Cæsar Borgia, Napoleon, Goethe, Bismarck are approximations to the type, but all come short somewhere--they were men of power, took great and fearful responsibilities, but were spoiled by some defect. 11 Zarathustra is spoken of by Nietzsche as an incorporation of the ideal, 12 but Zarathustra is an imaginary figure--and, as portrayed, he himself looked beyond.

Nietzsche once puts his problem, and incidentally reveals his understanding of the new phrase, thus: Dismissing the current individualistic morality along with the collectivistic, since the former, like the latter, fails to recognize an order of rank among men and wants to give equal freedom to all, he says that the thoughts turn rather on the degree of power that one or another person may exercise over others or over all, i.e. or how far a sacrifice of freedom and virtual enslavement may be the basis for the bringing forth of the higher type. Put in the crudest way, to what extent could we sacrifice the development of humanity to the end of bringing a higher type than man into existence? His concept, or rather image ( Gleichniss), for such a type is "superman" 13 Another statement of the problem, put in the form of the demand, is; "To brings forth bringing who stand elevated above the whole race of man, and to sacrifice one's kind to this end." 14 Taking this literally, a new species is suggested, and countenance is lent to the view that Nietzsche conceived of an evolution in the future like that which Darwin is supposed to have proved in the past, namely, of a new biological type. But there is reason to doubt whether Nietzsche had anything so definite as this in mind. The whole question as to his relation to Darwinism is a mooted point. He may himself have had different attitudes at different times--that of criticism becomes marked toward the end of his life. The view that seems to me most reasonable is that he finally settled down to thinking of supermen simply as extraordinary specimens of men, who, however, if favored, instead of being fought as they commonly are, might lead to a considerable modification of the human type--one so great that, speaking in literary and fluid rather than scientific fashion, the result might be called a new species. He expressly says in one of his later books, "Not what shall take the place of humanity in the successive order of beings is the problem I propose--man is an end; but what type of man we shall train, shall wish for as one of higher value, worthier of life, surer of the future. The more valuable type has often enough existed, but as a happy chance, an exception, never as something willed. Instead of this it has been something feared, almost the fearful thing--and from motives of fear the contrasted type has been willed, trained, attained: man the domestic animal, the social animal the sick animal--the Christian." In the following paragraph, he speaks of the higher as "relatively" a "sort of superman." 15 Once he makes a derisive reference to "learned cattle who had suspected him of Darwinism." 16 If Nietzsche finally held to Darwinism at all--and it is not certain that he did 17 --it was only in the sense of a development-theory in general, much as Emerson spoke of the worm mounting "through all the spires of form" to man. For not evolution, not even selection, is a distinctive Darwinian idea, but only natural selection, along with the theory of surplus numbers and the consequent struggle for existence-and Nietzsche distrusted these premises of Darwin's view, and wanted not so much natural selection (which he thought often favored the weak) as conscious, human selection in the direction of individuals of maximum power.

III

But when we ask how the superman is to be got, we are left more or less in the vague. Nietzsche thinks that we have not sufficient data for a judgment as yet. Physiology, medicine, psychology, sociology--sciences that must give us the data--are not developed enough. Those who imagine that Nietzsche has any short cut to Utopia have little idea of the manner of man he was. Brandes called his view "aristocratic radicalism" (in distinction from radicalism of the democratic or socialistic type); but he is radical in thought, not in proposing a program. He has a profound sense of the slowness of all real social changes. He contrasts the French Revolution with what it might have been, had steadier heads kept in control. 18 Chronic ailings (such as lung troubles) develop from slight causes repeated constantly, he observes, and cures, if possible, come in much the same way (in this case by repeated deep breathing); and the truth holds equally of spiritual ills. 19 So "no impatience" now! "The superman is our next stage "--but "moderation" along with courage is needed in aiming thitherward.

Zarathustra, the prophet of the coming order, has repose, can wait. Life and action having got a purpose and meaning, there is no need of leaping, and each step onward may be perfect and give happy feeling. All violent longing is to be overcome-the calm of the great stream is to come in its place. 20 Speaking more prosaically, we are to guard against exchanging the customary morality for a new valuation suddenly and violently-we must continue to live in the old for a long time and take the new in small doses repeatedly, till we find, very late, probably, that the new valuation has got predominant force and that the little doses have made a new nature in us. 21 Indeed, in order to be taught, the new morality must introduce itself in connection with the existing moral law and under its names and guises--that is, it must be more or less opportunist and compromising. 22 Nietzsche does not think much of "agitators," all too apt to be empty heads, who flatten and inflate any good idea they get hold of and give it out with a hollow sound. 23 It is a change in the depths of thought that is needed, -not a noisy enthusiasm. And this is why he might have had reserves as to some who call themselves Nietzscheans today-for, he observes, with a touch of humor, the first disciples of a doctrine prove nothing against it! b

I have said that his thought as to how to reach the superman is vague. It may be something, however, to turn the mind in this direction, and to have a clear conviction that the result is more or less in our hands. If mankind were really persuaded that its chief function is not to make itself happy and secure on the earth, but to produce godlike individuals, it would surely make a difference. At present, the old Christian thought of heaven and hell being no longer regnant, there is, Nietzsche thinks, no common aim, and things are going by luck, hit or miss. If there is any faith, it is a vague and more or less lazy confidence that things will come out right anyway, "Providence" or "evolution" or "progress" or "the course of things" being the determining matter--as if, says Nietzsche, it did not depend on us how things come out, as if we could let them go their way. 24 Indeed, what does "coming out right" mean, save as we have some notion of what is right? Nietzsche is opposed to leaving things to chance--and it may be counted one of his distinctions in the future that he restored rationality (in the large sense) to its proper place as the ruler of the world--something to be quite distinguished from the faith that rationality, with a big R, does rule the world--and that he helped to make man the sovereign creator of his own destiny.

A word which Nietzsche often uses is "Züchtung"; its meaning is training or breeding, a practical equivalent being purposive selection. It is something that Burbank is doing in California in the realm of plant life. Nietzsche, however, uses the term in a large sense and comprehends under it all the means, physical, social, spiritual, that may be used for producing the great result at which he aims. 25 Sometimes he uses "Erziehung," meaning education, not in our conventional, but in the broadest sense. "Züchtung," however, brings out more clearly the necessary factor of selection. 26 Let us observe, he urges, nature and history and see in what way notable results have been reached unconsciously and perhaps clumsily and by very slow methods in the past; then, taking things into our own hands, let us see if the results we aim at cannot be reached in a similar way, but more surely and with less waste of time and force. Let an organized mankind test Darwin's assertions by experiment-even if the experimentation covers centuries and millenniums and we have to turn the whole earth into experiment stations. Let it be proved whether apes can be developed into men, and lower races into higher races, and whether from the best mankind has at present to show, something still higher can be reared. 27 The Chinese have made trees that bear roses on one side and pears on the other--and where are the limits to be set to the possibilities of selective human breeding? Historical processes may be improved upon: granting that races and racial struggles, national fevers and personal rivalries, have done their part, why could not the long-drawn-out and painful tale be crowded into brief space and the net results be got without the fearful waste! 28 It is evident that Nietzsche has in mind a control of humanity such as has not been heard or perhaps thought of before. He speaks repeatedly of a world-economy, a rule of the earth--and it might be said in reply that there would be need of a God to administer it. A sort of contradiction might be charged up to him in that the superman who is to be reached as the outcome of a process of evolution would be required to start and guide the process--we should have to be Gods to know how to create them! And Nietzsche could only answer that, as individuals learn by doing and have to venture even if they make mistakes, so with mankind--that the only practical thing in the present case is to start with as strong, masterful intelligence as we can get, aiming at world-control, and hope to win sooner or later a world-result.

IV

The initiative in such an enterprise can evidently only be taken by those who have the thought that inspires it--naturally they will be few. They must be thinkers, and men of action at the same time. 29 They will choose themselves, and, so to speak, put the crown on their own heads. Evidently physical force is not sufficient to constitute them--force of this kind can do little in a connection like this. Neither is it a question of wealth--our rich men are the poorest, says Nietzsche, the aim of all wealth being forgotten. 30 Nor is it any longer a question of race, though a superior race, the "blond [Aryan] beast," did once lift Europe to a higher level--there are no pure races in Europe now. 31 Nor is it a question of aristocratic descent--where in Germany will you find, Nietzsche asks, a great family in whose blood there is not venereal infection and corruption? Peasant blood, he thinks, is still the best. c Not whence you come, but whither you go, is the critical question for the nobility to be. 32 The challenge is, How strong are you, how near completeness in body, mind, and soul, how far can you stand alone, assume responsibility, be your own master, and thereby be fit to master others. 33 In other words, it is a question of character (in the great sense). 34 The men to take the lead in redeeming the world from folly and chance, and in organizing collective experiments and hazardous enterprises to that end, will be "philosophers" of this type. Every sound quality that belongs to the ascending line of life will be theirs. Socalled "aristocrats of intellect" are not enough; 35 there must be blood and sound physical organization; they must be capable of projecting a new physiological line--all aristocracies start from superior whole men. d Nor will they despise the economic basis of life. Though wealth will be nowise a distinctive mark of them (others will have more than they) they will have wealth --enough to make them independent and able to do what they like, instead of what other people like, enough to lift them above pitiful economies, enough to marry well on and pay for the best instruction to their children. Nietzsche's ideas will hardly be thought extravagant in this connection. He says that 300 Thaler a year may have almost the same effect as 30,000; 36 and, in commenting on the Greek aristocracies with their hereditary property and saying that they "lived better" than we, he significantly adds that he means "better in every sense, above all much more simply in food and drink." 37 At the same time the aristocracy to be will control wealth, even if not possessing it in any high degree--they will see that it does not hinder, but rather serves the great public ends they have at heart. Nietzsche even throws out what may seem a wild suggestion, namely, that the wise must secure the monopoly of the money-market: however elevated they may be above the wealthy class by their aims and manner of life, they must give direction to wealth--it is absolutely necessary, he declares, that the highest intelligence give direction to it. Money will be safest under their control--otherwise it will be liable to go (as so often happens now) for extreme one-sided tendencies. 38

These men, too, will know, as real aristocracies always know, the significance of marriage. 39 Love will be looked at from a new angle (new, that is, to the modern world)--it will be controlled by ideal considerations. 40 Marriage will not be from passion or emotion simply. Nor will mere considerations of mutual fitness and compatibility be the controlling thing. The main aim of marriage for men like these will be the continuation of their type, and propagation will be a matter of the utmost sacredness. 41 Zarathustra speaks in this spirit in a passage already summarized. 42 e He speaks also of the helpful influence which physicians may exert. 43 Women may help directly--the deepest instincts of motherhood may be brought into line with the aim of producing a higher race. 44 It is, of course, a different aim from the ordinary one of "founding a family" which vulgar and self-centered people may wish to do--the aristocracy to be will exist for universal ends, and, instead of being a closed line or set of lines, it will take to itself new elements of promise wherever they appear, and will draw on all the varied talents that are needed for the administration of the earth. 45 As little is it a national aristocracy which Nietzsche has in mind. His thought is European 46 (or wider) and the aristocracy will be international-the principle of the possibility of a United Europe; he speaks of possible "international marital unions" as fortresses under whose protection the training of a race of future lords of the earth may go on. 47 He is aware that accident more or less rules in the world, and perhaps always will--he is aware that genius itself is often a happy accident. 48 Indeed, some of his interpreters cannot clearly make out whether the superman is to be trained and educated or is to come like a piece of fate. 49 Nietzsche, however, really combines both views, saying that we may look to heredity, happy marriages, and to happy accidents to give us great men 50 --he is really a more balanced thinker than many imagine.

With this training of an aristocracy is also to go every possible measure for preventing degeneration among the mass of men. Races that cannot be utilized in some way may be allowed to die out. Sickly people and criminals may be kept from propagating themselves. 51 Nietzsche does not think much of those who talk of man's rights in marriage; it is better to speak of the right to marry, and he thinks it a rare right. Permission to produce children should be granted as a distinction-physicians' certificates being in order. 52 Women have obvious power here, and with power Nietzsche suggests responsibility. Remarking that the earth might be turned into a garden of happiness, if the dissatisfied, melancholy, grumbling could be prevented from perpetuating themselves, he intimates here "a practical philosophy for the female sex." It would also be better if men of high intellect, but with weakly nervous character, could not be perpetuated in kind. Society may hold in readiness the severest measures of restriction to this end, on occasion even castration. "The Bible commandment 'thou shalt not kill' is a naïveté compared with the commandment of life to decadents, 'thou shalt not beget.'" 53

V Under what general social conditions would the higher species (or the incipient approaches thereto) best arise? Nietzsche's view is almost paradoxical. Not favorable, but unfavorable conditions are best for them. With all said and done as to aiming at them and facilitating them, circumstances must not be too easy, conditions too soft, for them. He generally gives us the extremes of his thought (of course, at different times or in different connections), leaving us to reconcile them--and I am not sure that I can quite reconcile them in this case. The underlying idea is that the men of the future will be men of power and can only be proved by opposition. He early saw the place of insecurity, peril, and danger in educating the race and bringing out its higher qualities, and he applies the view in the present connection. He had made a special study of Greek life, and of the marked individuals who appeared in such numbers in the Greek city-states he observes, "It was necessary to be strong: danger was near--it lurked everywhere." Men became great not so much from the good intentions of the people, as because danger challenged them and they asserted themselves even to the point of seeming böse to the people. 54 So with the Romans--they were the outcome of a long-continued struggle for power: it was in this way that they reached their giant stature, like that of a primeval forest. 55 Let one go through history, says Nietzsche: the times when the individual becomes ripe for his perfection, i.e., free, when the classic type. of the sovereign man is reached--"oh, no, they were never humane times!" There must be no choice, either above or below trodden under foot. It is no small advantage to have a hundred Damocles-swords over one--thereby one learns to dance, comes to "fredom of motion." 56 The view seems extreme, and yet the very fundamental idea of Nietzsche, that of an order of rank ( Rangordnung), presupposes differences of power, differences usually determined by opposition and conflict--man in his struggle with nature being the grandiose prototype. Even under conditions of civilization one must guard against too much intercourse with the good-natured--for it relaxes: all intercourse is good in which one is armed (not necessarily with a pistol--need I add for the benefit of the simple?). 57 Perhaps in no way does Nietzsche go so contrary to current ways of thinking; and he is well aware of it. Modern life, he remarks, wants at all points to be protected--yet when danger goes, vigilance goes, too, and stimulus and exuberance of spirit, "coarse remedies" being revolutions and wars. It may even be that with the general increase of security, fineness of mind will no longer be needed--and will decrease as in China; struggle against Christianity, the anarchy of opinion, competition among princes, peoples, and business men, having thus far hindered the complete result. 58 To this extent Nietzsche looks at the whole modern situation from an unusual standpoint. With his main thought on the development of a new and higher class of men, he exclaims, "If things grow more insecure about us, so much the better! I wish that we live somewhat circumspectly and martially." 59 Wars are for the time-being the greatest stimulants of the imagination, now that Christian transports and terrors have become feeble. The social revolution which he thinks is coming will, perhaps, be something still greater. He accordingly faces eventualities of this sort undisturbed. The French Revolution, he observes, made Napoleon and Beethoven possible; and for a parallel recompense one would be obliged to welcome an anarchistic downfall of our whole civilization. 60 It is under conditions of peril that personal manly virtue gets value, and a stronger type, physically and in every way, is trained; beauty (schöne Männer) again becomes possible, and it really also goes better with the philosophers. 61

And yet Nietzsche had not had his Christian education for nothing; and it is the necessities of the situation, the logic of the production of great men, that lead him to say what he does. "Persons" do not come easily in this world. Good intentions alone are not sufficient--the force of circumstances is generally a co-operating cause. Moreover, rude situations may be necessary, where finer ones cannot be appreciated. Speaking of physical wars and revolutions, he calls them "coarse remedies" 62 [for the overmuch security in which we love to live]. The general truth is simply that a "person," being by nature something more or less isolated, needs temporary isolating and compulsion to an armed manner of existence: if this is not his fortune, he does not develope. What the nature of the compulsion is, or rather must be, depends on the grain of the man. Nietzsche required no wars or physical combats to make him a "person," and one of the most individual ones of modern time; but power on a lower level may require opposition of a coarser sort. Hence, though it is quite possible that the coming aristocracy he looked for will be a fighting aristocracy (in the literal sense) almost from the start, it will not be merely that; the fighting, too, may be forced rather than chosen. Moreover, the fighting may be delayed; at least Nietzsche saw no immediate occasion for it. At present, he says, though the new association will assert itself in warrior fashion, it will be a war without powder, a war between ideas and their marshaled hosts. 63 Most of what he says in praise of war (not all) has reference to war of this sort. How little physical war was an ideal to him appears in his asking whether the higher species might not be reached in some better and quicker way than by the fearful play of wars and revolutions--whether the end might not be gained by maintaining, training, separating certain experimental groups? 64 . His mind evidently wavered as to the probable future course of things. One can only describe him as in utrumque paratus. Sometimes he has misgivings as to whether we can foresee the most favorable conditions for the emergence of men of the highest worth--it is too complicated, a thousandfold too complicated a matter, and the chances of miscarriage are great, very great. 65 The only thing plain to him is what ought to be, what he desires--and the fact that we can set the type on high in our estimation, and be ready for any manifestation of it when it appears; and also that those who feel that they anywise approximate to it can more or less train themselves.

Of this self-training Nietzsche makes much. Men of the type he looks for may heighten courage, insight, hardness, independence, the feeling of responsibility in themselves--they may live differently from the mass now, and will probably find plenty of opposition without seeking it or coming to an actual passage of arms. 66 Nietzsche was aloof from the world of today, and had and has plenty of opposition. Is not his an evil name in the mouths of most men now? I hear little but dispraise of him, or at best condescension and pity towards him, in America (this quite apart from the ignorant abuse of him just now, as one of the causes of the present war). He himself had no illusions about the probable lot of men who thought as he did. In the figure of Zarathustra he tells us that he attempted a portraiture of the pain and sacrifice involved in a higher man's training--he leaves home, family, fatherland, is contemned by current morality, and has the suffering attendant on new ventures and mistakes, without any of the comfort which older ideals bestow. 67 Nietzsche says of his own disciples: "To the men who concern me I wish suffering, solitude, illness, mistreatment, disgrace--I desire that deep self-contempt, the suffering of self-mistrust, the pitiful state of the vanquished, may not be unknown to them: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the one thing that can prove today whether a man has worth or not--that he hold his ground." 68 These men, looking before and after, may in certain particulars anticipate the immensely slow processes of natural selection, put aside conditions not propitious to them (isolate themselves), select influences (nature, books, high events) that suit them, doing much thinking on the subject; they may keep in mind benevolent oppoments only, independent friends, 69 and put out of view the lower sorts of humanity, practising the willing blindness and deafness of the wise. 70 Further, they may concede to themselves a right to exceptional actions, as exercise in self-control and in the use of freedom; they may put themselves in circumstances where they are obliged to be hard; 71 they may win surplus power and self-confidence by all kinds of asceticism; they may school themselves in fine obedience and in the fixed sense of differences of rank among men, altogether outgrowing the idea that what is right for one is allowable for another and ceasing to emulate virtues that belong to others than themselves. 72 Their manner of life will vary from that of the "industrial masses" (the business and working class). Industrious habits, fixed rules, moderation in all things, settled convictions-in short, the "social virtues"--are indeed best for men at large; in this way they reach the perfection of their type. But for the exceptional men whom Nietzsche covets to see, other things are good: leisure, adventure, unbelief [as ordinarily understood], even excess--things that, if allowed to average natures, would cause their undoing. The very discipline that strengthens a strong nature and fits it for great undertakings undermines and shatters weaker men--"'doubt," la largeur de cœur, experiment, independence. 73

So may higher men educate themselves. And yet to create the whole set of conditions which accident sometimes provides for the appearance of great individuals, would require, Nietzsche remarks, an iron-hardness, "iron men," such as have never existed. Practically higher natures can only train themselves, utilize any existing situation, and wait for developments. 74 Wars will probably come willy-nilly, and though Nietzsche has little interest in ordinary wars, serving as they do only national ambitions and aims of trade 75 [such, I may say on my own account, as the present war in Europe] they may none the less serve in some measure as training-ground for the future type. f But more than this, the great war may come, the war for an idea, for the rule and organization of the earth (since willing compliance with the idea on the part of all concerned cannot be taken for granted) --and to this, if it comes, Nietzsche's higher men will not merely consent, they will inspire and lead in it. Oddly as it may sound to our ears today, he has a special word of recognition for religious wars, and this just because they turn on intellectual points. 76 In general, he regards the church as a superior institution to the state, since it gives to spiritual things the first place and to spiritual men rather than men of physical force the supreme authority; and if war must needs be, then it is nobler to contend for shades of doctrine than for material possessions. 77 And the great war, the only conflict in which Nietzsche is supremely interested, will be one for a conception, a philosophical doctrine--not with this as a cloak for other aims, but on behalf of it 78 --that conception of an ordered world, a rule and administration of the round earth, to which I have before alluded. He ventured to say--most extravagantly perhaps, and perhaps not--that his ideas would precipitate a crisis in the world's history, wars ensuing such as never had been known before. 79 The supreme result would justify all it cost, and would consecrate those who took part in the struggle--for it is bringing death into connection with the aims we strive for, that makes us reverend (ehrwürdig). 80

VI

Nietzsche was a passionate spirit and took his ideas greatly, and would have others take them so. He animadverts on the scholars who are content to sit in cool shadows; it is not enough, he says, to prove a thing, one must win men over or lift them to it. 81 We and our thoughts are not to be like shy deer hidden in the wood, but to go forth to conquer and possess. It may be left to little maidens to say, "good is what is pretty and touching"; to be really good is to be brave. 82 The time of war may not yet be come; Nietzsche is human enough, Christian enough to count it his happy fortune that he lives a preparatory existence and can leave to future man the conduct of actual conflicts; 83 but war in the large sense belonged to his nature. Although I do not remember his quoting Heraclitus's dictum, πΠλεμος π?τη?ρ πα?ντων, it accords with his spirit. He might also have said with Goethe:

"Machet nicht viel Federlesen, Schreibt auf meinen Leichenstein: Dieser ist ein Mensch gewesen, Und das heisst: ein Kδmpfer sein!"

--and he wished to transmit a legacy of this spirit to his disciples. Zarathustra says, "Your war shall ye wage, and for the sake of your thoughts. . . . Ye shall love peace as a means to new wars--and the short peace more than the long. I counsel you not to work, but to conflict. I counsel you not to peace, but to victory. Let your work be a conflict, your peace be a victory; . . . Let your love to life be love to your highest hope, and let your highest hope be the highest thought of life! . . . What matter about long life! What warrior wisheth to be spared?" 84

Nietzsche had his dark hours, as the strongest have, and about details and methods he had no settled assurance; but his dominant mood was one of hope. "We children of the future, how can we be at home in this world of today?" Zarathustra scarcely knew how to live, save as a seer of things to come-so did the past oppress him; but atonement would be made for the shortcomings of the past and the great Hazar be finally ushered in. 85 "Have ye not heard anything of my children? Speak to me of my garden, my Happy Isles, my new beautiful race. For their sake, I am rich, for their sake I became poor; . . . what have I not surrendered? What would I not surrender that I might have one thing: those children, that living plantation, those life-trees of my will and my highest hope!" 86 One feels the full longing of a man's soul (of one who is woman too in the great, divine sense of the word) in language like this. Yet it is not mere longing with Nietzsche. He speaks of the "unexhausted possibilities" of man and our human world. He is confident that in the long course of history the fundamental law will break through and the best come at last to victory--supposing that man with supreme determination wills their supremacy. "From you, the self-chosen," says Zarathustra to his disciples, "shall a chosen people grow; and from it the superman." 87 Indeed, the conditions for a change in the general attitude exist now--only the great persuasive men are lacking." 88 And from the class of new moralists, or, as he daringly said, "immoralists," he believed they would arise. "We immoralists," he declares--and it is one of his proudest utterances--"are today the only power that needs no allies in order to come to victory: hereby we are by far the strongest of the strong. We do not even need falsehood: what other power can dispense with it? A strong allurement fights for us--perhaps the strongest that exists, the allurement of the truth." And then disdaining that word as savoring of presumption, he adds, "The charm that fights for us, the Venus-eye that ensnares even our opponents and blinds them, is the magic of extremes, the allurement that goes with all daring to the utmost." 89

Itself an extreme utterance, we say. But it may be safer to let the future decide that. In this strange world, the unexpected, the undreamed of, sometimes happens.

CHAPTER XXVIII SOCIAL CRITICISM. ANALYSIS OF MODERN SOCIAL TENDENCIES THE general moral view set forth in the preceding pages implies an ideal of social organization--indeed, the two things are so closely connected that Nietzsche's ideal has already been adumbrated and I shall have only now to make it somewhat more articulate.

By way of preface I may summarize his criticism of existing society.

I In a broad, general way, the present is to him a time of disorganization and degeneration. Strong, ruling forces--the condition of organization and of advancing life--do not appear. The old aristocracies are themselves corrupted; they have spoiled the image of the ruler for us 1 --that is, have robbed it of the dignity and grace it once had in men's eyes. The contrary idea is that of freedom, and under its influence, with whatever compensatory features, a vast amount of commonness and vulgar egoism has been let loose on the world. There are two moments in the secular process of society: (1) the evergrowing conquest of larger but weaker social groups by smaller but stronger ones; (2) the ever-greater conquest of the stronger [within a group] by the mass, and in consequence the advent of democracy, with anarchy of the elements as a final result. 2 We are in the second stage of the process now. The institutions in which and by which society has lived and been strong in the past are slowly dissolving. Men call it progress, and if progress is movement and movement to an end, progress it is--but, to Nietzsche, progressive decline. Democracy he calls "a form of decline (Verfallsform) of the state. 3 However justifiable, or at least excusable, as a temporary measure it may be, it represents a form of unbelief--unbelief in great men and a select society: "we are all equal," it says. 4 The sentiment of hostility to whatever rules or wills to rule, which underlies it, Nietzsche calls "misarchism"--admitting that it is a bad word for a bad thing. 5 The individual wants to be free, but as most are constituted, "freedom" is a misfortune for them. European democracy is to a certain extent a liberation of powers, but to a far greater extent a liberation of weaknesses and other ignoble things. 6 The demand for independence, for free development, for laisser aller is most hotly made by those for whom no control could be too strict. 7 "A more common kind of men are getting the upper hand (in place of the noblesse, or the priests): first the business people, then the workers." 8 These classes, whom Nietzsche puts together as "Pφbel,""Gesindel," are the "lords of today": for there need be no illusions--though they may talk only of freedom, they really want to rule. 9 They have their place, even a necessary place, in society, but they are a lower type of men, and when they wish to order everything for their own benefit, their selfishness is only less revolting than that of degenerates, who say "all for myself." 10 Nietzsche refers in Zarathustra to the "too many," the "much too many," and it is commonly assumed (in accordance with the usual manner of discourse in England and America) that he has in mind the vast working populations of our time; but he is really thinking of the lower sorts of men in general, and it happens (perhaps does not merely "happen") that those whom he specially mentions are the rich and would-be rich, clamberers for power, journalists and the educated class. 11 "They gain wealth and are poorer with it." A king in Zarathustra says that he would rather live among hermits and goat-herds than with our gilded, false, painted populace (Pφbel), though it call itself "good society," or "nobility "--healthy, hardnecked peasants are better. 12 "Populace below, populace above I what is today 'poor' and 'rich'?""This distinction I unlearned," says another character, whom Zarathustra chides a little, but does not really condemn. Greed, envy, revenge, pride --these are more or less the motives all around. 13 [1]

The modern ideas of "freedom," "equal rights," "no masters and no slaves," are sometimes traced to France and the eighteenth century, but Nietzsche thinks that they are really and ultimately of English origin--the French being only the apes and actors of them, also their best soldiers, and alas! their first and profoundest victims. 14 The ideas played a part too in the German Reformation, which on one side was a kind of peasants' insurrection, an eruption of common instincts, with pillage, lust for the riches of the churches, and an unchaining of the senses, following in its wake. 15 Going back further still, the modern movement is a continuation and materialistic rendering of the slave-insurrection in morality, which began in ancient Israel and was carried on by Christianity--setting on high, as it did, the common man and his interests and valuations, and bent on abasing the powerful and the great.

II

But whatever its origin and spiritual filiations, the movement is growing and taking on ever more pronounced forms. The long, slow insurrection of populace and slaves (the two are almost equivalent expressions to Nietzsche) "grows and grows." 16 It is not that want is greater, that social conditions are worse 17 --the causes are of another order. The business class have not perhaps much more to get; but as to the working class, it is just because the laborer finds himself relatively so well off that he asks for more, and asks it more immodestly. 18 "Now all benevolence and small charity stirs up the low, and the over-rich had better be on their guard! When today a person pours from a big bottle through too small a neck, people break the neck." 19 Nietzsche was one of the few to see the intimate connection of democracy with socialism. They are, to his mind, successive waves of one ground-swell. As the democratic movement is the heir of the Christian, so socialism is the natural offspring of democracy. If workingmen are given political rights, it is only to be expected that, as the largest factor in the population, they will become the determining factor in the state and try to order things for their own benefit: the principle of majority-rule brings this species of rule with it. In the lukewarm (lauen) atmosphere of democratic ease, this may not be perceived--the power to draw conclusions relaxes under a laisser faire rιgime; but the conclusion is inevitable. 20 a It is, indeed, often said that there is an essential difference between democracy and socialism, in that the former aims simply at individual liberty and independence, or, as James Russell Lowell put it,

"To make a man a Man an' let him be,"

while socialism would submerge individual liberty under a rιgime of strict social organization. But the socialists are keen enough to see (it is really a very old truth) that individual aims may sometimes best be secured by social organization-the individual first getting effective rights and powers in this way. That is to say, socialism and individualism are not really antithetical, but play into one another; as Nietzsche says, "Socialism is only a means of agitation for individualism." 21 It is but a specious self-surrender to the whole which the socialist workingman makes--he gives himself up only the better to secure individual rights and enjoyment; the whole is simply a new instrument with which to serve private aims. 22 b Moreover without intending to, democratic institutions are making socialism practically possible, for they are putting into the worker's hands the means for obtaining his ends. They are giving him the ballot, giving him the right of combination, making him capable of bearing arms (militδrtόchtig). He thus becomes part of the political power, yes, in virtue of his numbers, the leading factor in it--he can do what he will, at least can try to (for there may be a gap between the hope and the performance). 23

The socialist movement sometimes takes on an anarchist form. The final aims are the same, but the anarchists are more impatient, wish to proceed more summarily with the existing order. Nietzsche has in mind such communist-anarchists as we in America knew (particularly in Chicago) in the eighties, not of course the so-called "philosophical anarchists"--who are not socialists at all. As socialism is a means of agitation for individualism, so this anarchism is a means of agitation for socialism; with it socialism excites fear and begins to have the fascination of fearful things--it draws the bold, the adventurous to its side, the intellectually daring included. Uprisings, violences, novel state-experiments are to be expected. 24

III

What unites anarchism, socialism, and democracy is the common man's impatience of rule, his hatred of lords and masters, his opposition to laws he does not himself make, his disallowance of separate and special claims, rights, and privileges-this on the negative side. Positively, as already stated, he wants himself to rule, to bring all that has hitherto been separate and on high into subjection to him: it is an extreme of self-assertion, of will to power--only now not in the quarter where we have been accustomed to look for it. 25 Restraint from tradition is as unwelcome as from rulers. The tendency is to judge everything by individual standards, to make personal or even momentary happiness the measure of right and wrong. Authorities are questioned, the aged no longer have the accustomed reverence, institutions grow weak, discipline and the idea of discipline tend to vanish. On the other hand, the desire for personal enjoyment, for wealth and luxury, knows no bounds. Nietzsche Once gives a formal characterization of modernity: absence of moral discipline--human beings being left to grow; lack of authority; lack of moderation within settled horizons; lack of fineness in judgment; a chaos of contradictory valuations. 26 They are marks of life in process of disorganization. Nietzsche admits that our institutions no longer fit us, but he says that the trouble is with us, not with them. We live for today, live very fast, very irresponsibly--this is our "freedom"; at the mere mention of "authority" we think we are in danger of a new slavery. But in order that there may be great social growths and institutions that fit them, there must be a species of will, instinct, imperative, which is "antiliberal bis zur Bosheit"; a will to tradition, to authority, to responsibility stretching over centuries, to a solidarity of the generations forward and backward in infinitum. Then comes a growth like the imperium Romanum. 27

To illustrate what he means, he speaks of marriage. The institution is losing its reason today--why? Because the instincts and aims that have created it and lie back of it are disappearing. More and more there is a tendency to ( Nietzsche says "indulgence in favor of") love-matches. But the institutions of society are never founded on an idiosyncrasy, and marriage cannot rest on an idiosyncrasy like "love." At its basis is a combination of impulses belonging to human nature, i.e., strong human nature, as such: the impulse of sex, the impulse of property (wife and child as property), the impulse of dominion, which continually organizes that smallest social structure, the family, and which needs children and heirs in order to hold fast even physiologically an attained measure of power, influence, wealth, and so to make possible tasks and instinctsolidarity reaching from century to century. The reason of marriage lay in the sole juristic responsibility of the man-thereby it got a center of gravity, while today it goes hitching along (auf beiden Beinen hinkt) ; it lay in its indissolubleness in principle--thereby it won an authority that could make itself heard over against accidents of feeling, passion, and the moment; it lay in the responsibility of the families concerned for the selection of the marriage partners--the whole presupposing a lasting organization of society itself, under whose protection and guarantees the family-process could go on. But in these modern days, with idiosyncrasies, thoughts of momentary pleasure rampant, marriage is losing its meaning--hence its tendency to disappear. The objection, however, is not to marriage, but to modernity. 28 It is but an instance. All along the line tradition is attacked--tradition which is the condition of the possibility of a continuity of valuations and po

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